Nazi comparisons have never been more relevant to UK politics – it's time to repeal 'Godwin's Law'

Following David Lammy's recent comments comparing the European Research Group (ERG) to Nazis, and the ongoing dispute over the dismissal of government adviser Roger Scruton for appearing to make what Downing Street described as "deeply offensive" comments, some people have been invoking Godwin's Law. This is the internet “rule” that the longer an argument goes on the more the likelihood that someone will invoke the Nazis and that then shuts down all debate.

Once upon a time, this supposed law had value in calling out hysterics. People were far too willing to call any notion they viewed as “authoritarian” – from taxes and regulations on the left to immigration control on the right – fascism.

This was a time we thought fascism had largely been defeated. No matter how right wing politics got, we didn’t expect to to have an MP shot by a member of the far-right and many other subjected to regular threats.

Last week, UKIP leader Gerard Batten unveiled his party’s candidates for the European Elections. Among his picks was Carl Benjamin, a YouTuber who, amongst other unsavoury statements, was recorded last year proudly and unashamedly using the n-word. Despite the recording leaking, he is still a UKIP candidate.

But dangerous attitudes are in no way confined to the far-right. Today, we see Batten sticking up for Change UK candidate Nora Mulready, who has faced criticism for her views on Islam. Batten, who has been accused of having a “fixation” with Islam, says he hopes presence of Mulready's views in a Remain party will make his more mainstream.

In the UK’s governing party, views like Batten’s are already mainstream. Senior Tory Boris Johnson – a man who may well become the next prime minister – is meeting with Trump’s racist advisor Steve Bannon and writing columns denigrating Muslim women. It’s time to call this what it is.

Godwin’s Law was useful for a while to stop people simply crying fascist to close down any speech they disagreed with. That was both damaging to debate and actually harmed our ability to call out genuine far-right hate. If you call everything fascist, no one will differentiate when you get it right from when you’re just being an alarmist.

But now the pendulum has swung too far the other way. Now the use of Godwin’s law is resulting in a chilling of debate when people like Lammy describe reasonable parallels between what happened then and now.

Instead of listening to a man who is fighting the racism that is becoming normalised again in our society, we’re busy having a debate about what the politer language he should have used is.

People are adapting Godwin’s Law to mean that there have to be exact historical parallels rather than looking at the disturbing trends that we can read across from history. For example, on argument I’ve been presented with is that if Johnson doesn’t actually have his own militia, how then can we argue that his racist behaviours and fondness for authoritarians might take our country down a dark path?

These are often not arguments made in good faith but by people who stand to gain from the silencing of their opponents. But they are also made by people who were scarred by seeing the term fascism too often misapplied to try and shut down debate. By liberals concerned about the free speech implications that Godwin’s Law has been both designed and adapted to deal with.

But in going too far the other way, we are now actively harming debate because it is now seen as almost impossible to draw parallels between modern politics and what happened in the 1930s. But these parallels exist and need to be discussed. Not in a hysterical way. Not by simply calling fascist anything you happen to disagree with. But because it is important that as the far right are further emboldened, the liberal left don’t hand-wring themselves out of calling this moment what it is.

When Tommy Robinson is working for the leader of UKIP and Jacob Rees-Mogg is retweeting the AfD – Germany's far-right party – we are in a moment where fascism is far too close to power and the political mainstream. That needs to be fought, and to do so, it needs to be named.