Godwin's law states: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." In other words, Godwin put forth the sarcastic observation that, given enough time, all discussions—regardless of topic or scope—inevitably end up being about Hitler and the Nazis. -Wikipedia
I'm going to try to tread lightly on here, because I already know that some of my friends are going to disagree with me on this one. But try to keep an open mind to the point I'll be trying to make, please.
In a recent online discussion, I compared the actions of a certain political party to those of Hitler - as a joke. Now, true, this may have been in poor taste. I'm not defending myself for that one. However, one of the responses read:
"Until [insert compared group here] kills 12 million people, I'm not comfortable with anyone comparing anyone else with Hitler."
And that is the inspiration for this post.
I think that there are times where it IS appropriate to compare the actions of people with the actions of Hitler. Why? Because if we don't, then we will never see actual correlations until they're too late. It's true that a group may not yet have killed 12 million people. But their current line of action may be dangerous for society, in the same way that it was when Hitler did it. And thus, the correlation should be drawn. It has been said that if we don't study history, then history is doomed to repeat itself. Well, we need to do more than just study history - we need to be bold enough to point out when history is repeating itself. We do this by drawing correlations.
Let me give a few examples to illustrate my point.
Hitler's biggest strategy for growing nationalism within his citizens was the use of faceless scapegoats. The German economy was in shambles, and who's fault was it? Why, the Jews, of course! It's been proven time and again that if you make people feel like they're being attacked from the outside - be it Jews, illegal immigrants, terrorists, communists, witches, etc. - then the people will band together (under a leader who makes them feel safe) to fight this faceless enemy. It's happened throughout history.
It happens over and over in fiction, too.
In 1984, the country was constantly at war. The war didn't really matter. The enemy kept changing and no one noticed. But the state of war was important. Because they had an enemy to fight, even though no one was sure who it was. It kept the citizens constantly loyal to their country, and constantly on guard against anyone who might subvert the country -- VERY useful for the ruling class.
In Star Wars Episode 3, too. You build a faceless enemy, and the people unite under your rule. Why? Because you're going to make everything all right. You're going to fight the faceless enemy. All you need is their support.
If you depict a Jew as a person, just like any other person, just trying to survive, provide for their family, love their wife, teach their children, work, sleep, eat, pray - then you can't motivate people to hate them, and you can't motivate people to rally behind you to fight them, and you can't gain power by using their fear. You must make them a faceless, nonhuman force. And this is the rhetoric of which I speak.
Now, we come to my point. By looking at Hitler's example of using the faceless scapegoat to gain political power, we should be able to learn from it. We should be able to see when other politicians are trying to create a faceless enemy. Whether it's the "us versus them, good versus evil" mentality of our "war on terror," or whether it's the idea that illegal immigrants are stealing our jobs or living on welfare that we've paid for - politicians use this rhetoric today. And we should be able to see the correlation.
Now, when I say that a politician rallying support against illegal immigrants by making them seem like they're not real people - am I saying that that politician is as evil as Hitler? No. Am I saying that he is as detrimental to society as Hitler? No. All I'm saying is that they're using the same rhetoric, and that we should be aware of it, so that we don't fall for it, the same way that people in Germany did, pre-WWII.
There could be other examples, that's not the point. The point is that there are times when correlations can correctly be drawn, and I see nothing wrong with it.
The problem is that most times the correlations are not correctly drawn. Let me give one example.
I've had a few discussions about atheism. And I've read the argument, "Well, Hitler and Stalin were atheists, and look what they did. Therefore, atheists must be immoral and evil." The problem with this correlation is that it ignores the fact that Hitler's atheism was not the cause of his actions. I believe he did what he did in a quest for political power, which he succeeded in gaining - right until the very end as the war was lost. Blaming Hitler's actions on atheism is like blaming everything George Bush did on the fact that he's a Christian. We never hear that claim, though, do we?
My point is this. Not all correlations to Hitler should be looked at with scorn. If we're afraid to draw these correlations, then we can miss out on many things we can learn from the past. If the correlation is good, we should learn from it. If the correlation doesn't pass the scrutiny of logic, then it should be exposed and discarded.
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5 comments:
I definitely understand your point about Hitler being much worse than "Random Tea Party-ist A." But I wanted to make a few points.
1) Racism like Hitler's looks very disgusting to us today (as it should.) But back in those days, Hitler wouldn't have seemed as crazy as we would think. In fact it was quite widespread. (Watch "Birth of a Nation" or early 20th century film. Most people believed that there were inferior or savage races.)
2) You speak of the evil of his intentions. While it's true that he was clearly genocidal and racist, there are two points to be made:
a) We can't know the intentions of the other people we're comparing him to. They could also be racist or genocidal. They might not. We only know of Hitler's intentions because he wrote them in a book. Which leads me to...
b) It's not so much important what his intentions were - but more so what his actions were. There are a lot of racist people throughout history that have killed other races. Hitler did something different, by rising to power in a democratic country and getting other people to also kill another race.
So, what intrigues me about Hitler aren't his intentions (which are evil), or the end result (which was mass evil), but the middle part: His rhetoric and speaking which allowed him to get an entire nation to follow him.
This interests me because of its implication for "Random Politician X." We can't know X's intentions. We can't know what X is leading towards. But if we can pick up dubious markers in what he's doing right now, we can NOT FOLLOW HIM into mass evil, like democratic Germany did not too long ago.
It may be true that Mein Kampf is much much worse than what politicians are saying about immigrants or Muslims. But I think there are some similarities, too. And I want to be aware of those similarities before we allow things to get worse.
I think both major political parties are full of fingers pointed at faceless enemies. Democrats blame Republicans, Republicans blame Democrats. And Stalin blamed the U.S. for his country's economic problems. There's my correlation addition. And amusingly enough, while in power Fidel blamed the U.S. for his countries problems. Now just recently he said to the press, "communism clearly isn't working." There are people on both sides and always have been who used Hitler's tactics, which in the overall history of the world should come as no surprise as every dictator has a bag of tricks surprisingly similar to the other guy seeking power. We have had presidents who wiped out millions of Native Americans before Hitler was outta diapers so really, none of this is new. It has happen repeatedly in history and is bound to happen again. Indeed it is going on right now in Southeast Asia but of course no one talks about that because no one cares about them. We are just lucky that kind of bloodshed has not happen here in our lifetimes and hopefully won't either.
Well, I think that's exactly right, Charles.
I think people act like Hitler is the "Ultimate Evil" and to compare someone else to him in any way is foolish, because no one else could be that evil. But the truth is that he is one of many evil people to terrorize this world on varying scales of evil. So, I don't think it's blasphemy to draw comparisons.
I think that he gives us an example of how one evil person can rise to power in a democratic state. If we can learn from how he did it, we should be able to learn more about how to stop other evil people. We shouldn't have to wait until they've killed millions of people to recognize them.
Germany had been a 'democratic state' for all of five years when Hitler began his rise to power.
i.haz
I get it, Paul. The situation was different.
But how exactly alike do two situations need to be before you can draw useful comparisons?
Maybe we shouldn't compare someone to Hitler until they've killed 12 million people. Or, maybe we can just when they're close. Maybe when they've killed 11 million? Is that close enough? What if they've just killed one person? What if they haven't killed anyone, but they round people up and put them in camps? What if instead of camps, it's deportation?
This is my point. We shouldn't have to wait for things to be EXACTLY THE SAME before we can compare things that are similar.
So what if they'd only been a democracy for 5 years? How close do we need to be before we can draw a comparison based on the fact that we are also a democracy? Don't democracies still work the same way?
The point is, he got into the minds of people. It doesn't matter that they'd only been a democracy for so long, or that they're German instead of American, or that he hated Jews instead of Mexicans or [insert any other group here]. The point is that he did it. And I say if we see people using similar rhetoric today, we should be wary. That's all.
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