> There's plenty of good arguments against Activision Blizzard's actions without having to resort to Nazis; doing so only weakens the position.

No, it doesn't.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21289611

The comparison isn't "superficial".

Godwin's law is very clearly dead, have you seen the state of discourse in the US? "Nazi" is thrown around so liberally it has lost all meaning.

>"Nazi" is thrown around [in the US] so liberally it has lost all meaning.

I fail to see how that implies that Godwin's law is dead.

In fact, if true it would just imply... Godwin’s Law.

Dealing with that is CIA business, not Activision Blizzard.

Or maybe it's CBP business. If a foreign regime is turning the trade taps on and off to impose their values, then the counter to that is to turn those taps off yourself and sever that influence.

Would you say the same thing about IBM during 1940s, Germany?

So fire protestors?!

EDIT: reporters of protestors!?!

I love that line of argument.

1) China has done >0 bad things

2) Comparison is whataboutism

3) Therefore China is literally Nazi Germany (actual topic of this subthread, not a strawman).

in a thread about USA crimes asking 'but what about China?' would be whataboutism. with your line of thinking it's valid to derail any discussion.

Context matters. When the only relevant sins are those of our chief geopolitical rival.. at a certain point that says more about us than them.

And as a rough idea how SV's role in this will age:

https://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/542499/marshall-curr...

What seems snazzy and modern today, what is presented with smug sophistry and self-righteous downvotes, will be revised or swept under the rug tomorrow.

And a few years prior, Yeats had written that "The center cannot hold", and that "The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity".

Worth remembering, IMO. Lots of passionate people calling for a conflict, and it's not clear that they've thought about ramifications very deeply.

> Brute force plays a much larger part in the government of the world than it did before 1914, and what is especially alarming, force tends increasingly to fall into the hands of those who are enemies of civilisation. The danger is profound and terrible; it cannot be waved aside with easy optimism.

> The fundamental cause of the trouble is that in the modern world the stupid are cocksure while the intelligent are full of doubt. Even those of the intelligent who believe that they have a nostrum are too individualistic to combine with other intelligent men from whom they differ on minor points. This was not always the case. A hundred years ago the philosophical radicals formed a school of intelligent men who were just as sure of themselves as the Hitlerites are; the result was that they dominated politics and that the world advanced rapidly both in intelligence and in material well-being.

> It is quite true that the intelligence of the philosophical radicals was very limited. It is, I think, undeniable that the best men of the present day have a wider and truer outlook, but the best men of that day had influence, while the best men of this are impotent spectators. Perhaps we shall have to realise that scepticism and intellectual individualism are luxuries which in our tragic age must be forgone, and if intelligence is to be effective, it will have to be combined with a moral fervour which it usually possessed in the past but now usually lacks.

-- Bertrand Russell, "The Triumph of Stupidity" https://russell-j.com/0583TS.HTM

You have me at a disadvantage here because I'm not sure which sentences you're trying to emphasize or how they relate to the debate.

It sounds like you're saying that you're so right, self-doubt would be an unnecessary encumbrance.

How many words of Chinese do you know? How much Chinese history? Have you ever seen a subsistence farmer?

> It sounds like you're saying that you're so right, self-doubt would be an unnecessary encumbrance.

What sentence gives you that idea?

Why? Places like the USA were perfectly fine with the Nazis until their ally bombed us. We also routinely turned away boats full of Jewish refugees that eventually had to return to Germany.

People hold the Nazis up as this great evil that the world banded together to defeat. But from what I can tell the world mostly didn't care until they were directly attacked. Most people truly don't give a crap about this stuff. Never have. Probably never will.

> Places like the USA were perfectly fine with the Nazis until their ally bombed us.

So I guess all those ships and supplies we sent to the UK and France before Japan hit Pearl Harbor were just for shits and giggles, right? What utter and complete nonsense.

So a random bunch of twats on the internet are allowed to make "laws" that dictate where people are allowed to make historical parallels?

Fuck Goodwin's law and any asshole that hides behind it because they're too scared to deal with reality. Might as well ban scientific literature and evidence to prove the Earth is round too. "There they go! Eratosthenes' law in action! They're trying to prove the Earth is round with science!"

Godwin is alright:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law

But the people refer to his quip are often wrong -- certainly in context of a bona fide totalitarian regime that has been murdering dissidents for 7 decades -- and are using said quip as a cheap way out, while projecting that on those who made the comparison.

"Never again" and "don't even think of comparing anything with the Nazis, not even mass murdering totalitarian regimes" don't go together.