'World Leader' to Obama: Explain Why 'They're Putting a Hitler Moustache On You'I've always said that comparisons to Hitler are meaningless. Hitler was pretty much in a class by himself, and to paraphrase Godwin's law, the first person to start comparing someone to Hitler loses the argument.
There's plenty of things about Obama worth complaining about. Hitler comparisons don't help anyone make their case.
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3 comments:
That is a mis-statement of Godwin's law, although a common one.
As written, it says:
As a Usenet discussion grows
longer, the probability of a
comparison involving Nazis or
Hitler approaches 1."[2][3]
The footnotes refer to (and the quotation is from) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin%27s_law
I will agree that the restriction to Usenet is probably an error and was when the law was first recorded because discussions on BBS's and things like The Well displayed the characteristic noted.
Unfortunately, Hitler was/is not in a category all his own. Human nature can be barbaric; Hitler is but one example.
Hitler spent a few years getting things the way he wanted them in Germany. He had a long-term plan that moved his country to socialism. Everyone wants to jump to the Holocaust and Blitzkrieg comparisons, but those things came relatively late in Hitler's era. In the early years, he established things like government healthcare and control of the education system, and nationalization of industry. There was no State of Israel at that time, so some comparisons are not possible.
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