Rhetorical extortion (rhextortion)

One of my frustrations when in a discussion with someone is the difficulty of challenging logical fallacies.  It is easy to get sidetracked into a discussion of the fallacy and off the topic.  A good example is from our recent "fun with the Wuhan virus" has been "medical professionals are all saying".  Many of them may be but it is hard to counter this unless you happen to have  your own list of medical professionals lined up in the wings ready to go.

Oliver Traldi, who I've never knowingly read before and am not sure what else he has done, has come up with a new, interesting term based on what recently happened with the letter to Harper's calling for freer discussion of ideas. 

Rhextortion: Intentionally misinterpreting someone's word in order to prevent them from speaking.

Hopefully everyone is familiar with the basic structure of logic where P and Q represent statements (which may be true or false, that is irrelevant to the discussion).  From the article:

When someone prevents you from saying P on the grounds that someone else might interpret it as meaning Q, you haven’t been prevented from saying Q. You’ve been prevented from saying P. A realist has to assume that the goal, therefore, is to prevent people from saying P. 

I'll let you read the article for more.  It's short, well written, and informative.