A conversation is effectively finished once a Nazi or Hitler comparison is made.
- Godwin's law
I always found Godwin's law pretentious bullshit on some visceral level, without ever consciously articulating exactly why. It's definitely not Godwin's fault, as the quote above is not from him. It is a twisted version of his original observation and thus mistakenly attributed to him. The real one, as I learned recently, states that
"if any online discussion continues long enough, then eventually someone in it will compare something to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis"
which is hard to disagree with, on strictly statistical grounds. Nevertheless, the people invoking Godwin more often than not refer to the first version.
The point Godwin was making is obvious. He highlighted the fact that Nazi comparisons are made too frivolously in online discourse, to the detriment of it. This is a factually valid observation. My dislike stems from the smugness of people misusing it, indicating that bringing up Nazis in a conversation about current political events at any time is just a sign of unsophisticatedness.
This post is obviously prompted by the previous one, which in the eyes of many clearly violated Godwin's law, so before I try to figure out why exactly I detest the bastardized version, let's dispel some possible misunderstanding right at the start.
Last time, I made a very categoric statement that Trump voters would have elected Adolf Hitler as chancellor, had they lived in the 30s Germany. This perhaps deserves some afterthought. After great disappointments, one tends to be carried away with emotions, in written form as much as in person, and sometimes expresses opinions in a needlessly offensive, problematic manner, which he later regrets once emotions cool down and common sense prevails. I want to reassure the readers of the New Vac Times that this is absolutely not the case with the previous op-ed. I really do despise half of the electorate. Not as humans in everyday life, not their morality necessarily, but as citizens. I stand by this opinion, and everything that came out after the elections of Trump-supporting intellectuals, media personalities, and tech billionaires supports my belief. So do some friends and family, too, sadly.
I agree with everything The Dispatch's Nick Cattogio wrote before and after the election. If the paywall stops you, you can listen to Tim Miller reading up a piece of it from 35:05. If you listen to it a bit longer, you will hear the succinct version of the argument, from Tom Nichols:
"- You can't judge these people!"
"- The hell I can't!"
By the way, I didn't describe Trump voters as Nazis. I merely claimed that they would have voted for the Nazis, and everyone can draw their own conclusions from this.
Here are mine.
90% of these people are ignorant not only about cold hard facts that are well within their effortless reach but are also unable to comprehend the importance of the rule of law, liberalism, institutions, and many other fundamental building blocks of modern society, more than an average kid does at the age of 12. This is arrested development on a global scale.
Arguably, most people are simply not interested enough in these topics as much as others are not interested in chemistry. There are only 24 hours in a day. But, if you listen to Donald Trump (and you could not listen to him for hours aggregated in the last 8 years) and think, this is the guy I'd rather see leading the world, you lack something more than just information.
If I despise these people, that feeling is nothing compared to what I feel towards right-wing intellectuals and self-described centrists. The staff at National Review, Wall Street Journal, Unherd, and likes of popular historian Niall Fergusson or "journalist" Piers Morgan, or the dozens of podcast hosts with millions of followers. Pretentious assholes playing high-brow intellectuals for the highest bidders. They would have fit in nicely with Albert Speers, Carl Schmitts, and Martin Heideggers, or just the run-of-the-mill functionaries of that era. Fergusson made some indignant noises when Tucker Carlsson interviewed Nazi apologist Darryl Cooper ("the most important historian of the United States today") who claimed that the real bad guy of the Second World War was Winston Churchill, a puppet of his Jewish financiers. In five years, when another slimy little "historian" will voice similar claims, it won't make such ripples, and Ferguson will just shut the fuck up and find something quickly on the Democrats' side to complain about.
As for the tech bros, like Peter Thiel, David Sacks, or Elon Musk? In case you'd think that there is a charitable interpretation of their sycophantic behavior, Thiel just spared you the trouble on Piers Morgan recently, when he gloated about how the time has come to demolish the "ancienne regime", by which he meant, liberalism. It's not clear which part of liberalism he detests. Rule of law? Judicial independence? Free press? Or just voting rights for the hoi polloi? The less said about another self-proclaimed big thinker, Elon Musk, the better. Actually, I can't resist quoteingDestiny: "... Elon Musk is a 97 IQ man who masquerades as a 137 IQ man and all of his followers are 85 IQ so they all believe that he's as smart as he says he is". Zuckerberg, Bezos, and the rest? These are just miserable cowards. They required no prison or threat of physical violence to cave, just the prospect of losing some profit.
In short, everyone named above would have gone along with every right-wing regime in the 20th century. In the unlikely event that Trump really starts rounding up people by the millions to deport, they will explain why it's still better than a Democrat president. Rotten bunch. They deserve a post on their own.
Yes, this argument is not constructive, but again, a medical diagnosis can be valid even if there's nothing good coming out of it.
That was more long-winded than I expected. The intended main topic of the post will probably end up shorter. So here we go: is it ever justified or useful to call someone (or liken to) a Nazi? I can think of some obvious cons, and some pros as well.
The cons come easy to mind if you open a left-leaning newspaper. The "Israel is the Nazis of today" Soviet propaganda which originated in the seventies when Israel aligned itself with the US is still going strong and will do so as long as the public remembers the Second World War. After that, we might just revert to the old, time-proven habit of calling Jews God-killers. The fascist label is basically on everyone who criticizes BLM, or its next incarnation. Go to the Left enough (no need to travel far, just a step beyond the Guardian) and you will live in a world where everyone but you and your friends (and Facebook soulmates) are fascists.
These people are grinding away one of the best social taboos humanity has come up with, the taboo against racism, one chip at a time. Another metaphor might be even better. Words as vehicles of magic. The word "Nazi" puts a powerful stigma on its target, like the mark of Cain, banning him or her from society. But the magical potential is finite and the power ebbs away at every use, even faster by every misuse.
Having said that, all the above doesn't categorically imply that the comparison is never justified or helpful. To make a convincing argument in a good-faith debate, or to have any real debate at all, the participants need to establish a common ground, from which point they can reach some conclusion following the rules of logic. There is not much common ground left. When even basic facts are controversial, the agreement that Nazis are bad is one of the few remaining ones.
Therefore dogmatic reverence of avoiding Nazi comparisons is silly. If someone chants "Jews will not replace us" or uses the word "vermins" to immigrants who "poison the blood of the country", then obvious analogies come to mind. The burden of proof to justify their position is not on those who point out the glaring similarities but on the ones who have a knee-jerk reflex to dismiss drawing any Nazi parallels. As is the burden on the person who chants and blabbers racist crap to clarify "I only borrow phrases from the Mein Kampf, but I wouldn't follow them up with actions".