# Godwin's Law question **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 22, 2005, 6:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godwins-law-question/291312 "2005-02-22T06:44:26Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![rfgdxm](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/c0e974/32.png) [@rfgdxm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rfgdxm)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2005, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godwins-law-question/291312/21 "2005-02-22T23:20:06Z")
> [@pravnik](#): > > 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](http://www.lidice-memorial.cz/index_uk.htm) 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. One point here from a long time Usenet rat. The implicit assumption of Godwin’s Law was that it applied in arguments where a direct comparison with Hitler or the Nazis was unreasonable. Unreasonable in the sense that a neutral reader who had no particular stake in the debate at hand would when seeing the comparison to the Nazis would :rolleyes: and think it was ridiculous. HOWEVER, it I were to post 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”, because I am in fact proposing the mass murder of innocent people, as this is definitely nazi-like, nobody would think it ridiculous that someone would make the comparison. Godwin’s Law doesn’t apply in cases of advocating the mass murder of civilians. ---
**Author:** ![MrDibble](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mrdibble/32/114_2.png) [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2005, 6:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godwins-law-question/291312/22 "2005-02-24T06:04:41Z")
> [@tomndebb](#): > > [The usenet FAQ on Gowin’s Law](http://www.faqs.org/faqs/usenet/legends/godwin/) explains the intent, use, misuse, and abuse of Godwin’s Law (including some suggestions on dealing with a “Godwinized” situation). > > [Godwin’s own commentary on the topic](http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/2.10/godwin.if_pr.html) makes a number of interesting observations. Thanks **tomndebb** , that goes a long way to clearing things up. it looks like it mostly gets horribly misused. ---
**Author:** ![Scissorjack](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c67d28/32.png) [@Scissorjack](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scissorjack)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2005, 9:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godwins-law-question/291312/23 "2005-02-24T09:07:53Z")
> [@Stranger On A Train](#): > > 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. > > Stranger True dat. I remember from my lurking years here, many moons ago {I won’t search and link to it in case any of the participants here are still around to be embarrassed by it, and I suggest no-one else does either} when a relatively innocuous, if a shade precious, thread on how vegans should have their books peronalised resulted in a comparison between those who bound their books in leather and concentration camp commandants who fashioned lampshades out of human skin. A horrendous analogy on a number of levels, and the resulting firestorm was not pretty. ---
**Author:** ![Scott\_Plaid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/258eb7/32.png) [@Scott\_Plaid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scott_Plaid)\ **Post date:** [February 24, 2005, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godwins-law-question/291312/24 "2005-02-24T16:05:35Z")
> [@rjung](#): > > The problem with Godwin’s Law is that it makes it harder to argue the case when your targets _are_ acting like Nazis… > [@Stranger On A Train](#): > > 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. > > Stranger A far better use of godwinization would be when your targets are acting like republicans. 😃 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/godwins-law-question/291312.md?page=1)