[pizza]

Yes, but as an example (whose effect is only stark because of our present world history), the Nuremberg trials were also a replacement of world history. Many people on trial said "I was just following orders"; mere world history.

Just because world history is symbolic, does not mean millions of people's duties do not depend upon which symbols are present.

[seanmcdirmid]

We hit Hitler comparisons fast on this thread, eh?

It is fine to condemn it if you want, we definitely don't want to repeat it, but if you think any culture really has the moral high ground on this, you should look deeper.

[pizza]

The looking deeper is exactly not defaulting to moral relativism AND not defaulting to the belief that universal goods, as defined by one culture, are universal simply because any culture says so.

The two perspectives aren't even very different.

The "world history is just how the circle of life turns round" stance is to the moral high ground stance what a sitcom with canned laughter is to a comedy without a laugh track: with the canned laugh track, you aren't even expected to bring the laughter. To forget your dilemmas, all that is expected of you is just to stare at the screen.

I get that Nazism is a topic people tend to be skeptical of the possibility of using examples in discussions both honestly and seriously. Not only does it flare emotions, it also makes it more likely that discussion will just split around calling the opponent a Hitler-sympathizer/trying to distance oneself from the cultural taboo "evil is a subset of 'the set of Hitlers'" (which is not the same as "Hitler is a singleton subset of the set of evils".

The evergreen task is finding the deficiencies of historical signifiers we used to use, both the ones that brought the most prosperity, and the ones that brought the most ruin.

[walterstucco]

> We hit Hitler comparisons fast on this thread, eh?

There was no comparison to Hitler

[nebabyte]

> We hit Hitler comparisons fast on this thread, eh

god forbid people bring up hitler in a thread about history/world politics

In fact, let's just scrub history of any references to Germany so we can make internet threads marginally less annoying

[seanmcdirmid]

You probably know as well as I do that Godwin's law is almost as old as the internet itself.

[ionised]

Godwin's law is not a law of nature, and Godwin himself stated that it is being abused to stifle debate;

From Wikipedia;

Godwin's law itself can be abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate. Similar criticisms of the "law" (or "at least the distorted version which purports to prohibit all comparisons to German crimes") have been made by the American lawyer, journalist, and author Glenn Greenwald.

In December 2015, Godwin commented on the Nazi and fascist comparisons being made by several articles on Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump, saying: "If you're thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler when you talk about Trump. Or any other politician."

On August 13, 2017, Godwin made similar remarks on social networking websites Facebook and Twitter with respect to the two previous days' Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, endorsing and encouraging efforts to compare its alt-right organizers to Nazis.

[nebabyte]

Hackneyed phrases are as old as time, kid; doesn't mean you have a point.

[seanmcdirmid]

It means there are people out there who believe they can win arguments by creating false analogies to Hitler, who is basically indefensible. Godwin's law then makes it really easy to identify trolls, and you can avoid feeding them by not taking the bait.

[vacri]

Godwin's Law doesn't state that as soon as the Nazis are mentioned, that the quality of the conversation is zero.

There is a difference when drawing a comparison about something entirely unrelated, but when you're talking about topics involving wiping out a people, claiming Godwin's law is silly.

[enraged_camel]

Hitler wiped out a huge number of people. That's the topic of this comment thread. Therefore, bringing up Hitler is totally fine because it is directly relevant.

[Mithaldu]

Not what happened here though.