Reductio ad Hitlerum

[3] Arguments can be termed reductio ad Hitlerum if they are fallacious (e.g., arguing that because Hitler abstained from eating meat or was against smoking, anyone else who does so is a Nazi).

Contrarily, straightforward arguments critiquing specifically fascist components of Nazism like Führerprinzip are not part of the association fallacy.

[7] A comparison to Hitler or Nazism is not a reductio ad Hitlerum if it illuminates an argument instead of causing distraction from it.

However, one could argue fallaciously that because Hitler abstained from eating meat or was opposed to smoking, anyone else who has these opinions so is a Nazi.

[9] The phrase reductio ad Hitlerum is first known to have been used in an article written by University of Chicago professor Leo Strauss for Measure: A Critical Journal in spring 1951,[10] although it was made famous in a book by Strauss published in 1953[3] Natural Right and History, Chapter II: In following this movement towards its end we shall inevitably reach a point beyond which the scene is darkened by the shadow of Hitler.

[11][12] Claims that allegations of antisemitism are reductio ad Hitlerum have also been employed by David Irving, a British Holocaust denier.

After VE Day, Pharaoh continued to appear in the speeches of social reformers like Martin Luther King Jr.[15] Judas Iscariot and Pontius Pilate were also commonly held up as pure evil.

[15] In 1991, Michael André Bernstein alleged reductio ad Hitlerum over a full-page advertisement placed in The New York Times by the Lubavitch community after the Crown Heights riot under the heading "This Year Kristallnacht Took Place on August 19th Right Here in Crown Heights".