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Reductio Ad Hitlerum is a Clichéd Argument for (a) Reason.
Yadda-yadda, fallacy of informal logic. And yet … Reductio Ad Hitlerum (or Argumentum Ad Hitlerum/Ad Nazium) is rarely not a TKO, when used relevantly. With good reason. And then, it’s far from a fallacy.
COMMENTER: So many of Lovecraft’s stories can be easily reinterpreted in a positive and progressive way if you just look at them from a non xenophobic, racist, white supremacist viewpoint. The Shadow Over Innsmouth is about a town reconnecting with humanities underwater cousins. The Dunwich Horror is about a single mother and her father having been blessed by a God struggling to take care of their half-cosmic children. The Horror at Red Hook is about a rich white man taking advantage of lower class immigrants who have been persecuted by the police and using them for his horrible occult rituals.
BUG: So, basically, if one completely ignores all context and the author’s own language … the language of a man who had a cat called “N*gger-Man* … one can feel positive about Lovecraft’s work? Look … I can and do appreciate not only Lovecraft’s impact on Cosmic Horror, but also his actual work. I’d go so far as to say I’m a fan. But I haven’t been lobotomized, nor ethically compromised in this arena. I WILL not completely write-off (see what I did, there?) the reality of an artist’s views influencing his ART, his output to the…
