DiscussMormonism.com

At the MADhouse, a thread is underway discussing Godwin's Law and the MADerators' bizarre interpretation of and moderatorial responses to it. In it, cjcampbell has this to say about fallacious comparisons to Hitler/Nazis:

cjcampbell wrote:Most people posting here know what Godwin's law is. What this board has is a Godwin's rule -- comparing people to Nazis, Communists, or other organized evil groups adds nothing constructive to the discussion. Hitler was fond of dogs and little children. Does that make everyone who is fond of dogs and little children an evil Nazi?

The Nazis opposed homosexuality. So do we. That does not mean we are Nazis. Nazis put their pants on one leg at a time, just like homosexuals. That does not make homosexuals Nazis.

The idea, of course, is to smear people who take a political position that you disagree with. "Oh, you support capital punishment, eh? Just like Hitler."

It is not restricted to Nazis. "America, as the only country that has used nuclear weapons, bears a special responsibility to help eradicate them." This is not only an insult to Truman, but assumes that the use of nuclear weapons was worse than the alternatives. It basically violates Godwin's law as used by this board, suggesting that the use of nuclear weapons was arbitrary, capricious, even intentionally genocidal.

Violations of Godwin's law always tell us more about the person who accuses you of being a Nazi than they do about the object of their spleen. It exposes the fact that they have no better argument, are probably shallow, and their utter lack of civility. It is an ad hominem argument taken to the extreme.

[emphasis added]


Following this post, Lars Umlaut quotes the bolded passages above and asks:

Lars Umlaut wrote:With these points in mind -- points with which I agree, by and big -- what is your take on the following? (See bolded.)

On 25 July 1986, the vocal anti-Mormon J. Edward Decker and a contingent of his followers even attempted to present a petition to leaders of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, demanding that Mormons cease calling themselves Christians. (Unfortunately for the Deckerites, Church offices were closed for the long Pioneer Day weekend. Richard Baer, one of Decker's lieutenants, was finally able to deliver the petition on 8 August 1986.) Nearly 21,000 people had signed the petition by that date, and the drive was intended to continue.

Ed Decker and his friends do not, of course, seriously expect the Latter-day Saints or their leaders to "concede" that they are not Christians. (Church spokesman Jerry Cahill, asked what would be done with the petition and its accompanying documents, replied rather cryptically: "They will receive the attention they deserve, I suppose.") The effort, therefore, seems to have had one or both of the following goals: (a) to generate publicity for the accusation that Latter-day Saints are not Christians, or (b) simply to embarrass the Mormon Church. 5



footnote 5: Salt Lake Tribune (26 July 1986); Salt Lake Deseret News (9 August 1986). Alert readers will recall the Nazi technique of the "the Big Lie."

emphasis added; source

Would or should this sort of comment be allowed on the board? Is it "constructive"? Do you think its authors "shallow" or "utter[ly] lack[ing] civility"? (I'm not playing "gotcha" or trying to embarrass anyone -- I'm genuinely curious.)

[emphasis in original]


Those who click on Lars's link will find that he has cited the online edition of Offenders For a Word, by Stephen D. Ricks and our own Daniel C. Peterson. As of yet, no one has answered Lars's questions, nor has anyone even acknowledged that he has quoted DCP. I wonder, will cjcampbell stand by his statements in application to DCP's words? Or will he, or others, find a way to excuse them or rationalize them away?

Pending a response from the MADites, I wonder what my fellow Great and Spacious Trailer Parkers think of this.






Syntax/Spelling/Grammar Nazis: Should it be Lars' or Lars's? I can't ever keep it straight.

There's no reason for Daniel to follow MAD's stupid rule anywhere but on MAD (and there's no reason to follow it there either, unless one is knuckling under to Nazi MAD mods).

And since the contents of the link aren't posted directly on the board, maybe that's how Lars is getting around it.

Godwin's Law is that as the longer a discussion on the internet goes, the more likely there is to be a comparison to the Nazis. It's half-serious and half-true. Juliann never really got this and focused on the half-joking, related idea that whoever ends up making that comparison automatically loses. That's because there's lots of overwrought, bad comparison's to the Nazis that veterans of online discussions tire of. Juliann then took this further and argued that anyone who does this automatically deserves censorship.

There are, of course, perfectly good allusions to the Nazis that are relevant to a discussion. One of the ridiculous aspects of the FAIR enforcement, which was mainly if not exclusively done against arguments they did not like, was to censor perfectly good, and in some cases insightful, references to the Nazis under "Godwin's Law." My personal favorite was a thread where Hitler and Nazism was being blamed on atheism. I wrote a detailed post, backed by a fair amount of footnotes, discussing religious context Nazi Germany existed within. It was erased under Godwin's Law and I was banned from the thread.

That said, DCP is actually quite fond of making comparisons to the Nazis. He used to call the old lighthouse ministry mod "Der Fuhrer" for goodness sake. But it's not as though he came up with this asinine moderation idea. He just benefits from their hypocrisy.

It also bears mentioning that MAD mods have also taken "Godwin's Law" outside of the Nazi context and also applied it to other things generally understood as very bad.

So while they'd absurdly censor a critic for a conversation like this:

Apologist: God's understanding of morality exceeds our own. We must trust what he command is good.

Critic: So if God ordered the holocaust, we must trust it good?

Mod: Godwin's Law! Suspended!

They'd do it just the same for this:

Apologist: God's understanding of morality exceeds our own. We must trust what he command is good.

Critic: So if God ordered the killing fields of the Khmer Rouge, we must trust it good?

Mod: Godwin's Law! Suspended!

Don't forget that an unfavorable comparison between Joseph Smith and any infamous person will also result in a mod censure under Goodwin's law--as they interpret it.

Of course, there's no problem making the comparison if the comparison has merit.

Droopy wrote:Of course, there's no problem making the comparison if the comparison has merit.

I'm so glad to hear that you're at last ready to admit that there are parallels between the LDS Church and totalitarianism. Bravo, Droopy! Brah-vo!

A MAD update: cjcampbell said of DCP's Offenders passage [without knowing it was DCP's writing, perhaps?]: "I would not allow it. It is an egregious and gratuitous insult." To which DCP responded,

DCP wrote:It was not an insult, let alone an egregious one, and it was certainly not gratuitous. It was a serious point, and I stand by it.

Fortunately, my book Offenders for a Word (from which the quotation came), has never been governed by the rules of this or any other message board, and the moderators' reach doesn't extend so far as to censor my publications.

cjcampbell then capitulates a tad: "It was also probably taken a little out of context, then."

I don't believe DCP ran afoul of Godwin in his book. Who is Godwin anyway? God? It's like he discovered gravity or something.