180 — Ray Comfort’s 180th Blunder

I have not watched it.

First of all I will confess that I did not watch 180. I have read enough about it in order to get the gist of the picture. I figured that I have done my fundie-horror-picture-show duty having sat through Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed and A Thief in the Night.

A Thief in the Night is a 1972 embarrassingly campy production that was used as a scare tactic aimed at children.

Expelled and 180 are fundie propaganda movies that employ an appeal-to-emotion tactic that has been a favorite of moronic propagandists for decades now.

From Wikipedia:

Reductio ad Hitlerum, also argumentum ad Hitlerum, (Latin for “reduction to” and “argument to” and dog Latin for “Hitler” respectively) is an ad hominem or ad misericordiam argument whereby an opponent’s view is compared to a view that would be held by Adolf Hitler or the Nazi Party. It is a fallacy of irrelevance, in which a conclusion is suggested based solely on something’s or someone’s origin rather than its current meaning. The suggested logic is one of guilt by association.

Its name is a variation on reductio ad absurdum, and was coined by an academic ethicist, Leo Strauss, in 1953. Engaging in this fallacy is sometimes known as playing the Nazi card,^[1] by analogy to playing the race card. The tactic is often used to derail arguments, because such comparisons tend to distract and anger the opponent.^[1]

It is effective as a distraction and angering device. Sure, when this puerile fallacy is employed, one may be inclined to begin a retort with something like, “ATTENTION YOU IGNORANT FUCK-BUCKET…” Argumentum ad Hitlerum would not be used with such frequency if it did not have some degree of efficacy. We see this crock used all the time. Again from Wikipedia:

Godwin’s law (also known as Godwin’s Rule of Nazi Analogies or Godwin’s Law of Nazi Analogies)^[1][2] is a humorous observation made by Mike Godwin in 1990^[2] that has become an Internet adage. It states: “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.”^[2][3] In other words, Godwin observed that, given enough time, in any online discussion—regardless of topic or scope—someone inevitably criticizes some point made in the discussion by comparing it to beliefs held by Hitler and the Nazis.

It is indubitably the case that there are some topics that cannot be discussed in-depth without mentioning Hitler. If you are talking about WWII, German history, antisemitism,  or totalitarian dictatorships — Hitler would come up by necessity. If you are discussing woman’s right to reproductive choice or the scientific theory of evolution — Hitler is irrelevant.

This fallacy is effective merely because it pisses people off. The way that it is used by Ray Comfort and Ben Stein in their vile pieces of propaganda is nothing more than a grade-school playground insult.

Atheists have become the fundies’ pet scape-goat since the attention that the “new atheism” has been getting starting in the early 2000s.  Being that contemporary American atheists, as a group, don’t commit any dastardly anti-social acts — Ray and them resort the stupid — “just like Hitler” canard.

Those of us who are not currently indoctrinated into a fundamentalist, evangelical Christian-right cult can easily dismiss such horse-shit as a transparent, childish, ignorant, and desperate attempt to demonize a section of society for the purpose of stirring up hatred and bigotry against them. Hate sells.

The cult members are trained like bad dogs not to evoke anything similar to critical analysis when it comes the the assertions made by the cult leaders. Ray Comfort, Ben Stein, Pat Robertson, and them say that atheists are all latent Nazis — ergo — atheists are all latent Nazis. The evidence: “Because some fuck-tard said so.” In the mind of the mindless, if you will accept that oxymoronic but suitable description, that settles the issue.

I find such shallow and narrow-minded dogmatism frustrating. It closes communication. Dogmatic authoritarian structure is designed for the specific purpose of limiting the thought process of the adherents. Their thinking must stay on a simple-minded, dualistic, and child-like level if they are going to remain part of the group. One of the tenets of the fundie doctrine is that atheists, as a group, are to be feared and loathed. Why? Because they are all a bunch of Hitler clones. How do we know? They know because half of them (give or take) used to be atheists — they must therefor be experts on the subject.

Atheists worship Hitler?

I have read some statements written by radical fundies in which they proclaim that Adolf Hitler is some sort of hero to the atheist community. Whenever atheists are not busy worshiping Charles Darwin and praying to the theory of evolution they are aspiring to be the next Hitler-esque tyrant.

I do not believe in any sort of god and I am certain that I do not have any sort of admiration of the late German dictator on my personal agenda either. Really, I don’t, no matter how many Bible verses one can repeat that clearly and unambiguously state that I do, I’m sure that I do not.

There are those who do. Members of Neo-Nazi organizations do expressly and shamelessly state that they do, in fact, consider Adolf Hitler to be a heroic and enlightened historical figure, base their group tenets on the writings of Hitler and other WWII-era German Nazi propagandists, and do express a belief that the World ought to be controlled and dominated by a dictatorship based on the ideology of the long-defunct National Socialist Party of Germany.

I do not associate with any such organization. I have no intention of doing so. I have nothing to do with them, because, frankly, those fuckers scare the shit out of me.