I’m putting this in GD because it’s a meta-debate, really.
The question: what is your understanding of Godwin’s Law?
I’ve always read it as when you compare your debating opponent/s (i.e. the other 'Dopers involved in the debate) to the Nazis, you lose the argument automatically. Around here, though, it seems that it also gets called when someone calles the debate subject (Bush, PETA, anti-fox-hunters, Israelis, Palestinians, etc) a Nazi.
So, IMHO: “You support Bush because you’re a brownshirt-wannabe” is Godwinizing, but
“I don’t like Blair because he reminds me of Hitler” is not.
So - the debate:
Am I being too picky? Is the difference really meaningful? Do both qualify as Godwinitizination, or do we invent another term for the second expression? ParaGodwin?
One nitpick I have is that the Godwin law should only apply when you are directly comparing opponents with Nazis.
For example, if someone points out that Bush won the popular vote, I could point out that the Nazis won the popular vote too. I’m not calling Bush a Nazi, just saying that winning the popular vote doesn’t mean you’re a good leader. That should be acceptable.
Godwin’s Law, as I intepret it, is bringing into the discussion any reference of Nazis or the Holocaust in which a) the topic is not strictly germane to the discussion or is b) is grossly out of proportion with the topic at hand.
If your discussion is about 1930’s Germany, then Nazism is germane. If you are comparing, say, Stalinist Soviet Union or Khamer Rouge Kampuchian massacres then it is proportionate. If you are making a comparison between, say, feminists who dislike men or people who object to Mark Twain, or are invoking it in an argument between perl and Python advocates, then it is grossly out of proportion and disrespectful to those who died in the Holocaust.
Godwin’s Law is basically a formalization of a plea to have a sense of proportion.
You mean bashing down doors, smashing storefronts, rounding people up and putting them in concentration camps? That sort of thing?
I think if they are doing this, the situation is self-evident and hardly requires comparison. If you mean they are just disagreeing with you strenuously, being bullheaded or bigoted, or otherwise obnoxious, then it’s hardly a fair comparison…to the victims (and their survivors) of the Nazis.
I think “Godwin’s Law” is overrated and is invoked far too many times.
Hitler and the Nazis are universally accepted as the embodiment of evil, so when you want to make a point like Blalron’s above, it makes the point clear and unambiguous.
Most other historical figures are not considered the embodiment of evil and so will make any analogy using them will be useless, because people who support them won’t be able to see the point of the analogy.
For example, in (far) right-wing circles someone can use Clinton in their analogies of debauchery and immorailty and they will be understood, and in (far) left-wing circles someone can use Bush in their analogies of evil and incompetence and they will be understood.
But, when you are addressing the entire political spectrum, the above analogies will be useless because there are many supporters of both Clinton and Bush.
Hitler stands alone as someone who is considered unequivocally evil, so when you want to make an analogy involving someone who is evil he is the man to use.
Of course, some might say “don’t make an analogy, just state your point directly”. But, sometimes, stating your point directly isn’t as effective. Taking Blalron’s example, if you just state “winning the popular vote doesn’t mean you’re a good leader” is definitely not as effective as “winning the popular vote doesn’t mean you’re a good leader, for example, the Nazis won the popular vote”.
No, calling someone who disagrees with you a Nazi is overexaggerating the issue. But on the other hand, limiting the term “Nazi” solely to folks who carry out the most extremist acts is also short-sighted, IMO. After all, the Nazis didn’t start off with Crystal Night on Day 1; matters were built slowly and gradually, from the minor revocation of various rights and the fanning of anti-semetic racism, to imprisoning folks without cause and the pogroms…
I believe it started as not much more than a statistical observation; that the longer a heated debate continues, the more likely it is that someone will compare someone else (or their position) to Hitler/the Nazis. - This seems to have been somewhat turned on its head to mean that once that point has been reached, the debate is over (i.e. that it has continued too long).
It is certainly fallacious though, to insist that any mention of, or comparison with, Hitler/the nazis automatically invalidates your argument - for example, there was a thread a year or so ago on this very board wherein someone insisted that old people were a menace to society and should be forcibly rounded up, shipped off and made to live in camps. In my opinion, it is entirely valid in that sort of case to at least mention the comparison with the actions of Nazi Germany.
All Godwin’s Law states is: As a Usenet discussion increases in length, the probability that one or more parties will compare their opponents to Hitler and/or the Nazis approaches one.
It is very often misinvoked. A thread is “Godwinized” when any comparison of a debating party to Hitler or the Nazis is made. All Godwin’s Law provides is that this will happen.
I’m a serious Usenet rat here. The above is correct. Basically, the idea behind Godwin’s law is that threads tend to start out with reasonable debate. As the thread grows longer and longer, the relevant arguments are all brought up and exhausted. Thus it finally gets to the point where all one side can do is resort to ridiculous comparisons. Such as the opponents are just “nazis”.
I’m glad someone pointed this out. G’sL has nothing to say about who won or lost the debate, only that a comparison to NAZIs is inevitable, if a “usenet” discussion is carried on long enough.
A perfect example of someone who doesn’t understand what G’sL is, but who simply wants to score cheap points with an emotion-laden exageration. While some people have extended the “law” to mean that the discussions ends once NAZIs have been brought up, that really doesn’t serve the purpose of honest debate. There ARE groups/goverments that are analogous to NAZIs (neo-NAZIs being one obvious example), but the burden of proof is on the preson making the claim.
The usenet FAQ on Gowin’s Law explains the intent, use, misuse, and abuse of Godwin’s Law (including some suggestions on dealing with a “Godwinized” situation).
You can’t invoke Nazism or Fascism without invoking the Holocaust. When you compare a situation to Nazism, you are explicitly claiming a direct line from whatever bad thing you are discussing to the gas chambers. Allow/ban guns? Leads to the gas chambers. Against/support abortion? Leads to the gas chambers. Against/for gay marriage? Leads to the gas chambers.
There have been hundreds of authoritarian regimes that stifled free speech, trampled on the rights of minorities, funded the military at the expense of the citizenry, and exhalted their leaders. Most of them didn’t lead to the gas chambers.
Claiming that a particular bad thing really IS Nazism and that your opponents really ARE Nazis, and therefore should be exempt is disingenous, unless you really do mean to invoke the gas chambers.
Otherwise, maybe you should compare them to Ferdinand Marcos, or Juan Peron, or Fidel Castro, or George III, or Oliver Cromwell, or some other kleptocrat or dictator or idiot or military ruler whose policies did NOT lead to the gas chambers.
I knew people were going to read that and say “How dare you compare Bush to Hitler!” Bush is not Hitler. I just get annoyed when people act like winning the popular vote gives you some Divine Mandate from God to do whatever you please, and I’m trying to take their leader worship down a peg.
Now that’s short-sighted. “Sure, he might be a tyrant and a dictator who starves his people, rapes his women, and indiscriminately kills his men, but he didn’t build gas chambers, so he’s not as bad as the Nazis!” Uh, no. I don’t think all the Holocaust survivors who said “Never again” actually meant to say, “Never again, but stopping short of gas chambers is okay.”
Am I hitting a little too close to home for you, John?
No, they meant genocide. If you find a ruler who is trying to erradicate a race of people, who impliments a militaristic, expansionist policy, and who uses actual fascist tactics in governing, then there WOULD be some value in comparing that ruler to Hitler and/or the NAZIs.
I have no idea what you’re talking about. I pointed out that your post indicated a misunderstanding of what G’sL is, which is factually true.
My understanding of Godwin’s Law is simply that as an internet debate progresses, the probability of a comparison to Nazis or Hitler approach one. That’s it. It does not speak to the per se validity of any argument, or the winning or losing of any debate, in any way, shape, fashion, or form. At the realization of Godwin’s Law in a debate, the party invoking Nazi comparisons may have revealed themselves to be prone to hysterics, or a cheesedick, or what have you, but they have not, by the simple fact of having made the comparison, invalidated their argument. College textbooks on logic have not added Godwin’s Law to the list of accepted logical fallacies.
As an example, shortly after 9/11 I found myself on a somewhat more excitable message board where a poster was half-seriously proposing a rather drastic action. He suggested that in order to teach Them that they Should Not Fuck With Us, we should do as the Russians did to the hometown of a terrorist in years past: take the hometown of one of the hijackers, kill every man, woman, and child in it, and raze it to the ground with bulldozers so that no trace remained. I pointed out that this was pretty much straight up Nazi thinking – this was almost exactly what was done to the Czech town of Lidice by the Nazis in retaliation for the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich in Prague.
Now, this person apparently thought of himself as a good American (who probably never thought when he got up that morning that he was going to spew out some Nazism), and was suggesting the foregoing as an example of the type of thinking that we need to take with These People rather than the namby-pamby attitude we used in the past. He could have retorted that since I had compared his way of thinking to tactics taken by the Nazis to intimidate a foriegn populace with their ruthlessness, I had invoked Godwin’s Law and automatically lost the argument, but that’s just plain untrue–Godwin’s law does not a logical fallacy make. If someone is going to advocate a couse of action peculiar to Nazism, they shouldn’t expect to hide behind “Godwin’s Law” like it was scratching on the debate 8 ball when they get called on it.