Reductio ad Hitlerum, also argumentum ad Hitlerum, or reductio (or argumentum) ad Nazium – dog Latin for "reduction (or argument) to Adolf Hitler (or the Nazis)" – is a modern formal fallacy in logic. The name is a pun on reductio ad absurdum, or especially its related argumentum ad misericordiam. It is a variety of both questionable cause and association fallacy. The phrase reductio ad Hitlerum was coined by an academic ethicist, Leo Strauss, in 1953. Engaging in this fallacy is sometimes known as playing the Nazi card.[1][2]
The fallacy most often assumes the form of "Hitler (or the Nazis) supported X, therefore X must be evil/undesirable/bad,"[2] as in "Hitler supported the anti-smoking movement, thereby showing that such campaigns are wrong". The argument carries emotional weight as rhetoric, since in most cultures the values of Hitler or the Nazis are automatically condemned. The tactic is often used to derail arguments, as such a comparison tends to distract and to result in angry and less reasoned responses.[2] A subtype of the fallacy is the comparison of an opponent's propositions to the Holocaust.[2] Other variants include comparisons to the Gestapo (the Nazi secret police), to fascism and totalitarianism more generally,[1] and even more vaguely to terrorism.[3] An inverted variant can take the form "Hitler was against X, therefore X must be good."
