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Reductio ad Hitlerum, also argumentum ad Hitlerum, or reductio (or argumentum) ad Nazium – dog Latin for "reduction (or argument) to Adolf Hitler (or the Nazis)" – is a modern formal fallacy in logic. The name is a pun on reductio ad absurdum, or especially its related argumentum ad misericordiam. It is a variety of both questionable cause and association fallacy. The phrase reductio ad Hitlerum was coined by an academic ethicist, Leo Strauss, in 1953. Engaging in this fallacy is sometimes known as playing the Nazi card.^[1][2]

The fallacy most often assumes the form of "Hitler (or the Nazis) supported X, therefore X must be evil/undesirable/bad,"^[2] as in "Hitler supported the anti-smoking movement, thereby showing that such campaigns are wrong". The argument carries emotional weight as rhetoric, since in most cultures the values of Hitler or the Nazis are automatically condemned. The tactic is often used to derail arguments, as such a comparison tends to distract and to result in angry and less reasoned responses.^[2] A subtype of the fallacy is the comparison of an opponent's propositions to the Holocaust.^[2] Other variants include comparisons to the Gestapo (the Nazi secret police), to fascism and totalitarianism more generally,^[1] and even more vaguely to terrorism.^[3] An inverted variant can take the form "Hitler was against X, therefore X must be good."

Contents 1 Fallacious nature of the argument 1.1 Countering the fallacy 2 History of the term 3 Examples of the fallacy in practice 3.1 Linking Israelis with Nazis 3.2 Linking acceptance of evolution with Nazism 3.3 Use in political rhetoric in the USA 4 In popular culture 5 See also 6 References

[edit] Fallacious nature of the argument

Reductio ad Hitlerum is rationally unsound for two different reasons: As a wrong direction fallacy (a type of questionable cause), it inverts the cause–effect relationship between why a villain and an idea might be criticized; conversely, as guilt by association^[2][4] (a form of association fallacy), it illogically attempts to shift culpability from a villain to an idea regardless of who is espousing it and why. Specific instances of reductio ad Hitlerum are also frequently likely to suffer from the fallacy of begging the question or take the form of slippery slope arguments, which are frequently (though not always) false as well.^[2]

Those policies advocated by Hitler and his party which are generally considered evil are all condemned in and of themselves, not because Hitler supported them. In other words, genocide and race supremacism, as two examples, are considered evil on their own merits, while Hitler is considered evil for numerous reasons largely because he advocated them. A common example of the fallacy in action is, "The Nazis favored eugenics, therefore eugenics is wrong."^[2][4] But the ethical debate over eugenics has nothing to do with Hitler or the Nazis in particular; both eugenics and criticism of it considerably predate Nazism, and have gone well beyond it, into concerns about modern genetic engineering, unknown to Hitler. Used broadly enough, ad Hitlerum can encompass more than one questionable cause fallacy type, as it does in the eugenics example, by both inverting cause and effect and by linking an alleged cause to wholly unrelated consequences. The fallacy of guilt by association can readily be seen by noting that Hitler claimed to be a vegetarian and was fond of dogs and children; arguments that because of this, vegetarianism or affection for dogs and children are evil do not convince.

Ad Hitlerum can also be combined with ad hominem or personally-attacking arguments. Reasoning such as "you are wrong because Hitler said something similar, and Hitler was evil, so you must be evil too" is doubly false, and as such is also related to the fallacy of appeal to emotion.

The argument being false, however, does not prove that X or its supporters are not evil (assuming so would be another fallacy, namely affirming the consequent). Moreover, recall that the argument is false in itself, no matter whether X is actually good or evil.^[2] So, "Hitler killed human beings, therefore killing is wrong", is nonetheless a fallacy, however truthful the premise and conclusion may be, because there is no logical connection between the two. It would be akin to "I wear trousers, therefore tomorrow it will rain". This sentence is logically faulty, even if the speaker does wear trousers, and the next day does turn out rainy.

Various criminals, controversial religious and political figures, regimes, and atrocities other than Hitler, the Nazis and the Holocaust can be used for the same purposes. For example, a reductio ad Stalinum could assert that corporal punishment of wayward children is necessary because Joseph Stalin enacted its abolition, or that atheism is a dangerous philosophy because Stalin was an atheist.^[5] Similarly, one example of a reductio ad Cromwellium would be to equate enjoying chamber music with hating the Irish, while a reductio ad bin-Ladenum might equate making propaganda or non-mainstream media in general with terrorism. Such constructions, as a class, make no more sense than saying moustaches are evil because Hitler and Stalin had moustaches.

[edit] Countering the fallacy

The fallacious nature of reductio ad Hitlerum is, however, most easily illustrated by identifying X as something that Adolf Hitler or his supporters did promote but which is not considered unethical, such as painting, owning dogs, or vegetarianism. It may be refuted through counterexamples using figures with reputations generally opposite that of Hitler:

• Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill, Hitler's British opponent, also painted.
• President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his successor Harry Truman, Hitler's American opponents, also owned dogs.
• India's celebrated pacifist reformer Mohandas Gandhi was a vegetarian.
• Like Hitler, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Nelson Mandela were superb orators who ended up in trouble with legal authorities due to their political activities.

The fallacy is sufficiently widely known to often be referred to enthymetic and dismissively. For example comparing someone's argument to the straw man "The Fascists also made the trains run on time" might implicitly reference the reductio ad Hitlerum.

Many of Hitler's qualities and talents were admirable if seen in isolation. He is generally considered an excellent orator and a political organizer of first rank, despite his use of those talents to further a program of genocide, aggressive warfare, and other atrocities. In addition to this, it must be remembered that not all arguments involving Hitler or Nazism are reductio ad Hitlerum, although they may be otherwise fallacious.

[edit] History of the term

The phrase reductio ad Hitlerum is first known to have appeared in University of Chicago professor Leo Strauss's 1953^[6] book, Natural Right and History, Chapter II:

In following this movement towards its end we shall inevitably reach a point beyond which the scene is darkened by the shadow of Hitler. Unfortunately, it does not go without saying that in our examination we must avoid the fallacy that in the last decades has frequently been used as a substitute for the reductio ad absurdum: the reductio ad Hitlerum. A view is not refuted by the fact that it happens to have been shared by Hitler.

The phrase was derived from the better known (and sometimes valid) logical argument called reductio ad absurdum. The argumentum variant takes its form from the names of many classic fallacies, such as argumentum ad hominem. The ad Nazium variant may be further derived, humorously, from argumentum ad nauseam.

[edit] Examples of the fallacy in practice

[edit] Linking Israelis with Nazis

Many cartoons, essays, and editorials have equated the actions of the Israeli government, Israel's supporters, or the political philosophy of Zionism with the actions or beliefs of the Nazi Party during or before the Holocaust.^[7][8] These comparisons may commit the fallacy discussed in this article if they ask the reader to derive specific conclusions about desirable actions by or towards Israel that would directly correspond to how the reader would similarly judge Nazi Germany.

Comparisons of Zionism and Nazism are often criticized as constituting a false analogy, or simply a bad analogy, even where critics do not allege a specific formal fallacy.^{[citation needed]} Often the comparison is made simply out of an appeal to emotion, rather than because the alleged analogues actually illustrate some specific political dynamic in Israel or political belief of supporters of Israel. A bad analogy, however, does not necessarily constitute a logical fallacy per se.

In addition, the emotional draw of these comparisons can obscure, blur, and complicate arguments intended to be focused on a specific similarity with Nazi Germany. For example, Israeli politician Yosef Lapid's comparison of the suffering of Palestinian and European Jewish civilians caught in war led to controversy,^[9] and UN Special Rapporteur Richard Falk's criticism of policies involving indiscriminate actions against broad social groups justified using national security, intended to be provocative, but resulted in a highly emotional debate in which his original point was lost.^[10]

[edit] Linking acceptance of evolution with Nazism

After World War II, some people on the creationist side of the creation-evolution debate, most of whom are religious Christians in the United States, began alleging that acceptance of evolution as a scientific theory leads to Nazism.^[11] The argument is that social Darwinism was inspired by Charles Darwin's discovery of natural selection, and that Hitler's evil philosophy can be explained in terms of social Darwinism, and therefore evolution is evil. This was carried out in the 2008 documentary film, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, in which the evolutionary biologists are juxtaposed with images of Nazis.^[12][13] Richard Dawkins and Eugenie Scott, two scientists that were interviewed in the film, have been among the most vocal critics of many statements contained in the film. After a viewer of the film wrote to Dawkins that he accepted the film's argument, Dawkins wrote back that the film did not consider the long history of anti-Semitism in Europe that preceded Nazism of which Hitler took advantage and that evolution is a scientific theory, that "whether or not we like it politically or morally is irrelevant," and that "[s]cientific theories are not prescriptions for how we should behave."^[14]

This movie also tried to equate an understanding of biological evolution with the rise of communism in the 20th century and the Berlin Wall was used as a double entendre in many parts of the film (part implying evolution and atheism are to blame for communism, part implying that academics in 21st century America are silenced for questioning Darwinian evolution).

[edit] Use in political rhetoric in the USA

The Reductio ad Hitlerum has been used against former presidents Ronald Reagan,^[15] George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush,^[16] 2008 Presidential candidate John McCain^[17] and President Barack Obama.^[18][19]

[edit] In popular culture

The relative frequency of such comparisons in Usenet discussions led to the formulation of an adage called Godwin's Law in 1990, which posits that the probability of analogies involving Hitler or the Nazis approaches 100% as the duration of an online discussion increases.^[2]

The concept behind reductio ad Hitlerum sometimes makes appearances in the mass media. For example,

• In the film Office Space, main character Peter Gibbons, while trying to rationalize his embezzlement to his waitress girlfriend, notes that "the Nazis had pieces of flair that they made the Jews wear," in reference to cloying buttons and slogans she's required to wear at work.
• In the episode of Daria ("Pinch-Sitter"), the children Daria is babysitting for tell her that "Sugar is bad. Sugar rots your teeth. Sugar makes you hyper. Hitler ate sugar."
• In the "Atomic No. 33" episode of Numb3rs, the character Susan Doran criticizes science because it was embraced by the Nazis.

[edit] See also

• Godwin's Law
• List of fallacies
• Wisdom of repugnance

[edit] References

v • d • e Fallacies of relevance General Absurdity • Accident • Ad nauseam • Argument from ignorance • Argument from silence • Argumentum ad populum • Base rate • Compound question • Loaded question • Argument to moderation • Moralistic • Naturalistic • Proof by assertion • Irrelevant conclusion • Special pleading • Straw man • Style over substance • Two wrongs make a right Appeals to emotion Fear • Flattery • Nature • Novelty • Pity • Ridicule • Repugnance • Spite Genetic fallacies Ad hominem (Ad hominem tu quoque) • Appeal to authority • Appeal to motive • Appeal to tradition • Appeal to wealth • Appeal to poverty • Association • Bulverism • Chronological snobbery • Ipse-dixitism • Poisoning the well • Appeal to etymology • Reductio ad Hitlerum • Appeals to intellectual and mental stability or capability Appeals to consequences Appeal to force • Wishful thinking