My understanding is that Godwin was simply making an observation. The fallacy was imputed by others.

So using Godwin as a way for the Left to win against us, is perhaps ironic.

It’s called a false analogy. It says “Hitler was bad. X is like Hitler. Therefore X is bad like Hitler.”

It’s only a fallacy if it’s not true. Godwin was a jackass.

Godwin was just describing a usenet debate phenomenon, but its popular application, as I understand it, is a version of the logical fallacy that:

Hitler is evil. Hitler is fond of children. That guy is fond of children. That guy is evil. Or, Hitler is evil. Hitler is fond of children. Being fond of children is evil.

It’s the logical fallacy that some folks apply to activism: The Left is bad. The Left uses activism. Activism is bad.

King’s speaking cadence was different, in that he spoke in a manner common to Black Southern preachers, a cadence designed to elicit a “call and response” reaction from the congregation. At points King may have moderated that cadence as he probably understood that a national audience would not respond in the same way as a Black church congregation, but in the end he was what he was and spoke accordingly. For him to have adopted a Hitleresque speaking style would not have worked, either for his congregation or the nation as a whole; it would have been alien….

Come on Mr.National Security Advisor to President Reagan, Chief of the Joint Chiefs under Bush-41 and Sec’y of State under Bush-43… ANY SHAME felt in your gut these days,’Yo?

Indeed, the Left’s and Hitler’s activist skillsets match up closely.

Activism is just a method, a workshop of tools. Anyone cause it to reify any cause. Either use activism to normalize your good cause, or opt not to use activism and allow activism to be used by your competition to normalize their bad cause.

MLK aggressively used propaganda that was incitant and adversarial. In other words, activism “by any means necessary” (X) vs “use any means of legitimate nonviolent protest necessary” (MLK).

Indeed, the majority of the Left’s winning activism is not physically violent. War is just politics by other means, after all. Whether the means are violent or non-violent, activism is about competing to impose one’s preferred norms and marginalize/stigmatize alternative norms. There can be only one.

To understand him as an activist, note that in his 1st-stage activism, MLK did not condemn the violence that characterized the concurrent black separatist movement. Like Ghandi’s activism, MLK was not dogmatically pacifist. He understood the utility of political violence. He just believed that non-violent activism was more effective for his social movement.

When speaking to white Americans in his 1st-stage activism, MLK shrewdly wove in the implied threat of violent black unrest as the dangerous alternative to King’s social movement, which he framed as the benign alternative that would placate the justified anger of black Americans.

To wit, MLK, “I Have a Dream”:

Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual. There will be neither rest nor tranquility in America until the Negro is granted his citizenship rights.

The whirlwinds of revolt will continue to shake the foundations of our nation until the bright day of justice emerges.

Of course, as MLK learned within days of the passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act at the 1965 Watts riots, the event that triggered his 2nd-stage activism, his benign alternative wasn’t enough.