25 Reader Responses

1. Dan Says:
   August 16th, 2005 at 3:39 am

   Godwin’s law is retarded. Anyone who doesn’t instinctively see this will not be persuaded by any reasonable argument, so I won’t even try.

2. Dan Says:
   August 16th, 2005 at 3:42 am

   Oh yeah, I was going to say, I always knew Gowin’s Law was an intentionaly counter-meme. It’s just obvious. Nazis & Hitler are the perfect example of Fascism. If you can trick people into refraining from mentioning Hitler, than it’s much harder to argue against Fascism.

   Nerds invoke this law just to show how nerdy they are. It’s not that they think it’s a good law. They just like to show off their internet savvy.

3. albion Says:
   August 16th, 2005 at 4:19 am

   i was trolling on some right-wing board recently, and it appears that some people think hitler was a leftist! apparently because of the “socialism” in “national socialism.” upon reflection, i think there may be something to that. liberals and leftists focus on the “nationalist” part to put the nazis on the right. atheists & christians point to the nazis’ occult leanings as the reason for their derangement. and spiritual people blame it all on rational & mechanistic thinking - as if it were the machines themselves that went crazy! it would seem the nazis always represent everything bad, but never “us” - whoever “us” may be.

4. JK Says:
   August 16th, 2005 at 5:03 am

   There’s no longer sense to really just about anything. We must lead with our hearts. And whatever we sense, see or feel, we must call like a bird high in a tree.

   Hitler is about to become a leftist. Yes he is. And forever a leftist he shall be.

   Fascism doesn’t concern itself with logical consistency. It thrives within the the phony boundaries it sets within fearful and uninquisitive minds. The fact that the boundaries are phony allow for any number of updates to be implemented so that the meme or counter meme acts as nothing more than a leash with which to dictate social norms and identifiable behaviors.

5. carlos Says:
   August 16th, 2005 at 10:55 am

   anyone playing with ideas that evolve might spare a minute to consider the theory of evolution. an immune response against a virulent agent places selection pressure on the agent to become more virulent in order to overcome the immune system. this places selection pressure on the immune system….

   (dune’s author frank herbert was obsessed with this notion, applied politically)

   but what i find interesting is that this “meme” would have been yet another ignored comment were it not named. calling an idea “godwin’s law” or “moore’s law” increases the virulence of the idea, because people find it easier to adopt, manage and use ideas if they are readily identifiable. but for godwin’s law to really take off it needs a symbol and a theme tune.

   Fascism seems kind of nebulous to most people, but 50yrs of propaganda encourages people to say Nazi rather than Fascist, because it’s easier and because Nazi is a catchy brand name with cool symbolism and a wagnerian jingle. saying Nazi maximises the impact of your argument (which is essentially a meme riding on the back of another) and people get the full picture.

   if godwin’s law wasn’t named as such it would have been regarded as what it is: a slightly clever throwaway line that doesn’t really mean anything.

   imo, people who are offended by the “nazi comparison meme” are apologists for fascism, and by that i mean “filthy fucking nazis.”

   now call this idea “mike godwin’s a stupid nazi sympathiser” and think of the nuremberg rally for maximum impact.

   (yes it’s glib and gratuitous. so what? i’m not allowed to be? another silly meme!)

   ok, so maybe he isn’t a nazi, but he does feel a “moral imperative” to change the opinions, language and behaviours of those that aren’t on his page, and he’s (somewhat) prepared to use magick to do it, so….

   i’m a nazi you’re a nazi he’s a nazi she’s a nazi wouldn’t you like to be a nazi too?

6. hebrides Says:
   August 16th, 2005 at 10:56 am

   Godwin’s Law, as Dan put it, is retarded. Sure, there are “glib” comparisons to the Nazi’s that occur or knee-jerk ones where people don’t really have anything more than their emotion to hang on to in terms of arguing that some behavior or development seems to be fascist. I won’t cop to that, but more often than that, there is uncomfortably evidence that if one bothers to research, actually backs up the comparisons in particular instances and cultural-political developments. All Godwin’s so-called Law does is short-circuit any real inquiry and any real opposition to the totalitarianism occuring in our world. Not only undertaken by our “enemies,” but also by our allies and our own government. Part of the problem is that the vast majority of the people simplistically equate Nazi or Fascist with Evil Evil Evil and Inhuman, as if the people who openly espoused and put into practice these destructive philsophies during WWII weren’t actually people. But the thing is they were human, all-too-human. And any society and any individual is susceptible, given certain circumstances and a certain environment, to fascist thinking and behavior. It’s far too easy to just put that out of mind by just calling these folks “monsters” or thinking it’s all in the past and thus “distasteful” to make comparisons.

   Another problem: lots of people can’t make a distinction between Fascism and Nazi-ism, the latter is a sub-set of the former but not the same. Italian Fascism did not demonstrate anti-semitism until later in its alliance with the Nazis and that for political expediency. So people assume that, well if it’s not anti-semitic (i.e. the neo-cons who avidly support the Likud government of Israel which, while certainly not anti-semitic and not-Nazi have engaged in activities that are fascist), then it must not be fascism, which is false. It simply means there is another scapegoat being used (commies, muslims, arabs, what have you).

   The other thing is that there is fascism in many of the cultures with which it came in contact -in Arab culture (where the Nazi-sympathisizing subset of fascism thrives through wide dissemination of the Protocols of Zion), in the heart of Ariel Sharon (there’s a quote in a biography of Sharon written by a Ha’aretz reporter shortly after the early 80’s scandal in Lebanon where he is quoted as justifying firing on arab women by stating they were the “whores of the enemy”) and in the U.S. itself. And no matter how horrendous the actions of any of the folks involved, they are still people. But ya gotta call the actions what they are in the harshest terms possible, just to get others to take them seriously. All Godwin’s Law does is circumvent this.

   In the end, I don’t think the counter-meme shit is an effective thing. It’s yet another cold-war strategy, via linguistics and under-the-radar propaganda (marketing). It simply perpetuates the cycle of escalation of bullshit, which no one involved is apt to see because everyone is seeding anti-memes for “a good reason” regardless of the consequences. And the most positive or even benign memes are not necessarily the ones that win out. Same cage, different window dressing.

7. carlos Says:
   August 16th, 2005 at 11:07 am

   hey, according to godwin’s law, i just called godwin a nazi so the probability has reached one, which means that godwin’s law has been unsuccessful (here at least). this means that the meme will not have the effect that godwin intended (eliminating nazi comparisons) until it is wrong!

   is this how the psyop boys continually mess with us? back and forth, left and right and wrong, does nothing but distract us really, does it?

8. hebrides Says:
   August 16th, 2005 at 11:36 am

   I absolutely agree with that, carlos. It’s a distraction.

9. rev max Says:
   August 16th, 2005 at 12:15 pm

   I don’t think the counter-meme shit is an effective thing. It’s yet another cold-war strategy, via linguistics and under-the-radar propaganda (marketing). It simply perpetuates the cycle of escalation of bullshi

   —————

   Seems like its been pretty effective to me. The right-wing grassroots is already bubbling with the message that CIndy Sheehan (the woman who is camping out in front of Bush’s ranch in Crawford) is an “anti-semitic kook” because she criticized PNAC and the neocons in the Bush admin.

   Once Drudge put this out there, the WSJ, Limbaugh, Malkin etc picked up the ball and ran with it, now the wingnuts have an easy rebuttal they can use to sideline and marginalize anyone who asks for some sort of accountability in AMerican foreign policy.

   So this meme and those like it are really akin to the “thought-stoppers” in 1984 I think - a way to short circuit critical thinking and keep people in an emotionally agitated state.

   FWIW I agree that the idea that Hitler was some sort of “leftist-liberal” is retarded bullshit. Mark my words though, if you repeat anything enough times it will become true and the wingnuts of today are nothing if not deicated and persistent. Their time has come!

   Onwards, camarades, for the glorious democratic international revolution of the Bushviks! The people’s struggle against liberal fascism must continue! Michael Savage and Sean Hannity told me so!

10. carlos Says:
    August 16th, 2005 at 12:23 pm

    i think the craziness of this counter-meme shit is totally related to the Gnostic Koan #1 and today’s RI post Doom Days.

    It’s been some kind of fun hell trying to get my head around it all, and i think that’s the point of everything.

    but i’m tired, and possibly quite mad

    is attempting to think our way out of this only sinking us further?

11. rev max Says:
    August 16th, 2005 at 12:28 pm

    2+2=5, Carlos!

    Don’t make me report you to the People’s COmmittee!

12. james Says:
    August 16th, 2005 at 4:07 pm

    Nazis get brought up all the time not because people are using logical shorthand in arguments. They show up in arguments because people are fascinated/repelled by Nazism to no end. I personally can talk for hours about how crazy them National Socialists were because it doesn’t seem real, and of course the sad truth is that it was all TOO real.

    Louis Pauwels and Jacques Bergier’s “Morning Of The Magicians” explains this appeal in magical terms.

    btw: I recently had the “Hitler was a leftist” argument with someone. It turned out that they were simply brain-dead: when I asked them to define “socialism” and “nationalism” separately, they were at a loss for words.

    Good arguments and sound reasoning (and a willingness to get down and dirty with ignoramuses) are more effective than memes.

13. Tim Boucher Says:
    August 16th, 2005 at 5:57 pm

    So this meme and those like it are really akin to the “thought-stoppers” in 1984 I think - a way to short circuit critical thinking and keep people in an emotionally agitated state.

    That’s part of what I’m after here.

    is attempting to think our way out of this only sinking us further?

    Good question, I tend to think it’s the only way to unravel these things though, understand how they work and reverse engineer from them into other forms.

14. hebrides Says:
    August 16th, 2005 at 5:57 pm

    I guess I wasn’t being completely clear; when I said that the counter-meme stuff isn’t effective I meant it is not effective, to my mind, as a means of creating lasting, positive change or a way out of the Black Iron Prison. And it ain’t. It’s just more of the same bushhit.

    Granted, it’s been highly effectively used by the corporate media, the Neocons and their cheerleaders to silence dissent and create knee-jerk emotional responses. But that shit ain’t new: it’s Pavlov. Roots-hypnosis of the totalitarian kind.

15. hebrides Says:
    August 16th, 2005 at 6:00 pm

    …Course, then again, hypnosis in a therapeautic setting or done on one’s own recognizance can be highly beneficial and useful. Trouble is, whenever a neutral tool can be used effectively to do violence to others it will be…and often. And you wind up just playing their game, the game of the authoritarian power structure, far too easily and often.

16. Tim Boucher Says:
    August 16th, 2005 at 6:02 pm

    Granted, it’s been highly effectively used by the corporate media,

    Part of my point is that if somethings effective in corporate media, then it’s effective period and can be learned from and utilized in other ways. There’s also nothing wrong with hypnosis or automatic response either, necessarily

17. hf Says:
    August 16th, 2005 at 8:17 pm

    I think Godwin’s Law can have a bad effect, but it seems helpful more often than not. Because the original form looks perfectly accurate: Ravenhurst’s Law (see guestbook) shows that people can always connect their opponents to Hitler. Sooner or later someone will. Sure, any magical action can have negative effects, but if we let that stop us from telling the fucking truth we’ll never do anything. (And we’ve probably fallen for someone else’s spell.)

    Hebrides, if you think a lack of anti-semitism distracts from the presence of fascism, tell people what you think fascism means. Tell us. Let’s see if it fits with my definition. Then perhaps we’ll have a way to address bad Nazi comparisons and bad uses of Godwin’s Law.

    And carlos, what do you mean, “until it’s wrong”?

18. hf Says:
    August 16th, 2005 at 8:27 pm

    To tie this back to the main topic: we may need to add a more complex argument to get the most use out of a meme. But that doesn’t mean the short version can’t help us.

19. carlos Says:
    August 17th, 2005 at 12:08 am

    I tend to think [thinking is] the only way to unravel these things though, understand how they work and reverse engineer from them into other forms.

    yeah i thought that until that week where everyone was burning out, and i wondered if the “unraveling game” might be a trap, but how to unravel the truth of that? and so on. at the koan level of discourse, logic twists its ankle and has to be left behind. as ultraviolence is used to traumatise, so too is ultradeception. i am comfortable with maximum uncertainty, to the point where i’m no longer certain how comfortable i am, you feel?

    and i think we all feel obligated to improve (change, really. improve is illusory) our informational environment, that’s why this thread has so many comments. and i’m not attempting to dissuade anyone from their unraveling and reverse-engineering efforts, more power to y’all. i just get the sense that perhaps my quest has taken a completely unexpected twist, maybe a new quest altogether…

    rev max, in ‘96 my then employer (govt dept) actually used 2+2=5 as a promotional tool (they had posters up in the offices and everything) to encourage us plebs to adopt an insanely unfair workplace bargaining agreement. it was supposed to highlight how synergy can improve productivity (nothing but buzzwords). it was hilarious though cos all the managers were sooo enthusiastic that 2+2=5 was such a good thing, even though when you asked them nobody had the foggiest idea what the hell it meant.

    btw the union dealt under the table (unions are just governments-in-waiting) and accepted the agreement on our behalf despite everyone voting against it. i resigned and sat in the sun reading books for 6 years (i’m badly sunburnt and all the pages have faded). it’s all good.

    hf, until it’s wrong:

    godwin’s law attempts to eliminate nazi comparisons. if it was successful the original premise of godwin’s law is wrong. that is, the the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler DOES NOT approach one, meaning that godwin’s law is no longer true (if it ever was). i should have said “until it’s untrue”.

    i find it interesting cos it’s one of those “this statement is false” things, and it makes me wonder if it is the pursuit of truth itself that creates these crazy paradoxes in the world of politics, philosophy, etc. especially when everyone is accidentally and deliberately deceiving themselves and others, both allies and enemies. ultradeception.

    I just don’t think it’s possible to navigate this headspace with conventional logic (unpopular notion?), even game theory seems woefully inadequate in this regard, and what if we’re supposed to be playing the counter-meme game because it will achieve nothing but the turning of our heads into mush?

    quoth lionel hutz: but what is truth, if you follow me?

    also: could we all stop saying meme and just say idea? meme is just a way to make an idea seem more important than it is. people knew that ideas had ideas of their own and evolved and all that stuff, way way way before some idiot said “hey let’s call ideas memes, isn’t that a great idea, i mean, meme?”

    guess what? there’s no such thing as memes, now there’s an idea!

20. Tim Boucher Says:
    August 17th, 2005 at 12:46 am

    Yeah I feel you on that Carlos… to be totally honest, whatever it is that this thread turned into made more or less no sense to me. It was pretty much totally divergent from what I was originally thinking. And now I no longer remember what my original impulse was in all of it. I guess that’s what I get for posting just before I go to bed.

21. hf Says:
    August 17th, 2005 at 12:53 am

    carlos, I knew what you literally meant, it just doesn’t make sense. You assume that Godwin thinks he can eradicate Nazi comparisons entirely. I doubt he sees it as a possibility, much less a goal to set his heart on.

    “The statement, ‘leaving meat on the street attracts rats’ aims to reduce the rat population. But if it succeeds in wiping out the rat species, it will no longer be true. It can’t succeed until it’s wrong!”

22. carlos Says:
    August 17th, 2005 at 2:53 am

    hf, your analogy only holds if rats read the statement and it influences their actions in some way. but apart from that i see your point, godwin’s law makes no sense, psyop warfare makes no sense, and i probably make the least sense of all. i think that was my point, i just don’t know anymore.

    …whatever it is that this thread turned into made more or less no sense to me. It was pretty much totally divergent from what I was originally thinking. And now I no longer remember what my original impulse was in all of it.

    that’s precisely why i suspect that this meme-war shit is a trap. not being able to remember your intent seems about as disempowered as you can get. sorry to crap all over your thread, bro. i haven’t really slept this week, testing a theory.

    that’s where i’m leaving this for the time being, less theory, more practice. i’m going to sit in the sun again, without books this time.

    oh, and i apologise for calling mike godwin a nazi sympathiser, i’m sure he isn’t, i just thought his “law” was stupid. most of my ideas are stupid too, time wasting little fuckers they are.

23. hebrides Says:
    August 17th, 2005 at 10:45 am

    Hf (sorry don’t gno how to put a fancy box inside a box–anyone wanna tell me?) said:

    Hebrides, if you think a lack of anti-semitism distracts from the presence of fascism, tell people what you think fascism means. Tell us. Let’s see if it fits with my definition. Then perhaps we’ll have a way to address bad Nazi comparisons and bad uses of Godwin’s Law.

    Okay, fascism has several attributes: the State as the final value with authority over all aspects of life (insomuch as this is possible); a cult of sacrifice of the individual to the state; a strong, autocratic leader or council of leaders; near complete symbiosis between corporate interests and State interests (as in Italy, corporations set up unions of executives to regulate and regiment both labor and the economy to their optimal benefit); intense nationalism in strong symbiosis with the popular religion–the State annexes religion again as it’s branch and there is a religious sense of a “national spirit” that the citizens of the State adhere to quasi-mystically; fear of the Left or any individuals, movements or ideas that are perceived as threats to absolute State power; scapegoating of dissidents as enemies of the State (as the individual is to be sacrificed to state, it matters not whether the sacrifice is willing or not–the state does what it wants and scapegoats are often dealt with however the State sees fit, with the collaboration of the people in thrall to the State).

    That is fascism as designed and theorized by Mussolini, its founder and those surrounding him. Nazism is a subset of fascism, obviously–one in which the “national spirit” is tied up with blood and becomes also a “racial spirit”; the scapegoats then become those who don’t “share” this blood, i.e. the Jews. There have been fascist states where anti-semitism is not the main means of scapegoating and where the Jews were not the primary scapegoats, just one of many.

    That answer your question?

24. rev max Says:
    August 17th, 2005 at 11:56 am

    I highly recommend the ANatomy of Fascism for anyone who wants to understand what it is

    Also They Thought they Were Free by Milton Mayer and The True Believer by Eric Hoffer

25. scott rassbach Says:
    August 17th, 2005 at 12:11 pm

    Egregores, Hitler, Boogymen, and Memes