Reductio ad Hitlerum

Reductio ad Hitlerum is a term for a fallacy of irrelevance (aka association fallacy). It is when an opinion, entity, or person is challenged in a discussion merely based on the fact that they can be linked by association with a characteristic of Hitler or the Nazis. For examples, look at criticism of any world leader since about 1945. The term was coined by Leo Strauss as early as 1953.


Godwin's Law, coined in 1990 by Mike Godwin, was, as he stated "an expiriment in memetics" (memetics being a term referring to "meme", originally coined by Richard Dawkins to mean a unit of social evolution through information transfer (articles, songs, catch-phrases, videos, etc. ) from person to person. The idea of the meme being related to Dawkins' field of genetics is largely based on the way that these pieces of information (videos, etc.) survive through a process of natural selection whose criteria for selection are dependent on the current state of the culture (e.g. what the hell were we thinking back in the 80's?)
                       back to Godwin's Law. In 1990, Mike Godwin stated:


 "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1."


 This is very helpful to me, as my original intent in venturing into Wikipedia for answers was that i did not understand this string of comments: 


Comment 1: "The mind of [a fully informed, yet dedicated] believer is a disgrace to the human species." 
                                                                                                       -R. Dawkins
Comment 2: Hitler was "fully informed and dedicated".


Comment 3: Wow, Godwin's Law on the second comment. Impressive.


Comment 4 was a refutation of comment 2, and stated that neither Hitler nor commenter 2 "knew dick about dick" . Then somebody (not the second commenter) said that the second comment was obviously a joke, and commenter 4 was an idiot. Commenter 4 said he was truly sorry, and had realized the error of his ways. The conversation continued, and eventually some late-comer said "Why is everything these days always about Hitler?"


This string of comments was left on this video, where Richard Dawkins refutes Creationism with what he considers the most compelling fact (or observation) that we have at our disposal.