Health Care and Godwin’s Law: Evoking Nazis is for Losers

A corollary to Godwin’s Law states that “as an Internet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler increases, and whomever makes that comparison has automatically ‘lost’ whatever debate was in progress.” Extending this axiom to the current public discourse of health care reform begs the question: should critics of the Obama Administration who evoke Hitler and Nazis be considered losers? Absolutely.

This came to mind last night as Barney Frank responded to a Town Hall participant who asked “Why do you continue to support a Nazi policy?” Frank’s response was not only refreshingly quick and concise, it was the model reply to this line of questioning.

Frank said, “You stand there with a picture of the president defaced to look like Hitler and compare the effort to increase health care to the Nazis. My answer to you is, as I said before, it is a tribute to the First Amendment that this sort of vile, contemptible nonsense is so freely propagated.”

But the individual asking Frank about the Nazi policy

is not an exception to the rule – she’s part of a growing trend. As Mediaite’s Rachel Sklar points out earlier today, there are plenty of examples of portraying Obama and his reform agenda as somehow being akin to Nazi Germany:

• HotAirPundit points out that “LaRouche PAC had a table outside the event” where Obama-with-Hitler-mustache posters were being handed out.

• Anne Coulter started it off last year (while appearing on Hannity and Colmes) she compared Obama’s autobiography to Mein Kampf

• Rush Limbaugh talked about Obama “sending out his Brownshirts.”

• Glenn Beck has made countless references to Nazi tactics in this discussion, and his magazine went so far as to put Obama in a Nazi uniform

• The Washington Times linked Nazi Euthanasia to Obama

Need more examples? Simply do Google News search using the terms “Obama” and “Nazi” — you come up with over 3,000 articles in the last week alone that includes both terms.

Some commentators might point out that it is a simple hyperbole, but the suppressed rage in the voices of Town Hall protesters belies any metaphorical mention of Nazism.

At what point do we stop finding this to be a curious socio-anthropological development, instead calling it what it actually is: cause for alarm.