As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1. – Mike Godwin
Most well-informed internet users are familiar with Godwin’s Law, a humorous observation which acknowledges the fact that since the Nazi regime in general and Hitler in particular are widely viewed as the very worst recent examples of human behavior imaginable, they are often invoked when a critic or debater wishes to vilify his opponent in the most extreme manner possible. Mike Godwin has written (both in articles and in his book Cyber Rights) that it is precisely because such comparisons are sometimes appropriate (as in discussions about propaganda, eugenics or oppressive regimes) that he formulated the “law” or observation, so as to call attention to the fact that frivolous use of such analogies tends to “rob the valid comparisons of their impact.”
He is particularly critical of Holocaust comparisons; “Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics, its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler or to Nazis to think a bit harder about the The Holocaust.” A perfect example of this is in the recent tendency of trafficking fanatics to brand those who question their wild exaggerations as the equivalent of Holocaust deniers: To compare the ancient evil of slavery with the modern one of genocide is merely asinine, but to compare those who demand basic proof for extraordinary claims with fanatics who deny overwhelming physical and documentary evidence and thousands of eyewitness accounts is both highly hypocritical and astonishingly irrational.
But Godwin’s clear statements about the intended application of his “law” don’t prevent some people from attempting to censor others’ arguments by invoking it even when the comparisons it is leveled against are in fact valid. What makes such misuse more worthy of note than other sleazy argumentation tactics is what it says about people’s perception of the Nazi phenomenon: By pretending the Nazis were so evil that NO comparison to them, however apt, is reasonable, we essentially say that Nazism was some sort of fluke that could never happen again…and that, sadly, is completely untrue. People tend to overlook the fact that the Nazis were a legitimate political party duly elected to leadership of an advanced, modern country by the exact same democratic process as leaders are elected in every Western nation today. Hitler was not a military dictator who seized power in some bloody coup d’état but a politician elected as chief executive by popular vote, and all of his actions as chief executive were 100% legal under the laws enacted by the German legislature. The Nazis came to power by the same means as politicians always come to power everywhere (namely by telling the people what they wanted to hear), and the German people accepted the militaristic oppression of the Nazis for the exact reason that the British and American people have accepted the abridgement of their civil rights and ever-expanding police powers: they valued the illusion of “safety” over the reality of liberty.
What this means is that whatever we may think of the Nazis’ morality, it’s impossible to fault their legality. Morals are principles which transcend human behavior, while laws are merely arbitrary rules invented by eminently-fallible humans in order to control others and/or impose their own personal views of right action. Some laws are moral and many immoral, but the majority are simply amoral; however, even moral or amoral laws can be (and often are) used for the highly immoral purpose of exerting external control over inoffensive individuals who neither desire nor require that control. And because this is so, the act of agreeing to serve as a policeman in any regime is at best an amoral one, because in doing so the individual agrees to enforce (by violence if necessary) all of the laws passed by his government, whether he agrees with them or not; he abdicates his personal morality to those in authority and allows his actions to be dictated by others, even if he knows those actions to be wrong.
At Nuremberg, Western society established the legal precedent that “I was only following orders” is not a valid defense against wrongdoing even if the offender was only a low-level functionary in an authoritarian system, yet how often do we hear police abuses (especially against prostitutes) defended with phrases like “they’re just doing their job” or “cops don’t make the laws, they just enforce them”? If a cop is tasked with enforcing a law he knows to be immoral, it is his duty as a moral man to refuse that order even if it means his job. If he agrees with an immoral law then he is also immoral, and if he enforces a law he knows to be wrong even more so. The law of the land in Nazi-era Germany was for Jews and other “undesirables” to be sent to concentration camps, and the maltreatment of the prisoners was encouraged and even ordered by those in charge; any German soldier or policeman enforcing those laws was the exact moral equivalent of any soldier or policeman under any other democratically-elected government enforcing the laws enacted by that regime. Either “I was only following orders” is a valid defense, or it isn’t; either we agree that hired enforcers are absolved from responsibility because “they’re just doing their jobs”, or we don’t. You can’t have it both ways, and sometimes Nazi analogies are entirely appropriate.
This, to me, is one of key arguments to those who argue that sex workers don’t deserve rights because they are criminalized, and then proceed to compare them to thieves or murderers asking if those should be decriminalized as well.
But at least, it is easy to point out that homosexuality or female ability to vote were once illegal – while slavery was perfectly legal, so contemporary laws are far from universal measures of right and wrong.
Any comparison usually has limits within which it is valid. Comparisons that are taken outside this limit can end up completely derailing the conversation and distorting understanding.
mira sorvino was heard to compare me to a ‘holocaust denier’ at that thing in egypt – live, though. someone overheard her and objected, whereupon she said she hadn’t meant it, etc.
hope you saw my offer to take you for a drink sometime…
I remembered Sorvino had used that on you, and one of the fanatics who responded to the Dallas Observer article said the same about me. 🙁
I had somehow missed your offer, so I went back to my last comment on your site and there it was! As I said there, I’ll hold you to that offer if ever you’re in this neck of the woods. 🙂
As in all things, Maggie, government will never be strictly principled on this issue. It will determine “I was only following orders” is valid when it suits the politicians’ and bureacrats’ purpose and invalid when it does not. That has been the case throughout human history. I don’t anticipate its ever changing.
There is of course a problem with the “follow your moral principles to the point of not obeying orders” injunction, too: if it is taken to the letter, then it would be possible, for example, for a cop who is secretely a Nazi to not follow the order of defending someone against physical assault by others if the victim in question is a Jew, and the cop in question is fully convinced (he is a true Nazi) that it would be immoral to help or defend a Jew (since they are a disease consumming all that is good in mankind, etc.). In other words, we wouldn’t like it if cops followed their conscience (rather than the law) every time their conscience disagreed with ours.
Which is why the ‘Nuremberg deffense’ (“I was just following orders”) could still be plausibly overruled: moral imperatives on which pretty much everybody agrees can be a good basis for the claim, and if there is a likelly candidate for a near-general agreement as a moral imperative, it is “thou shalt not commit genocide.” Similar arguments based on less strong imperatives have apparently failed (I seem to remember they tried to prosecute old East German border guards after the Reunification for following the order to fire on civilians attempting to escape to West Berlin; and as I recall it didn’t stick, because the ‘some orders should not be obeyed’ argument didn’t really seem so obvious there as it was in the case of the Holocaust).
It’s when not everybody agrees on the morality of the principle that we get problems. Say, abortion — about the morality of which people of good faith disagree. Or about whether prostitution is or isn’t a moral offence. There we would have problems if cops decided that their conscience tells them not to obey the order to defend citizens against physical assault if the victim happens to be a woman entering an abortion clinic (and who is, in the cop’s view, about to “commit murder”). Or, if some day prostitution is decriminalized in the US, a cop does not answer calls for help from prostitutes, because his/her conscience tells him/her theirs is “an immoral business that harms society.”
Any system based on discipline — the military, the law — needs compliance to have effect. If orders are to have any effect, there must be a (correct) expectation that they will be obeyed no matter what; or else, the institution simply will not work (and then why have it at all?). Which is why I end up agreeing that the “I was just following orders” is a justified defense, especially in institutions (army, police) were obeying orders is an essential part of the job — unless something as important and as non-controversially evil as genocide is involved.
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(A detail — I do nit-pick, alas… Hitler was never elected for any political job; he was and remained simply leader of the NSDAP till he was appointed Reichskanzler by President Hindenburg in 1933, after negotiations with the former Reichskanzler Franz von Pappen. Since, however, such negotiations between the larger parties are normal parts of the game in parliamentary democracies, you are of course correct in saying that the Nazis came legitimally to power. They were one of the largest parties — at one point the largest — in the Reichstag. It is, however, still interesting to note that at no point did the Nazis have an overall majority. Even in their most successful election — July 1932 — where they were the storngest party, they only had 37% of the vote; 63% of the Germans still preferred to vote for other parties, mostly the Communists and the Socialists.)
I disagree; you might not like it, but I would. I don’t depend on cops to defend me, and a cop acting in a manner such as you describe would quickly be fired.
About your genocide argument: no individual Nazi prison camp guard was ever ordered to commit genocide (only to harm individuals or deliver them for lawful execution under the law of the land), and though raping, robbing and harassing women by accusing them of an unprovable “crime” which hurts nobody isn’t the equal of beating individuals to death by any stretch, it’s bad enough.
Another important thing to remember about the Nazis’ rise to power is that they didn’t gain clear control until after enacting emergency powers following the Reichstag fire. I think this is a good illustration (and by no means he ony one) for why emergency powers and martial law should be Constitutionally prohibited, or at least severely limited (I’d prefer the former). And a central government should never, under any crcumstances, be permitted to amend the Constitution by itself, as is sadly the case in many supposedly free countries.
Exactly. Since at least Roman times, “emergency powers” are always permanent or nearly so, and always lead to increased tyranny. I don’t see our civil liberties being restored now that bin Laden has been declared dead, and I don’t believe they will be once the “Drug War” ends either.
Ah, but that’s the great thing about wars that never end: you never have to give back those emergency wartime powers.
Plus, in the United States, the SCOTUS has ruled that police have no general obligation to protect members of the public. They can only be called to account for this failure in particular instances where they created the situation that place the citizen in danger, eg., informants they recruited that are then outed to their former criminal associates.
There was a case against the Castle Rock police in Colorado where a husband had kidnapped his three daughters, had made threats against their lives and the police, although they visited the house and were aware of the extant restraining order, did nothing. He killed them and his wife sued the department, saying that the restraining order required police to act and therefore, their inaction was actionable. While the appellate courts said that the wife had standing to sue, SCOTUS ruled that the police had no liability.
So I agree Maggie. Better to have the police do nothing – which they are legally entitled to do – than to have them doing some serious negative things.
Maggie – excellent article.
Have you ever read anything by Naomi Wolf on fascism in America? here’s one http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/apr/24/usa.comment or Paxton’s Five Stages of Fascism? scary…
Naomi Wolf is interesting; twenty years ago she was as rabid a neofeminist as any, but like a few of them she seems to have grown up a great deal in the meantime. The article you linked is a good example, and the excesses of the Obama government seem to have shaken her out of the childish idea (displayed in that article) that the march toward totalitarianism in the U.S. is a partisan thing. I referenced her article on Julian Assange back in December, and it represents an even further departure from neofeminism.
I’m a lot quicker to forgive those following orders than those giving them. I realize that neither leaders nor followers give half a damn about who or what I personally forgive, but for the record.
Great article. Shiela Jeffreys refers to brothels as the equivalent of Nazi concentration camps in her book the Industrial Vagina
And so you dont have to give her a cent you can download her whole book here…. but proceed to read it with caution and either wine or drugs…
http://www.slideshare.net/filosofiacr/sheila-jeffreys-the-industrial-vagina-the-political-economy-of-the-global-sex-trade-2008
I can’t read Jeffreys; as soon as I hit a statement like “The act which men commonly perform on prostituted women is penis-in-vagina sexual intercourse. There is nothing ‘natural’ about that act,” I start laughing uncontrollably. If she were posting on the internet instead of haunting a university, she’d rightfully be classified as a troll.
Penis-in-vagina sexual intercourse? Eeewww! How can that be natural!?
Next thing you’ll be telling me it has something to do with babies!
She was my teacher at University in Melbourne. She screwed up my essay on organising street sex workers in melbourne and threw it in the bin and said “that’s what people like you do to women”
She wrote about 5 pages on me in her earlier book On Prostutution.
I dont have to read her book, but stealing it feels good…!
What a lunatic! People like her being given tenure only reinforces their insanity, and is a large portion of what has allowed neofeminism to develop.
> To compare the ancient evil of slavery with the modern one of genocide
Genocide is ancient too.
And slavery was once considered the enlightened humane alternative to genocide (for war’s losing side).
[…] The always awesome Maggie McNeill points me to an old blog post of hers that bears on this […]
Good one Maggie.
I’ve long been disgusted by the way Godwin’s Law is so often invoked to try to force people to unlearn perhaps the hardest lesson the 20th Century had to teach. It’s reassuring to know the person who coined it didn’t mean it to be used that way.
In particular I agree that the widespread insistence that the Holocaust was unique in anything other than it’s ‘efficiency’ strikes me as particularly pernicious. It has already recurred in Cambodia and Rwanda among other places and will doubtless keep recurring. Anyone who thinks their own society could never do it is engaging in dangerous self-delusion.
The word “Milgram” comes to mind.