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Appeal to Emotion

Appeal to emotion uses a fabricated argument or controversy that may or may not have a factual basis. The rhetor misconstrues it in a way that evokes an emotional response from the audience. While an emotional response is not wrong, the pretext used to do so in this situation can be misleading or false.  Anti-smoking advertisements often use an appeal to emotion to build the argument that smoking is bad for your health.  Consider a billboard of a mother blowing smoke into the face of her child with a caption reading "Second-hand smoke kills. Are you okay with silently killing your children?"  The intent of the advertisement is to provoke a response that elicits emotion for the child in a harmful situation caused by smoking.

Augustus Sol Invictus is a follower of a pagan faith known as Thelema. As a part of his religion, he sacrificed and drank the blood of a goat to honor the god of the wilderness.

News outlets have latched onto this story to portray Invictus in a negative light to the voting population. The media outlets know how society views pagan religious, and uses these views to allow the minds of their audience to wander. This results in a response of fear from the uninformed reader at the thought of a pagan or occultist holding political office. The idea of a man drinking blood and killing an animal draws a comparison with devil worship.

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