06-25-2018, 06:53 AM
(06-24-2018, 08:17 PM)TheNomad Wrote: As soon as people cite The Holocaust in any way and use the word Hitler, that is when they have lost their barking mind over some doctrinal offense they must sanctify with absolutism.
The references were used to distinguish between objectionable material (opinion), indefensible positions (provable falsehood) and an accurate description of objectionable or provably-false material (the quotations could be themselves truthful. Godwin's Law applies when someone cheaply compares someone or an institution to Hitler, Nazism, or the consequences of either as a deprecation of someone else. Thus an Israeli program to reduce tobacco use is not 'Nazi' simply because the Nazis were opposed to tobacco. On the other hand, if someone really is a vehemently racist, militarist, despotic opponent of democracy then one might have a valid comparison to Hitler. If you are a singing a near-translation of the Horst-Wessel-Lied in an unironic way and not for dramatic or educational purposes, then you are probably a Nazi.
Maybe I could have used the example of someone who has been stopped for erratic driving who proclaims to the police officer who stopped him. "Osshifer, I only had a cupp'la beerzh" and then fails the field-sobriety tests and for whom the Breathalyzer registers a 0.15% BAC is clearly false (it was four beers) or at least deceitful (the beers were 'forties') in his protest of sobriety, the report of the drunk's verbal claim might be accurate.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.