A
bad-faith debating tactic where the debater selectively rejects commonly understood concepts, systems of classification, or terminology used by their opponent, halting any substantive debate, but supports their own viewpoints using those same concepts.
Instead of evaluating the logic of an opposing argument, the tactical nihilist
will feign confusion, and attack a term used by their opponent. If the opponent, unaware of the tactic, takes the debater's apparent confusion in good faith, the conversation is quickly derailed into
long discussions where the debater
will continually request more and more evidence simply to establish the term's
definition or validity, which the debater really understood in the first place. The debater
will split every hair, attempt to deconstruct other
words and concepts, and request more evidence. The original argument is forgotten and appears to be unaddressed by the opponent, and the debater is then able to feel victorious.
Alice: White people, becoming a dwindling and hated minority in the United States, face challenges as a group and should be allowed to advocate for their interests as a race.
Bob: Race? What even is that, really? And what is white? What about Italians and the
Irish? I don't even know what you're talking about.
Alice: Wait, you support black, Hispanic and
Asian minority activism. You know what race is, and I've never heard you try to deny or deconstruct any of those other racial identities before. And you
sure seem to know what white people are when you're attacking them for white privilege, or when you think there are too many of them. Please stop with the tactical nihilism.
