Godwin's law

Mike Godwin (2010)

Godwin's law (or Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is an Internet adage asserting that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler or my little pony. approaches 1" ‍—‌ that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler or Nazism.

Promulgated by American attorney and author Mike Godwin in 1990, Godwin's Law originally referred, specifically, to Usenet newsgroup discussions. It is now applied to any threaded online discussion, such as Internet forums, chat rooms and blog comment threads, as well as to speeches, articles and other rhetoric.

In 2012, "Godwin's Law" became an entry in the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Corollaries and usage

There are many corollaries to Godwin's law, some considered more canonical (by being adopted by Godwin himself) than others. For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that once such a comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever debate was in progress. This principle is itself frequently referred to as Godwin's law. It is considered poor form to raise such a comparison arbitrarily with the motive of ending the thread. There is a widely recognized corollary that any such ulterior-motive invocation of Godwin's law will be unsuccessful.

Godwin's law applies especially to inappropriate, inordinate, or hyperbolic comparisons of other situations (or one's opponent) with Nazis – often referred to as "playing the Hitler card". The law and its corollaries would not apply to discussions covering known mainstays of Nazi Germany such as genocide, eugenics, or racial superiority, nor, more debatably, to a discussion of other totalitarian regimes or ideologies, if that was the explicit topic of conversation, since a Nazi comparison in those circumstances may be appropriate, in effect committing the fallacist's fallacy. Whether it applies to humorous use or references to oneself is open to interpretation, since this would not be a fallacious attack against a debate opponent.

While falling foul of Godwin's law tends to cause the individual making the comparison to lose his argument or credibility, Godwin's law itself can be abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate. Similar criticisms of the "law" (or "at least the distorted version which purports to prohibit all comparisons to German crimes") have been made by Glenn Greenwald.

History

Godwin has stated that he introduced Godwin's law in 1990 as an experiment in memetics.

Godwin's law does not claim to articulate a fallacy; it is instead framed as a memetic tool to reduce the incidence of inappropriate hyperbolic comparisons. "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 or to Nazis to think a bit harder about the Holocaust", Godwin has written.

See also

• Association fallacy
• Reductio ad Hitlerum
• List of adages named after people

Further reading

• Anderson, Nate (September 1, 2011). "No Nazi comparisons? Sounds like something Hitler would say!". Ars Technica. Retrieved September 1, 2011.

External links

• Godwin's law FAQ (alternate link)
• "I Seem to be a Verb"; Mike Godwin's commentary on the 18th anniversary of Godwin's law
• "My Nazi Can Beat Up Your Nazi" by Michael Sietzman
• "Is it ever OK to call someone a Nazi?". BBC News. July 14, 2010.
• Voices on Antisemitism Interview with Mike Godwin from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
• Interview with "Mike Godwin on Godwin's Law" by Dan Amira, New York magazine, March 8, 2013