Comment by itistoday | Hacker News Reader

Comment by itistoday | Hacker News Reader

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I love this little snarky response to that post:

  "THEY CAME FIRST for the phone app developers,
  and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a phone app developer.
  THEN THEY CAME for the flash developer,
  and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a flash developer.
  THEN THEY CAME for the desktop style app developers,
  and I didn't speak up because I wasn't a desktop style app developer.
  THEN THEY CAME for me
  and by that time no one was left to speak up."
  Yep Godwin was right : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Godwin's_law
  Neil Ellis said this on June 1, 2010 at 11:01 pm

You know, despite the fact that that poem is about the Nazis, it does have a point beyond that. I've mostly seen it referenced as "be aware of these kind of issues, it could be you next", rather than "<issue> is just like what the Nazis did!" To say that this is a case of Godwin's law misses the point: it is a good idea to be active in calling out injustice even if you are not personally affected, because one day you could be. It does not always warrant the gravitas of comparing it to the Holocaust, but the poem itself is a nice succinct illustration of the idea that preventing injustice against others is a wise idea.

Also, calling Godwin's law on a legitimate comparison is just as bad as what Hitler did. :-P

I certainly agree with you, and just to note, even though he puts it in quotes, he wasn't quoting any part of the original post, it was mostly his own invention (a modification of the original: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came...)

I came here to post something like this. Too late!

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