Yes, I know: there is a very, very good reason for Godwin’s law. You can’t have a reasonable debate when you’re being compared to a Nazi every five seconds.
But…
My philosophy of philosophy is that every idea needs to be tested to the limit. If it breaks down under extreme circumstances, then you have to change the idea until it holds up, or scrap it altogether. One extremely useful extreme circumstance is Nazi Germany.
To take one classic example, say you are arguing that morality comes from obeying the law. Your opponent would point out that, in WII Germany, the law said that killing Jews and gypsies and gays was okay. This is obviously immoral. Therefore, one cannot say that morality exclusively comes from legislation.
So where you you draw the line between “Laws aren’t always moral; see Nazi Germany”, and “You support Politial View X! You’re just like Hitler!”? When, in your opinion, are comparisions appropriate, and when are they inapropriate?
Any valid comparison that helps illustrate a point or helps fight ignorance is valid. Any invocation of Hitler that is used to simply paint an opponent as an extremist is not.
It is like playing the race card or accusations of antisemitism: even when accurate such charges rarely help make your case; they instead are more likely to come off as a cheap rhetorical device that polarizes any meaningful discussion and the target audience. The added risk with Godwinizing is that its use usually cheapens the true horror that was the Holocaust.
Even gratuitous mention of Nazism that is just not clearly relevant can derail a discussion.
Godwinizing should be avoided as much as possible.
The problem is few people really study WWII in depth and can see Hitler for what it’s worth. Simply being responsible for death isn’t enough. Napoleon was responsible for a lot of deaths too, but he also brought changes that were good in the long run, so his nastiness is lessened by some good. As is Stalin, who was evil but was on the winning side. Or Mao who was arguably responsible for more deaths than Hitler, but those deaths were compromised by being mostly brought on by starvation, due to inept attempts to change the economy. Mao didn’t set out to kill his people but the fact they died, was of no importance to him. Looking at it like that one could say he was not evil just indifferent.
Of course those are oversimplified a bit, but Hitler was also much villified because Germans, unlike the Chinese, Russians, or any of the mass slaughters in Africa, were considered a very “Civilized” people. They weren’t teems of unwashed masses who lacked education, or opportunity. And yet these “civil” people turned into blood savages This on some levels seems worse.
As the saying goes, if you give a chimp a gun you don’t blame the chimp if he kills someone.
Hitler brought mass sufferings on people who weren’t his own. Throughout history if you are a dictator and you confine your murderous ways to your own borders you don’t, at least historically, get much guff.
The last part is almost no one liked Stalin, but a lot of people liked Hitler. Remember six million Jews didn’t die because Hitler wanted them dead. They died because Hitler wanted him dead and “Well since he’s gonna do it anyway, we’ll look over here.”
I read a book by Hitler’s secretary, she was 19 at the time and she was with him in the last days. She was asked if she knew what was going on, with regards to the murders, destruction and concentration camps etc. She said “I had no idea, but if I had bothered to look, I would have definately seen it.”
A legitimate argument is saying “It was wrong when the Nazis did it and it’s wrong when somebody else does it.” An illegitimate argument is saying “The Nazis did it, so it must be wrong, and therefore somebody else who does it is also wrong.”
So saying “the Nazis killed people just because of their ancestry, that’s wrong, and it’s just as wrong when people are doing the same thing in Sudan” that’s a reasonable point. But saying “Hitler was a vegetarian; Hitler was evil; therefore anyone who’s a vegetarian is evil like Hitler” is ridiculous.
Bringing up Hitler and the Nazis is a valid argument whenever someone declares an absolute. If a pacifist declares that any act of violence is always wrong, then it is perfectly legitimate to examine that line of reasoning at the extreme. It is not valid when someone makes a moderate statement. If someone says they support ID cards for all citizens, it is not fair to retort that the Nazis liked keeping track of people.
Basically, it is a legitimate debating tactic to use when probing the implications of an extreme argument, but it is inappropriate rhetoric when used simply to paint an unfair comparison.
I have always thought of “Godwin’s Law” as “Godwin’s Ridiculous Objection.” There are many times when Hitler really can be used as a totally valid metaphor/example. But of course it has to follow the same rules of logic as any other metaphor/example. Obviously, simply using Hitler or the Nazis doesn’t invalidate an argument.
Well, it should be pointed out that all Godwin’s Law really is is that as the length of a Usenet [or other type of discussion system] discussion increases, the probability of someone making a comparison to Hitler or Nazis approaches 1. It doesn’t say anything about the merits of the usage.
I’d say that whenever a person has the power (political or otherwise) to kill a significant portion of a significant demographic group, and uses or attempts to use that power to do so, it is fair and appropriate to compare that person to Hitler. This would apply to most of the assorted genocidal dictators in the real world, as well as to some fictional characters like Darth Vader and Voldemort.
Exactly. Godwin’s law has been elevated to the level of a logical fallacy, to the degree that when you make a comparison to Hitler or Nazi Germany you allegedly “lose the argument.” There are circumstances where making a comparison to Nazi Germany is completely valid. Shortly after 9/11, a poster on another board suggested that to teach the world a lesson about the consequences of attacking the United States, we should pick out a village at random and kill everyone in it. Apart from this being a horrific idea in its own right, I pointed out that this was exactly what the Nazis did to the village of Lidice in retaliation for the assassination of Heydrich.
Yes. Bringing Hitler into a discussion or debate is not necessarily a losing tactic. There are people deserving of being compared even in the extreme. But even when their crimes against people are on a smaller scale, it doesn’t hurt to remind others of the similarities and of where such thinking can lead.
With warrantless searches and wire-tapping and prisoners being held and tortured without charges or trials, I’ve wondered how parts of our government differ from the secret police or the gestapo. The scale of the operation was one, but what else?
Godwin’s Law was supposed to be humorous. It wasn’t a bad thing or even wrong. Too bad that posters let it intimidate them.
Godwin’s law certainly annoys me when it comes to the topic of the government turning tyrannical. I don’t know of any other examples of a popularly elected leader taking complete control of a modern nation.
This is a misunderstanding of the whole point of Godwin’s Law, but I guess nobody is going to understand that now: The misconception is too deeply ingrained.
Godwin was talking about how people eventually begin start talking past each other and create a stupid flame-fest out of any sufficiently long discussion. Invoking the Nazis is symptomatic of an argument that isn’t going anywhere anymore.
I don’t believe this is a nitpick; this is a major misunderstanding of the political events of 1932.
Hitler was never elected.
He ran for the office of Reich President (head of state) in 1932 and came in well behind Hindenburg in both rounds of the election. Hindenburg, in an overture to the Nazi party, appointed Hitler Chancellor (head of government) in January 1933. From there Hitler made his moves to expand his political powers and, ultimately, to fuse the offices of President and Chancellor on Hindenburg’s death in 1934. Whatever Hitler did, it wasn’t necessarily the expression of popular German will, especially given that the November 1932 parliamentary elections saw the NSDAP lose seats to make the German Social Democratic Party and German Communist Party a majority in the Reichstag (which they could have used to definite advantage if they hadn’t been so criminally sectarian).
Olentzero: You can add to that the effect of the Brownshirts (the SA), the NSDAP’s own gang of street thugs who intimidated voters and left-wing thugs with the implicit support of the government. (The Weimar government was blind in its right eye: Left-wing violence was met with police actions, but right-wing violence was largely ignored. The SA took full advantage of this.) The SA, incidentally, was effectively destroyed by the SS during the Night of Long Knives after the Nazis had consolidated official power.
But we’re fighting a losing battle pointing these things out. People want a Moral Lesson from their history. The Moral Lesson here, apparently, is Voting Is Evil.
Hitlers was the largest party in the Riechstag at the time. If Hitler did’nt win the election, then pretty much evey head of a minority government in human history was unelected.
Last time I checked, being a Nazi, being Adolf Hitler, having swatsikas etc do’nt ,ake you evil.
Doing what Hitler and the Nazis didm is what makes you evil.