Jard Piper | PHL Council
Seth Higgins: Larry Krasner breaks Godwin’s Law
Have you ever noticed that political arguments, particularly those online, inevitably devolve until someone gets called a Nazi? After which point, the discussion ends.
This phenomenon has a name: Godwin’s law. It has actually been around since 1990, roughly corresponding with the rise of the internet. While Godwin’s law has no set definition, it is commonly understood as the observation that “As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.”
Larry Krasner, Philadelphia’s district attorney, recently took about 1,400 words to break Godwin’s law.
So much for the rule of law in the City of Brotherly Love.
To explain, Krasner is campaigning for a third term as Philadelphia’s progressive-minded prosecutor. He is facing a primary challenge from former Judge Patrick Dugan, who argues that Krasner is too soft on crime. While running for reelection, Krasner participated in a recent interview with City & State PA.
This was no hardball interview. But that may have been a good thing, because Krasner seemed comfortable being candid. At one point, the conversation took an inevitable turn to Krasner’s approach to working with – or against – the federal government.
The interviewer asked: “You’ve also pitched yourself as a democracy advocate and someone who will stand up to an overreaching federal government. Do you think starting legal battles with the Trump administration could impact your bandwidth to do your work within the city?”
At this point, Krasner snatched Godwin’s Law as if handed to him on a stone tablet atop Mount Sinai, only to smash it to pieces.
Krasner began his response by stating that in President Trump’s first term, the federal government de-emphasized going after white-collar criminals because many of these supposed criminals are Trump’s friends. He then stated that potential cuts to social programs increase poverty, which will lead to an increase in crime.
Disagreements aside, nothing too crazy — yet.
Then Krasner took a hard left turn, as he’s inclined to do, and said, “And I don’t want people to miss this — Trump likes crime. Fascists like crime. Right-wing Republican MAGA people like crime and they like it because it gins up a crisis that doesn’t have to be, which allows them to scapegoat different groups of marginalized people so they can eliminate our rights. This is a very old playbook.”
And with Krasner’s rant about MAGA fascists’ supposed love of crime, Godwin’s law was shredded like cheap tissue paper.
But fear not, Krasner wasn’t finished. He went on to state:
“I’m speaking to you as a 63-year-old whose dad volunteered and served in World War II … I grew up knowing a hell of a lot about World War II, the Nazis and the rise of fascism and Mussolini. This is all stuff close to me, and I know exactly where we need to be with this one: loud, proud, standing up and in their faces. These are fundamentally fascists, and it will not do us any good to try to appease them. They are bullies who need to be punched in the face as hard as possible, and that is the only way that all the people around us who are so frightened will understand they can stand up, too.”
Philadelphia’s top prosecutor thinks his political opponents “need to be punched in the face.” I could ask who sounds like the actual fascist here, but I won’t. After all, if the district attorney won’t respect Godwin’s law, someone has to.
Seth Higgins, a native of Saint Marys, Pennsylvania, specializes in bringing conservative thought to local government. Seth is a former Tablet Magazine Fellow and a former Krauthammer Fellow with The Tikvah Fund.
I have always been curious about the fact that the degeneration of internet political conversation devolves to “Nazi” and “Fascist” as if the descriptions are interchangeable. They are most assuredly not. It only proves that as a general rule. politicians are an ill-educated lot. However, my point in this comment is that one never sees any comparison to the Japanese Empire and the warrior cult. I am not certain if this is because most politicians are woefully ignorant of that period in history, or they have a racist view of Japan or they are ashamed that their darlings of the progressive Democratic Party established concentration camps and force Japanese – American citizens into them while confiscating all they owned (Think Chief Supreme Court Earl Warren, and FDR). To close, Larry Krasner is one of those who believe nobody should be responsible for their actions and it is all society’s fault there is bad behaviour in the world. In his world, Philadelphia is somehow responsible for MS-13 and Tren de Agular arising in their home countries and transporting the violence to Philly. Perhaps he should worry less about how much in campaign contributions he will get from George Soros and more about the safety of Philly’s citizens.
” they are ashamed that their darlings of the progressive Democratic Party established concentration camps and force Japanese – American citizens into them while confiscating all they owned” – You do realize that the same Democrats with racist beliefs have no become Republicans. Now they are rounding people with valid visas for engaging in free speech and deporting them without providing any actual proof that they support Hamas.
What are American Jews supposed to think during Trump’s campaign when he stated that American Jews were disloyal if they did not vote Republican, if they did vote Democrat they hated their religion and Israel, and if he lost the election it would the fault of American Jews? Or an unelected bureaucrat who gave a Hitler salute twice in 30 seconds at a Trump rally and gave a speech to a neo-Nazi political party at rally, AfD.
“they like it because it gins up a crisis that doesn’t have to be, which allows them to scapegoat different groups of marginalized people so they can eliminate our rights.” – Now Trump is deporting people over free speech with no evidence presented to the public and deporting peopl on a whim. Trump is going after the LGTBTQ community, rewriting American history, and getting rid of agencies that help average Americans that benefit the rich. While eliminating or altering government agencies that protect civil rights.
In the lead up to WWI British Prime Minister tried to appease Hitler, the Russians signed a mutual non-aggression treaty, and the United States became an isolationist nation. How did that work out? When dealing with White Supremacists they never respond to logic and facts, because the operate by spreading fear and violence. So yes punching them in the nose is the only thing they understand. Because in that moment they realize how few they are.
All of this is distraction on Trump’s part, including invading Greenland and Canada. So you don’t find out that consumers will be paying the costs of tariffs. That Elon Musk is destroying government agencies while have access to classified information about Americans. The recent classified information failure and the dangerously incompetent people who make up his cabinet and their direct reports.