In the bygone days of usenet's booming popularity, Mike Godwin crafted a theory that's often called Godwin's Law or Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies. As originally stated, it ties specifically to Usenet (newsgroups) but it has been applied to almost any form of discussion including Forums, mailing lists, IRC and even Twitter.
As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.Frogman alerted me to a hilarious Godwin's Law proof Monday involving the Wikipedia ban of edits coming from the Church of Scientology. On May 28th, Wikipedia banned edits from CoS. on the grounds that all CoS wikipedia edits have been self-serving and sometimes downright subversive. On May 30th, David Miscavige (Chairman of the CoS RTC) retorted with this statement, essentially calling Wikipedia's Arbitration Committee a bunch of Nazis:
Blocking the IP addresses of computers located at Scientology's Pac Base, Int Base and Celebrity Centre is just a way to force Scientology parishioners into an undesired beingness. What's next, will Scientologists have to wear yellow, six-pointed stars on our clothing?Dude. Godwin's Law! Hey, I have to include an xkcd if one is relavent!
On the ranty side -- and this is my personal opinion:
There are very few things that could possibly happen on this planet that will ever come close to the kind of oppression that Hitler was trying to implement. I really wish that people would quit trying to draw parallels to the mother****ing HOLOCAUST when they can't get their way in life. Not only is it irrationally dramatic in most cases, but it trivializes a tragedy the likes of which we will hopefully never have to deal with again.
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