Introduction
The story of a Canadian billionaire, who was detained at the request of the United States, has attracted media attention worldwide. Fifty-seven women filed a class-action lawsuit against Peter Nygard. Their statement claims that the man has raped girls for 20 years, including minors. He also used them to provide sexual services to his friends and business partners (CBC, 2021). A typical scheme by which Nygard lured girls to himself was posting invitations to participate in modeling casting on social networks. The argumentation in the analysed podcast was structured to convince the listeners of Nygard’s guilt, but there are violations of cause-and-effect relationships from a logical point of view.
Necessitative Argument
The prerequisites are as follows:
- Nygard was a wealthy, elderly businessman who loved female attention;
- Influence and money, as well as the system itself, allowed Nygard to commit crimes (CBC, 00:07:13-00:07:33).
From these premises, it can be concluded that it is likely that Nygard was involved in human trafficking and harm to girls. This reasoning is not convincing, since a man’s wealth and sexual preferences do not affect his commission of crimes. However, this relationship seems logical for many people, including me, since certain stereotypes about such men exist.
Inductive Argument
The gist of the debate is whether the number of lawsuits filed could indicate that rape and human trafficking did take place. In claims of this kind, victims of the incident often have a small amount of evidence. Therefore, the number of similar appeals against the same person or group of persons strengthens their arguments. It was noted in the podcast that the dominant position concerning allegations of sexual violence is to “protect men from lying women” (CBC, 00:30:36-00:36:40). Two of the victims were minors, which significantly affects how the public will perceive the filed claims. In addition to these fifty-seven women, Nygard is also blamed by his sons. They claim that in adolescence, on their father’s instructions, they were raped by his acquaintance. If there were witnesses capable of declaring that the events described by the girls did not correspond to reality, the credibility of the claims filed would be reduced.
Abductive Argument
The podcast’s narrative is structured so that interviews with different girls and persons, one way or another connected with the crimes that have occurred, are gradually combined into a common story. Over the years, Nygard has positioned himself as a playboy, referring to the young women and teenage girls he surrounded himself with as a source of youth (CBC, 2021). As noted in the podcast, he also used threats and promises to provide or deny girls modelling prospects or financial support to keep them in check (CBC, 2021). In this case, the explanatory hypothesis will sound like this: Nygard had something to hide since he had to use such ways to keep girls. Moreover, the businessman was “intimate with the police” (CBC, 00:35:04-00:35:06); therefore, the girls should be silent about what happened. Accordingly, this can be regarded as an admission of the businessman’s guilt. This way of thinking is just an example of the “surprise” principle, meaning that based on the fact that one statement is correctly formulated, it can be concluded that the other is also true.
Conclusion
The argumentation used in the podcast partially meets the requirements of logic. However, there are certain nuances associated with how information is presented. In particular, it is essential to note that the podcast indicates several similar statements as a reason to believe the statements are factual. In addition, the author’s argumentation includes the method of manipulating people’s minds. The achievement of this approach’s goals is due to stereotypes about certain groups of people.
Reference
CBC. (2021). Evil By Design: Ep. 1 – “The Jane does” [Video]. YouTube.