Godwin's Law: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
[[File:hitlercard2.jpg|link=Magic: The Gathering|frame|There are some things stupid arguments can't solve. For everything else, there's [[The Hitler Card]].
{{quote|''"You wanna know [[Hitler Ate Sugar|who else]] used laws to stop debates? [[Adolf Hitler|HITLER]]!"''}}
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{{quote|As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving [[Those Wacky Nazis|Nazis]] or [[Adolf Hitler|Hitler]] approaches one.}}
Reformulated in the [http://www.cs.uu.nl/wais/html/na-dir/net-legends-faq/part2.html Net.Legends FAQ] s "Usenet Rule #4":
{{quote|"Any off-topic mention of Hitler or Nazis will cause the thread it is mentioned in to come to an irrelevant and off-topic end very soon; every thread on [[UseNet]] has a constantly-increasing probability to contain such a mention."}}
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{{quote|"After a rather influential message by M Sipher in 1997 the term 'true fan' has taken on a whole new meaning among some TransFans. It's a sort of twist on Godwin's Law where anybody who accuses somebody of not being a true fan automatically loses any argument, and is often discounted as a buffoon afterwards."|'''[http://www.physics.ohio-state.edu/~sstoneb/tf/faq/fandom/fans.php Steve-o's Transformers FAQ]'''}}
Note that some lay claim to the ability to invoke "Bentsen's Defense" (i.e. "I knew Mike Godwin, Mike Godwin was a friend of mine -- you, sir are no Mike Godwin") to negate invocations of Godwin's Law. Note, also, that this is only available to those who can truthfully make the statement and that it is designed to foster reasoned
Pre-Mike Godwin and its prevalence on the internet, the spoken and written word version of this was called ''[[wikipedia:Reductio ad Hitlerum|reductio ad Hitlerum]]'' or ''argumentum ad Hitlerum'', coined by ethical philosopher Leo Strauss in 1953. It means pretty much the same as Godwin's Law: [[Hitler Ate Sugar|"A view is not refuted by the fact that it happens to have been shared by Hitler."]]
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