Editorial: Sonoma Assemblyman doesn’t need to exaggerate concerns over Trump appointee

'Two little Hitlers will fight it out until – one little Hitler does the other one's will' – Elvis Costello, 'Two Little Hitlers'

In 1990, author Mike Godwin coined a prescient internet maxim, now known as Godwin's law, which holds that if a debate goes on long enough – sooner or later one person will compare the other to Adolf Hitler and/or Nazis.

It's at that point, reasons Godwin, that the person who introduced der Fuhrer to the discussion has exhausted reasonable discourse and has, ultimately, lost the debate.

Well, it's taken Sonoma's 10th district Assemblyman Marc Levine all of seven days since the election to leap into the Hitler chasm, specifically in his response to President-elect Trump's appointment of alt-right-embracing media mogul Steve Bannon as a chief strategist in his presidential cabinet.

In response to the appointment of Bannon, Levine issued a statement last week which rolled through Godwin's law with Blitzkreig precision.

'With Trump's appointment of Steve Bannon he has moved with deliberate speed to implement an agenda of ethnic cleansing through deportation,' wrote Levine. 'We must reject a propaganda minister inside the White House masterminding ethnic cleansing in America.'

In that paragraph alone, Levine attacked Godwin's law on multiple fronts, as it were. 'Implement an agenda'… 'ethnic cleansing'… 'propaganda minister'… 'masterminding'… One would think the Democrats not only handed Trump the White House, but Czechoslovakia, as well.

No doubt sensing the spuriousness of his assertion, Levine couched his hyperbole behind a 1993 report by the United Nations Commission of Experts which defined ethnic cleansing as 'rendering an area ethnically homogenous by using force or intimidation to remove persons of given groups from the area.' That's, of course, in reference to Trump's assertion that he will deport undocumented residents and build a wall across the U.S. boarder with Mexico.

The UNCE's definition is at the broad end of the ethnic-cleansing spectrum – the term is more commonly associated with what comes next, after forced deportation inevitably fails: removal of groups through genocide. Which is why the Assemblyman's use of other Nazi-sounding expressions was clearly intended to invoke ethnic cleansing at its most sinister. The only term that follows such words as 'propaganda minister' and 'masterminding' – at least to anyone who has the History Channel as part of their cable package – is 'Final Solution.' And that's ridiculous.

Levine's not the only person post-election to welcome worst-case-scenario interpretations from the ugly rhetoric that soiled the campaign trail. But as an elected official he should know better.

It goes without saying that it's a disservice to victims and survivors of actual ethnic cleansings – the Nazi Holocaust, East Timor, Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia and others – sadly, too many in the last hundred years to cite in this short column space.

But survivors of genocide have had far worse to contend with than tactless analogies by regional politicians. The real damage from grossly overstating the aims of governmental ne'er-do-wells is that it robs the legitimacy from debate over what their actual policies may be.

Levine is certainly within his rights to be outraged at the appointment of Bannon to such an influential role in American politics – given past statements, and what he's overseen as chairman of ultra-conservative Breitbart News, he's clearly OK with racist rhetoric. Trump's choice of Jeff Sessions as Attorney General is potentially even more problematic, given his long-established, anti-minority political history. So there's a justifiable concern that Trump is filling his policy team with apparent racists and homophobes – and, of course, one hopes that turns out not to be the case. And still, people with race issues and homophobia are a far cry from ethnic cleansers. Heck, many of us are probably having Thanksgiving dinner with some of them on Thursday.

Any cause for alarm with such political appointments isn't about 'police state,' it's about state of policy. Transgender equality, rights of undocumented Americans, voting access, healthcare for the poor, a woman's right to choose – this is what's at stake. And this is why all the 'ethnic cleansing' rigmarole is counterproductive: Don't worry that they're constructing camps – worry that they're deconstructing campiness.

Of course, Godwin's law isn't new. The idea dates back to 1951, when University of Chicago professor Leo Strauss coined the phrase 'reductio ad Hitlerum' a play upon words on a logical fallacy known as 'reduction ad absurdum,' which attempts to disprove a statement by demonstrating it leads to an absurd conclusion.

Strauss's point was that when debaters bring their argument to the Hitler-level – as in, 'You know who else said that?' – it ceases to illuminate their argument and, instead, distracts from it. It's counterproductive – it means you're losing the debate.

Sonoma politicians and otherwise well-meaning activists would be well-advised not to lose the debate so early in the discussion.

Email Jason at jason.walsh@sonomanews.com.