Godwin’s Law: What the Creator Thinks of Hitler Comparisons | Time.com

2017/07/04 Leave a comment

Excerpt from an interview with Mike Godwin, the inventor of Godwin’s law (invoking Hitler means losing an argument):

It’s obvious you have a pulse on social media where the Hitler comparisons you predicted are rampant. You can’t just chalk that up to Trump right?
As far as I know, every President who has been President from the time I got on the internet has been compared by someone to Hitler. People compared President Obama to Hitler. People have forgotten there were pictures of Obama with a Hitler moustache. That talk was crazy.

I’m not going to tell people whether to compare Obama or Trump to Hitler. It’s the government of the United States, and that’s very hard to destroy with a cult of personality because we have a lot of institutional inertia by design.

Would you say Trump’s impact makes the comparisons to fascism online more frequent?
I think so. There’s always been a general upward trend, peaking at election times. I think President Trump’s campaign was so populist and so outside the political establishment that it inspired people to reach for the comparisons because we’ve never had a President like this come in as a media personality outsider.

Isn’t it lazy to go there?
Of course it is. If you want to say something more powerful than the last person who disagreed with you said, people volunteer the rhetorical comparisons because they haven’t thought hard about history and what’s different between now and Germany in the 1930s or Cambodia in the 1970s.

When do you believe it’s a fair shake?
I urge people to develop enough perspective to do it thoughtfully. If you think the comparison is valid, and you’ve given it some thought, do it. All I ask you to do is think about the human beings capable of acting very badly. We have to keep the magnitude of those events in mind, and not be glib. Our society needs to be more humane, more civilized and to grow up.

Any idea how to stop the glib references?
A lot of education reform. If I ran the world, I would strengthen both history and scientific education in the United States. If we fostered more self-criticism and self-skepticism, I think that would do much to prevent rhetorical meanness and mean spiritedness on the internet, of which Hitler comparisons are only a tiny part.

We are in mid-adolescence culturally. When you reach adolescence, you’re not fully socialized. If we’re more self-aware, we can use social media with newfound growth and muscles.

Source: Godwin’s Law: What the Creator Thinks of Hitler Comparisons | Time.com

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Justin Trudeau, Steven Blaney and Godwin’s law of Nazi analogies – From the author of Godwin’s Law

2015/03/16 Leave a comment

For those accusing Justin Trudeau and Minister Blaney of inappropriate Nazi and Hitler references, an interview with Mike Godwin, the coiner of Godwin’s law that whoever first invokes an (inappropriate) reference has lost the argument, to set the record straight:

Let’s start with Mr. Trudeau. Did you think what he said was appropriate? 

Yes I actually do I think that it’s served Canada well to remain aware that the singling out of people on the basis of their ethnic or religious background is not something that Canadians have totally been a stranger to. That in the run up to World War Two certainly Jews in Canada had that experience …. I think that Canada of this century is a better place and I think what Mr. Trudeau is saying is in line with what I think majority of Canadian values are today.

You are aware that some people did criticize him for that comparison perhaps unconsciously thinking of Godwin’s Law. 

I am aware of it and I think that the thing that I would say in defence of Mr. Trudeau is that he is not saying that anyone who is afraid of people of different cultures or people of different ethnic groups is inherently going to act like a Nazi or be like Hitler. I think what he’s saying is look, let’s be aware of history, we should remember our mistakes and not repeat them.

Let’s look at minister Blaney who seemed to draw a line between certain kinds of speech and the Holocaust. Do you think that that comparison was acceptable. 

…  I want to say, in defence of Mr. Blaney, that in fact bad ideas can lead to bad real world outcomes. That is certainly true and nobody can dispute that. But what free and open societies like Canada’s and like those of other developed nations really try to do is not attack the ideas by suppressing them.

For all the Canadian pundits, politicians and interest groups who condemned both, worth reading and reflecting upon, and appreciating the nuance in Trudeau’s remarks in contrast to the less sophisticated remarks of Blaney.

Justin Trudeau, Steven Blaney and Godwin’s law of Nazi analogies – Home | Day 6 | CBC Radio.

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