“Fallacy of Relative Privation” or the “Not as bad as Fallacy”
The “Fallacy of Relative Privation,” also known as the “Not As Bad As” fallacy, is on full display in this Disclose.TV meme. Disclose.TV is a Facebook page that is a great stomping ground for teaching critical thinking — they have fallacies galore when presenting arguments about aliens, UFOs, and the like.
I offered the singular rape versus gang rape analogy to illustrate this. Should a person not be entitled to grieve about being raped by one person in prison, simply because someone across the street at another prison — or in another country — gets routinely raped by entire militias? Both are bad. Both need to stop. And both need to be fought against aggressively. The fact that a similar situation is worse does not negate the need to address the situation at hand.
This is also a popular fallacy presented to Black people who bring up racism or racial injustice. Some people point to how Black people are faring in certain third-world countries as a way of suggesting they should be grateful for the racism or oppression they face here, and should simply stay quiet about it.
Further Reading