If the physical world obeys the law of gravity, the virtual world obeys Godwin's law, which states: “The longer an online discussion lasts, the more likely it is that a comparison between Adolf Hitler and the Nazis will arise.”
This internet universal constant, created as satire by lawyer Mike Godwin in 1990, describes the cringeworthy moment when a debater loses the debate.
Once you run out of reasonable arguments to prove a particular point, you end up with Hitler or the Holocaust. It is a rhetorical desperation that appeals to exaggerated emotions and the everyday. After all, apart from a few sociopaths, no one likes National Socialism.
This common social media resource is not very suitable for authority figures, especially those of international importance. But the Brazilian president decided to innovate, saying during an event in Ethiopia that there is only one parallel in history to what is happening in Gaza: what Hitler did to the Jews.
Lula ended up in Godwin's Law without interruption. It could have done well with legitimate arguments, such as a comparison with the war crimes that Russia is now committing in Ukraine or the genocide in Rwanda that claimed around 800,000 lives.
But in these cases it would not please the leftwing militancy, which, with its outdated antiAmericanism, worships the Russian autocracy and dreams of the rise of an imaginative “Global South.”
The Holocaust was an extraordinary event. Never before had a killing apparatus been created on an industrial scale that decimated so many people in such a short period of time as in National Socialist Germany.
Israel was brutally attacked and responded. In fact, there are actions by your army that are barbaric and reprehensible and that result in the deaths of Palestinian civilians, including women and children.
But to criticize the catastrophe in Gaza, it is not necessary to downgrade logic and relativize the Holocaust just to appease militancy. By embracing Godwin's Law, Lula is only stoking political polarization and antiSemitism, and even embarrassing Brazil along the way.