Nazi analogies

Argumentum ad Laroucheum Hitlerum.

Cogito ergo sum Logic and rhetoric

Key articles

Logical fallacy Syllogism Argument

General logic

Self-fulfilling prophecy Informal fallacy Argumentum ad sarcina inserta Logical fallacy Rationalist taboo Argument from etymology

Bad logic

Deepity Escape hatch Enthymeme Golden hammer Argumentum ad fastidium Media was wrong before v - t - e

“” I wonder if there will come a time when Nazis will become primarily known for the ridiculous analogies people make using them and not genocide.

—rupucis

Nazi analogies are fallacies that use the extremely negative perception that Hitler and National Socialism (Nazism) have in the modern world to boost someone's opinions.

• Reductio ad Hitlerum is, basically, the premise that "everything Hitler supported must be bad and everything Hitler was against must be good". Hitler's opinions serve as the sole parameter to judge something's desirability or morality. The reason this is idiotic is because Hitler wore clothes, so by this logic wearing clothes makes one a Nazi. He was also a strong supporter of animal rights making everybody who DOESN'T abuse their pets Nazis as well.
• Godwin’s Law, itself a response to reductio ad Hitlerum, asserts that the longer an online discussion grows, the greater are the odds of someone mentioning Hitler or the Nazis. It is something one can verify by oneself and that demonstrates how common such analogies are. Godwin only heard of Leo Strauss' coining of the fallacy 4 decades after he himself had proposed it.

Those are also known by other names, such as argumentum ad Nazium (a pun on argumentum ad nauseam) or "playing the Hitler/Nazi Card".

Origins

Mike Godwin in 2017

“”‘Who was it that said: "Whenver[sic] somebody starts mentioning Nazis on USENET, you know the discussion has gone on too long"?'.. I said it. Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies: As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

—Michael Godwin in 1991, one of his earliest invocations

Reductio ad Hitlerum was coined in 1951 by neoconservative progenitor Leo Strauss,

“”Unfortunately, it does not go without saying that in our examination we must avoid the fallacy that the last decades has frequently been used as a substitute for the reductio ad absurdum: the reductio ad Hitlerum. A view that is not refuted by the fact that it happens to have been shared by Hitler.

Godwin's Law was formulated by attorney Mike Godwin, former general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation, in the 1990s, and states:

“”As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

How it works

Everyone I Don't Like is Hitler: If only we hadn't all grown up with this book.

“”It's like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, except there's just one degree, and Kevin Bacon is Hitler!

—Lewis Black

When a Hitler or Nazi comparison is made, it may be an extended analogy fallacy.

P1: Hitler's final solution would have put an end to overpopulation.

P2: Person X wants to use birth control to solve the problem of overpopulation.

C: Therefore person X is like Hitler.

Or it could be an ad hominem attack such as saying, "You are just like Hitler and therefore whatever you are arguing for is wrong," without having any reasoning behind how this conclusion was reached.

With the increase in the number of media for online discussion, Godwin's Law is now applied to any online discussion — be they mailing lists, message boards, forums, chat rooms, blog comment threads, or wiki talk pages.

Traditionally in many Internet discussion forums, it is the rule that once such a comparison is made, the discussion is effectively finished and whoever mentioned Hitler or the Nazis has automatically lost the debate, though it is considered sort-of acceptable if one immediately says "Pardon me for invoking Godwin's Law." The blogosphere has only heightened the prevalence of Godwin's Law, with Nazi references being dropped across the political spectrum, such as the liberal Daily Kos, right-wing religious strongholds such as Bill Donohue's Catholic League, and intelligent design advocates like the Discovery Institute.

Compared to other known blog-based laws, namely Poe's Law, Godwin's Law is quite well known in more mainstream areas. Just to prove it, the law even has its own Wikipedia article. In 2012, it was added to the Oxford Dictionary, which means that in 500 years' time, it will be reviewed by completely mystified college arts majors.

When the analogy is applicable

Godwin's Law does not dispute the validity or otherwise of references or comparison to Hitler or the Nazis. As such a comparison or reference may sometimes be appropriate in a discussion, Godwin has argued that overuse of the Nazi comparison should be avoided as it waters down the impact of any valid usage. In its purest sense, the rule has more to do with completely losing one's sense of proportion rather than just mentioning Nazis specifically. The law was initiated as a counter-meme to flippant comparisons to the Nazis, rather than to invoke a complete ban on comparisons. As Godwin himself wrote in 2008:

When I saw the photographs from Abu Ghraib, for example, I understood instantly the connection between the humiliations inflicted there and the ones the Nazis imposed upon death camp inmates — but I am the one person in the world least able to draw attention to that valid comparison.

Additionally, Godwin made an appearance in Glenn Greenwald's Salon comments section in 2010 to confirm, as Greenwald put it in a column titled The odiousness of the distorted Godwin's Law:

Godwin himself appears in comments (authenticity confirmed via email) to explain that his "law" sought to discourage frivolous, but not substantive, Nazi analogies and comparisons.

Godwin said in 2017 that it's OK to call the alt-right Nazis, because many of them use Nazi symbols and express support for Nazi ideology. He wrote in 2016:

To be clear: I don't personally believe all rational discourse has ended when Nazis or the Holocaust are invoked. … But I'm pleased that people still use Godwin's Law to force one another to argue more thoughtfully.

In 2023, Godwin also said Trump is acting like Hitler:

But when people draw parallels between Donald Trump's 2024 candidacy and Hitler's progression from fringe figure to Great Dictator, we aren’t joking. Those of us who hope to preserve our democratic institutions need to underscore the resemblance before we enter the twilight of American democracy.

Historian Timothy Snyder goes further, writing that when there is a taboo on comparing someone to Hitler who is actually acting like Hitler (Trump and J. D. Vance), it becomes a shield for the perpetrator, such that "…the more Trump resembles Hitler, the safer the man is from criticism on this point."

Schizofascism

Snyder has coined the word 'schizofascism' to refer to actual fascists who make Nazi analogies or fascist accusations against other people. As an example, fascist Russian politician Aleksandr Dugin has blamed Ukrainian Jews for the Holocaust, which is just literally adding insult to injury.

Russian propaganda has used schizofascism extensively since the 2014 invasion of Crimea, the Russian-sponsored coup attempts in Ukraine, and the Russian-backed insurrection in eastern Ukraine. During this time, Russian President Vladimir Putin, head of a regime labeled as crypto-fascist, defined Ukrainian opponents of Russian incursions as fascists. In February 2022, Putin called for the "de-nazification" of Ukraine, just prior to the full-scale invasion of Ukraine (euphemistically-called "special military operation") in March 2022, in which Putin gave de-nazification as a justification for his war of aggression, despite Ukraine's democratically-elected president (Volodymyr Zelenskyy) being ethnically Jewish. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov went further stating, "I could be wrong, but Hitler also had Jewish blood. [That Zelensky is Jewish] means absolutely nothing. Wise Jewish people say that the most ardent anti-Semites are usually Jews."

Further, writer and antisemite Alexander Prokhanov compared Russia's failed 2014 coup in Odessa, Ukraine to the Holocaust. Alexander Zaldostanov, leader of the Night Wolves motorcycle-gang, made similar pronouncements at the same rally as Prokhanov. Vladimir Antyufeyev, who has been in leadership positions in self-declared fascistic puppet-states within Moldova (Transnistria, founded in 1990/1991) and within Ukraine (Donetsk People's Republic, founded in 2014), claimed that Russia was at war with fascists who were aligned with an international Freemason conspiracy.

Ginni Thomas, wife of US Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, while herself plotting to overturn a democratic election, referred to the "fascist left" and "transsexual fascists".

Trump has also utilized schizofascism multiple times, referring to his political opponents as fascists despite being a fascist himself by his actions and rhetoric (including cozying up to actual fascists). Another level of irony is that he has claimed that the far-right is not a major issue (yet fascism is far-right by its very nature) and instead refers to leftists as fascists.

"Schizofascism is an example of what philosopher Jason Stanley calls 'undermining propaganda': using a concept to destroy that concept. Here anti-fascism is being used to destroy anti-fascism." The intent of the undermining propaganda is generally in the furtherance of fake news, including but not limited to attempts to stain the credibility of one's opponents and maintaining the ideological purity of one's followers.

Stormfront and other corollaries

“”This is exactly how Nazi Germany was started! A bunch of layabouts with nothing better to do than to cause trouble!

—John Cleese as Basil Fawlty

A number of corollaries have been proposed since the introduction of Godwin's Law.

In a hilarious instance of cosmic symmetry, a similar law applies to neo-Nazi boards such as Stormfront: as the discussion grows longer, the probability of someone calling their opponent a Jew approaches one. (For another version, replace Stormfront with Conservapedia and Jew with liberal.)

Another example of a corollary, and an early example, is called "Sircar's Corollary," which is: "If the Usenet discussion touches on homosexuality or Heinlein, Nazis or Hitler are mentioned within three days.”'

Another corollary was proposed by "Buddy Larson" in the comments to a post by the libertarian Volokh Conspiracy blog (alleging that gun control caused Kristallnacht) in November 2010:

As an online discussion of an original post concerning Nazis or Hitler grows, the probability of observing a laboured and unwarranted retreat or appeal to Godwin's Law (of laboured, unwarranted retreat to Nazi or Hitler references) approaches one.

A corollary for feminists is:

As an online discussion about sexism continues, the probability of a woman who speaks out being called a feminazi approaches 1.

Other versions

Frederic Guimont's portrayal of Big Brother, based on a 1932 election poster for Hitler

A number of different Internet laws have been proposed which basically mirror Godwin. Arken's Law states:

“”A discussion is over when present society is compared to George Orwell's Oceania in the book 1984.

The exact history of Arken's Law is debatable, but it is claimed that Arken's Law has its roots in the days of Web 1.0 and earlier (such as Usenet). Any accusations of Big Brotherism, utilizing newspeak, practicing doublethink, thought policing, sending updates down the memory hole, or belonging to the Anti-Sex League would all be invocations of Arken's Law.

Researchers from the University College London attempted to formulate reductio ad Hitlerum into a Bayesian framework, presenting evidence that this is pretty much exactly how people processed the argument:

$P(good|Hitler)={\frac {P(good)P(Hitler|good)}{P(Hitler)}}$

Pre-Nazism

Before Hitler was a thing, the typical point of comparison for worst person in the world appears to have been the Pharaoh of the Biblical book of Exodus (the pharaoh's identity is uncertain, and he may be fictional, which makes it a weaker rhetorical comparison), although the likes of Judas Iscariot, Pontius Pilate, Oliver Cromwell (for the Irish), Napoleon Bonaparte, and King George III (for Americans), were occasional references. Calling something medieval also seemed to work. However, those don't seem to have been used in an earlier version of Godwin's Law, possibly because the internet did not exist.

Evil Nazi things: Reductio ad Hitlerum exempla

The Nazis were eclectic and often self-contradictory (e.g. some were pro-fraktur font and some were anti-fraktur font). What follows is a list of things which, by the logic of reductio ad Hitlerum, at least some Nazis were in favor of and which someone later thought was therefore evil (or the converse things that Hitler hated which therefore someone thought was good):

• Abortion and the Terri Schiavo case: Mike Johnson, "The prevailing judicial philosophy is no different than Hitler's. Because the life of an unborn child (or a disabled Terri Schiavo, or the elderly or infirm) may be difficult or inconvenient or even costly to society now means it can be terminated. This disregard for life has been fostered by the courts. During business hours today, 4,500 innocent American children will be killed. It is a holocaust that has been repeated every day for 32 years, since 1973's Roe v. Wade."
• Anti-smoking: "Nicotine Nazis strike again"
• Atheism: Pope Benedict XVI, "Even in our own lifetime, we can recall how Britain and her leaders stood against a Nazi tyranny that wished to eradicate God from society and denied our common humanity to many, especially the Jews, who were thought unfit to live. I also recall the regime’s attitude to Christian pastors and religious who spoke the truth in love, opposed the Nazis and paid for that opposition with their lives. As we reflect on the sobering lessons of the atheist extremism of the twentieth century, let us never forget how the exclusion of God, religion and virtue from public life leads ultimately to a truncated vision of man and of society and thus to a “reductive vision of the person and his destiny”."
• European Union: Boris Johnson on Brexit, "Napoleon, Hitler, various people tried this out, and it ends tragically. The EU is an attempt to do this by different methods." Gerard Batten of UKIP, "But there is a closer link. In 1942 when the German’s still thought they were going to win the war they produced a report entitled the Europaische Wirtschafts Gemeinschaft – which translates as the European Economic Community."
• Evolution — see Hitler and evolution: Institute for Creation Research, "The Darwinian worldview was critical, not only in influencing the development of Nazism and communism, but also in the rise of the ruthless capitalists that flourished in the late 1800s and early 1900s."
• Gun control — Neal Knox, regarding the Gun Control Act of 1968 sponsored by Senator Dodd, "But a person close to Dodd — who must remain nameless even today — told me at the time that Dodd was very upset by the reigstration bills and had told him: "'That's a Nazi bill.'" There was strict gun control during the Weimar Republic, but when the Nazis came to power, they loosened regulations for party members, but banned gun ownership for Jews and others considered undesirable. Historical revisionism can enable reductio ad Hitlerum.
• Homosexuality — there is a myth that Nazis were pro-homosexual because one of them, Ernst Röhm, was gay. In homophobe Dinesh D'Souza's revisionist film Death of a Nation, Hitler is not only portrayed as supporting or at least being indifferent to homosexuals, but also as being left-wing… somehow. In fact, the Nazis killed huge numbers of homosexuals, including Röhm himself.
• Same-sex marriage — Patriarch Kirill, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, compared the legalization of same-sex marriage to the laws of Nazi Germany, because in his view, both destroyed the traditional family. It's ironic because Nazi Germany defined a traditional family that Kirill would probably agree with, Kinder, Küche, Kirche.
• Socialism — you can't spell "national socialism" without "socialism", although Hitler had the left-leaning Nazis, the Strasserites, purged in the Night of the Long Knives. Marjorie Taylor Greene claimed that the Democratic Party is "now a national socialist party" just like the "National Socialist German Workers’ Party".
• Vaccine verification and face masks during the COVID-19 pandemic: Marjorie Taylor Greene said that they are "Nazi practices" similar to yellow stars forced upon Jews by Nazis.
• Wealthy people: Billionaire Tom Perkins complained to the Wall Street Journal that the Occupy movement and the San Francisco Chronicle are demonizing rich people: "I would call attention to the parallels of Nazi Germany to its war on its 'one percent,' namely its Jews, to the progressive war on the American one percent, namely the 'rich.' From the Occupy movement to the demonization of the rich embedded in virtually every word of our local newspaper, the San Francisco Chronicle, I perceive a rising tide of hatred of the successful one percent."

Making one of these types analogies can make a person look really stupid.

Jonah Goldberg (yes, that Jonah Goldberg) in his book Liberal Fascism likely reached maximum reductio ad Hitlerum in a single paragraph, hitting so many topics at once that one could call him "Der Führer" of reductio ad Hitlerum (but one shouldn't):

“”Or consider the explosion of health and New Age crusades in recent years, from the war on smoking, to the obsession with animal rights, to the sanctification of organic foods. No one disputes that these fads are a product of the cultural and political left. But few are willing to grapple with the fact that we've seen this sort of thing before. Heinrich Himmler was a certified animal rights activist and aggressive promoter of "natural healing." Rudolf Hess, Hitler's deputy, championed homeopathy and herbal medicines. Hitler and his advisers dedicated hours of their time to discussions of the need to move the entire nation to vegetarianism as a response to the unhealthiness promoted by capitalism. Dachau hosted the world's largest alternative and organic medicine research lab and produced its own organic honey.

Overlap with Holocaust denial

Bigtree, promoting pseudoscience while flirting with Holocaust denial

See the main article on this topic: Holocaust denial

Inappropriate Nazi analogies can have the effect of downplaying the Holocaust and other crimes against humanity of the Third Reich. This is particularly the case when the thing being compared to the Holocaust is not only less bad than the Holocaust but entirely unobjectionable.

For example, during the COVID-19 pandemic, many anti-vaccine protesters took to wearing yellow stars to protest vaccine mandates. Antivaxx leader Del Bigtree started doing this before the pandemic. As international relations scholar Nicholas Grossman has pointed out, “This is a warped form of Holocaust denial. … [T]he core point, charitably interpreted, is that the Holocaust was public pressure in response to a voluntary choice, when it was actually the industrialized mass murder of millions just for who they were.”

Criticisms

Some, such as author Robert J. Sawyer, have criticized Godwin's Law for implying the Holocaust was sui generis, a unique event that can never happen again. Consequently, he argues, people will be reluctant to issue comparisons for future situations until it is too late, and even if they try, Godwin's Law will be used to falsely shoot them down.

Similar analogies

Hitler comparisons are not the only kind of default association with negative and infamous historical figures; other people make comparisons with various other dictators such as Mussolini, Stalin, and many others.

The opposite

A reverse effect happens when people's views or actions are compared to those of well-known sages or heroes, such as Einstein, Lincoln, etc. The basic idea is that "if you think or do like them, you will be like them". And just like Hitler, they are often promoted as the authors of false quotes or the subjects of spurious stories.

While both Hitler and Einstein adopted a vegetarian diet at some point of their lives, two distinct pieces of information that are conveniently brought up by both proponents and critics of vegetarianism in separate occasions when they see fit, this hardly means that one would be as bad as Hitler or as intelligent as Einstein only because one does not eat meat. Citing historical examples (when backed up by proper historical evidence) can be an important part of supporting a cause, but are far from being a sufficient argument by themselves.

See also

• Ad hominem
• Antifa
• Axis of evil
• Glenn Beck
• Dickwad theory
• Fascism‎#Broadness of the term "fascism"
• Gore's Law
• Hyperbole
• Irony meter
• Scott Lively
• Red-baiting, often used conjointly
• Ben Stein
• Straw man

Want to read this in another language?

تقلیل_به_هیتلر in Farsi

External links

• See the Wikipedia article on Reductio ad Hitlerum.
• Ad Nazium, Fallacy Files
• Meme, Counter Meme, Wired
• How to post about Nazis and get away with it — the Godwin's Law FAQ
• Before Hitler, who did people compare their political enemies to? (Mostly this guy.)
• Greatest. Godwin. Ever., Dispatches from the Culture Wars
• /r/godwinslaw/ Godwin's law on reddit. The site of bad historical analogies.
• How Godwin's law demeans Hitler, hehe. (Albeit using both Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay as examples...)

References

Articles on RationalWiki about Eponymous laws

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