Invoking Nazis isn’t politically bad for Winston Peters - Heather du Plessis-Allan

OPINION

There is a saying on the internet known as Godwin’s law. Basically everyone misquotes it.

The actual rule is that the longer an online discussion goes on, the higher the probability that someone invokes a comparison to the Nazis or Hitler.

But everyone thinks the rule is that whoever invokes the Nazis or Hitler loses the argument.

Even though that’s a misquote, it’s still true.

It’s not that a comparison to the Nazis or Hitler is necessarily wrong or even necessarily offensive. It’s just that you can’t convince anyone when you use that comparison.

People who agree with your basic argument will still understand the point being made. But people who don’t agree will stop listening the minute that Nazis are mentioned because almost certainly whoever you’re comparing to a Nazi didn’t end up killing six million people.

So when Winston Peters used the Nazis in his speech he probably won over exactly no one to his argument that co-governance is a bad idea.

But he ended up quite possibly winning a separate argument on his new favourite subject: the media.

Entirely predictably, the media lost its mind over the Nazi comparison. The outrage went on for days.

There is a rule in politics which doesn’t yet have a name: the longer media outrage at Winston Peters goes on, the higher the probability that he’s loving it.

It’s not always true (the Owen Glenn drama jumps to mind) but it mostly is.

And so, like clockwork, Winston began fighting back. And in the end, he actually pointed out some well-overdue home truths to the media.

The longer media outrage at Winston Peters goes on, the higher the probability that he’s loving it. Photo / Mark Mitchell

On Monday he pointed out that the media hadn’t been nearly as outraged when the Māori Party published its sports policy online with the clanger: “It is a known fact that Māori genetic makeup is stronger than others.”

The media can’t argue ignorance. We were all well aware this had happened. Act had sent media multiple statements and yet there was hardly any mention of it, and certainly no Peters-level outrage.

On Tuesday, Peters put out a list of examples of others using Nazi comparisons that didn’t result in days of media outrage, if any at all.

Māori Party co-leader Debbie Ngarewa-Packer had said in her maiden speech “I stand here as a descendant of a people who survived a holocaust, a genocide sponsored by this House.”

The Māori Party had described the Coalition Government’s repeal of smoking laws as “systemic genocide”.

Auckland Pride’s executive director Max Tweedie had compared the support of Posie Parker to “Nazi ideology of the 1930s” which was “very much aligned in terms of eradicating rainbow communities from public life”.

Former Green MP Golriz Ghahraman had tweeted - on her way to the same rally - “So ready to fight Nazis”.

Case closed. The media have waved throughout outrageous comments from some - notably all on the very radical left of politics - while not cutting Peters nearly the same kind of slack.

The media can quite rightly argue that they hold Peters to a higher standard given that he’s the Deputy PM. By contrast, Max Tweedie and this particular iteration of the Māori Party are miles further away from the centre of power. But the argument falters when you consider that Ghahraman made her comments as an MP of a party technically part of the last Government.

Everyone who was outraged at Winston Peters ended up helping Winston Peters. He doesn’t mind the outrage. He milks it. That why, on Wednesday, he played Chumbawamba on his phone while walking through a press scrum. It gave him one more day of headlines about how everyone including a working class English anarcho-communist band are angry with his Nazi comments.

So Godwin’s (misquoted) law is only right to a point. Invoke the Nazis and you lose the argument. But that isn’t necessarily politically bad, if you’re Winston Peters.