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Godwin's Law

Godwin's Law

Part of a series on Nazism. [View Related Entries]

Updated Jun 25, 2018 at 07:53AM EDT by Y F.

Added Jul 02, 2009 at 01:50PM EDT by Brad.

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About

Godwin's Law is an internet adage that is derived from one of the earliest bits of Usenet wisdoms, which posits that "if you mention Adolf Hitler or Nazis within a discussion thread, you've automatically ended whatever discussion you were taking part in."

Origin

Mike Godwin coined his observation as a "natural law of Usenet" in 1990. For more information about Godwin's Law, check out the original FAQ page.[1] According to the online slang dictionary Jargon File:


:Godwin's Law: /prov./ [Usenet "As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." There is a tradition in many groups that, once this occurs, that thread is over, and whoever mentioned the Nazis has automatically lost whatever argument was in progress. Godwin's Law thus practically guarantees the existence of an upper bound on thread length in those groups


Spread

While Godwin's Law was originally conceived for the Usenet newsgroup discussions, the humorous rule remains just as applicable today in any threaded online discussion, such as message boards, chat rooms, comment threads and wiki talk pages. Since the dawn of online discussions, Godwin's Law has been used as an indicator of whether a thread has gone on too long, who's playing fair and who's just slinging mud and who finally gets to "win" the discussion.


Godwin's Law Length of internet discussion

On October 9th, 2009, the /r/GodwinsLaw[24] subreddit launched. As of August 2017, the subreddit has more than 1,700 subscribers. The subreddit is described as "the place to highlight those who belittle horror of the the most reprehensible figures in history by comparing them to people and things they simply don't like."

In 2012, Godwin's Law was added to the Oxford English Dictionary (definition below).[2][25]


Godwin's law NOUN humorous The theory that as an online discussion progresses, it becomes inevitable that someone or something will eventually be compared to Adolf Hitler or the Nazis, regardless of the original topic. 'correcting others' errors, especially online, can quickly lead to invocations of Godwin's law' + More example sentences Origin 1990s: named after Mike Godwin (b.1956), the US lawyer and author who originated the theory.

On July 8th, 2015, PBS Ideas' Channel[21] published "Three Laws of The Internet Explained!" which featured a section on Godwin's Law. The post (shown below, left) received more than 230,000 views in two years.

Two years later, on January 29th, 2017, YouTuber [22] QI: Quite Interesting uploaded the video "What Is Godwin's Law?" The post (shown below, right) received more than 52,000 views in eight months.



On March 30th, 2017, Redditor[23] randomusername123458 posted "TIL that Godwin's law states that 'As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1'" in /r/todayilearned subreddit. The post received more than 1,800 points (87% upvoted) and 190 comments in five months.

Godwin's Response

In a 1994 Wired[5] article titled "Meme, counter-meme," Godwin explained how he "seeded" the Law as a trivialization and a counterpoint to the gratuitous Nazi comparisons found on Usenet groups. Know Your Meme researchers have found this to be one of the first uses of "meme" to refer to viral media & the general spread of ideas via Internet communications.

Exception

Following the controversial Unite The Right Rally neo-Nazi gathering in August 2017, Mike Godwin responded to the controversy on Twitter. On August 13th, 2017, he tweeted [15] "By all means, compare these shitheads to Nazis. Again and again. I'm with you." The tweet (shown below) received more than 20,000 retweets and 48,000 likes in less than a week.

Several news outlets covered Godwin's tweet, including The Washington Post,[16] The Telegraph,[17] Sacramento Bee,[18] Esquire,[19] HuffPost[20] and more.


Mike Godwin @sfmnemonic By all means, compare these s-------- to Nazis. Again and again. I'm with you

Notable Examples

  • In 2007, Slashdot noted that Godwin's Law affected an ongoing, highly public dispute between Linux author Linus Torvalds and the GNOME project.
  • A May 2007 issue of Randall Munroe's webcomic xkcd anachronistically portrays Allied officers trying to discuss Axis military tactics, but being interrupted by Godwin's Law.
  • Similarly, a November 2007 issue of Jeph Jacques's webcomic Questionable Content, entitled "Godwin Wars", referenced (and contrasted) Godwin's law and the reductio ad Hitlerum.
  • In October 2007 issue, Wired published a "Geekipedia" piece that includes an entry for "Godwin's law" among "people, place, ideas, and trends you need to know now".
  • By 2007, The Economist had declared that "a good rule in most discussions is that the first person to call the other a Nazi automatically loses the argument."

Search Interest

External References

[1] FAQs – Godwin's Law

[2] Wikipedia – Godwin's Law

[3] Wikipedia – Reductio ad Hitlerum

[4] Encyclopedia Dramatica – Godwin's Law

[5] Wired – Meme, Counter-meme

[6] Urban Dictionary – Godwin's Law

[7] TVTropes – Godwin's Law

[8] RationalWiki – Godwin's Law

[9] Washington Post – Sure, call Trump a Nazi. Just make sure you know what you’re talking about.

[10] Daily Kos – Understanding Godwin's Law

[11] The Telegraph – Internet rules and laws: the top 10, from Godwin to Poe

[12] Wiktionary – Godwin's law

[13] Metro – What is Godwin’s Law and how has Trump used it by referencing Nazi Germany on Twitter?

[14] CNN – Sean Spicer just forgot the 1st rule of politics: Never compare anything to Hitler

[15] Twitter – @sfmnemonic's Tweet

[16] The Washington Post – The creator of Godwin’s Law explains why some Nazi comparisons don’t break his famous Internet rule

[17] The Telegraph – Creator of Godwin's law: 'It's OK to call Charlottesville white supremacists Nazis'

[18] The Sacramento Bee – Creator of Godwin’s Law: You can totally call these guys Nazis

[19] Esquire – The Creator of Godwin's Law Says You Definitely Should Compare White Nationalists to Nazis

[20] HuffPost – Godwin’s Law Creator Supports Calling Racist Demonstrators ‘Nazis’

[21] YouTube – Three Laws of The Internet Explained!

[22] YouTube – QI | What Is Godwin's Law?

[23] Reddit – TIL that Godwin's law states that 'As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Hitler approaches 1'

[24] Reddit – /r/GodwinsLaw

[25] Oxford English Dictionary – Godwin's Law

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Top Comments

Nedhitis
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Nedhitis

…there is no exception here, though..? If a group of people at Charlottesville literally call themselves Nazis, wave Nazi flags, do Nazi salutes and use Nazi ideology, you cannot "compare" them with Nazis, since they ARE Nazis. It would be like comparing oranges with oranges and calling that an "exception".

The law never occurs to begin with, since no argument is being derailed at any point.

Furthermore, I believe KYM is just putting words in his mouth. While him "comparing" nazis with nazis is semantically wrong, he never called it an "exception", either. He did not change the law at all.

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