Thank you to those who commented on my query about the so-called Godwin's Law.

[kairos12]

Your responses were thought provoking and informative. For me to say America could be lured by a fascist strongman into becoming a Nazi like state requires:

A cowed and compliant media. Possible, maybe. Drumpt is talking about limiting Press rights.

A compliant General Staff. The Vietnam War taught us that is possible.

A judiciary that is essentially suspended and put out of business. Given all the behind the scenes extra-legal rulings that happened after 9/11 I suppose it is possible. At least below the surface.

A complicit and profit focused industrial base. Halliburton.

Religious leaders unwilling to question and even support fascist objectives. I suppose some in the Evangelical movement are capable of this.

A triggering event, another spectacular terrorist attack, for instance. Unfortunately, always a possibility in this world.

Using a terrible event to "burn our Reichstag/Congress to the ground and blame our enemies for it.

Given these similarities I don't think its hyperbole or unfair to link Drumpt to a possible Nazi State. He would be riding current circumstances, into an already in place set of dynamics, making the country vulnerable to a Drumpt version of Nazism.

[gordianot]

1. Goodwin's law is helpful to cut down comparisons between an actual industrial military regime...

.....whose purpose was to commit racial genocide. That does not preclude the possibility that industrial genocide might return.

[merrily]

2. Godwin's Law was bullshit, designed only to see how fast a meme would spread. After people started

citing it, as though it were meaningful, Godwin altered his original explanation of it.

It is misused to silence people about facism. Granted, we should not make thoughtless comments about the Holocaust, to the point where we become numb to the horror of killing 12 million people that way (or, indeed, any way). However, comparing a dangerous leader to Hitler should not be silenced. If wrong, debate it. And I don't think it's automatically wrong because no one seems to be literally committing genocide.

That's my view.

[Bluenorthwest]

3. "Godwin's Law" is bullshit which serves to protect those who want to despise the same

minorities Nazis despised without being compared to the Nazis.

[merrily]

4. Agreed. It is invoked to shame the same kind of speech that wingnuts would love to silence.

BTW, this is "law:"

Godwin's law (or Godwin's rule of Nazi analogies)[1][2] is an Internet adage asserting that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazism or Hitler approaches 1"[2][3]—​​that is, if an online discussion (regardless of topic or scope) goes on long enough, sooner or later someone will compare someone or something to Hitler or Nazism.

The law itself does not say such comparisons are wrong or evil. And it sure doesn't say the poster to make the comparison automatically "loses" anything.