Godwin's Exception: When is it okay to name-drop Hitler?

[storyguide3]

@Derleth

Olentzero: 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.

I would rather say that the intended lesson would be that just because a government is elected does not mean that it is somehow incapable of acting against its own people or some subset thereof. It could also serve to demonstrate the problems with letting a majority vote on the rights of a minority, however since his was not a majority government that would be a more tenuous assertion.

However, I don’t see how you can get “Voting is Evil” out of it, at least not from the cases that I have seen when it has come up in discussions of elected governments doing wrong. YMMV.

[Lantern]

I agree that Goodwin’s “law” is taken way too seriously on many boards. At best it is an amusing commentary on the temptation to demonize a position by drawing parallels with Nazis. However that doesn’t mean that the analogy isn’t sometime appropriate. You have to judge it case by case instead of invoking some made-up law.

[Sailboat]

It’s worth noting that Godwin’s Law was originally created as an experimental meme, and not necessarily derived from actual rules of debate.

[Gary_Robson]

Godwin’s Law is cute (and often accurate), but as others have pointed out, it doesn’t say there’s anything wrong with comparisons to Hitler per se. In discussions of history and politics, it’s appropriate to compare leaders and administrations. Hitler’s Nazi Germany was one of the most influential governments of the last century, after all.

@Markxxx

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’ve read this paragraph four times and I just can’t make any sense out of it. Maybe I’m just parsing poorly, but would you please rephrase that, Mark?

@Chronos

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.

Wouldn’t Emperor Palpatine be a more appropriate comparison here than Darth Vader? Vader was just a tool. Palpatine was the genocidal dictator.

[Derleth]

@storyguide3

I would rather say that the intended lesson would be that just because a government is elected does not mean that it is somehow incapable of acting against its own people or some subset thereof.

That is valid. However, using the Nazis to make that point is inapt because the Nazis demonstrated that a failed former democracy can be strong-armed into accepting a bunch of crazed thugs as its leaders.

However, I don’t see how you can get “Voting is Evil” out of it, at least not from the cases that I have seen when it has come up in discussions of elected governments doing wrong. YMMV.

I wasn’t being entirely serious with that part. What the Nazis demonstrated is that when things get bad enough, voting is worthless and pure brute force is the only thing that matters. But we don’t really need to invoke the Nazis to make that point.