It's time to repeal Godwin's Law

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Last Conformist
The real problem isn't Nazi comparisons per se, but the use of inapt but emotionally charged comparisons.

ie

"But the real problem with typological thinking about history is that it is not historical thinking at all. It is ahistorical thinking. It obscures and obliterates all the differences between historical circumstances in favor of a gross, immutable, edifying similarity. It is an insufficiently worldly way to judge the world."

[MrFun]

Originally posted by lord of the mark


but there are other regimes that had repression of free speech, forced labor camps, street bully politics, etc, etc. When you refer to Nazis you necessarily bring in connotations of the holocaust.

I never said there are no other possible exampes besides Nazi Germany. For instance, the Confederate States of America would be another historical example of a repressive government.

Hell, the United States itself, in different periods of its own history can be used as relevant examples and analogies when discussing repressive, violent governments or repressive, violent acts done by otherwise free governments.

[GePap]

What is the real "sanctity" of the Holocaust?

What the Nazi's did was perhaps unprecendented in scale, but not in intent. Countless people's have been slaughtered throughout history, and in all honesty, the Nazi methods of killing were not any more horrific than those of any other genocidal campaign. Personally I find the Rwandan genocide in many ways much more graphic and disturbing, as instead of industrialized, de-personalized killing in special centers removed form most large population sites, and in general hidden, both in location and through terminology (the Nazi's never, ever openly stated that their extermination campaign was ongoing-and they usually wrote in code even amongst themselves) and finally carried out by military and government forces for the most part, you had a much more personal type of killing, in which people were killed where they lived, many times be their own neighbors, people using their own hands (much of the killing done with Machetes), and even then they reached a rate of killing on par if not greater than the height of the killing capaigns by the Nazi's.

As was stated before, if I started calling people the Interahamwe most people anywhere in the world will not have a clue what that means.

On top of that, the "Nazi's" were a large political party with millions of people, the mayority of which had nothing personally to do with the Holocaust. The current Pope was a Nazi, but certainly not a mass murderer of any kind. So to always connect Nazi to Holocaust is in itself to ignore what Nazi means. If you called people SS men, that's closer to the Holocaust than just Nazi, or using the Gestapo reference as well.

So I for one am all for redefining when Godwin's Law is used, in terms of saying the debate has deteriorated beyond reach or safety. If the coparison is to muder, mass murder, state terror, state sponsored repression, genocide, or propaganda then a Nazi reference in context is probably valid.

If you are discussing security at the mall or anti-smoking laws or other minutiate like that then Nazi references are nonsense.

[Last Conformist]

I don't think that being a HJ member in itself made you a Nazi. People at the time don't seem to've thought so.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by GePap
What is the real "sanctity" of the Holocaust?

What the Nazi's did was perhaps unprecendented in scale, but not in intent.

Um, excuse me . . . . . .


you're saying the Holocaust was NOT intentional!?!?

[Rufus T. Firefly]

Godwin's Law should not be repealed. But, just like any other law, it should be amended to include farm subsidies, highway funds, and expanded federal wiretapping authority.

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by MrFun

What the Nazi's did was perhaps unprecendented in scale, but not in intent.

you're saying the Holocaust was NOT intentional!?!?

un·prec·e·dent·ed adj. Having no previous example; novel.

[GePap]

Originally posted by MrFun



Um, excuse me . . . . . .


you're saying the Holocaust was NOT intentional!?!?

No. It was. But there have been plenty of intentional genocides. Just that one group attempted to exterminate another is nothing new, sadly.

What was new about the Holocaust was the method, the first time industrial processes were employed in order to industrialize the killing. That is what makes it new and different-the method, not the madness.

But the evil is in the madness, not the method.

[Ramo]

so why not compare the abuse to the French in Algeria, say, which is actually a more apt comparison? Cause he wants to get the benefit of the shock value of the word Nazi. Well you cant have it both ways - with the shock value, comes the distraction from your actual point. Which is the point of Godwins law.

As I recall, the French killed around a million Algerians (out of several million). Why do you want to trivialize the actions of the French?

Seriously, the situation we're in, on a macro level, is not all that similar to really anything I can think of in the past. But Durbin specifically didn't intend a macroscopic comparision. As I said, it's a comparison of an individual act with an individual act. And as Boris pointed out, Nazi Germany is symoblic of the bad bad state, so it's only natural to use it. Pointing to the French in Algeria isn't a very powerful statement, since a rediculously small portion of the public would get the reference, and thus wouldn't be effective.

"when a Likud politician compares Palestinian terrorists to Nazis, hes NOT comparing anything to mass murder. Hes saying the killing of Jews cited belongs to a totalitarian (not authoritarian) regime like Nazi Germany, rather than an aspiring democratic nationalist movement"

Do you buy that? Cause I dont. The Palestinians, even the terrorists, are NOT Nazis, and calling them that tends to A. Confuse the issue, and lead to poor policy approaches and B. Trivialize the holocaust - which is implicated in every such reference to Nazis, though some may regret it. The same applies to the use of the term re Gitmo. Just as you cant understand Palestinian terrorists by thinking about Nazis, and cant formulate a correct way to end Pal terrrorism, so you cant understand US actions at Gitmo and elsewhere by thinking about Nazis, nor can you formulate correct ways to end those.

But Durbin didn't say that Americans are like Nazis. He said precisely the opposite. He said that the specific act mentioned is unAmerican and ought to belong to an authoritarian regime rather than us. It really is a powerful moral statement when you stop to think about it.

Now, if a Likud politician said that "if I heard about this suicide bombing, I would have thought that it was done by the Nazis or in a Soviet gulag or by the Khmer Rouge." I would think that it is perhaps inaccurate since the Nazis, etc. used state power and Hamas et al. specifically don't (and thus, this is an invalid microcomparision), but I wouldn't think that this remark is disparaging to Palestians in any way (or the victims of these regimes, for that matter). Rather the opposite, in fact.

[molly bloom]

Originally posted by GePap
What is the real "sanctity" of the Holocaust?

What the Nazi's did was perhaps unprecendented in scale, but not in intent.

I disagree- the intent was not simply to destroy a people, but to destroy a civilization and a religion and its cultures across an entire continent (and had they succeeded, the world).

There had been earlier genocides- either accidental or a mixture of accident and deliberation, but the intent of the Nazis was to completely eradicate Judaism as a concept and a people- with perhaps a little human zoo or museum of Jews to show off their idea and its achievement. There was no territorial imperative either- the Jews of Europe were not concentrated in one territory, did not control arable lands, or wield power over one country, or occupy unexploited agricultural land- which is the 'why' of other genocides or attempted genocides.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by Boris Godunov


un·prec·e·dent·ed adj. Having no previous example; novel.

Thanks Mr. Rogers, I already knew what unprecedented means. I guess I was focusing on GePap's words, "but not in intent."

[Boris Godunov]

Originally posted by MrFun




Thanks Mr. Rogers, I already knew what unprecedented means. I guess I was focusing on GePap's words, "but not in intent."

Yeah, and he was clearly stating that what the Nazis did was not unprecedented in its intent--that genocide has been committed with the same intent for ages prior to Nazism. How on earth you construed his meaning to be that he was saying the Nazi atrocities were just a big "oops" on their part, I don't know...

[Az]

Originally posted by MrFun




Thanks Mr. Rogers, I already knew what unprecedented means. I guess I was focusing on GePap's words, "but not in intent."

Dude, I can't believe you missed out on the obvious joke to make: call him a "word Nazi".

[Boris Godunov]

Why on earth could you not believe that MrFun would miss out on any joke?

[Az]

Point