A field note from the wild, untamed frontier that is the Internet:
Godwin’s Law, posited by Mike Godwin in 1990, states that, in online forums, the longer a discussion thread goes on, the more likely it becomes that someone will compare someone else to Hitler or call them a Nazi in a heated argument. It draws an explicit a connection between on line discussions, especially in discussion forums and Usenet groups, to the logical fallacy of Reductio ad Hitlerum, coined in the 1950s by Leo Strauss, which is very basically the argument that, if Hitler’s regime was characterized by XYZ, then XYZ is inherently evil and invalid. “As an online discussion grows longer,” the original formulation of the law goes, “the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.” Once that happens — once someone exercises the rhetorical equivalent of the nuclear option — the thread is effectively dead. Meaningful discussion is no longer possible. Once Nazis goose-step into your thread, it’s time to find a new one.
Those of us who have participated in online discussions of various stripes have seen Godwin’s law proven again and again, especially when someone conflates criticism of his or her position on the subject at hand with suppression of free expression. (An interesting example of such a conflation in another context can be seen here.) To wit:
You people have been criticizing my position on homemade v. canned cranberry sauce (Thanksgiving was just last week, after all) and, by doing so, you have violated my right to express my opinion. This is exactly what the Nazis did in Germany. You are worse than Hitler!
While one may initially get the impression that Godwin’s Law somehow trivializes the brutal historical significance of Nazi Germany, Godwin notes that the law first came to be as a means of countering such obviously absurd trivializations in heated online discussions. Writing 18 years after first having created the law, Godwin explains his motivation like this:
It was difficult, after attempting a greater psychological understanding of why the Holocaust happened and how it was conducted, to tolerate the glib comparisons I encountered on the Internet (Usenet in those days). My sense of moral outrage at this phenomenon found an outlet after I read an article in in the Whole Earth Review about memes—viral ideas—that inspired me to create a kind of counter-measure. And so I created Godwin’s Law and began to repeat it in online forums whenever I encountered a silly comparison of someone or something to Hitler or to the Nazis. (source)
I’ll move that Godwin’s law can only work as a counter-measure in this way is if it is cited when a comparison to Nazis occurs — something like “Godwin’s Law: proven again!” Useful here is the Dodd Corollary to Godwin’s original law, which states that whoever invokes the Nazis in an online debate is automatically discredited for doing so and loses the argument. The Dodd Corollary highlights the triviality and the warped sense of history implicit in such comparisons. If I call you a Nazi because you vehemently disagree with my argument that canned cranberry sauce is superior to all other kinds of cranberry sauce, I lose the argument because I was stupid enough to conflate your position with the ideology of an iconically repressive, genocidal regime. I obviously need to reevaluate how passionately I feel about canned cranberry sauce.
For more on Godwin’s Law, see the Godwin’s Law FAQ. (Hat tip to Zach Davis.)
Recent Comments