Reductio ad Communum

Reductio ad Communum, also argumentum ad Communum, or reductio (or argumentum) ad Marxum - dog Latin for "reduction (or argument) to Communism (or Marxism)" - is a modern formal fallacy in logic. The name is a pun on reductio ad absurdum, or especially its related argumentum ad misericordiam. It is a variety of both questionable cause and association fallacy and has the effect of an appeal to emotion.
The fallacy is typically applied during political policy discussions involving any form of public regulation, taxation, or service. The argument carries emotional weight as rhetoric, since in most western or American cultures the policies of Communists are automatically condemned. The tactic is often used to derail arguments, as such a comparison tends to distract and to result in angry and less reasoned responses. On the other hand, just labelling a counter-argument reductio ad communum does not make your argument right.
Fallacious nature of the argument
Reductio ad Communum is rationally unsound for three different reasons: As a wrong direction fallacy (a type of questionable cause), it inverts the cause-effect relationship between why a villain and an idea might be criticized; conversely, as guilt by association (a form of association fallacy), it illogically attempts to shift culpability from a villain to an idea regardless of who is espousing it and why. reductio ad Communum suffers from the fallacy of begging the question or take the form of slippery slope arguments, which are frequently (though not always) false as well.

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