(CONNECTICUT) – When Mike Godwin, the attorney and free-speech activist, came up with Godwin’s Law, he didn’t have “socialists,” “communists” and the “Soviet Union” in mind, but he may as well have. Americans enjoy a proud history of making very little distinction between “Nazis” and “communists.” It’s all the same; all not American. Godwin’s Law, if applied to today’s public affairs, speaks to our paranoid political subconscious. It says, “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” To wit, I would add that the longer Republicans and conservatives go without having substantive ideas of their own, the probability of a comparing an idea they don’t like to Nazis or Hitler — or socialists, communists and the Soviet Union — also approaches 1. And I don’t mean just liberal or Democrat ideas. I mean any idea. Even if it comes from a fellow Republican or conservative.
I first noticed this pattern in April when Michael Bloomberg, the mayor of New York City, responded to a proposal to establish a “living wage” for employees of firms receiving city subsidies. The “living wage” would amount to $11.50 an hour or $10 plus benefits. The ordinance would apply only to companies getting $1 million or more in tax credits or that generate more than $5 million in annual revenue, and it would affect about 500 people, according to news reports. Bloomberg said establishing a “living wage” would be something communists would do.
“The last time we had a big managed economy was the USSR and that didn’t work out so well,” Bloomberg said.
But Bloomberg did back a failed proposal to raise the minimum ($8.50 an hour) in the New York state legislature. I guess that had nothing to do with a managed economy and I guess the difference between managed/not-managed is $3.50.
Soon after these remarks, Bloomberg began a campaign to ban the sale of jumbo-sized soft drinks in the city. The idea was that obesity is a major public health issue and that banning such items would be a small way of mitigating the social cost of obesity and the ailments that come with it.
Well, the guy who runs the Coca-Cola Company, which would have a stake any kind of ban on jumbo-sized soft drinks in New York City, the largest market in the country, had something to say about that. Chairman and CEO Muhtar Kent, who donated to Sen. Barack Obama’s and Sen. John McCain’s 2008 campaigns, told the Rotary Club of Atlanta that a ban would be something those communists would do.
“I have never seen it work where the government tells people what to eat and what to drink. If it worked, the Soviet Union would still be around.”
Earlier this month, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky helped filibuster the Paycheck Fairness Act in the Senate. The bill would make legal recourse less cumbersome when a woman suspects she is being paid less than a man for the same work. Well, said the libertarian tea party darling, such a law would be something communists would do.
“Three hundred million people get to vote everyday on what you should be paid or what the price of goods are,” he said. “In the Soviet Union, the Politburo decided the price of bread, and they either had no bread or too much bread. So setting prices or wages by the government is always a bad idea.”
Never mind that Paycheck Fairness had nothing to do with setting prices and everything to do with equal rights.
In May, two Senators, including Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer of New York, proposed a law that would force billionaires who desired giving up their U.S. citizenship to avoid paying taxes to prove they weren’t doing it to avoid paying taxes. Grover Norquist, who is head of Americans for Tax Reform and who has made nearly every Republican to never ever never-ever-ever raise taxes, said that such a proposal is something those communists and fascists would do.
“I think Schumer can probably find the legislation to do this. It existed in Germany in the 1930s,” Norquist told The Hill in May. ” … The East Germans had the position that if you wanted to leave the country you had to pay them back for all the wonderful Communist education they gave you K through 12.”
The headline in The Hill was: “Norquist compares Sen. Schumer’s tax-dodger bill to the Nazis, communists.”
Schumer is Jewish.
U.S. Rep. Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin faces a handful of Republican challengers, including former hedge funder Eric Hovde. In an interview with The Hill, Hovde said she “has a more liberal record than almost anybody in Congress.”
“Her philosophy has its roots in Marxism, communism, socialism, extreme liberalism — she calls it progressivism — versus mine, which is rooted in free-market conservatism.”
The headline in The Hill was: “Wisconsin Senate candidate calls Rep. Baldwin a communist.”
Baldwin is a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, which is mostly known for a much-ignored federal budget proposal that would raise taxes on the very, very rich and spend on badly needed infrastructure projects. The caucus probably got more attention than it ever got before when U.S. Rep. Allen of Florida, who, like Rand Paul, is a libertarian beloved by the tea party, said of the caucus, “I believe there is about 78 to 81 members of the Democratic Party that are members of the Communist Party.”
Interestingly, both Grover Norquist and Eric Hovde later said that they never said what they said. In Norquist’s case, that is true. He never used the word “Nazi,” but the tax legislation he refers to targeted Jews attempting to leave Nazi Germany. As for Hovde, his spokesman upbraided The Hill: “Eric never called her a Communist. He was characterizing her liberal philosophy and vision which … is pretty accurate.”
That Norquist and Hovde said they didn’t say what they said (or knowingly implied) is, as I see it, part of the general tendency I’m talking about. So is believing that “Marxism, communism, socialism, extreme liberalism” are all the same. So is conflating communism and fascism. That Norquist, Hovde, Rand and the rest obviate the very important distinctions between such very different political philosophies suggests what they are really up to. It’s a scare tactic. This isn’t about ideas and genuine debate. This is about power.
Which leads to the social dimension behind Godwin’s Law. If an online discussion goes on for long enough, there will be a point, like clockwork, when someone compares something to Nazi or Hitler, and at that point all debate stops cold.
But why stop debate? What’s the point? Well, if you notice, every one of these examples, except for Hovde, addresses the subject of money — the living wage, Coke’s potential lost profits, equal pay for women and taxes on the rich.
This ought to tell you something about our current age. In the past, the charge of communism was leveled as agents of social justice, like Martin Luther King Jr., by the protectors of the status quo. The U.S. has moved on and into a era of obvious and enormous wealth disparity. Now the charge of communism — or fascism or whatever boogeyman we can conjure — is largely leveled at agents of economic justice.
So don’t worry the next time you hear someone or something being compared to Hitler or Stalin, Naziism or socialism, or whatever. That’s a canard. What that means is the person using those words doesn’t have anything to say and is frightened of the times a-changin’. Indeed, if “communism” does come up, it probably means you’re on the right track.