Godwin's law is an Internetadage asserting that "as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1". That is, if an online discussion goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Adolf Hitler or his deeds, the point at which effectively the discussion or thread often ends. Promulgated by the American attorney and author Mike Godwin in 1990, Godwin's law originally referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions. He stated that he introduced Godwin's law in 1990 as an experiment in memetics. It is now applied to any threaded online discussion, such as Internet forums, chat rooms, and comment threads, as well as to speeches, articles, and other rhetoric where reductio ad Hitlerum occurs. In 2012, "Godwin's law" became an entry in the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.
There are many corollaries to Godwin's law, some considered more canonical than others. For example, there is a tradition in many newsgroups and other Internet discussion forums that, when a Hitler comparison is made, the thread is finished and whoever made the comparison loses whatever debate is in progress. This principle is itself frequently referred to as Godwin's law. Godwin's law itself can be abused as a distraction, diversion or even as censorship, fallaciously miscasting an opponent's argument as hyperbole when the comparisons made by the argument are actually appropriate. Mike Godwin himself has also criticized the overapplication of Godwin's law, claiming it does not articulate a fallacy; it is instead framed as a memetic tool to reduce the incidence of inappropriate, hyperbolic comparisons. "Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics," Godwin wrote, "its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler to think a bit harder about the Holocaust."
Exceptions
In December 2015, Godwin commented on the Nazi and fascist comparisons being made by several articles about Republicanpresidential candidateDonald Trump, saying: "If you're thoughtful about it and show some real awareness of history, go ahead and refer to Hitler when you talk about Trump, or any other politician." In August 2017, Godwin made similar remarks on social networking websitesFacebook and Twitterwith respect to the two previous days' Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, endorsing and encouraging efforts to compare its alt-right organizers to Nazis. In June, 2018, Godwin wrote an opinion piece in the Los Angeles Times which denied the need to update or amend the rule, and which rejects the idea that whoever invokes Godwin's Law has lost their argument, and which argues that appropriate application of the rule "should function less as a conversation ender and more as a conversation starter". In October 2018, Godwin said on Twitter that it was acceptable to call Brazilian politician Jair Bolsonaro, who had won the first round and later the second round of the presidential election, a "Nazi". In June 2019, after Chris Hayes invoked Godwin's Law in a discussion of whether it was appropriate to call the United States's refugee detention centers "concentration camps", Godwin explicitly stated his belief that the term "concentration camps" was appropriate.
