Mike Godwin Interviewed 89
theshowmecanuck writes CBC Radio in Canada has just posted an interview with Mike Godwin, the originator of the famous Godwin's Law. Unbelievably it comes after a week where Canadian politicians started flinging the H word at each other. Part of the interview reads: "I really wanted people not to make silly or glib comparisons that really show no awareness of history... and I think that to that extent Godwin's Law has succeeded."
Jeesh, history is important (Score:4, Funny)
But the guy doesn't have to be a nazi about it.
OK, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
In fact, many cases of Hitler references trivialize the almost inconceivable magnitude of the evil of the 3rd reich. But some cases - the Khmer Rouge or ISIS, for example - it really is appropriate. Yet Godwin is used to stifle the discussion. I think in that sense it has been a disservice.
Re:OK, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
No. If X (not Hitler) is doing Y and Y is very bad then you should be able to explain how come Y is very bad WITHOUT BRINGING HITLER INTO THE DISCUSSION.
Dragging Hitler/Nazis into a discussion is a lazy way to try to claim some moral high ground.
Re:OK, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Dragging Hitler/Nazis into a discussion is a lazy way to try to claim some moral high ground.
Says you, whose entire argument is based around mentioning Hitler.
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This is called a "meta-Godwin", where Hitler is brought up as a sensible argument.
Can we go deeper?
Re:OK, but... (Score:5, Funny)
No. If X (not Hitler) is doing Y and Y is very bad then you should be able to explain how come Y is very bad WITHOUT BRINGING HITLER INTO THE DISCUSSION.
Dragging Hitler/Nazis into a discussion is a lazy way to try to claim some moral high ground.
That's just the sort of thing Hitler would say.
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X11 is doing all things bad.
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But that is the price of Freedom!
Note that I did not close by saying "what are you, some kind of Nazi?" (going for the true meta-Godwin).
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Introducing other names doesn't help much IMO because it ignores the source of their power: great numbers of people looking for some kind of messiah to step in and solve all their problems -- the 'total' in 'totalitarianism' as Hitchens pointed out.
Hitler with his silly
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Stalin (3 times as many victims), Mao (2 times as many) and Kim Il Sung do have worshippers to this day.
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Hitler with his silly hair cut and ridiculous mustache
May I remind you that the mustache and haircut was pretty common in that time. ...... this particular style also was used by a plenty of people who did a lot of good.
What has "people who did a lot of good" have to do with it? The fact is that the style was quite common at the time. Charlie Chaplin had one. It was Hitler who made it go out of fashion (like the name "Adolf" too). Despite that there were plenty of old farts who still wore Chaplin-Hitler type mustaches in the 1950's and 60's. One of my schoolteachers did - we called him "Hitler".
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That works in any time with any people, as long as the prerequisites are in. Hitler is only the proof that it neither takes an intelligent nor an organized person to pull it off. Only someone full of himself with enough misplaced self esteem.
What it takes is a faltering economy, a population that used to think their country is big and strong only to be internationally humiliated, fear of enemies abroad and domestic and politicians or other leaders that are obviously or at least perceived as ineffectual, bum
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Um, no.
Take gun control for example. The current debate surrounding cites several statistics for and against that do more to obfuscate the issue than a clear example, as sharply put by Ben Shapiro, of a worse case scenario that transpired in Nazi Germany. Slippery slope arguments aside (although given how much civil liberties have fallen, I'm not certain that counts as a fallacy anymore), it puts the context in order.
Too often the opposite is true, where someone cites Godwin's Law as a shorthand in lieu of
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Nazi Germany serves as a well-known historical example of how certain policies can have disastrous effects, .... the onus is on those who advocate for such policies to explain clearly what immutable safeguards will be in place to prevent such a state from occurring.
History shows that nothing ever occurs the same way twice. There are just too many factors (both random and non-random) involved. I think the onus is on those who advocate ANY policy to try to show that it will not go pear shaped. Just saying it is the opposite of what Hitler would have done is not good enough.
Re:OK, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
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What do you mean "you should be able to explain"?
That's absurd. If you're talking to somebody who shares NONE of your cultural values, you can never convince them of anything. You have to start your argument from some point of agreement.
Hitler is used because he is the ONLY universally shared cultural value.
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This isn't really right. The concept of "white" we understand now wasn't what was understood then, and that wasn't what alarmed anyone who wasn't a victim at the time. What set the nazis apart (and may still do in times since) is the clean, industrial approach to destroying peoples and cultures that they employed. It terrified people not for the brutality, but for the complete divorce from human emotion.
Empires have grown and fallen by doing exactly, morally, what the nazis did. But never mechanically what
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What set the nazis apart (and may still do in times since) is the clean, industrial approach to destroying peoples and cultures that they employed. It terrified people not for the brutality, but for the complete divorce from human emotion.
So... ISIS????
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They've industrialized the elimination of everyone they can find in a targeted people group?
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ISIS recruits idiots who grew up with Call of Duty and modern zombie movies (rather than say, Doom and Counterstrike 1.x). They do the killing and splatter for the fun of it. Some mix of dude bro fun and complacently useful fervor.
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ISIS recruits idiots who grew up with Call of Duty and modern zombie movies (rather than say, Doom and Counterstrike 1.x).
I think that is the scariest "get the hell off my lawn" I've ever seen.
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What set the nazis apart (and may still do in times since) is the clean, industrial approach to destroying peoples and cultures that they employed. It terrified people not for the brutality, but for the complete divorce from human emotion.
So... ISIS????
What the OP meant is that the Nazis literally invented techniques of mass-murder because the old stand-by (shooting a bunch of people in the head) a) took a lot of labor (the Order Police who were supposed to be controlling Poland for them had time for very little except Jew-killing when they were shooting each one in the head individually), and b) gave tens of thousands of Germans PTSD from shooting little kids in the head. They kept doing it until they invaded Russia, but then they had a million-odd Sovie
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Empires have grown and fallen by doing exactly, morally, what the nazis did. But never mechanically what they did. We've destroyed peoples, but not with the efficiency and clarity of the Holocaust.
I think some of the Roman conquests might actually have matched the Nazis. Carthage was largely exterminated completely. Julius Ceasar's Gallic campaign certainly encountered some smaller opponents who resisted and the end result was anyone not dead was sold into slavery.
Parts of the 30 Years' war were pretty in
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stifle the discussion
Just like the nazis did!
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This.
The big problem with comparing someone to Hitler or their rule to the Nazis is that nobody takes the warning signs seriously until it's too late, like with ISIL. Harper is guilty of so many anti-democracy actions and downright un-Canadian legislation in this country that has been overturned by our courts it's not even funny.
In all seriousness, the man should be arrested and tried for treason.
Re: Unbelievably? (Score:1)
Get a grip.
Re: Unbelievably? (Score:1)
Funny how your reply unselfconsciously confirms Godwin's Law without being ironic or meta.... kudos...
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Unbelievably it comes after a week where Canadian politicians started flinging the H word at each other.
Please people?! Why can't we have peace for our time?
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~ Hitler, 1928
Not entirely fairly applied. (Score:5, Informative)
For those who aren't aware of what was said, in the case of Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau's comments, I don't think Godwin is being appropriately applied.
Mr. Trudeau didn't compare the government to that of the Nazis. He didn't compare it to Hitler. He didn't claim that a government policy was as bad as the Holocaust.
What he did say is that current anti-Muslim government policies are akin to the Canadian policy just after World War II of "none is too many" when it came to Jewish immigrants to Canada, which the Government of Canada has since admitted was wrong.
In essence, it compared a current policy to a previous policy that the Government had admitted was wrong. I don't see why everyone is so upset, other than that the government would like to try to make this into a Godwin-like comparison in order to score cheap political points. For the record, according to the interview (for anyone who doesn't RTFA), Mr. Godwin agrees with this analysis.
Minister Blaney, however, seems in my mind to have skirted the line much more closely, specifically bringing up the Holocaust as an example to try to prop up support for an unpopular bill. His specific statement, that the Holocaust didn't begin with the gas chambers, but with words is correct -- however I have to agree with MP Randall Garrison (FWIW, he represents my riding, although admittedly I didn't vote for him in the last election) who said that this was "over-inflated rhetoric".
So in essence we have one instance worthy of invoking Godwin against, and another that had nothing directly to do with the Holocaust, but instead a Canadian policy that happened around the same time, and affected the same people, which mirrors in some respects what the current Government is attempting to do with a different population, for which Godwin shouldn't apply (but which is being brought out in some corners in an attempt to score political hay).
Yaz
stop with your logic and reason and understanding (Score:4, Funny)
you nazi fascist
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http://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/c... [reddit.com]
Hello reddit. I am Ben Lesser[1] .
I am the founder of the Zachor Holocaust Remembrance Foundation[2] .
I was born in Krakow, Poland, in 1928. With the exception of my older sister Lola and myself, the rest of my family was killed by the Nazis.
Over the 5 years of the war, I was fortunate to survive several ghettos, as well as the notorious camps of Auschwitz, Buchenwald, and finally be liberated in Dachau.
After the war, in 1947 I immigrated to the United States where a few yea
This Godwin sounds like an arrogant prick (Score:1)
No one with a brain adheres to silly arbitrary internet "laws".
This is all utter bullshit.
Now, go ahead and mod me down, you brainless cock-gobbling retards.
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But Few Even Post on Usenet Now (Score:3, Informative)
Godwin's law is a usenet phenomenon, intended to describe the period when a usenet thread could go on and on for weeks. So a thread woud be 'officially ended' by Godwin's Law when someone invoked the hitler mentioning.
On today's modern web, i.e. on Slashdot, theads never last more than a few days because blog site operators close down the comments after a few days or a week has passed. The agenda of discussions is driven by the operators by means of throwing up new 'articles' all the time.
Essentially, Godwin's Law is obsolete and doesn't pertain. Certainly not in the context that it was created to operate within.
It's just a meaningless meme now that people use to shut down discussions even more prematurely than blog operators like Slashdot do by shutting closing off comments and adding new topics.
but Godwin's Law is still true (Score:1)
Godwin's Law didn't stop being true. I see it all the time.
It's older than Godwin... (Score:1)
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Thanks for the link, this is why I participate in Slashdot, to discover interesting nuggets I was not aware of previously.
I was not aware of Alan Watts prior to 15 minutes ago (I'm now listening to How to Make it Out of the Trap).
Thank you.
Unhelpful (Score:2)
The problem with Godwin's Law is that nazism is on the rise and people are afraid to point it out because of Godwin's Law.
http://www.vice.com/read/white... [vice.com]
(fun fact: the nazis' internet clubhouse is 8chan, because birds of a feather...)
interviewer doesn't understand Godwin's Law (Score:1)
"since the law came into effect"
Oh, please. It's not a law in the prescriptive sense, it's a law in the descriptive sense. It's like the law of gravity, not the law against murder.
even Godwin misunderstood Godwin's Law (Score:1)
Godwin's Law is true, but apparently even Godwin doesn't understand why.
People inevitably make Hitler comparisons because it's the only moral bedrock we have left. There is no other issue upon which we can all be expected to agree.
Here's how Internet discussions work:
I say "X is bad". Somebody disagrees, so I say "X is bad because Y is bad". Somebody says "but Y isn't bad", so I have to say "Y is bad because Z is bad". Given the vast diversity of the Internet, there's going to be somebody who says "but