Refuting an ideology requires attacking its best exponents, not its weakest

Evidence

One observation which could be made on many polemical references in the Manual is its systematic failure to recognise the possibility of error on the part of individual authors quoted, with the result that a social group—of which the men of science are always assumed to be the representatives—finds attributed to it the most disparate opinions and the most contradictory intentions. This is connected precisely to a more general criterion of method which is this: it is not very “scientific”, or more simply it is not very “serious”, to choose to combat the stupidest and most mediocre of one’s opponents or even to choose the least essential and the most occasional of their opinions and then to presume thereby to have “destroyed” “all” the enemy because one has destroyed a secondary and incidental opinion of his or to have destroyed an ideology or a doctrine because one has demonstrated the theoretical inadequacy of its thirdor fourth-rate champions. Further: “one must be fair to one’s enemies”, in the sense that one must make an effort to understand what they really meant to say and not maliciously stop short at the superficial immediate meaning of their expressions. — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1562

Categorization

• DEFINE: This frames a Gramscian principle of serious intellectual combat relevant to how marginal groups get polemically misrepresented.
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: how does attacking straw opponents function rhetorically regardless of intellectual seriousness - what purpose does it serve the attacker even when illegitimate?
• XREF: connects to: Ideological struggle must target the strongest adversary, not the weakest — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1541; Critique must target foundational syntheses, not mass ideology — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1543; Said’s own critique reproduces the fixed Occident-Orient essentialism it attacks — Aijaz Ahmad, In Theory: Classes, Nations, Literatures, 747

Broader Connections

• Ideological struggle must target the strongest adversary, not the weakest #corroborates (0.97) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1541
• Critique must target foundational syntheses, not mass ideology #expands (0.75) — Antonio Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, 1543