X-Message-Number: 18790 From: "John de Rivaz" <> References: <> Subject: Re: Goodwin's law and lessons of the past Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 16:29:49 -0000 > Message #18780 > From: "George Smith" <> <del> > The current crop of Europeans as a whole now lacks the survivors of WW II to > personally remind them that the world remains a brutal place due to the > immaturity of short lived human beings. Hitlers happen. <del> > If there had been no Jews in Germany, Hitler would > have picked some other group to blame. I feel very strongly about these points, and agree with both of them, although I was only one year of age when the war ended. Unfortunately a very powerful meme has been released on the Internet, for what motive I do not know, called Goodwin's Law (or maybe Godwin's Law). It states that if anyone introduced Hitler, National Socialism and so on into a discussion the discussion automatically ends and the point of view of the introducer loses. This meme seems to have been highly effective in preventing people from pointing out various slippery slopes back to National Socialism as exist, usually under other names. I cannot help but speculate whether this meme was introduced by a National Socialist sympathiser, so as to reduce discussion on back-door fascism, and thereby enhance the re-introduction of these ideas by stealth. In the UK, less than 20 years after the war, the Labour Party there built up a hate campaign against "the rich" that was very similar to the anti-semitism of the Nazis, yet few seemed to see it. Chancellor Denis Healy gave rabble rousing speeches prior to elections "We'll tax the rich until they howl with anguish" to raptuous roars from the crouds, who never thought themselves to be rich and felt very smug in that they would not be affected. Eventually they realised that tax starting at 38% rising to 98% did affect many of them, but that was decades later. Today such speeches would be highly "non-PC", but then no one turned a hair. -- Sincerely, John de Rivaz: http://www.deRivaz.com : http://www.AlecHarleyReeves.com http://www.longevity-report.com : http://www.autopsychoice.com : http://www.cryonics-europe.org http://www.porthtowan.com Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=18790