Fallacy of Isolated Grievance

A fallacy that treats a grievance as if it existed in isolation from its context, from related grievances, from historical patterns. The fallacy presents a single incident as if it were the whole story, or dismisses a pattern by focusing on a single counterexample. It's the logic of "one minority succeeded, so discrimination doesn't exist," of "one bad experience doesn't prove systemic racism." The Fallacy of Isolated Grievance allows its user to dismiss systemic problems by pointing to exceptions, to deny patterns by focusing on particulars. It's the favorite fallacy of those who don't want to see the forest for the trees, because the forest would require action.

Example: "She presented decades of data showing housing discrimination. He responded with the Fallacy of Isolated Grievance: 'But my neighbor is Black and he owns his house. Checkmate.' One data point, isolated from the pattern, used to dismiss the whole. The data didn't matter; the exception was all he needed. The fallacy had done its work: making the systemic invisible."

by Dumu The Void February 20, 2026

Fallacy of Specific Grievance

A fallacy that focuses on specific, often well-documented grievances while ignoring the broader context in which they occur. The fallacy presents, for example, police violence against a particular individual as an isolated incident, rather than as part of a pattern of systemic racism. Or it focuses on a particular policy failure while ignoring the successes of the same system. Specifying grievance allows the fallacy-user to acknowledge problems without addressing their causes, to admit that "mistakes happen" while denying that the mistakes are systematic. It's the logic of "one bad apple" applied to everything—acknowledging the specific while denying the general.

Example: "He admitted that yes, that particular police killing was tragic. But the Fallacy of Specific Grievance meant he never had to ask why it kept happening, why certain communities kept being targeted, why the system produced the same outcome over and over. One tragedy, acknowledged; the pattern, ignored. The specific had been used to hide the general."

by Dumu The Void February 20, 2026