opinions & letters
Godwin’s Law and its Discontents
Benjamin Kerstein
T here is a famous axiom regarding internet
discourse called “Godwin’s Law,” which holds, “As
an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a
comparison involving Hitler approaches 1.” That is to
say, at some point, someone will call their opponent
a Nazi. When this happens, the Law asserts, the very
possibility of dialogue has been destroyed and the
argument is now pointless.

Godwin’s Law is only one expression of a wider senti-
ment, which is that to compare one’s opponents to the
Nazis is undesirable and offensive. First, as Godwin’s
Law holds, it demonizes one’s opponent to the point
that no agreement is possible. Second, it minimizes
the Nazis’ crimes by equating them to something that
may be offensive but is hardly systematic mass murder.

Third, given the immensity of the Nazis’ crimes, the
comparison is by definition inaccurate.

These are all good arguments and, generally speak-
ing, applicable. Yet no one seems to have gotten the
message. Political discourse in the West and beyond is
riddled with violations of Godwin’s Law. In the United
States, for example, the left routinely accuses the
right of Nazism or, in what is essentially a synonym,
“fascism.” Such accusations were routinely hurled at Donald
Trump, which might be put down to the divisiveness of
his presidency, except the same accusation was made
against the relatively innocuous George W. Bush, who
was sometimes referred to by the awkward expletive
“Bushitler.” While such rhetoric has long been the province of
the left, the right has begun to hurl the same insult,
claiming that since the Nazis claimed to be socialists of
a kind, the left is a Nazi movement.

Even in Israel, where sensitivities ought to be highest,
Godwin’s Law is not infrequently violated, though
usually in the form of the “fascism” accusation, as
outright references to Nazism are still mostly taboo.

Nonetheless, in the run-up to the last election, the
satirical — and often very funny — television show
“Eretz Nehederet” (“A Wonderful Country”) broadcast
a spoof of the musical “The Producers” that all but
explicitly equated current National Security Minister
Itamar Ben-Gvir to Hitler.

Clearly, violations of Godwin’s Law feed divisiveness
and often demolish the possibility of dialogue. But
is the Nazi comparison always entirely illegitimate? I
believe it is not. There is one sense in which the Nazi
comparison may be too important to entirely abandon.

Although religion remains a strong force in world
affairs, ours remains a largely secular age. Especially
in the West, we have long since given up on the
metaphysical claims of religion. The zeitgeist, despite
challenge, remains mostly materialist, without a strong
sense that “spiritual” ideas have a genuine, autono-
mous reality.

This is not necessarily a bad thing, in that things like
burning witches, the Inquisition and slaughtering Jews
for “deicide” are now long in the past. But it has one
serious drawback: We no longer have a word for evil.

Godwin’s Law is only one
expression of a wider
sentiment, which is that to
compare one’s opponents
to the Nazis is undesirable
and offensive.

This also provides the West with what may be the
only moral imperative in which it absolutely believes:
Don’t be like the Nazis. Indeed, the entire Western
discourse on issues like racism, human rights, imperi-
alism, militarism, authoritarianism, democracy, geopol-
itics, international relations and a great deal more is
almost entirely driven by this imperative.

While this can often lead to irritating and hysterical
rhetoric, and sometimes outright bad faith, it is proba-
bly a good thing. The world could do and has done
worse than attempt not to be Nazis.

Moreover, the rightful demonization of Nazism gives
the world a concept of evil that enjoys almost universal
consent. Whatever its discontents, this means that, in
a godless age, it can still be acknowledged that evil
exists and must be fought.

Godwin’s Law is well and good for the internet and
public discourse in general, but it is not a moral imper-
ative. When we violate Godwin’s Law, at least when we
have good reason to do so, we are acknowledging, all
unknowing, a certain essential truth: If we are to resist
evil, we must acknowledge that it exists. We need a
word for it. Pace Godwin, “Nazi,” however problematic,
is better than nothing. ■
Benjamin Kerstein is a writer and editor living in Tel Aviv.

That is to say, while we still see certain beliefs or
acts as “bad” or undesirable, we do not see them as
the expression of an autonomous metaphysical force.

Thus, we find it difficult to fully condemn even the most
horrendous acts. Recall, for example, the chorus of
laughter from certain circles after Bush gave his famous
“Axis of Evil” speech. No, it was said, we cannot call
terrorism “evil.” It is certainly a bad thing, but we must
“understand” it and its root causes and then deal with
it as we would any other irrational aberration.

While it is not necessarily wrong to refrain from
demonizing people, this recoiling from the concept of
evil has one very unfortunate side effect: It disarms
us in the face of evil acts. Rather than see things like
murdering 3,000 innocent people with suicide planes
as the expression of a monstrous force that must be
resisted, we regard it as a rather unfortunate misunder-
standing. This fantasy is pleasant, but it is, alas, not true.

However, the general disdain for the idea that evil exists
has one and only one exception: The Nazis. Whether due
to the horrendous scope of their crimes or the hideous-
ness of the ideology that drove them, the Nazis are right-
fully viewed as a kind of Satan — the adversary of all that
is good and sacred. Nazism is the one thing the West has
that even vaguely resembles the devil.

letters How Does the Media Depict Israel?
I thank Mitchell Bard for his op-ed “Assad Hates
Israel More Than He loves His People” (Feb. 16).

I ask those Jewish organizations that focus on the
presentation of Israel in the media to provide the
general public with a review of how much space in
the print and the electronic media was devoted to
Israel’s efforts to directly rescue people of neigh-
boring Syria and Turkey — countries whose leaders
choose to be Israel’s enemies. This review would
document the level of anti-Israel bias that exists in
the general media no matter what Israel’s humani-
tarian actions are. ■
David Romanoff, Penn Valley
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