Contrary to popular belief, Godwin’s Law doesn’t mean that comparisons to Nazi Germany are never, ever appropriate, or that anyone who compares his opponent to the Nazis has lost the argument. The font of all wisdom defines it as follows:
Godwin's law, short for Godwin's law (or rule) of Nazi analogies, is an Internet adage asserting that as an online discussion grows longer (regardless of topic or scope), the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Adolf Hitler approaches 1. In less mathematical terms, the longer the discussion, the more likely a Nazi comparison becomes, and with long enough discussions, it is a certainty.
Show me someone who has never been compared to a Nazi at some point, and I’ll show you someone who doesn’t spend much time on the internet. In some very online corners of the web, supporting fair trials and due process for murder defendants now means you’re a fascist.
It’s usually a cheap rhetorical trick, and I try to avoid using it. But the former National Security Advisor to the President of the United States is making that impossible:
The fusion of American nationalism and Christianity continues apace, and when the merger is complete it will be an ideological takeover of religion, not the other way around. As David French recently put it, you’re more likely to see someone leave his church because he doesn’t like its politics than to leave his political party because it conflicts with his church.
Am I being hyperbolic with the Nazi comparison? Well, note that even Rod Dreher, a man much more sympathetic to “national conservatism” than I, was compelled to make it:
First of all, his Biblical exegesis is bonkers. America is not Biblical Israel. We are a country that has been greatly blessed by God, but Americans are not a chosen people. This is idolatry. I am in favor of what is called “national conservatism,” but I do not believe in mixing nationalism with Christianity. In Germany and Austria before the Second World War, lots of Christians were so corrupted by nationalism that they fell for the Nazi Party’s pseudo-Christian propaganda, and failed to recognize the evil of Nazism. I oppose the Church getting too close to the state for the sake of protecting the Church.
Once the Nazis did take power, they tried to control Christian churches as much as they controlled all other aspects of German society. Faith in Christ, to the extent it was tolerated at all, was a distant second to faith in the Fuhrer and the Reich:
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