Alaska Republican Suggests Bringing in ‘Predator’ Wolves to Solve Community’s ‘Homeless Problem’

Godwin's law
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Godwin's Law (or Godwin's Rule of Nazi Analogies) is an Internet adage asserting that "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1" —​ 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. Despite being described as universal regarding the subject of the discussion, Godwin's law is more likely to be applicable to social topics (including politics, law, religion, etc.).

Promulgated by American attorney and author Mike Godwin in 1990, Godwin's Law originally referred specifically to Usenet newsgroup discussions. It is now applied to any threaded online discussion, such as Internet forums, chat rooms, and blog comment threads, as well as to speeches, articles, and other rhetoric.

In 2012, "Godwin's Law" became an entry in the third edition of the Oxford English Dictionary.

Godwin's Law

Godwin’s Law (earlier referred to as reductio ad Hitlerum) was formulated by the attorney Mike Godwin (former general counsel for the Wikimedia Foundation) in the 1990s and states:

"As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches."

"It's like Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, except there's just one degree, and Kevin Bacon is Hitler!"
—Lewis Black

Godwin’s Law does not dispute the validity or otherwise of references or comparison to Hitler or the Nazis. As such a comparison or reference may sometimes be appropriate in a discussion, Godwin has argued that overuse of the Nazi comparison should be avoided as it waters down the impact of any valid usage. In its purest sense, the rule has more to do with completely losing one's sense of proportion rather than just mentioning Nazis specifically. The law was initiated as a counter-meme to flippant comparisons to the Nazis, rather than to invoke a complete ban on comparisons. As Mike Godwin wrote himself in 2008:

Alaska Republican Suggests Bringing in ‘Predator’
Wolves to Solve Community’s ‘Homeless Problem’
The remark was made by the same person who
linked suicide to “government handouts.”
By Arturo Garcia / Raw Story | March 6, 2015

Rep. Don Young (R-AK) was on the defensive after suggesting gray wolves as a means of fighting homelessness, the Washington Post reported on Thursday.

“The grey wolf in fact is a predator that’s killing the cloven hoof animals,” Young told Interior Secretary Sally Jewell on Thursday. “And we’ve got 79 congressmen sending you a letter, haven’t got a damn wolf in their whole district. I’d like to introduce them to your district. I introduce them in your district, you wouldn’t have a homeless problem any more.”

The remark came during a meeting of the House Natural Resources Committee regarding Jewell’s department’s budget. The letter in question was sent to Jewell a day earlier. The committee’s ranking member, Rep. Raúl M. Grijalva (D-AZ), was among the 79 signatories calling on Jewell to list gray wolves as threatened under the Environmental Protection Act.

“Gray wolves are still subject to intense persecution where they are not protected,” Grijalva said in a statement. “They currently inhabit only five percent of their historical range and are clearly still threatened with extinction.”

During the meeting, Young mocked Grijalva’s appeal to the department.

“How many of you have got wolves in your district?” he asked. “None. None. Not one.”

A spokesperson for Young — who was forced to apologize last year after attributing suicide to depression caused by “government handouts” — told the Post that the remark was “purposely hyperbolic to stress the point that these predators pose serious threats to wildlife management and their listing has damaging impacts to local communities.”

Watch footage of Young’s remarks, as posted online on Thursday, below.  



[h/t The Huffington Post]

Arturo R. García is the managing editor at Racialicious.com. His work has appeared on GlobalComment.com, the Root and Comment Is Free. Follow him on Twitter at @ABoyNamedArt.