Bifurcation - in black and white
In logic the fallacy of bifurcation is committed if an either/or situation is presented when in reality there is a range of options. The mistake is made by the denial of those extra choices. Unlike many fallacies which introduce irrelevant material, this one omits relevant material.
It has been committed in strength by the opponents of Winston Marshall, the banjo player of the group Mumford and Sons. He has resigned from the band because of a Twitter storm by woke leftist agitprop people. He favourably commented on a book that exposed Antifa, an extremist hard left group that advocates violence. They called him a fascist and a Nazi, among other abuse. It was too much for him, since 13 of his relatives were murdered in the Nazi Holocaust. He’s quit the band in order to protect his band-mates from abuse, and to be free to express his views without causing difficulties for them.
His abusers were committing the fallacy of bifurcation, sometimes called the fallacy of black and white. It mistakenly supposes there to be only two alternatives when in fact there are several. They said that because he supported an exposé of the extreme left, he must therefore be of the extreme right. Nonsense. He might be a moderate who opposes extremism and violence in general. But there you are. The Woken SS takes anyone who disagrees with them to be a right-wing racist extremist.
The standard line of fanatics is “He that is not with us is against us!” The intent of the fallacy is to force people into being either in favour of their agenda or to admit to being against it. In reality, outside of that black-and-white world, people might support some of their agenda while opposing other parts of it. They might support many of the aims in general, while opposing the hate and fanaticism used to advance them. They might even, who knows, show no interest in it at all, preferring to fill their minds and their time with things more relevant to their own lives.
In 1930s Germany, people faced intimidation and violence if they refrained from giving the straight-arm salute. In modern day USA, people have been bullied, screamed at by mobs, and threatened with violence for declining to give the clenched-fist salute associated with Communism and left-wing fanaticism.
Most bullies regard acquiescence in their bullying as a cue for them to do more of it. When authority figures such as University Vice-Chancellors and Directors of National Institutions surrender to bullying, it encourages the bullies to seek other targets on whom they can enforce their will. A more valid response to the whipped-up hysteria would be to point out that there are vast swathes of life outside the scope of the black-and-white world of the fanatics, and that most of us prefer to live in the complex and colourful world that is, rather than in the narrow and bifurcated world they want it to become.