Godwin's Law holds that "as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one." And not just online discussions. Yesterday Günter Grass, speaking at a camapaign event in Hamburg, accused Roland Koch, the minister-president of Hesse, of using neo-Nazi speech: "Bei einer Wahlkampfveranstaltung für die SPD in Hamburg warf der Literatur-Nobelpreisträger dem Hessischen Ministerpräsidenten vor, sich der Sprache der NPD zu bedienen."
Godwin's Law also applies to books. In a comment to a post below, Hattie mentioned Jonah Goldberg's new book Liberal Fascism, which describes the Democratic Party in the US as a fascist movement. I haven't read the book, and I refuse to buy it so as not to further enrich Jonah. I may borrow it from the university library if I am in need of comic relief. David Oshinsky neatly trashes the book in his New York Times review. I also note that many readers on Amazon.com have nominated Liberal Fascism as the worst book of all time, although it's hard to imagine that it could be worse than Michelle Malkin's In Defense of Internmment, which celebrates the imprisonment of 150,000 Japanese-Americans during World War II.
If there is an equivalent figure to Jonah Goldberg in Germany, it must be Götz Aly. In a long and depressing debate about the '68er generation' which for some reason Sign and Sight decided to translate into English and publish, the historian Götz Aly looks back on his time as a Maoist student in Berlin in 1968 and determines that the entire generation was fascist:
Aly:... The children of German mass murderers were running after another mass murderer. I myself carried a Mao placard. 1968 was a delayed offshoot of European totalitarianism – especially the German variety.
Far from being a progressive force in Germany, the '68er generation' was - in Aly's eyes -an anti-democratic, authoritarian force that blocked any positive change:
Kohl's generation turned its back on '68, because it realised that there had been something wild and totalitarian in it, that it had missed its big chance and had fallen back into totalitarianism, into the tracks of our fathers of 1933, who had also created a student movement that had operated with similar methods. The "bewegung" or movement – a hateful Nazi term – denounced serious reformers as "shitty liberals." That's why the student movement tended to slow down the liberalisation of the Federal Republic rather than accelerate it.
Godwins Gesetz rules on both sides of the Atlantic.
UPDATE: How could I forget Michael Savage. the king of right-wing hate radio who reaches over 10 million American listeners each week? The other day he told his audience that the media watchdog Web site Media Matters "a homosexual, fascist website ... "Let me explain who Media Matters is. ... It's run by a bunch of fascist homosexuals. They're the brownshirts of our time."
Goldberg is a gift to the left, because he is so ridiculous.
Posted by: Hattie | January 16, 2008 at 07:44 PM