Godwin’s Law, as it’s called, states:  “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”

When referring to a humorous observation as a law, people tend to take it much more seriously than they should.  Is the adage true?  Well, technically, but no more so than if you were to replace Nazis and Hitler with Puppies and Kittens (In fact, I now decree that version to be Cutaia’s Law).

However, the more widespread this supposed edict becomes, the more people misuse it.  Recently, I saw someone in an online discussion bring up the Nuremberg Trials in an attempt to illustrate that a state of war does not excuse dishonorable actions by those involved.  Immediately, some Wikipedia reading know-it-all showed up with this to say, “Thank you for invoking Godwin’s Law[…]It’s not like that besmirches the honor of the holocaust survivors or anything, you witless turd.”

In the mind of the Godwin’s Law devotees, any mention of Nazis or Hitler is automatically inappropriate to the conversation at hand and somehow belittles the terrible nature of the Holocaust.  It never crosses the minds of these folks that these analogies might possibly be common because, oh I don’t know…World War II was a really huge fucking event in our history about which everyone has a reasonable amount of knowledge?

That’s the issue with accepting the ramifications of such a broad aphorism as absolute truth.  It causes people to avoid actually thinking about what’s being said, instead simply jumping to their own conclusion immediately.

Even worse is when the same people make the leap to Godwin’s Law anytime someone mentions fascism itself.  Fascism, after all, is not a concept unique to Hitler.  It’s a political ideology that comes in many levels of extremity.

There are arguably times when governments and politicians do things that would quite literally be classified as fascist.  The danger behind Godwin’s Law is that its biggest proponents seemingly (and perhaps unknowingly) seek to frighten people out of ever mentioning that possibility.

The Nazis didn’t just appear out of thin air, after all.  There’s a build-up required in order to work a country into a nationalistic, Jew-hating fervor.  Understanding that fact and pointing out trends that hint even slightly towards that direction is in no way a bad thing.  If you ask me, the only thing that would “besmirch the honor of Holocaust survivors” would be to let fear silence you into ever allowing anything even remotely similar to happen again.

A far more useful adage than Godwin’s Law, I would think, is one from philosopher, George Santayana:  “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”

People who wish to preserve the memory of the immense evil of the Nazis at the cost of squelching speech about the more minor evils of today’s leaders are doing their cause an incredible disservice.  They’re no more reasonable than puppies chasing their tails around in circles.

Oh, hey, look at that!  Cutaia’s Law…