Reductio ad Hitlerum-- a tired old insult
The link above is from a 2017 City Journal Article.
Quotes:
1.
"A specter haunts Europe—this time, not that of Communism, as the opening lines of The Communist Manifesto famously assert, but that of Adolf Hitler. Nearly three-quarters of a century after Hitler’s death, the mere mention of his name instills fear in disputants’ hearts and brings debate to a stop. The reductio ad Hitlerum is now the most powerful of rhetorical weapons; and the faintest, most far-fetched, or plainly false analogy of an idea or proposal to anything that Hitler said or did is often sufficient to discredit it."
2.
"The reductio ad Hitlerum can reach remote or arcane places. In 1999, Robert Proctor, a historian of science, published The Nazi War on Cancer, which raised the possibility that the man usually most credited with discovering that smoking cigarettes caused lung cancer, the eminent British epidemiologist Sir Richard Doll, had developed his ideas during a prewar visit to Nazi Germany, where the connection between smoking and cancer was first investigated scientifically.
It is likely that Doll feared that an early and frank acknowledgment of any inspiration that he might have drawn from work carried out in a similar field in Germany during the Nazi period would have discredited it; the reductio ad Hitlerum would have been brought to bear against it."
3.
"Recently, with Donald Trump’s election as president, the reductio ad Hitlerum has crossed the Atlantic. The comparisons of Trump with Hitler are (as I write) coming thick and fast."
Comment:
Starting with third quote, the comparison with Hitler has been going on for a long time. The election of Trump is no different from what has been done to others. Although President Carter didn't do it in his debate with GOP challenger Ronald Reagan, there was an attempt to tar and feather him as "dangerous". Reagan responded with " there you go again." This kind of thing isn't new. It is an old tactic.
As for the second quote, it does seem ridiculous to discredit something just because Hitler did it. That was also a way to discredit the practice of making fuel oil out of coal. This was something once considered here in the USA. It was argued against on the basis that Nazi Germany did it. As if that was a meaningful argument.
As for the first quote, it just says what "reduction ad Hitlerum". It is meant to ridicule the tendency to overplay the tactic of reducing everything to same silly argument.
The same silly argument is being used against Trump, but note that the danger to the republic is not coming from him. It is coming from his detractors. The Republic won't end if Trump is in the White House again. To the contrary, the country thrived with him in the White House, and it will likely thrive again if he returns.
The real danger to the Republic occurs when those who attempt to justify the use of a wrecking ball to the same in the name of saving it. If they succeed in "saving" it, one may hardly notice the difference between the new situation than the one that they were purportedly warning against. Like it was said of a village in Viet Nam in the sixties war: "We had to destroy the village in order to save it."
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