Posted: Thu May 25, 2006 10:04 pm
dANdeLION wrote:Yikes, that's what Chamberlain said right before Hitler attacked!
Godwin's Law (also Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is, in Internet culture, an adage originated in 1990 by Mike Godwin that states:
As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.[1]
This adage was formulated because many people compare anyone and anything they mildly dislike with Hitler. There is a tradition in many Usenet newsgroups that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress.
It is considered poor form to arbitrarily raise such a comparison with the motive of ending the thread. There is a widely recognized codicil that any such deliberate invocation of Godwin's Law will be unsuccessful.
Although in one of its early forms Godwin's Law referred specifically to Usenet discussions[2], the law can be applied to any threaded online discussion: electronic mailing lists, message boards, chat rooms, and so on.
Debate and controversy
One common objection to the invocation of Godwin's Law is that sometimes using Hitler or the Nazis is an apt way of making a point. For instance, if one is debating the relative merits of a particular leader, and someone says something like, "He's a good leader, look at the way he's improved the economy," one could reply, "Just because he improved the economy doesn't make him a good leader. Even Hitler improved the economy." Some would view this as a perfectly acceptable comparison, because this example uses Hitler as a well-known example of an extreme case that requires no explanation to prove that a generalization is not universally true. Furthermore, this drives home the point one wants to make. When making analogies no one ever chooses examples which are milder, weaker, or less extreme than what one is comparing them to, for that would be counter-productive.
Also, extreme examples tend to have been heard of by everyone and so provide a common context with which all participants in the discussion/debate/argument are familiar. Citing the example of the Turkish genocide of the Armenians might simply fall through the spaces of your audience's ignorance, and whereas essentially everyone agrees that the Nazis were evil and it's undesirable and indeed dangerous to tend in their direction, apologists for the Great Leap Forward or Soviet Collectivization might still be found.
Some would argue, however, that Godwin's Law applies especially to the situation mentioned above, as it portrays an inevitable appeal to emotion as well as holding an implied ad hominem attack on the subject being compared, both of which are fallacious in irrelevant contexts. Hitler, on a semiotic level, has far too many negative connotations associated with him to be used as a valid comparison to anything but other despotic dictators. Thus, Godwin's Law holds even when making comparisons to normal leaders that, on the surface, would seem to be reasonable comparisons.
Godwin's standard answer to the first objection is to note that Godwin's Law does not dispute whether, in a particular instance, a reference or comparison to Hitler or the Nazis might be apt. It is precisely because such a reference or comparison may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin has argued, that hyperbolic overuse of the Hitler/Nazi comparison should be avoided. Avoiding such hyperbole, he argues, is a way of ensuring that when valid comparisons to Hitler or Nazis are made, such comparisons have the appropriate impact.
Alternatively, one might argue that as long as comparisons are valid and faux moral equivalence is avoided ("He appealed to the country to unite behind him. Therefore he is the same as Hitler!"), there isn't anything wrong with using the Nazis as examples.
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Additional discussion
From a philosophical standpoint, Godwin's Law could be said to exclude normative (ethical) considerations from a positivist (scientific) discussion. Frequently, a reference to Hitler is used as an evocation of evil. Thus a discussion proceeding on a positivist examination of facts is considered terminated when this objective consideration is transformed into a normative discussion of subjective right and wrong. It is exacerbated by the frequent fallacy of "Hitler did A, therefore A is evil" (Reductio ad Hitlerum). However, as noted, the exceptions to Godwin's Law include the invocation of the Hitler comparison in a positivist manner that does not have a normative dimension.
In a class that will see a good deal of discussion, citing this law early in the course can have a good deal of pedagogical value.
Many people incorrectly say Godwin's Law has been "violated" rather than "invoked." [1][2] Godwin's Law can only be violated by an infinitely long thread that never mentions Hitler or the Nazis.
(stupid laws...grumble, grumble...)
