I think Godwin's Law should be updated to include "communist" along with the Nazis.
Its use is a sure sign a conversation is deteriorating.
Well, what am I supposed to call it when somebody claims that an organization which today overtly uses a Communist name, a Communist symbol, substantively Communist ideology, and Communist tactics, with the same old Communist purpose, has nothing to do with Communism?
The whole point of my Hitler/SA thought experiment was to demonstrate that nutildah’s argument would meet unanimous scorn, if it were applied to people who were overtly labelling
themselves with NSDAP symbolism.
Godwin was probably only semi-serious, but he stated that if any thread argument went on long enough the probability that Hitler would get mentioned was close to 1.
In the overall context of discussing a self-styled “Antifascist” organization founded in Germany in 1932, any mention whatsoever of Hitler must be nothing more than the convergence of random probabilities involving unintelligent hotheads arguing on the Internet.
Sure, that makes sense.
I must surely not be the first to propose
Meta-Godwin’s Law: On the Internet, any mention whatsoever of Hitler will trigger a blind invocation of Godwin’s Law—whether or not the mention of Hitler is reasonable—and whether or not the person mentioning Hitler is comparing his opponent to Hitler, which is actually
what Godwin was talking about.https://www.wired.com/1994/10/godwin-if-2/The Nazi-comparison meme, I'd decided, had gotten out of hand - in countless Usenet newsgroups, in many conferences on the Well, and on every BBS that I frequented, the labeling of posters or their ideas as "similar to the Nazis" or "Hitler-like" was a recurrent and often predictable event. It was the kind of thing that made you wonder how debates had ever occurred without having that handy rhetorical hammer.
[...]
I developed Godwin's Law of Nazi Analogies: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
I seeded Godwin's Law in any newsgroup or topic where I saw a gratuitous Nazi reference.
Only the braindead, who jerk their knees by reflex, could have imagined that I was comparing nutildah or Antifa to Nazis. They are Communists!
I know he's since clarified it shouldn't necessarily end an argument.