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The Gish Gallop is the debating technique of drowning the opponent in such a torrent of small arguments that their opponent cannot possibly answer or address each one in real time. More often than not, these myriad arguments are full of half-truths, lies, and straw-man arguments – the only condition is that there be many of them, not that they be particularly compelling on their own. They may be escape hatches or “gotcha” arguments that are specifically designed to be brief, but take a long time to unravel. Thus, galloping is frequently used in timed debates (especially by creationists) to overwhelm one’s opponent.

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May help some online discussions to know of this tactic.

A simple DFTT does the job too.

I got done by this technique at a conference. Very nasty.

The book “Straight and crooked thinking” by Robert H. Thouless, first published in 1930, includes a debunking of a large number of similar distortions of the truth.

But politicians and lawyers have been busy since then, inventing such techniques as “the big lie”, “never answer a question”, “massive repetition”, and now “the Gish gallop”.

Perhaps a new book is needed.