Politicians turn to ‘Godwin’s Law’

Twenty-seven years ago, Mike Godwin, an American attorney and author, coined an internet adage, asserting that if an online discussion goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Adolf Hitler or his deeds.

Long before it became known as “Godwin’s Law,” conservative and liberal politicians were using the Hitler card to political advantage. In 1964, Republican Rep. William Miller compared President Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society reform to the Hitler regime.

The book “Liberal Fascism” by conservative author and commentator Jonah Goldberg compares the traditions of Progressive-Liberal history from Woodrow Wilson and Theodore Roosevelt with Italian Fascism and German Nationalism.

Hitler-Nazi comparisons were flying in all directions during the wild GOP presidential primaries. Newsweek writer Alexander Nazaryan called the Ted Cruz campaign Hitleresque, tweeting: “Ted Cruz has a strong ground game in Iowa,” along with a photo of Nazi soldiers.

He soon deleted the tweet.

Debbie Wasserman Schultz, who headed the Democratic National Committee, criticized Marco Rubio for attending a fundraiser at the home of a rich donor in Dallas who owns paintings by Churchill, Eisenhower, Monet, Renoir — and Hitler.

Ohio Gov. John Kasich, a Republican presidential candidate, compared Donald Trump to Hitler by quoting the words of the anti-Nazi German pastor Martin Niemoller.

In an ABC interview during the bitter campaign, Trump himself said he was appalled by being likened to the Nazi tyrant.

Godwin’s Law surfaced last week in Chicago when Barack Obama spoke before the Economic Club of Chicago. In giving his views about democracy, he commented about Hitler’s Nazi regime. Many Republicans and conservative commentators saw his words as a backhanded slap at President Trump, Obama’s successor in the White House who has destroyed many Obama policies, thus damaging his presidential legacy.

Despite the democracy of the Weimar Republic and centuries of high-level cultural and scientific achievements, Obama told how Hitler rose to dominate and 60 million people died.

“We have to tend to this garden of democracy or else things could fall apart quickly,” he said. “That’s what happened in Germany in the 1930s.”

Comparisons to Hitler and the Nazis, who caused millions of deaths in World War II, is crazy. Hitler and the small clique of ruthless henchmen he surrounded himself with rose to power by forcing a collective subordination of individual rights, which had to be sacrificed for the good of the state.

Hitler and his fanatical henchmen attempted to build an “Aryan master race” through the extermination of entire populations — especially the Jews — the widespread use of slave labor, the looting of occupied countries, and the maltreatment and murder of prisoners of war.

Individual rights surfaced in another part of Obama’s speech when he addressed gun control. He said his greatest “regret and disappointment” was the failure to enact tighter controls on gun possession.

During the 1930s as the Nazis rose to power in Europe, the British government decided to take a hard line on gun control. Even as the Germans were threatening an invasion of England, the British government was trying to disarm its own people.

With the German threat looming, the English people appealed to Americans to send them whatever kind of firearm they could in order to defend themselves should the Nazis invade.

Americans responded by sending every type of firearm to the unarmed and helpless Brits.

Even after the war ended, the British government resumed its efforts to disarm its people and proceeded to seize many weapons which were then dumped into the sea.

There’s a lesson to be learned from Godwin’s Law. Obama and other liberal politicians need to get over their Trump fatigue syndrome and stop playing the Hitler smear game when talking about the office of the American presidency.

By Jim Zbick | tneditor@tnonline.com