Reinforced Straw Man: Sam Harris complained about being misquoted by a friend, to which of his. The friend had argued against the sentiment expressed in the misquote. He defended himself: “My argument still stands, because this is the kind of thing a Sam Harris would say.“
Woosh/Meme Citogenesis: People retweeted satire on twitter. Others only saw the tweet and comment “I can’t believe it’s not The Onion!“ It was the Borowitz Report. Somebody wrote a blog post about the tweet. Others tweeted about the blog post. Somebody wrote a listicle embedding these tweets for Buzzfeed. Somebody else wrote a long article de-bunking the original tweet. Instead of de-bunking a rumour, it repeated and cemented a meme. It directed people to the tweet.
Argument from Paranoia Display: People were scared because of a hate crime. They asked the police to do more. Turns out that hate crime didn’t happen. They asked the police to do more anyway, because their fear was still there. (Coined by @ilzolende)
These frequently occur together in this pattern: Somebody makes a joke about the outgroup. Somebody else who is not in on the joke thinks it’s real. People say something should be done about the outgroup. Outgroup complains. Ingroup counters that outgroup could have said that. Ingroup is scared. Ingroup blames outgroup for being scared. Ingroup is now more scared than before. Something must be done.
That sounds like something the outgroup would say.