reductio ad Hitlerum

reductio ad Hitlerum

An argument that compares someone or something to Adolf Hitler or Nazism, usually as an attempt to nullify the debate or debater. The phrase is modeled on the names of classic logical arguments (e.g. reductio ad absurdum) and is pseudo-Latin for "reduction to Hitler." A: "And anyone who supports that guy is a Nazi!" B: "Geez, it's a little early for reductio ad Hitlerum, don't you think?"
See also: ad
Farlex Dictionary of Idioms.
See also:
  • Godwin's law
  • (as) sure as eggs (is eggs)
  • model (something) after (something else)
  • model (something) on (something else)
  • I am (someone), hear me (do something)
  • from my cold, dead hands
  • a penny for them
  • eggs is eggs
  • fall out of love with (someone)
  • be twiddling (one's) thumbs
References in periodicals archive
In other words, the reductio ad hitlerum or ad stalinum, a priori or more or less mechanical charges of fascism, racism, anti-Semitism, populism, conspiracy, communitarianism, secularism, nationalism, self-imposed cosmopolitanism, rightism, leftism, born-againism, or even Bourdieuism, and so on are no longer tolerated.
As Andrew Mitchell might tell you, this tactic is known by the corrupted Latin phrase reductio ad Hitlerum - reduce to Hitler.
Mr Carey's use of reductio ad Hitlerum becomes even more ludicrous when you recall that Mr Clegg didn't really call anti-gay marriage types "bigots" in the first place.
According to Bay, producer Steven Spielberg instructed Bay to fire Fox after she committed the old reductio ad Hitlerum rhetorical and career fallacy.
All too often when no threat is present--such as Saddam's "weapons of mass destruction"--the reductio ad Hitlerum is deployed.
Much of today's talk about fascism derives from a third motive--a thinly disguised reductio ad Hitlerum. Whenever Krauthammer or Giuliani brings up "Islamofascism," we are being reminded that the enemies of Israel are like the Nazis.
We must resist falling into the trap of what Strauss once referred to as a reductio ad Hitlerum. One would get very little sense from reading this book why Heidegger has been considered a philosopher, much less a great philosopher.
This reductio ad Hitlerum is convincingly disproved.
Neoconservatives constantly cited the Shoah as a reductio ad Hitlerum debating tactic.
Of course, this tale, told in a style Leo Strauss once characterized as reductio ad Hitlerum, isn't the whole story.
The ultimate privacy fear is of course the reductio ad hitlerum: Imagine Hitler with a database that told him who and where all the Jews were.
As is usually the case, what in debating circles is known as the "reductio ad Hitlerum" doesn't advance rational disputation.
We even have the reductio ad Hitlerum: "Adolf Hitler's emerging autobahn had sparked America's vision for a transcontinental road." Gee, the Nazis built big highways, ergo...