Godwin’s Law evolved from discussions on usenet sites:
As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.
For all you blog readers out there, sounds pretty familiar, doesn’t it? In a long list of comments, someone eventually will compare their antagonist to Hitler or the Nazis. In particular, if you read comments on many left-of-center sites, you’ll see this law at work.
Mike Godwin explains how this Law came to be discerned, and how it is invoked. For all of you who like to use the analogy, you basically end the discussion as the loser. If you insist on using it, I would recommend you at least first read William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. No, your history books don’t explain Nazism well enough.
Mike also offers an antidote:
The best way to fight such memes is to craft counter-memes designed to put them in perspective. The time may have come for us to commit ourselves to memetic engineering – crafting good memes to drive out the bad ones.
If only I were smart enough to do that.