A Question of Civility: Why We Can’t Resist the Urge to Compare someone to Adolf Hitler?

Posted Jun 4 2011 by Margaret Feinberg with 17 Comments

    I recently read in Mental Floss magazine (a mag for the hard core trivia lover) of an attorney and writer named Mike Godwin who noticed a disturbing trend in online message boards tracing back to the pre-historic age of the internet (also known as 1990).

    Godwin began noting that whenever a conversation became heated online that inevitable a Hitler comparison emerged in the posts. To battle the trend, he created “Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies” which states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”

    Why develop such a law? “I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler or to the Nazis to think a bit harder about the Holocaust.”

    To test the Godwin theory, I randomly typed a few names into the search engine of Google in quotes along with the name Hitler in quotes. I selected names from a wide spectrum of Christianity:

    Rob Bell

    James Dobson

    Pat Robertson

    Joyce Meyers

    Rick Warren

    Guess what? Hitler comparisons-in one form or another-emerged with every name.

    Just for fun I typed in my own name and “Hitler”, thinking that I’d be immune from this principle. But alas, several things I’ve written or responded to have warranted a “Hitler comparison” in the posts.

    The glib references to Hitler serve as kind of trump card for ultimate evil and despicable acts against humanity.

    When we’re throwing these kinds of trump cards around without second thought, what have become?

    If we stopped throwing around all of our trump cards, could we actually engage in a real, thoughtful, and meaningful discussion?

    —-
    Margaret is a prolific author whose books include Scouting the Divine and the critically-acclaimed The Organic God. Margaret and her 6’8″ husband Leif currently live in Morrison, Colorado.  You can find Margaret on her website and on Twitter at @mafeinberg


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      • Deb

        Amen. Also, using words like fascist or swearing and name-calling. This shows me that civility in our society has decreased at an alarming rate. It also indicates the inability of a person to think critically, which is essential to an intelligent debate. I stop listening when these things enter the conversation.

        • Anonymous

          Yes, along with Hitler and Nazi analogies, I’d also throw in fascist, communist, socialist and any other characterization that is used more as a slur than a descriptive term.  Now if someone actually is a member of the communist party or has described themselves as a socialist, then these are appropriate terms to use.

          • Jennifer A. Nolan

            I can agree with that last one.  But do “communist” and “socialist” necessarily have to be slur terms.  Many of these forms of left-wing anti-poverty ideology are merely Jude0-Christian-based calls for justice, take away our metaphysical views.  Unless they are fanboys of Stalin or Mao, many of these people are not altogether wrong.

      • mike

        Sometime the shoe does fit, for example the when you are talking about muslim terrorist nazi comparsions do describe them.  The nazis were socialist again look around.

        • http://dispensinggrace.wordpress.com Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh

          Look around at what?  Obama’s not herding anyone into death camps.  I think you totally ignored the argument of this post.  The shoe only fits when we’re talking massive ideological brainwashing of an entire nation to propogate genocide.  That’s not happening.  America’s hands aren’t clean (i.e. fate of Native peoples) but your analogy utterly fails here.

          • Anonymous

            “America’s hands aren’t clean (i.e. fate of Native peoples)…”

            And even then, it’s not correct to describe what our government did as “Nazism” or “fascism.”  It was immoral and wrong and can be compared to genocide, but the underlying philosophy had nothing to do with fascism.

      • Anonymous

        Use of Hitler or Nazi is a way of ending the discussion once we’ve pronounced the person as synonymous with evil incarnate.  We like making final pronouncements on people and then washing our hands and walking away.    

      • http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1388514701 Greg Dill

        Good insight. A similar observation I have made on the religious spectrum is the commonly used word “heretic” whenever someone doesn’t agree with one’s theology. I see this predominantly used from those of the neo-Reformed and conservative camps. What have we become as Christians when we call someone who historically if branded a heretic is burned alive at the stake?

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      • http://www.travismamone.net/ Travis Mamone

        After much thinking, Margaret, I think I finally figured out why so many Christians use Hitler comparisons:  PRIDE.

      • Anonymous

        “If we stopped throwing around all of our trump cards, could we actually engage in a real, thoughtful, and meaningful discussion?”

        Amen!  Let it be so.

      • http://www.liveloud.net xfree9

        I’m as against glib Hitler/Nazi comparisons myself, but it might be pointed out that denouncing Hitler/Nazi comparisons is itself a trump card intended to be a conversation stopper. While I’ll grant 90% of the comparisons made to Hitler are simply in lieu of good reasoned dialogue, there are indeed good criticisms to be made by making such comparisons. 
        Personally I avoid Hitler comparisons simply because people stop listening. That is a better reason to stop making them, in my opinion. 

      • Mark Sweeney

        I’m convinced that the Hitler comparisons give the writer the opportunity to engage in “historical profanity”… and as with all use of the profane, it is done in an unthinking manner–but thinking or unthinking it is still profane.

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