Wouldn’t it be nice if we could get through just a week of political debate on the EU, or indeed any other subject, without old Adolf being dragged into it. It won’t be this week, obviously, not now that Boris has likened the expansive fervour of the EU to the Third Reich. Last week Hitler was on the other side, of course, with David Cameron claiming it was only the EU which stood between us and a repeat of the Second World War. Shame we can’t ask Adolf himself for his views on the EU referendum. Or maybe we can. Perhaps someone in the backwoods of Brazil could go and doorstep him and ask him how he’d be voting on 23 June.
The propensity for online discussions to descend into slanging matches involving Hitler and the Nazis was first made by US lawyer Mike Godwin in 1990, before your average bar room bore even had access to the internet. Godwin’s Law, as he called it, stated that eventually every debate in newsgroups, as internet forums were then made, would end with a mention of Hitler, following which it would lose all meaning. The original subject matter would be lost.
You don’t have to read too many internet forums to be realise how true this is. But what is remarkable is that Godwin’s Law has now begun to apply to our political leaders, too. It isn’t just Ken Livingstone: Hitler has been dragged into the HS2 debate, and into Heathrow. Boris himself has been accused of behaving like Albert Speer because he wants a grandiose airport in the Thames Estuary.
The employment of Hitler in political debate is so simple. Everyone disapproves of Hitler and the Nazis – well, almost everyone anyone. They are the antithesis of everything that the civilised world holds dear. Therefore, if you can in anyway associate your opponent with them, the harder it becomes for decent folk to associate with them. Trouble is, it never works like that. The moment Hitler gets dragged up, debate degenerates. Play the Hitler card and the other side immediately play the offence card. All reasoned arguments are lost.
Please, we’ve got another five weeks until the referendum. Can we have a moratorium on Adolf and stick to fish quotas, farm subsidies and the like. It might be less fun, but we will get a better answer at the end of it.
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