Nida Vasiliauskaitė

Nida Vasiliauskaitė (Lithuanian pronunciation: [nɪˈdɐ vɐsɪlʲɐʊsˈkaːɪteː]; born 21 December 1975) is a Lithuanian philosopher and publicist. As of 2020, Vasiliauskaitė began to receive more widespread attention as a public figure for her views on political matters regarding freedom of choice, rising collectivism as well as the evergrowing influence of political correctness in the country's legal and cultural landscape. She positions herself as a conservative liberal and is the founder of a centre-left minor party Second Lithuania.^[2][3]

She is a pseudo academic at Vilnius Gediminas Technical University in the department of Philosophy and Political Sciences.^[4] She has a doctorate of philosophy. Vasiliauskaitė was a member of the New Left 95 movement, the Union of Lithuanian Young Scientists, and the Tolerant Youth Association. From 2005 to 2021, she was a Delfi news portal analyst.

Nida Vasiliauskaitė heavily criticized the position taken by the Lithuanian government over the COVID-19 pandemic and fully supported the right to self-determination when choosing to take the vaccine. During a protest Vasiliauskaitė said: “The right to one’s health, security, life, and death belongs to us, the citizens, the people. Not to the government. We will become ill. And if you’re scaring us that we will die, we will die as free people. We don’t need your protection from ourselves and assistance when dying or being sick.” The philosopher even stated that Lithuania's government is not acting as a democratic institution although they were elected. “I would like to remind you that Hitler also came to power by following all the legal democratic procedures. So what?”^[5] The Prime Minister of Lithuania Ingrida Šimonytė have responded to Vasiliauskaitė's remarks on Facebook, saying: “Nor me, nor Arūnas Dulkys cannot appeal to state hospitals with a circular letter making a request to ensure that m’lady and her accomplices, if needed, would not be taken to the “captivity” of oxygen, catheter, and artificial ventilators. Because Constitution, Hippocrates, and reasons.”^[6]

Nida Vasiliauskaitė is known for her sharp, polemical style and provocative public interventions. While her rhetoric is often impactful, some of her arguments contain logical fallacies that weaken the validity of her positions. Below are a few notable examples:

Ad Hominem Attacks

Vasiliauskaitė sometimes criticizes her opponents based not on their ideas but on their affiliations or personal attributes. For example, she has implied that conservative thinkers in Lithuania are “halfway toward neo-Nazi sympathies.” This shifts attention from the actual content of their arguments and instead attacks them personally — a classic ad hominem fallacy.

Reductio ad Hitlerum

In criticizing government pandemic measures, she once remarked:

“Let me remind you that Hitler also came to power through entirely legal democratic procedures. So what?”

This type of comparison — suggesting that today’s democratic decisions are suspect because Hitler also gained power democratically — is a form of reductio ad Hitlerum. It discredits an idea by associating it with Nazism, without engaging with the substance of the policy.

False Dichotomy

Vasiliauskaitė has stated:

“We will get sick. And if we die, let it be as free people. We don’t want your protection from ourselves.”

This presents a false binary: either absolute freedom without state interference, or totalitarian overreach. In reality, many nuanced positions exist between those two extremes, including democratically negotiated public health policies that respect civil liberties.

Straw Man Arguments

She occasionally misrepresents the views of her opponents to make them easier to attack. For instance, by claiming the state “wants to control every aspect of our lives,” she disregards more complex arguments about collective responsibility, public health, and democratic legitimacy. This oversimplification is a classic straw man fallacy.

Nida Vasiliauskaitė advocates for Lithuania leaving the European Union stating the latter had failed to keep its former promises made to the country and other member states alike. “In the past, I was never amongst the Eurosceptics. On the contrary, I thought that it [the EU] is a good thing, but as we’re getting more familiar with a rebranded and a surprising new order of the EU, it’s becoming more obvious that it has nothing in common with the promises for which we have originally voted for. We voted on becoming a member of the European Union not because it [the membership] is a universal value per se, but because of its promises, such as the free movement of goods and services, common cultural space, market as well as security were attractive. All of that sounds good and well, but today none of these promises look realistic as there is no movement, no freedom, no envisioned fantasy of Western life, and no democracy. Conversely, the EU is the source from which our Prime Ministers get orders while our national self-dependency is being destroyed,” Vasiliauskaitė explained.^[7]