Until now, I admired the ironic intelligence of Godwin’s Law: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one. The problem though is that GL depends on, essentially, a rational starting place so that the “long discussion” can evolve into fascist insanity and name-calling. This man (Ahmadinejad) begins as Hitler. So where do we go when discussing him? Some other comparison or end point like Satan? (For some Hitler is worse than Satan.) What do you say to the that Mike Godwin? Any suggestions?
UPDATE: Reuters somehow deems this Ahmadinejad speech (linked above in AP coverage) a “slight” improvement from last year’s speech in which the Iranian leader called for Israel to be “wiped off the map.” Today Ahmadinejad said: “Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation. The Zionist regime is a rotten, dried tree that will be eliminated by one storm.” Sounds actually worse to me, but you know Reuters - always looking for the bright side where reactionary tyrants are concerned.
MORE: Hugh Hewitt, on whose show I just appeared talking about the Iranian situation, has posts here and here.
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16 Comments
1. Godzilla:I’d say that Godwin’s law breaks down here. Hitler is a valid comparison, and dead on with the early Hitler, at the point where he had assumed power but before the invasions and the pogrom began.
Apr 14, 2006 - 2:26 pm 2. rocketsbrain:It’s Time to Kick Butt!
Roger,
You and others in the Blogos are aware that the world is rapidly sliding into another apocalyptic period similar to the rise of the Third Reich or the coming of an age darkness and Evil in Tolkein’s metaphorical world of the Ring Trilogy.
It’s time for the Blogos to turn on the lights to guide the rest of the world from this danger. For it’s only the power of the truth and light of the collective free will of men and women that can pierce through this dark cloud approaching.
In simple terms it’s time to stop taking names, kick ass and don’t worry about political correctness, what our EU “friends” may say or what the Russians and the Chinese may or not do.
RBT is working on a draft piece if he had the ear of the President what the talking points would be.
RBT
Rocket’s Brain Trust
*****
Mr. President It’s Time!
Mr. President,
It’s the bottom of the ninth, one down, two men on base, the home team is trailing 3 to 2 and the power hitter is coming up to bat.
Mr. President it’s time to step up to the plate and swing away for the bleachers. It’s time to use the power that WE, the American people, have given you to defend this Great Country of ours against the enemy in the GWOT that seeks our ultimate destruction.
Mr. President use your bully pulpit to speak directly and plainly to the American people without the usual diplomatic nuances as you did after the enemy’s 9-11 attack. You will garner the will and support of the American people to decisively win the GWOT.
You must sweep away all the disinformation of the LL and the MSM have been slinging that has left the American people uninformed and disillusioned.
[...]
Mr. President please do swagger and talk plainly as a rider from the range. Please do convey the mental image:
Don’t mess with Texans and don’t mess with Texas!
I would also add this little adage for guidance and in no means an offense to Christians:
I would supplement WWJD to include WWJBD!
[WWJBD - What would Jack Bauer do?]
Apr 14, 2006 - 3:26 pm 3. zefal:Goodwin’s law is apt. The longer a conversation goes on the more likely that a war, that took place 60 odd years ago, and killed more people than any other war in human history will come up.
Who would have thunk it?
People on other forums thinks this means that if you bring up the war or make a comparison to the war (more specifically hitler and the nazis) your argument is weak or a cop out or something.
The same people will start screaming “it’s another VIETNAM!!!” at the drop of a hat, btw.
Apr 14, 2006 - 4:19 pm 4. ForNow:Godwin’s law is about discussion reaching a reductio ad Hitlerum.
But, when the discussion is already about Hitler or somebody enough like Hitler, then I think we need to apply Godwin’s law in reverse.
Prolonged enough, the discussion will reach the point where somebody compares bad guys with George Washington or the Minutemen, as Michael Moore did regarding the terrorists in Iraq.
I guess you could call that an inflatio ad Washingtonum.
Apr 14, 2006 - 4:25 pm 5. David Thomson:The movie Bob Roberts was released in 1992. It makes numerous references to Desert Storm. According to the Gore Vidal character that conflict was merely a conspiracy concocted by the devious right-wing ìNational Security Council.î This group supposedly runs the country, and not our elected leaders. The greedy military-industrial complex had to be satisfied, and would not take no for an answer. Saddam Hussein was not another Adolph Hitler—but a minor league dictator. Vidal dismisses him as merely another member of ìthe villain of the month club.î
Apr 14, 2006 - 4:40 pm 6. Kevin Peters:Roger:
Although I have no problem with Hitler comparison I think it should be avoided. Not because it can’t be argued. But because it tends to drag the argument into a rhetorical black hole. This nutters own words are so completly insane that you don’t need the historical analogy. He believes in the “Protocols of Zion.” He is a Holocaust denier. He thinks that Iran can survive a nuclear exchange with Israel because even if millions of his own people die Israel will be eliminated totally and that is a sacrafice he is comfortable with. He believes God will reach out his hand and protect any Muslim holy sites. He thinks a Palestinian teenager strapping bombs on his chest and blowing up a Jewish mother with her baby in a stroller is a holy thing. He thinks he can personally bring on the second coming of the Muslim messiah and a return to worldwide sharia law. “Eliminated by one storm” It’s easy to figure that one out. Nukes over Tel Aviv. And he will have the bomb within 2 years. This should be scary enough without bringing up Hitler. If it isn’t then there is no point in arguing with that person.
Apr 14, 2006 - 5:10 pm 7. David Thomson:ìBut because it tends to drag the argument into a rhetorical black hole.î
Not always. Sometimes itís simply an attempt by the far left to discourage one from logically describing an enemy of the United States. This is what Gore Vidal’s character does in Bob Roberts.
Apr 14, 2006 - 5:29 pm 8. Barry Dauphin:But the tone of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s speech to a conference on the Palestinian issue was slightly more moderate than fiery rhetoric last year, when Iran’s official IRNA news agency quoted him as telling a conference: “Israel must be wiped off the map.”
Well, I guess we now understand what Reuters means by “slightly more moderate”. Let’s see, Iran has just claimed membership to the nuclear club, and the first major public uttering by its president after this declaration is to predict that Israel will soon be wiped off the map (albeit in the metaphor of a tree falling in a storm). So Ahmadinejad moves from declaring a goal to suggesting that this goal is realistically achieveable fairly soon, and Reuters thinks this is more moderate. Gee, let’s invite ole Mahmoud over for barbacue.
I wonder if the pace of the Iranian announcements suggests that they feel that Iraq is becoming more stable, more quickly than they hoped and that their efforts to disrupt the democratic process in Iraq have not been as successful as they hoped, notwithstanding the headlines. The Iranians use different metrics for “success” than the NY Times.
Apr 14, 2006 - 5:37 pm 9. ForNow:I bring up Hitler & Stalin all the time. Back on Sept. 13, 2001 I posted in my building a few paragraphs in which I said that new technologies will be moving off the drawing boards and dropping “into the hands of Hitlers & Stalins on the street who think themselves prophets, heroes, saints.” My neighbors were taken aback by the thought. The monsters’ names have been trivialized at places like the DailyKos, but not everywhere.
Think of the islamofascists, but also of AUM in Japan, and of the kind of destructionists inspired by Prof. Eric R. Pianka in what seems his nudging & winking.
I used to compare Saddam with Hitler and in particular Stalin. Saddam had a whole bookcase of books on Stalin.
From a poem “The Kremlin Mountaineer” by Osip Mandelstam about Stalin (fuller version at Horsefeathers:
His fingers are fat as grubs
And the words, final as lead weights, fall from his lips,
His cockroach whiskers leer
And his boot tops gleam.
Around him a rabble of thin-necked leadersó
fawning half-men for him to play with.
They whinny, purr or whine
As he prates and points a finger,
One by one forging his laws, to be flung
Like horseshoes at the head, to the eye or the groin.
Hitler, Stalin, Mao, Mengistu, Amin, Pol Pot, I like to mention them and the people who mass-murdered for them. An honest & reasonable comparison is a way of not forgetting the victims, and of honoring them in seeking to avoid the repetition of mass horror.
Apr 14, 2006 - 5:40 pm 10. AST:It really doesn’t matter whether he’s insane or just evil. I mean, you don’t worry about the distinction when you’re confronted by an angry pit bull. Maybe he’s a trained attack dog or just one who’s been beaten too often. The main thing is to save yourself from the beast.
I’m not sure the media and the Senate Democrats get that. They seem more intent on censuring or impeaching Bush and investigating things that happened four years ago, than in trying to lead and serve the American people. There are certainly some Republicans acting the same way, but the President is not. He’s focused on a strategy for dealing with terrorism by striking at its roots. His critics seem to be focused on finding more nits to pick as their old claims about no WMD dissolve around them.
That is irresponsible, and shows a deep degree of unseriousness about them. They are like people on a raft headed for the falls whose only concern is that they should be controlling the tiller.
Apr 14, 2006 - 7:48 pm 11. Tim:While I’d never compare myself to Churchill, haven’t we seen this movie before? I think I have some sense as to how he must have felt during the gathering storm in the ’30’s. This too won’t end well, or soon, and the blood price will weigh heavy on most of us, but some more than others.
Apr 14, 2006 - 8:29 pm 12. Kevin Peters:Roger:
Apr 14, 2006 - 9:50 pm 13. klrfz1:I think the Hitler comparison is valid. My only objection to it is that it allows the person you are debating with room to deny the comparison rather then focus on the insanity of Iran’s new leader. This is strictly a tactical suggestion. I used to get into argumnets regarding communism and I often found myself dragged into silly arguments about who was worse, Stalin or Hitler. In my mind this was like debating the difference between a child molester who attacks his victim everyday and one that does it three times a week. After a while I would cede the point to the communist apologist and get back to making him discuss Stalin and communism in general. The Hitler of the 30’s and the self blinding denial that Europe and America showed while ignoring the threat is an excellent argument regarding Iran. I just think the material regarding Ahmadinejad is so rich that it is wiser to focus on him and leave Hitler out of it.
Here’s another Ahmadinejad quote:
This is the current Democratic Party position, except he left out “BUSH LIED”. Ahmadinejad may be more rational than Howard Dean.
I am an optimist. Though it’s difficult to see the silver lining to this cloud, isn’t it true that the atmospheric dust thrown up by a few dozen nuclear explosions in the Middle East would reverse the recent warming trend in the Earth’s climate? The increase in global mortality rates due to breathing radioactive dust would help to mitigate global overpopulation. And, with the increase in birth defects, even more abortions will be “necessary”. A hat-trick indeed.
You know, with such a terrific humanitarian outcome, Ahmadinejad might win a Nobel Peace Prize for this!
Apr 15, 2006 - 5:00 am 14. photoncourier.blogspot.com:Anyone who believes “deterrence” will ensure our safety vs a nuclear-armed Iran should keep one Hitler-related point in mind: Toward the end, Hitler decided the German people had failed him, and actively *wanted* Germany to be destroyed (and indeed, issued orders to that effect)
Had Hitler possessed a nuclear-armed version of the V-2 missile…with sufficient command and control to ensure his orders would be carried out…can anyone doubt that he would have issued the launch order?..***even if the Allies had possessed equivalent means of retaliation***?
Application to the case of Iran is left as an exercise for the reader.
Apr 15, 2006 - 7:08 am 15. Gerard Van der Leun:Well, Roger, there’s no mystery at all once you understand the official correlary to Godwin’s Law:
Mike Godwin writing in Wired 2.10: Meme, Counter-meme
“Van der Leun’s Corollary: As global connectivity improves, the
Apr 15, 2006 - 1:14 pm 16. Gerard Van der Leun:probability of actual Nazis being on the Net approaches one.”
What can I say? Zelig of Cyberspace c’est moi.
Apr 15, 2006 - 1:15 pm