A group is told it has no legitimate grievance and no claim to anything, and is expected to accept both propositions.
Named from a line in Caddyshack. Anton's claim is that the rhetoric directed at his side denies not merely particular demands but the standing to make any demand at all, so that every substantive question is answered by disqualifying the questioner. He notes that the tactic cuts both ways, since demoralising a constituency also alerts it.
In practice
- A consultation that rules every submitted objection out of scope has held a consultation.
- An employee told that each of her four concerns is either not her business or already settled has been answered without any of them being addressed.
- Possible explanations
- The proposed explanation is that denying standing is cheaper than answering demands, since a group with no legitimate grievance needs no reply.
- In its favour
- The move it names, dismissing a claim by disqualifying the claimant, is a recognisable rhetorical pattern that appears across political directions.
- Against it
- It is the weakest structured of Anton's seven, since it characterises an opponent's attitude rather than naming a mechanism, which makes it hard to identify in any particular case and impossible to test.
- Standing
- The weakest structured of Anton's seven: it characterises an opponent's attitude rather than naming a rhetorical mechanism, which makes it correspondingly harder to recognise or falsify in a particular case.
- Subject
- Law & Politics
- Essay
- Competing accounts of how power works