Godwin's law, short for Godwin's law (or rule) of Nazi analogies,[1] is an Internet adage asserting: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."[2]

An attendee at the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear wearing a T-shirt implicitly referencing Godwin's Law: "I disagree with you but I'm pretty sure you're not Hitler."

History

Promulgated by the American attorney and author Mike Godwin in 1990,[1] Godwin's law originally referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions.[3] He stated that he introduced Godwin's law in 1990 as an experiment in memetics,[1] specifically to address the ubiquity of such comparisons which he believes regrettably trivialize the Holocaust.[4][5] Later, it was applied to any threaded online discussion, such as Internet forums, chat rooms, and social-media comment threads, as well as to speeches, articles, and other rhetoric[6][7] where reductio ad Hitlerum occurs.

In 2012, Godwin's law became an entry in the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.[8]

Generalization, corollaries, and usage

Godwin's law can be applied mistakenly or abused as a distraction, a diversion, or even censorship, when miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole even when the comparison made by the argument is appropriate.[9] Godwin has criticized the over-application of the adage, claiming that it does not articulate a fallacy, but rather is intended to reduce the frequency of inappropriate and hyperbolic comparisons:[10]

Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics, its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler to think a bit harder about the Holocaust.

In 2021, Harvard researchers published an article showing that the Nazi-comparison phenomenon does not occur with statistically meaningful frequency in Reddit discussions.[11][12]

Godwin's law has many corollaries, some considered more canonical (by being adopted by Godwin himself)[2] than others. For example, many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums have a tradition that, when a Nazi or Hitler comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever made the comparison loses whatever debate is in progress.[13] This idea is itself sometimes mistakenly referred to as Godwin's law.[14]

Godwin rejected the idea that whoever invokes Godwin's law has lost the argument, and suggested that, applied appropriately, the rule "should function less as a conversation ender and more as a conversation starter."[15] The author has repeatedly made statements in the press about how Godwin's law could relate to contemporary American politics. In December 2015, he commented in The Washington Post on comparisons being made between Hitler and Republican US presidential candidate Donald Trump, saying: "If you're thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler when you talk about Trump, or any other politician."[16] In August 2017, Godwin made similar remarks in The Times of Israel with respect to the two previous days' Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, endorsing and encouraging social-media comparisons of its alt-right organizers to Nazis.[17][18] Godwin wrote an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times in June 2018, denying the need to update or amend the rule: "It still serves us as a tool to recognize specious comparisons to Nazism – but also, by contrast, to recognize comparisons that aren't."[15] In a December 2023 interview with Politico, Godwin stated "there's nothing categorically wrong with Biden's – or anyone else's – comparison of Trump calling people vermin or talking about blood poisoning to Hitler."[19] He also reiterated this point the day after in a new op-ed in The Washington Post: "Yes, it's okay to compare Trump to Hitler. Don't let me stop you."[20]

See also

References

  1. 1 2 3 Godwin, Mike (October 1, 1994). "Meme, Counter-meme". Wired. Vol. 2, no. 10. Retrieved March 24, 2006.
  2. 1 2 Godwin, Mike (January 12, 1995). "Godwin's law of Hitler Analogies (and Corollaries)". "Net Culture – Humor" archive section. w2.EFF.org. Electronic Frontier Foundation. Archived from the original on August 29, 2012. Retrieved June 19, 2012.
  3. ↑ Godwin, Mike (August 18, 1991). "Re: Nazis (was Re: Card's Article on Homosexuality". Newsgroup: rec.arts.sf-lovers. Usenet: 1991Aug18.215029.19421@eff.org.
  4. ↑ McFarlane, Andrew (July 14, 2010). "Is it ever OK to call someone a Nazi?". BBC News Magazine. Retrieved August 4, 2010.
  5. ↑ Fishman, Aleisa; Godwin, Mike (September 1, 2011). "Interview with Mike Godwin". Voices on Antisemitism (Podcast). United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Archived from the original on May 20, 2014.
  6. ↑ Goldacre, Ben (September 16, 2010). "Pope aligns atheists with Nazis. Bizarre. Transcript here". bengoldacre – secondary blog. Archived from the original on March 25, 2013.
  7. ↑ Stanley, Timothy (March 6, 2014). "Hillary, Putin's no Hitler". "Opinion" department. CNN.com. Retrieved March 6, 2014.
  8. ↑ "Godwin's law". Oxford English Dictionary. Oxford University Press. Retrieved February 27, 2013.
  9. ↑ Weigel, David (July 14, 2005). "Hands Off Hitler! It's time to repeal Godwin's Law". Reason. Archived from the original on July 15, 2009.
  10. ↑ "I Seem to Be a Verb: 18 Years of Godwin's Law". Jewcy.com. April 30, 2008. Archived from the original on January 15, 2013. Retrieved April 16, 2010.
  11. ↑ Harrison, Stephen (January 24, 2022). "Has Godwin's Law, the Rule of Nazi Comparisons, Been Disproved?". Slate. Retrieved April 23, 2022.
  12. ↑ Fariello, Gabriele; Jemielniak, Dariusz; Sulkowski, Adam (December 12, 2021). "Does Godwin's law (rule of Nazi analogies) apply in observable reality? An empirical study of selected words in 199 million Reddit posts". New Media & Society. Sage Publishing. doi:10.1177/14614448211062070. ISSN 1461-4448. S2CID 245035602.
  13. ↑ Chivers, Tom (October 23, 2009). "Internet rules and laws: The top 10, from Godwin to Poe". The Daily Telegraph. London.
  14. ↑ Oliver, John (August 13, 2017). "North Korea". Last Week Tonight. HBO. Archived from the original on August 14, 2017. Retrieved November 7, 2017 – via YouTube. There honestly aren't that many instances in modern American politics where you can honestly think: that guy really should have mentioned the Nazis, but this is emphatically one of them. It's like the reversed Godwin's law—if you fail to mention Nazism, you lose the argument.
  15. 1 2 Godwin, Mike (June 24, 2018). "Op-Ed: Do we need to update Godwin's Law about the probability of comparison to Nazis?". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 24, 2020.
  16. ↑ Godwin, Mike (December 14, 2015). "Sure, call Trump a Nazi. Just make sure you know what you're talking about". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on February 9, 2017.
  17. ↑ Gilbert, Alexandre (August 17, 2017). "Godwin's Law & the Nazi Cosplay Hobbiysts". The Times of Israel.
  18. ↑ Mandelbaum, Ryan F. (August 13, 2017). "Godwin of Godwin's Law: 'By All Means, Compare These Shitheads to the Nazis'". Gizmodo. Retrieved December 26, 2023.
  19. ↑ McHugh, Calder (December 19, 2023). "'Trump Knows What He's Doing': The Creator of Godwin's Law Says the Hitler Comparison Is Apt". Politico. Archived from the original on December 22, 2023. Retrieved December 19, 2023.
  20. ↑ Godwin, Mike (December 20, 2023). "Yes, it's okay to compare Trump to Hitler. Don't let me stop you". The Washington Post. Archived from the original on December 21, 2023. Retrieved December 20, 2023.

Further reading

Look up godwin's law in Wiktionary, the free dictionary.
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