Taking the Fuhrer's name in vain

I have a suspicion that the real reason people invoke Godwin's Law is that they are closet Fascists who consider any mention of their beloved leader's name to be blasphemy.

Apparently, if you call someone a Communist*, that's a perfectly legitimate criticism, whereas if you call them a Fascist you automatically lose because "Godwin's Law". That is to say, it's firstly a descent to a school-yard level of logic, and secondly it unfairly targets one side of politics.

[* = Recently however, the term "Socialist", or even in some circles "Liberal", seems to be taking over as a term of abuse, which is a very worrying trend.]

What I find interesting about the business is that whenever I have seen this law invoked (and it must run to the hundreds by now), it has almost without exception been incorrectly applied. There must be some selective blindness at work, because I have seen people cut-and-paste the wording of this law into a post without realising that it completely contradicts their use of this law.

Godwin's Law in no way prohibits the use of any words. It is not a law in the legal sense ("you must do this"), but instead a law in the scientific sense ("this is true"). In its original form it goes as follows:

"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."

In other words, it states that over time, discussions tend to degenerate into name-calling and hyperbole. Which is a perfectly valid observation.

You can see how the law was intended to be applied: If, for instance, a discussion on the relative merits of different game consoles reached the point where people were calling each other Nazis (a thing likely to happen relatively quickly), it would be fair enough for someone to cry out "Godwin's Law", as a short-hand way of saying "this discussion has now descended to the point where rational debate is no longer possible and therefore it should be abandoned".

The difficulty I have is that this law is also used to stifle legitimate political discussion. Nazism and Fascism are not isolated phenomena belonging entirely to the past. People don't actually call themselves Nazis or Fascists any more, but the fact is that the same sorts of people, with the same sorts of motivations, are saying and doing the same sort of things today - to the extent that things are getting actually frightening.

You can point out, giving specific examples, where the behaviour of some political figure mirrors that of Hitler or Goebbels, and then some arsehole can arrogantly dismiss your whole argument (without having to counter any of the points you've raised) with the line: "Bzzzzzzzzzt. Godwin's Law. You Lose."

For sure, the vast majority of the time someone gets compared to a Nazi, the comparison is not valid. E.g.:

"I think euthanasia should be legalised"
   
"Isn't that what the Nazis did?"

or

"I believe in stricter firearms laws"
   
"Hitler brought in stricter firearms laws"

But that's only because debate on the Internet is usually at such a low level that the vast majority of the time any one line rebuttal is logically flawed. It's the same principle as Sturgeon's Law**.

[** Supposedly someone said to science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon "90% of science fiction is crap" and Sturgeon replied to the effect of "True, but that's because 90% of everything is crap".]

Now consider this exchange:

"Taking aspirin to reduce a fever is counterproductive, because a fever is the body's way of fighting off invading microbes. In this case it's better to leave your body alone to look after itself."

"Isn't that what a Christian Scientist would say?"

You wouldn't argue that a comparison to a Christian Scientist violated some particular law and that this in itself invalidated their statement. You'd probably reply something along the lines that in this case the Christian Scientist would be right despite themselves and that this was irrelevant to the argument you were making (or more succinctly: "a stopped clock is right twice a day").

If a comparison is invalid or irrelevant, you can simply say that it is invalid or irrelevant. Similarly, if a debate has degenerated to name-calling, you can say that it has degenerated to name-calling and therefore should be abandoned. Godwin's Law is neither necessary nor sufficient to address these issues.

So I suppose all of this is a long-winded way of saying that I think Godwin's Law has outlived its usefulness and should be retired.


[Update 17th August 2017 - it seems that Mike Godwin himself has come to the same conclusion and writes: "By all means, compare these shitheads to Nazis."]