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There is a tradition in many Usenet newsgroups that once such a comparison is made, the thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. In addition, whoever points out that Godwin's Law applies to the thread is also considered to have "lost" the battle, as it is considered poor form to invoke the law explicitly. 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
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 memesmiley is an example of a visual meme. Once seen, you are likely to copy it, reproduce it and show it to others. A meme (rhymes with "dream", but comes from memetic and memory) is a unit of information that replicates from brains or retention systems, suc 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 IIWorld War II was the most extensive and costly armed conflict in the history of the world, involving the great majority of the world's nations, being fought simultaneously in several major theatres, and costing tens of millions of lives. The war was fough or the HolocaustThis article deals with the Nazi Holocaust. For other meanings of the word Holocaust see Holocaust (disambiguation Concentration camp inmates during the Holocaust The Holocaust refers to Nazi Germany's systematic genocide of various ethnic, religious, nat) automatically loses the argument, simply because the nature of these events is such that any comparison to any event less serious than genocideGenocide has been defined as the deliberate killing of people based on their ethnicity, nationality, race, religion, or (sometimes) politics, as well as other deliberate actions leading to the physical elimination of any of the above categories. There is or extinctionIn biology and ecology, extinction is the disappearance of a species or group of species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of that species. In species which reproduce sexually, extinction of a species is invalid and in poor taste.
Various 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:
One common objection to Godwin's Law is that sometimes using Hitler or the Nazis is a perfectly apt way of making a point. For instance, if one is debating the relative merits of a particular leader, and someone says something like, "He's a good leader, look at the way he's improved the economy", one could reply, "Just because he improved the economy doesn't make him a good leader. Even Hitler improved the economy." Some would view this as a perfectly acceptable comparison. One uses Hitler because he is a universally known leader and the example requires no explanation. Pretty much everyone would know exactly what you were talking about in the above example.
Some would argue, however, that Godwin's Law applies even to the situation mentioned above, as it portrays an inevitable appeal to emotions as well as holding an implied ad hominem attack on the subject being compared to, which are classic logical fallacies. Hitler, on a semiotic level, has far too many negative connotations associated with him to be used as a good comparison to anything except for other despotic dictators. Thus, Godwin's Law holds even in making comparisons to normal leaders that, on the surface, would seem to be a reasonable comparison.
Godwin's standard answer to this objection is to note that Godwin's Law does not dispute whether, in a particular instance, a reference or comparison to Hitler or the Nazis might be apt. It is precisely because such a reference or comparison may sometimes be appropriate, Godwin has argued, that hyperbolic overuse of the Hitler/Nazi comparison should be avoided. Avoiding such hyperbole, he argues, is a way of ensuring that when valid comparisons to Hitler or Nazis are made, such comparisons have the appropriate semantic impact.
Note that when discussing with actual neo-Nazis, Godwin's Law should not typically apply, as Hitler is bound to come up on one or the other side of the argument sooner rather than later. It is also interesting that, among Nazis, a "reverse Godwin's Law" exists where, as an argument devolves into a flame war, there is an increasingly greater probability that one or the other side will invoke a comparison to Jews as an insult, much the same as a comparison to Hitler or Nazis is regularly an insulting one.