Reductio ad Hitlerum

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Reductio ad Hitlerum, also argumentum ad Hitlerum, or reductio (or argumentum) ad Nazium – dog Latin for "reduction (or argument) to Adolf Hitler (or the Nazis)" – is a modern formal fallacy in logic. The name is a pun on reductio ad absurdum, or especially its related argumentum ad misericordiam. It is a variety of both questionable cause and association fallacy and has the effect of an appeal to emotion. The phrase reductio ad Hitlerum was coined by an academic ethicist, Leo Strauss, in 1953. Engaging in this fallacy is sometimes known as playing the Nazi card.^[1]

The fallacy most often assumes the form of "Hitler (or the Nazis) supported X, therefore X must be evil/undesirable/bad,"^[1] as in "Hitler supported the anti-smoking movement, so anti-smoking movements are wrong." The argument carries emotional weight as rhetoric, since in most cultures the values of Hitler or the Nazis are automatically condemned. The tactic is often used to derail arguments, as such a comparison tends to distract and to result in angry and less reasoned responses.^[1] On the other hand, just because reductio ad hitlerum is a logical fallacy does not necessarily make X good/desirable. In other words, labelling a counter-argument reductio ad hitlerum does not make your argument right. In the example, pointing out that Hitler's support for anti-smoking is reductio ad hitlerum does not in itself mean that anti-smoking campaigns are good/desirable; just that this particular argument against these campaigns is invalid.

Contents 1 Fallacious nature of the argument 1.1 Countering the fallacy 2 History of the term 3 Allegations of the fallacy in practice 4 In popular culture 5 See also 6 References

[edit] Fallacious nature of the argument

Reductio ad Hitlerum is rationally unsound for two different reasons: As a wrong direction fallacy (a type of questionable cause), it inverts the cause–effect relationship between why a villain and an idea might be criticized; conversely, as guilt by association^[1][2] (a form of association fallacy), it illogically attempts to shift culpability from a villain to an idea regardless of who is espousing it and why. Specific instances of reductio ad Hitlerum are also frequently likely to suffer from the fallacy of begging the question or take the form of slippery slope arguments, which are frequently (though not always) false as well.^[1]

Those policies advocated by Hitler and his party which are generally considered evil are all condemned in and of themselves, not because Hitler supported them. In other words, genocide and race supremacism, as two examples, are considered evil on their own merits, while Hitler is considered evil for numerous reasons largely because he advocated them. A common example of the fallacy in action is, "The Nazis favored eugenics, therefore eugenics is wrong."^[1][2] But the ethical debate over eugenics has nothing to do with Hitler or the Nazis in particular; both eugenics and criticism of it considerably predate Nazism, and have gone well beyond it, into concerns about modern genetic engineering, unknown to Hitler. Used broadly enough, ad Hitlerum can encompass more than one questionable cause fallacy type, as it does in the eugenics example, by both inverting cause and effect and by linking an alleged cause to wholly unrelated consequences. The fallacy of guilt by association can readily be seen by noting that Hitler was fond of dogs and children; arguments that because of this, affection for dogs and children is evil do not convince.

The argument being false, however, does not prove that X or its supporters are not evil (assuming so would be another fallacy, namely affirming the consequent). Moreover, recall that the argument is false in itself, no matter whether X is actually good or evil.^[1] So, "Hitler killed human beings, therefore killing is wrong", is nonetheless a fallacy, however truthful the premise and conclusion may be, because there is no logical connection between the two. It would be akin to "I wear trousers, therefore the sky is blue". This sentence is logically faulty, even if the speaker does wear trousers, and the sky is blue that day.

Various criminals, controversial religious and political figures, regimes, and atrocities other than Hitler, the Nazis and the Holocaust can be used for the same purposes. For example, a reductio ad Stalinum could assert that corporal punishment of wayward children is necessary because Joseph Stalin enacted its abolition^{[citation needed]}, or that atheism is a dangerous philosophy because Stalin was an atheist for most of his life.^[3] Similarly, one example of a reductio ad Cromwellium would be to equate enjoying chamber music with hating the Irish, while a reductio ad bin-Ladenum might equate making propaganda or non-mainstream media in general with terrorism. Such constructions, as a class, make no more sense than saying moustaches are evil because Hitler and Stalin had moustaches.

[edit] Countering the fallacy

The fallacious nature of reductio ad Hitlerum is, however, most easily illustrated by identifying X as something that Adolf Hitler or his supporters did promote but which is not considered unethical, such as painting, owning dogs or being a superb orator. It may be refuted through counterexamples using figures with reputations generally opposite that of Hitler:

• Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, Hitler's British opponent, also painted.
• President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his successor Harry Truman, Hitler's American opponents, also owned dogs.
• Like Hitler, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela were superb orators who ended up in trouble with legal authorities due to their political activities.

The fallacy is sufficiently widely known to often be referred to enthymetic and dismissively. For example comparing someone's argument to the straw man "The Fascists also made the trains run on time" might implicitly reference the reductio ad Hitlerum.

Many of Hitler's qualities and talents were admirable if seen in isolation. He is generally considered an excellent orator and a political organizer of first rank, despite his use of those talents to further a program of genocide, aggressive warfare, and other atrocities. In addition to this, it must be remembered that not all arguments involving Hitler or Nazism are reductio ad Hitlerum, although they may be otherwise fallacious.

[edit] History of the term

The phrase reductio ad Hitlerum is first known to have appeared in University of Chicago professor Leo Strauss's 1953^[4] book, Natural Right and History, Chapter II:

In following this movement towards its end we shall inevitably reach a point beyond which the scene is darkened by the shadow of Hitler. Unfortunately, it does not go without saying that in our examination we must avoid the fallacy that in the last decades has frequently been used as a substitute for the reductio ad absurdum: the reductio ad Hitlerum. A view is not refuted by the fact that it happens to have been shared by Hitler.

The phrase was derived from the better known (and sometimes valid) logical argument called reductio ad absurdum. The argumentum variant takes its form from the names of many classic fallacies, such as argumentum ad hominem. The ad Nazium variant may be further derived, humorously, from argumentum ad nauseam.

[edit] Allegations of the fallacy in practice

Neve Gordon, in a 2002 book review of Olivier Razac's Barbed Wire: A Political History, questioned why: "the architectural similarity and differences between the camps Israel has constructed to hold Palestinians and the concentration camps Jews were held in during the Holocaust [...] does not engender an outcry among survivors."^[5] In a January 2003 response to this review, Andrew Silow-Carroll alleged Gordon's use of Reductio ad Hitlerum with, "Logical Fallacy Alert: The Nazis used barbed wire. Israelis use barbed wire. Thus, the Israelis are like Nazis."^[6]

In 2009, the New York Post printed an editorial which criticized Columbia University Professor Joseph Massad for "[specializing] in reductio ad hitlerum." The Post editorialist supported his conclusion by quoting an essay by Massad written after Operation Cast Lead: "If Germans spent the day on the beach when the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939, ... Israeli Jews insisted on having front row seats on hills overlooking Gaza for a live show, cracking open champagne bottles and cheering the murder and maiming of thousands [sic] of civilians."^[7]

Some creationists, particularly religious Christians in the United States, have alleged that acceptance of evolution as a scientific theory leads to Nazism.^[8] The argument is that social Darwinism was inspired by Charles Darwin's discovery of natural selection, and that Hitler's evil philosophy can be explained in terms of social Darwinism, and therefore evolution is evil. This was carried out in the 2008 documentary film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, in which the evolutionary biologists are juxtaposed with images of Nazis.^[9][10] Richard Dawkins and Eugenie Scott, two scientists that were interviewed in the film, have been among the most vocal critics of many statements contained in the film. After a viewer of the film wrote to Dawkins that he accepted the film's argument, Dawkins wrote back that the film did not consider the long history of anti-Semitism in Europe that preceded Nazism of which Hitler took advantage and that evolution is a scientific theory, that "whether or not we like it politically or morally is irrelevant," and that "[s]cientific theories are not prescriptions for how we should behave."^[11] Expelled also equated an understanding of biological evolution with the rise of communism in the 20th century and the Berlin Wall was used as a double entendre in many parts of the film (part implying evolution and atheism are to blame for communism, part implying that academics in 21st century America are silenced for questioning Darwinian evolution).

The Reductio ad Hitlerum has been used in criticisms of United States Presidents Ronald Reagan,^[12] George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush,^[13] and Barack Obama, and against 2008 Presidential candidate John McCain.^{[14][15][16][17]} For example, A Penn State trustee compared Reagan's rhetoric when addressing a Young Americans for Freedom chapter to Adolf Hitler indoctrinating the Hitler Youth.^[12] If the audience is meant to derive an equivalence between the two addressed organizations, this would constitute the fallacy; comparing the speakers' rhetoric alone might be a hyperbolic or bad analogy, but would not be an instance of the fallacy itself.

[edit] In popular culture

The relative frequency of such comparisons in Usenet discussions led to the formulation of an adage called Godwin's Law in 1990, which posits that the probability of analogies involving Hitler or the Nazis approaches 1 as the duration of an online discussion increases.^[1]

The concept behind reductio ad Hitlerum sometimes makes appearances in the mass media. For example,

• In the film Office Space, main character Peter Gibbons, while trying to rationalize his embezzlement to his waitress girlfriend, notes that "the Nazis had pieces of flair that they made the Jews wear," in reference to cloying buttons and slogans she's required to wear at work.
• In the episode of Daria ("Pinch-Sitter"), the children Daria is babysitting for tell her that "Sugar is bad. Sugar rots your teeth. Sugar makes you hyper. Hitler ate sugar."
• In the "Atomic No. 33" episode of Numb3rs, the character Susan Doran criticizes science because it was embraced by the Nazis.

[edit] See also

• Godwin's Law
• List of fallacies
• Wisdom of repugnance

[edit] References

v • d • e Fallacies of relevance General Absurdity • Accident • Ad nauseam • Argument from ignorance • Argument from silence • Argumentum ad populum • Base rate • Compound question • Loaded question • Argument to moderation • Moralistic • Naturalistic • Proof by assertion • Irrelevant conclusion • Special pleading • Straw man • Style over substance • Two wrongs make a right Appeals to emotion Fear • Flattery • Nature • Novelty • Pity • Ridicule • Repugnance • Spite Genetic fallacies Ad hominem (Ad hominem tu quoque) • Appeal to authority • Appeal to motive • Appeal to tradition • Appeal to wealth • Appeal to poverty • Association • Bulverism • Chronological snobbery • Ipse-dixitism • Poisoning the well • Appeal to etymology • Reductio ad Hitlerum • Appeals to intellectual and mental stability or capability Appeals to consequences Appeal to force • Wishful thinking