When is a Godwin not a Godwin?

Diane Bruce

From time to time I see bad uses of informal fallacies online. An informal fallacy is not part of the logical argument at all. It refers to a class of psychological errors committed in the attempt to produce correct premises. Once valid premises are produced and all the arguments are satisfied, the logical argument is sound. 

An informal fallacy can produce a faulty premise which automatically results in an unsound argument. There are many examples of such fallacies. Let’s focus on the infamous Godwin’s law. 

Godwin’s law was a humorous observation made by Mike Godwin in 1990. It simply states that as an argument goes on and people get more heated, the likelihood of someone comparing the other person to Hitler or Nazis goes to near certainty. The mere act of comparing someone to Hitler or the Nazis is not a Godwin unless there was a heated argument between the interlocutors. This is not to be confused with Reductio ad Hitlerum.

Reductio ad Hitlerum was a term first used in 1953 by Leo Strauss in his book Natural Right and History. It involves comparing someone or something to Hitler or the Nazis when it is not a valid comparison. For example, the accusation of “You like sausages and Hitler liked sausages therefore you are a Nazi” is obviously fallacious since it is an instance of another fallacy: guilt by association. 

The mere act of comparing someone to Hitler or the Nazis is not a fallacy if the comparison is a valid one. For example, protestors at the infamous 2017 Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, North Carolina, carried swastika flags and made Nazi salutes. We can fairly compare modern use of Nazi symbolism to that of its use in decades past. 

I hope to cover more informal fallacies in the coming months.