Tag: Godwin’s Law

Helpful Atheists

I’ve been challenged by my recent conversations with my atheist friends to consider my comments on morality – apparently atheists find the suggestion that Christians are more inclined to act morally somewhat abhorrent and arrogant – they argue that there are plenty of nice atheists. Which is true. 

I made my suggestion in what I thought was a logical and coherent manner. If atheists are prepared to acknowledge that Christianity – in its pure, biblical form complete with love and an other person focus, is a force for good – then it follows that Christians must be gooder than average. I thought that made perfect sense. It lead to vitriol and condemnation. 

I may have countered the standard accusation that “religion” has killed lots of people and done bad stuff by breaking Godwin’s Law – and invoking Hitler, and other terrible atheists who have killed many more people throughout human history as a response. This is altogether another argument and worthy of a separate post – this line was rejected on the basis that they weren’t motivated by their atheism. I disagree slightly, but take the point… anyway, that’s a rather long intro to this little story about a nice, helpful atheist who has agreed to help out those Christians who subscribe to rapture based theology. He’s going to send mail on their behalf, post rapture. You can choose from a series of letters and greeting cards… like this one…

So there you have it. Atheists can be nice people after all…

Grammar Nazis

There are a couple of subtitled swear words here – but this is funny. And worth a watch. Does a video comparing grammar pedants with Hitler break Godwin’s Law?

Climate nazis

My own personal climate change skepticism not withstanding… actually, I’m much more skeptical on the politics and economics of climate change than I am that the climate is changing… this little outburst by a Liberal MP has done nothing for the opposition’s credibility in a week where Malcolm Turnbull has slammed the government for not going far enough. When describing the myth that “scientific consensus” is meaningless Dr Dennis Jensen even managed to break Godwin’s Law:

“Albert Einstein was very much criticised by Hitler, and Hitler actually had a group of 100 top scientists in Germany write a book called 100 scientists against Einstein,” Dr Jensen said.

“Einstein was asked: ‘Doesn’t it bother you Dr Einstein that you’ve got so many scientists against you?’

“And he said: ‘It doesn’t take 100 scientists to prove me wrong, it takes a single fact’.”

Repealing Godwin’s Law

Dont mention the law

Don't mention the law

I mentioned Godwin’s Law in the last post. It’s an interesting law – originally coined by Mike Godwin in 1990 to address the trend of usenet users throwing Hitler into arguments.

Originally expressed Godwin’s Law read:
“As an online discussion continues, the probability of a reference or comparison to Hitler or to Nazis approaches 1”

The basic application of the law was that the first person to mention Hitler lost the argument.
Godwin has an interesting explanation of his side of the story here.

“Although deliberately framed as if it were a law of nature or of mathematics, its purpose has always been rhetorical and pedagogical: I wanted folks who glibly compared someone else to Hitler or to Nazis to think a bit harder about the Holocaust.”

“I understood instantly the connection between the humiliations inflicted there and the ones the Nazis imposed upon death camp inmates—but I am the one person in the world least able to draw attention to that valid comparison.”

The problem with people blindly accusing people of breaking Godwin’s Law is that they’re going by the letter and not the spirit of the law. This probably only happens to me, because I engage in frivolous discussion with art studenty type geeks people… the kind of people who know what Godwin’s Law is to begin with.

There’s another article on pretty much the same thing here. That argues the repeal on the basis that Hitler should be fair game as a test case in arguments.

“The rules of snippy online debates, though, are nothing compared to public discourse. The Anti-Defamation League has beaten the hell out of anyone who’s dared use a Nazi analogy over the last decade. ”

“Thus, despite all efforts at regulation, the market has repeatedly decided in favor of the N-bomb. There simply isn’t any other tableau, in history or fiction, that offers the same variety of evil and oppressive examples as the Third Reich. Why compare some propaganda to 1984 and some slaughter to Srebrenica when you can double down and link both of them to Nazism?”

Rules of Engagement

Somehow our generic work address was added to the Citizen’s Electoral Council spam list. They send out conspiracy theories media releases on world events. I’ve never seen any picked up anywhere – except perhaps in their own newsletters, and in blogs mocking them.

PR rule number one – if you saturate the market with inane media releases you kill your credibility. It’s a “boy who cried wolf” situation – nobody will ever take you seriously if you comment on everything without having established credibility first.

Commenting on everything is a legitimate strategy – but only if a) you’re running for office, b) you’re not a loony, or c) you’re saying something about something that people vaguely care about.

Today’s CEC missive is about the Mumbai terrorist attacks. It wasn’t Pakistan. It wasn’t Islamic militants. It was the British.

“On Nov. 28 Lyndon LaRouche stated that it is absolutely clear that the British are behind the terror attack in Mumbai‚ India. Early press reports originating in India indicated that at least two of the terrorists captured alive by Indian security forces‚ and possibly several in total‚ were British-born Pakistanis. LaRouche commented that this phenomenon is suggestively similar to the number of Saudis who were involved in the 9/11 attacks in the United States in 2001.”

Comparisons to 9/11 must surely be the new Godwin’s Law. In fact, 92 articles on the CEC website mention Hitler. They’ve jumped the Godwin shark.

PR rule number 2 – don’t mention Hitler or 9/11 in your articles if you want to be credible.

The Citizen’s Electoral Council get their inspiration from perennial American presidential candidate Lyndon LaRouche.

His Wikipedia bio says:

“There are sharply contrasting views of LaRouche. His supporters regard him as a brilliant and original thinker, whereas critics variously see him as a conspiracy theorist, an anti-Semite, a fascist or neo-fascist, and the leader of a political cult. The Heritage Foundation has said that he “leads what may well be one of the strangest political groups in American history.”[2][3] In 1984, LaRouche’s research staff was described by Norman Bailey, a former senior staffer of the National Security Council, as “one of the best private intelligence services in the world.” In 2008, Russian economist Stanislav Menshikov described LaRouche as being “among those few economists who look at the root causes, and therefore see what others cannot see.”

One of the CEC’s big pushes is to introduce a new financial world order – based on the failed Bretton Woods System.

The chief features of the Bretton Woods system were an obligation for each country to adopt a monetary policy that maintained the exchange rate of its currency within a fixed value—plus or minus one percent—in terms of gold and the ability of the IMF to bridge temporary imbalances of payments. In the face of increasing strain, the system collapsed in 1971, following the United States‘ suspension of convertibility from dollars to gold. This created the unique situation whereby the United States dollar became the “reserve currency” for the nation-states which had signed the agreement.

Here are some recent highlights. These are from a recent email titled “Religious Right swaps neo-con crusade for global warming crusade”

“The Flagellants whipped each other to atone for their sins, calling on the populace to repent,” Mr Isherwood said. “Today, we have the Global Warmers whipping our sick economy to death, even during the worst financial crash since the 14th Century! How insane can you get?”“As Executive Intelligence Review magazine has documented, the Religious Right is financed by huge sums of government money laundered through ‘faith-based initiatives,’ with which it has engaged in extensive social engineering to shape elections, etc.”

“Financier Maurice Strong, the Secretary General of the 1992 UN Conference on Environment and Development, laid out the real intent behind the financial oligarchy’s crusade on global warming in his query: ‘Isn’t the only hope for the planet that the industrialised civilisations collapse? Isn’t it our responsibility to bring that about?’

“What we have here, is a financial oligarchy which intends to destroy the economy via draconian measures—such as shutting down farming in the Murray-Darling Basin—to stop a problem which doesn’t exist in the first place, the pre-calculable effects of which will be genocide. Does that count as a sin in Rev. Cizik’s bible?”

And this one ominously titled “Rudd be warned — only LaRouche’s ‘New Bretton Woods’ will avert a dark age”:

“Kevin Rudd had better support Lyndon LaRouche’s prescribed New Bretton Woods measures at the G-20 conference on 15th November in Washington D.C., or he’ll be guilty of contributing to the collapse of Australia, and the world, into a dark age,” CEC National Secretary Craig Isherwood declared today.“If Rudd intends, as it appears, to support Gordon Brown’s British imperial scam to empower the IMF as a world financial dictatorship, but exempt from regulation the largely-British offshore tax havens and their associated hedge funds and derivatives—the cancer of the financial system—it will be a betrayal of Australia’s true interests, to further the City of London’s.”

PR Rule number 3 – Don’t be crazy.