Zeig Heil! Nazis, Hitler... ad nauseum

[irateplatypus]

is anyone else weary of so many politically controversial figures being compared to hitler? i mean, my goodness... i've seen comparisons made to hitler for every president i can remember(reagan). what bothers me the most is that oftentimes it is only brought up because of its guaranteed emotional response (as opposed to a actual rational correlations). what is more, many people who aren't involved in the continuing political discourse see a reference to hitler somewhere and immediately villify whoever is being compared with him without knowing the source/context of the slander.

the honest truth is, republicans get the worst of this... mainly because they often occupy the right-most end of our political spectrum (fascism being be most extreme end of right-leaning governments, and hitler being a fascist).

still, i can sympathize with people on the left who tire of the word communist being floated in so many instances where it the person in question has no real links to communist ideals.

true, we must not forget our history... we must always be on the watch for potential hitler-esque leaders arising in our midst. but don't the constant references callous people to the real horror of the third reich? to me, if people associate hitler's likeness with such moderates as junior and senior Bush & Clinton... then when a real threat to the world arrises again, the public will not be able to differentiate between them.

any thoughts?

[Strange Famous]

communism is a good thing, the problem is people who cannot tell the difference between communism and Leninism

[pan6467]

Yeah, the left get called Communists, unpatriotic and so on.

I am guilty of Zeig Heil...... but it has become a defense for me out of sheer anger over the fact the right won't argue issues without calling names, making innuendoes or trying to bully and having total bullshit avoidance of the issues.

The left is just as guilty.

I also use Zeig Heil when it comes to an illegal war that every reason the President has given for us being there is refuted later. Yet if we say anything we are "communist sympathizing, unpatriotic, wanting peace while our homes burn from terrorists, idiots". In other words if we refuse to bow down to Bush we are wanting to doom our country because "us dems are to stoopid to understand how to defend the country", or "we are eager to turn everything over to the UN". The Right refuses to hear anything BUT names.

I'll make a deal with anyone on this board....... make a thread where we can debate in a civil fashion with no names, no innuendoes and no bullying just facts and acknowledgement of the other sides intelligence and I'll never call anyone any names. I won't have to. I'll win on the issues alone. ANY TAKERS?

People are just doing what they see their political leaders and talking heads doing. On both sides.

[Tman144]

I learned a long time ago to stop listening to some people when they say such-and-such politician "hates america" or when they compare them to Hitler.

[irateplatypus]

i'll wager my kid sister's little puppy on that one pan. bring it on.

lol, do we get to choose teams? if i'm the conservative captain, i choose Ustwo for first pick. haha...

[mml]

It would be a much more informative and enjoyable if everyone would refrain from throwing out the easy slams. I am sure we are all guilty of it at some point in time, but the best posts/discussions avoid that type of labeling.

So now that Hitler is out can I call you guys Mussolini? Franco?

[Seaver]

I agree, people who negate other people or their leaders to communists or facists only pull their entire party side down.

In any debate lets face it, the one to resort to the name calling simply ran out of topics they could talk about yet wouldnt concede.

Political name calling is for those pseudo-intellectuals that know only enough about history to pretend they are properly educated.

[pan6467]

Irate you're on.

Open a thread, find a NON PARTISAN moderator that will police for namecalling and let's do it. We'll choose 2 others to be on our debate team. And if we can, we'll find non-partisan volunteers to judge who has the best argument on the issues.

We'll each give two issues to debate, Moderator gives the fifth. We each get a point-counterpoint posting from each of our "team members".

It probably won't change anyone on the "teams" voting but may affect others on the board. (or it'll burn out real fast because it is too civil).

The gauntlet is down. If you choose to add any rules cool.... I don't want anyone to say that it had to be by my rules. For the ONLY 2 rules I truly need is keeping it civil and a non partisan/biased moderator.

edited because I am an idiot who spelled two to.

[ARTelevision]

Godwin's law
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.

Godwin's Law (also Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is an adage in Internet culture that was originated by Mike Godwin in 1990. The law states that:


As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
There is a tradition in many Usenet newsgroups that once such a comparison is made in a thread the thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups. Many people understand Godwin's Law to mean this, although (as is clear from the statement of the law above) this is not the original formulation.

Nevertheless, there is also a widely-recognized codicil that any intentional invocation of Godwin's Law for its thread-ending effects will be unsuccessful.

Godwin's Law is named after Mike Godwin, who was legal counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the early 1990s, when the law was first popularized. Richard Sexton maintains that the law is a formalization of his October 16, 1989 post

You can tell when a USENET discussion is getting old when one of the participents [sic] drags out Hitler and the Nazis.
Strictly speaking, however, this is not so, since the actual text of Godwin's Law does not state that such a reference or comparison makes a discussion "old," or, for that matter, that such a reference or comparison means that a discussion is over.

Finding the meme of Nazi comparisons on Usenet illogical and offensive, Godwin established the law as a counter-meme. The law's memetic function is not to end discussions (or even to classify them as "old"), but to make participants in a discussion more aware of whether a comparison to Nazis or Hitler is appropriate, or is simply a rhetorical overreach.

Many people have extended Godwin's Law to imply that the invoking of the Nazis as a debating tactic (in any argument not directly related to World War II or the Holocaust) automatically loses the argument, simply because these events were so horrible that any comparison to any event less serious than genocide or extinction is invalid and in poor taste.

Various additions and addenda to Godwin's Law have been proposed by Internet users, though the original reference to Nazis remains the most popular. Addenda to the law include:

this is taken from here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

A search for Godwin's Law on TFP brings up the many times this has been discussed here. Inevitably, you'll see examples of this and other similar rehetoric that convinces no one...

[mystmarimatt]

That's very interesting, ART.

But can the idea also be assumed for the calling of liberals communists, as par to Stalin, or is it strictly limited to Nazism?

[ARTelevision]

Godwin's Law is Nazism-related - but I think we all see many instances where very similar types of irrelevant hyperbolic comparisons are employed...

[Tophat665]

The problem as I see it is that there are often valid comparisons to be made between current events, governments, and leaders and those of the late thirties and early forties (no specifics here - I want to keep this theoretical rather than get particular) usually in kind but not degree, and typically in the adoption of certain public relations gambits. I think everyone can agree that Hitler was one of the most effective and charismatic public speakers of all time, and Gobbels pretty much invented modern propaganda. That the things that they did with it earned them a one way ticket to hell is a point aside. People use chainsaws to cut wood, and no amount of watching the Texas Chainsaw Massace will take that utility away from them. So there is often a valid comparison to make, but make it and people get righteously indignant.


That's a problem, because what you are doing is saying, in effect, careful how you swing that chainsaw around; you could take somebody's leg off. But everyone thinks you're calling them Leatherface. (Talk about a metaphor taking over.) Same deal here - Hitler is a cautionary tale to any democracy, but only if he can be discussed without outrage, and that usually isn't possible.

Finally, often a conversation will go "X verges on fascist." "Are you calling X a Nazi?" and it degrades from there. Nazis were fascists. Not all fascists are Nazis. While I disagree with fascism, I can see the benefits of a strong, authoritarian central government. I don't see the benefit of a pint size demogogue with a world class chip on his shoulder and an ego of galactic proportion preaching racial purity and blatant land grab. (Don't much care for James K. Polk either.)

To sum up: Fascism != Naziism. Nazi public relations are a dangerous tool too often seen, but not often effectively noted in this day and age. Other comparisons can be validly made, but they will be partial and lopsided.

[Anomaly_]

Originally posted by Stare At The Sun
First off, its SEIG Heil.

It's "Sieg heil" actually. Sieg being the noun for "victory" (nouns, except for most pronouns, are capitalized in German) and heil being the imperative form of the verb "to hail". Please resume non-trivial discussion.

[Stare At The Sun]

^Indeed, the typo is mine.