Basic Trope: Some participant will inevitably insult someone else by making a comparison to Adolf Hitler and/or Those Wacky Nazis during any online debate.
- Straight: Bob loses his temper during a forum discussion and compares his opponents to Hitler.
- Exaggerated:
- Bob spends all day trolling the forums, making Hitler references to everything he reads.
- Eventually, Bob decides a Hitler comparison is unfair to Hitler.
- Downplayed:
- Bob compares his opponent to another historical figure generally considered an acceptable target to mock, albeit one who was less awful than Hitler and could be more fairly compared to his opponent.
- Bob compares his opponent to a fictitious dictator, albeit one with Nazi-like qualities.
- Justified:
- The forum discussion is about Germany during World War II, so such references are appropriate.
- Another poster mentioned, in a positive light, one or more reasons that Hitler is reviled. If someone was telling you that they support genocide, wouldn't you mention that it's a horrible thing to do?
- The discussion is about a country or regime which can be seriously compared to Nazi Germany (e.g., Stalinist Russia).
- Bob is a lifelong Nazi Hunter, but he has crossed the line into He Who Fights Monsters, or at least Well-Intentioned Extremist (emphasis on 'extreme'), territory.
- Inverted:
- "Do you know who else was a Nazi? Oskar Schindler!"
- The forum members are antisemites, and among such a community a common meme is that someone insults an opponent by comparing them to Jews, or else a Hitler comparison is positive.
- Hitler is compared to someone else.
- Bob praises his allies by comparing them to Jesus.
- A serious discussion of the Nazis conducted in good faith is derailed by unrelated comparisons. For example, in a discussion about the Final Solution, someone says, "This sounds just like Obamacare!"
- Subverted:
- Bob enters a forum and makes a comparison to a man named Hitler, which is actually a reference to his great-grandfather, not the dictator.
- At length Bob cites "a certain European with a toothbrush mustache," but he's thinking of Charlie Chaplin.
- Bob loses his temper during a forum discussion and compares his opponents to Josef Stalin.
- Bob finds out that his opponent considers a Hitler comparison to be a badge of honor.
- Double Subverted:
- Bob's great-grandfather was a Nazi.
- And then Bob's opponent compares him to Hitler.
- So, Bob cites somebody whose actions and words even they consider vile.
- Parodied:
- When Bob makes his Hitler reference, huge sirens go off through his computer speakers and the screen begins to flash red warning messages, and then explodes.
- Hitler Ate Sugar
- Bob gets mad, calls his opponent "Reltih Floda," and when interrogated, says dubiously that it wasn't an attempt to dodge the forum's ban on mentioning Hitler.
- Zig-Zagged: Bob frequently posts online in situations where Hitler would be an obvious comparison, but always manages to find another historical figure who did something roughly similar: Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Francisco Franco, you name them. He becomes a famous historical lecturer, known as "the man who killed Godwin," and is invited on TV talk shows to discuss the Nazis and/or Israel, but turns these down because he's "very busy planning a reunion." Near the end of the work we see Bob shaving his full mustache, but we don't get a look at his face again until he walks into a German restaurant and shakes hands with several elderly German gentlemen. "Herr Goering, Herr Himmler. JOSEF! Liebschen! It's been so long!" And as he embraces a short, frail old man, the POV turns around and we see that he IS Hitler.
- Averted:
- Bob never makes any Hitler references and uses modern dictators as a comparison instead.
- Bob makes reference to Hitler, but only in a situation where it's a useful comparison — no insult is intended.
- Bob finds another Abomination Accusation Attack to use that doesn't involve dictators.
- Enforced: Bob is a sociologist studying the effects of Hitler/Nazi references in online discussions.
- Lampshaded: "Looks like Bob just played the 'Hitler card' …"
- Invoked: Bob has been in a heated argument with his opponent for weeks and finally decides that a comparison to Hitler is both unavoidable and entirely appropriate.
- Exploited: The opponent promptly raises a stink over Bob's "bigoted and ignorant" comment, hoping the forum mod will shut down Bob's account.
- Defied:
- Bob resists the temptation to use the Hitler comparison and instead draws a more realistic comparison to his opponent.
- The forum has, and strictly enforces, a policy banning contributors who compare anyone or anything to Hitler, so users go out of their way to avoid such references.
- Alternatively, the forum has a rule where if an argument or debate results in someone (e.g., Bob) comparing the opposition to Hitler, the argument ends instantaneously, and the offending party loses.
- Discussed: "Look, Bob, playing the Hitler card doesn't make you cool or witty, it just shows that you're out of arguments. I mean, I don't have a singular testicle, I never invaded Poland, and I certainly haven't employed ridiculous inventions to turn the tide of any war."
- Conversed: "Why are all these forums full of Nazi references?"
- Implied: Every time somebody who hasn't already ticked him off on the forum does so, Bob says they have "replaced that man as history's greatest villain."
- Deconstructed:
- Bob continues to make Hitler and Nazi references in various forums, which gets the attention of various countries' law enforcement agencies, who quickly add Bob to their list of suspected terrorists and arrest him.
- Alternatively, Bob becomes so infamous that he is recognized in real life and fired from his job.
- Bob's tirades about Hitler get so prevalent that everyone stops taking him seriously and he ends up as the laughingstock of the forum.
- Bob spawns a colossal Flame War.
- Bob is a Nazi. Whenever Alice gives her criticisms of the idea of “ethnic displacement,” Bob accuses her of this trope. Alice and Bob’s friends agree with him, so Bob works harder to convert them into like-minded white supremacists.
- Reconstructed: Bob is careful when using Hitler references to ensure everyone knows he is being funny and/or ironic, so nobody mistakes him for a right-wing crazy.
- Played for Laughs:
- Bob makes his Hitler references just so funny that nobody dares complain.
- Bob calls people whom he knows to be neo-Nazis Nazis.
- Played for Drama: Bob is a Hitler sympathizer who broke the "law" to fit in on that board. Eventually, however, the rest of the community grows up while he doesn't. Worse (for him, at least), when his true feelings about Hitler become known, he loses one of his foremost social activities.
- Played for Horror: When Bob compares people to Hitler, they decide, "Then Let Me Be Evil" and commit atrocities just like those Hitler committed.
- Intended Audience Reaction: It's a Very Special Episode aimed directly at people who abuse this law regularly to try to make them shape up.
You know who else wouldn't have clicked on this link? HITLER!
