It’s unusual for Godwin’s Law incidents involving someone prominent in climate to come so close together. I thought we’d seen two in one week– but after doing a quick search, I’m not sure this use of holocaust refers to Nazis. So, first let me describe the usage.
Qumrul Chowdhury, lead negotiator for the G77 and a spokesman for the least developed countries’ block at the upcoming Cancun climate talks, invoked the Holocaust. Here’s the paragraph, as reported by bbc.co.uk.
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t deliver at Copenhagen; and if we can’t deliver at Cancun… it will be unfortunate, it will be tragic, it will be a holocaust.”
IThe Guardian also reports
Bangladeshi Qumrul Chowdhury, who is lead negotiator for the G77 and a spokesman for the least developed countries’ block. When asked what would happen if the talks dragged on beyond Cancún in November to South Africa or further, he was despondent. “It will be tragic, a holocaust. I warn all the world that it will be at the expense of 1 billion people. We cannot afford to lose this battle.”
I note that Qumrul Chowdhury is Bangladeshi. In this context, it is worth noting that “a holocaust” might refer to incidents that may be familiar to people in or near the Indian subcontinent. I found this at Hinduwebsite:
Hindus, Sikhs and Buddhists have also suffered a terrible holocaust, probably without parallel in human history. Take the Hindu Kush for instance, probably one of the biggest genocides of Hindus. There is practically no serious research ever done about it and no mention in history books. Yet the name Hindu Kush appears many times in the writings of Muslim chroniclers in 1333 AD
I don’t think that author was trying to invoke Nazis by using “holocaust”– I think he was using the word more generically. I also find this usage at by Randeep Ramesh in New Delhi :
In War of Civilisations: India AD 1857, Amaresh Misra, a writer and historian based in Mumbai, argues that there was an “untold holocaust” which caused the deaths of almost 10 million people over 10 years beginning in 1857. Britain was then the world’s superpower but, says Misra, came perilously close to losing its most prized possession: India.
So, was this a Nazi reference? Or not? I’m not sure. But I’m posting for the record.
Hat tip: Jack Mosevich.
I did a quick etymological search on the word holocaust. It has been used for centuries (see link as I am too lazy to quote). Basically in recent time when it is capitalized it refers to the Nazi extermination or when stated as The Holocaust. It appears that the usages in the above quotes are probably not refering to the Nazis. So maybe my reaction was not well founded and it may not qualify as a Godwin Event. It is of course subtle, and if one were to hear it spoken I bet he or she would take it as a Nazi allusion.
Etymology:
http://www.spiritus-temporis.com/the-holocaust/etymology-and-usage-of-the-term.html
Yeah, I’m old enough to remember the common use of the term “nuclear holocaust,” where “holocaust,” uncapitalized, was used as a general synonym for “disaster.”
Godwin’s law refers to a dynamic in online discussion groups (As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches unity”). Even if generalized to include all forms of communication, I think it only has meaning as a way to describe calling one’s interlocutor a Nazi, or somehow likening someone’s behavior to Nazism.
I think it’d make the “law” so general as to pretty much rob it of meaning to invoke it for every use of any term associated with Nazi Germany.
I’d say Godwin’s law is not appropriate in regards to this usage.
some history:
http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JZS/is_5_23/ai_n25002440/
Of course, he’s got it backwards; encumbering carbon and raising the price of energy will be a holocaust on the poor of this earth, as I’ve been arguing for years.
And it’s going to be especially so if we cool long term thanks to the sun getting into the act with its Cheshire Cat sunspots. We will be grateful for the minimal warming effect of CO2 and its important crop fertilizing effect, which will keep millions, perhaps hundreds of millions, from freezing and starving to death. A grand or lesser solar minimum is very capable of causing a 5% die-off of the human race.
Nothing about Nazis, here. Another terribly important point to remember: If we allow no reference to Nazis, the sooner the horrors will be forgotten. It’s obvious to any fair rhetorician that ‘Godwinning’ is a joke, and it is now being taken far too seriously.
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OT, as the “contact Lucia” page is down….
Remember when I told you that I thought I saw a correlation in atmospheric CO2 rate of increase, with temperature?
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2010/06/09/a-study-the-temperature-rise-has-caused-the-co2-increase-not-the-other-way-around/#more-20331
This is exactly what I saw…..
Whatever he meant by it, he probably should have known better. The consequences of any statement which might be a reference to Nazis get’s you on The Blackboard. 😉
Still, such drama, such emotion! Does he really earnestly believe in such hyperbole? Or is he one of the greatest actors in history?
Re: Paul Daniel Acciavatti (Jun 9 13:57),
Here’s the law:
So it’s “a” comparison, not necessarily comparing a person to a Nazi.
It’s true that everything is now online, thereby broadening the number of conversations that might tiger a Godwin’s law event.
Re: kim (Jun 9 14:45),
Of course references to Nazi’s are allowed– particularly when discussing Nazi and what they did.
So it’s “a†comparison, not necessarily comparing a person to a Nazi.
Right, and this isn’t a comparison, but a descriptive term that’s commonly used to describe non-Nazi events in a way that, say, “Goebbelsian” is not.
I agree with Tom Fuller that it’d be unnecessarily broadening Godwin to include this as an example.
Andrew_FL (Comment#45418) June 9th, 2010 at 3:05 pm
“Still, such drama, such emotion! Does he really earnestly believe in such hyperbole?”
http://www.reliefweb.int/rw/rwb.nsf/db900SID/EGUA-85TPSH?OpenDocument
“Over the last 30 years Bangladesh has seen 191,637 deaths as a result of major natural disasters”
What’s the appropriate word to describe a flood that kills 100,000 people?
Whether or not global warming is real, another major flood event is going to happen in Bangladesh, just as certainly as a Category 5 Hurricane will make landfall somewhere in the US.
Re: Paul Daniel Acciavatti (Jun 9 15:54),
I agree this one doesn’t look like a Nazi reference. If not, it’s not a demonstration of Godwin’s law.
I just thought you were suggesting that Godwin’s law only applies to comparing a person to a Nazi. I’m not sure it does.
Interesting discussion. Fair or not, I guess the rule is that public figures (and sometimes private) are expected to be sensitive to both context and modern usage of a word, and not necessarily rely on etymological correctness.
A couple of cases come to mind. One is George W. Bush’s use of the perfectly good word “crusade” to discuss the response to 9/11. Several years ago, I read Dwight Eisenhower’s war memoir Crusade in Europe without giving the word a second thought, but when I heard Bush use it in reference to fighting wars in the Middle East, I immediately thought “big mistake”, and I’m no sensitivity-aware PC navel gazer.
Another is where even non-public individuals and very low level government-types have been run through the ringer for innocent use of the word “niggardly”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Controversies_about_the_word_%22niggardly%22
Heck, someone may even criticize me for using it here.
So a public figure “sensitive” to how words are used in current English-speaking “western” cultures should know how emotionally charged a word like “holocaust” is.
Should an English-speaking public figure in a non-western culture be as aware? Hmmm…. let me take a look at my navel.
Also here in Australia, holocaust is used more broadly – nuclear holocaust for example as well as to describe bushfires ie major destruction/deaths caused by fire/heat.
“So a public figure “sensitive†to how words are used in current English-speaking “western†cultures should know how emotionally charged a word like “holocaust†is.”
But knowing that a word is “charged” does not necessarily preclude using it where it applies. Good rhetoric cannot be composed entirely of words that, like noble gases, refuse to carry a charge.
The tricky part of applying Godwin’s law or any attempt to discourage emotionally manipulative, “waving the bloody shirt” language is that the appropriateness of a label or a comparison cannot be separated from the value judgment as to how similar the two concepts really are.
Often, people criticizing “overheated” rhetoric on the part of their opponents are merely expressing a tautology: My opponent is wrong, as we see by their “overheated” rhetoric, which I know to be overheated because they are wrong.
I think Monckton’s use of “Goebbelian” has been overblown here and that this story appears to be an attempt at balance. He shouldn’t have used the term in this case, but it’s too bad that this is the central focus of his attack on John Abraham, rather than the desperate stupidity of Monckton’s comments. Many feel Goebbels set the gold standard for propaganda, which has been a ubiquitous tool used by the media and others in the debate over global warming. If Monckton had pointed out a legitimate case of propagandizing… say a few things found here:
http://www.numberwatch.co.uk/warmlist.htm
using the term “Goebbelian”, would you still have jumped on his reference? It reminds me of the Ken Russel movie, Lisztomania, in which he cast the character of Richard Wagner as a ghoulish Nazi because of the association between Wagner’s music and Hitler. It didn’t matter that Wagner died in 1883.
Other than that, I find this site highly educational and unbiased.
I just thought you were suggesting that Godwin’s law only applies to comparing a person to a Nazi.
Well, as I said, “I think it only has meaning as a way to describe calling one’s interlocutor a Nazi, or somehow likening someone’s behavior to Nazism.”
As I read it, Godwin’s observation – now called a “Law” – was that Nazism is sort of the gold standard of odiousness, wherever you stand on the political spectrum. Desperately reaching for the Hitler-slam, he observed, is sort of inevitable at the end of a long online argument. I don’t think Mike Godwin intended to communicate that any Nazi reference is by its very nature invalid, though I think most of us would agree that pretty much all of them are.
Anyway, we’re agreed that this is probably not a Nazi reference. I’m trying to stand up for a somewhat narrower interpretation of Godwin’s Law, which I freely admit is my own.
The casualties in the 1971 war may be more appropriate in this context.
What are we talking about here, really? The rhetoric used by corrupt governments to recieve international welfare checks.
The usage, and the difficulty over whether it is a Godwinnian invocation, pinpoints a key difficulty with the concept: it embodies the mistaken notion of Nazi Holocaust exceptionalism. Well, as does the reservation of the term ‘holocaust’ to that episode.
It is a mistake to think this terrible episode was in any way exceptional or, alas, even unusual in human history. If we go through the recorded histories we have, we find regular programs of mass murder.
People have been murdered systematically in huge numbers on account of race, religion, class, nationality, and sometimes apparently the victims have had no distinguishing characteristics other than the fact that they were picked. It is not clear, for instance, that there is any difference between Tutsis and Hutus, other than the fact that one is, in Rwanda, one or the other.
What is in any case completely stupid is the use of the term, whether generic or Godwinnian, in the present case. The implicit argument is that to fail to lower CO2 emissions will be tantamount to a program of mass murder comparable to such programs in the past. In fact, there is no reason to think anything much will happen if we do not lower CO2 emissions, and there is anyway no reason to think that lowering them will have any particular effect.
It is completely idiotic. Copenhagen, from this point of view, was a great success and a triumph for humanity’s common sense. When confronted with proposals to take ineffective action at vast expense to solve a wholly imaginary problem, the world’s politicians realized this was going to be unsaleable back home, and backed off.
Holocaust comes from greek, ancient and is still used in modern greek.
In ancient greek it refered to animal ( hopefully not people) sacrifices that were burned whole, Etymology: Middle English, from Late Latin holocaustum, from Greek holokauston, from neuter of holokaustos burnt whole, from hol- + kaustos burnt, from kaiein to burn —
It used to be that sacrificial animals were superficially burned and the left overs were eaten by the priests/priestesses. Offering a holocauston meant you wanted not only the searing smoke to go to Olympus but the total animal.
When used in literature, in modern greek olokautoma, often it means a total sacrifice, for a love, or a country, that one is willing to be burned completely for one’s beliefs or desires.
Interestingly enough the different ending has significance.
The holocautoma used in modern greek is descriptive of the process of total burning.
The holocaust is indicative that it is to be burned.
Anyway, in modern greek the use of “holocautoma” which is the way it would be translated, does not have the direct connotations to the deliberate extermination of jewish people that it has in english.
On the other hand, when one is using strong language, one should know the nuances, so I am a lukewarmer on this.
In the run-up to the last climate summit, The Women’s International League for Peace and Freedom joined a coalition called Don’t Nuke The Climate because they thought it was campaigning against the use of ‘nuclear weapons as solutions to global warming’. Perhaps Mr Chowdhury also thinks such solutions are on the table and that if agreement isn’t reached at Cancun the UN will try to save the planet by engineering a nuclear winter.
He’s an environmental journalist, you know. They’ll believe anything.
http://www.wilpfinternational.org/environment/index.htm
No mention of the Chicago Black Hawks winning the Cup?
I’ve waited 49 years for this. FANTASTIC!
Re: P Gosselin (Jun 10 12:06),
Jim watched the game. He was thrilled!
At least the Sharks were beaten by the Stanley Cup winners.
While Godwin’s law is AFAIK restricted to the Nazi’s, the underlying foundation is to create a Godzilla sized strawman of an opinion or view. By expanding the definition say Godwin v2.0 to include other examples of extreme evil strawmen, the subject use of holocaust applies.
I think Godwin’s Law implies an implicit or explicit claim that the other side in a particular debate is Nazi-like in some manner. Use of the term “holocaust” as mere exaggeration is simply sloppy usage potentially distracting or offensive to Western sensibilities but not an instance of Godwin’s Law. The only commonality is a dearth of original thought and poor vocabulary skills.
An interesting tangent is whether movement environmentalists should still regard the loss of 1 billion people as a bad thing. See, e.g., Peter Singer
“An interesting tangent is whether movement environmentalists should still regard the loss of 1 billion people as a bad thing.”
Speaking of extreme straw men, the attempt to conflate the recognition of overpopulation and its negative consequences with the desire to see people be killed is a fine example of the concept.
To say that we along with the rest of life on earth might be better off if people reproduced at a slower rate cannot honestly be confused with advocating the mass slaughter of human beings, whether by war or famine or natural disaster. That’s a fallacy of the first order.
Muldoon’s curse is broken!
Clearly, I am going to be forced to write a formal post about the Stanley Cup. This despite the fact that I cannot skate and know nothing about hockey!