Godwin's Law

[BruceChatwin]

"As a discussion about Paolo Di Canio grows longer, the probability of it descending into a debate about fascism and the Nazis (and of someone posting this picture http://fistedaway.files.wordpress.com/2011/05/2011-03-24-15-07-22-3-paolo-di-canio.jpeg) approaches 1."

My version of Godwin's Law as applied to Paolo Di Canio. To be invoked in any scenario when a debate is derailed in the manner described above.

This law is based on years of research on opposition fans forums, in which someone tries to say something positive about Paolo Di Canio ('I love his passion' etc.) and someone instantly replies 'Fascist' 'Nazi' 'Wouldn't want him near my club' etc., after which the thread becomes totally derailed and descends into a debate about fascism and racism and the history of the Roman ultras and people's rights to their own beliefs etc. etc. totally irrelevant to the original discussion.

As with Godwin's Law, in which bringing up Hitler when non-relevant to a debate automatically signifies a person has lost that debate, under 'Di Canio's Law' any mention of fascism and Nazis when in a footballing debate about Di Canio instantly invalidates the posters contribution.

Alternative suggestions for a better name than 'Di Canio's Law' welcome.

[Batch]

Don't come round here imposing your draconian laws on us Nazi.

Oh.

[Ardiles]

It's the easy, lazy, default, fall-back response of anyone who wants to have a pop at STFC or PDC.  Nice idea to start the thread.  People can now link to it when the Nazi/fascism thing gets mentioned in other discussions.  We could award Godwin (or Chatwin?) Points to posters, based on how many posts in to a thread the subject is raised.

[Flashheart]

Just call it God wins law.   

[Anteater]

Alternative suggestions for a better name than 'Di Canio's Law' welcome.

Paolaw ?

[jayohaitchenn]

tl;dr

[Batch]

tl;dr

Literally, "Too long; didn't read" Said whenever a nerd makes a post that is too long to bother reading.

Go Poindexter!

[Nemo]

Without wishing to start the fight again, the whole point of Godwin's law is that the topic has nothing to do with Hitler or Nazis. Paolo clearly has something to do with Facism. Nazism perhaps may be more of a point, but it's still stretching the definition.

[jayohaitchenn]

Hitler had the right idea, he just lacked scope.

[BruceChatwin]

Without wishing to start the fight again, the whole point of Godwin's law is that the topic has nothing to do with Hitler or Nazis. Paolo clearly has something to do with Facism. Nazism perhaps may be more of a point, but it's still stretching the definition.

If a thread is framed along the lines of 'What do you think of Paolo Di Canio's political views?' then that would be fine.

But when something that starts out being framed clearly from a footballing perspective (for example 'what do you think about Paolo Di Canio as a football manager?') descends into a discussion about Nazi salutes and Roman history, at which point any salient footballing discussion someone might have been trying to make gets lost in the maelstrom, I think it would be useful for there to be something people can use as a sort of spam blocker to stop a thread being totally derailed.

[BruceChatwin]

Here's a good up to date example from today started about Di Canio's column on the QPR forums.

http://www.qprdot.org/viewtopic.php?t=65934&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

Which starts out as someone innocuously posting Di Canio's views on QPR as copied from the BBC website, by post 4 has already mentioned fascism, by post 5 has created an argument about whether fascism is relevant to any of this (it is't) and by post 17 has resulted in THAT photo finally appearing to complete the full set as predicted above (I think THAT photo appearing is the apogee of the fulfilment of Di Canio's Law, if you were to go through all the teams we've played's forums they'd be like host database's for the f*cking thing).

The most annoying thing about it is when people talk as if they're exposing Di Canio's political views to the world for the first time: that if only you knew this about him then you couldn't possibly hold that opinion you expressed about his ability or character.

'Do you really think the man performing this Nazi salute is good for the game?'

 

For people like this I would like to be able to invoke Di Canio's law (or whatever we might call it), to STTFU and get the topic back to football.

[ReadingRed]

This piece from an Independent article is worth quoting to any bores making the fascist accusations:

The truth is that – today at least – you don't have to spend long with Di Canio to realise he is not a demented fascista; neither does he have any time for the sort of repugnant racial opinions held by at least two English Premier League footballers I can think of (and that's without even trying). While he was in Italy, his column in the national sport newspaper Corriere dello Sport routinely took the form of a rant against the idiocy of racism.

"The truth is very simple," said one respected source who knows Di Canio well, but was insistent that his name should not appear in this article. "Paolo is not, and has never been, a bad person, or an ideological fascist. Certain things he has said and done – like the salute with the Lazio fans –have to do with his psychological history, particularly his former compulsive tendencies and pronounced mood swings.

[pauld]

This piece from an Independent article is worth quoting to any bores making the fascist accusations:

At the risk of being boring, it's not an "accusation", so much as a confession. Forgive me if I dismiss the conveniently anonymous apologist, in favour of Di Canio's own words:

I am a fascist, not a racist

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/1506262/Im-a-fascist-not-a-racist-says-Paolo-di-Canio.html

The debate over whether that's good, bad or irrelevant has been done to death on here and I don't want to reopen it, but let's not dress it up and pretend the man is something he's not.

[BruceChatwin]

http://www.owtb.co.uk/index.php?showtopic=40325

Just thought I'd post this here, partly because this thread on the oldham fansite clearly progresses according to the manner predicted by this law, but mostly because it provides a good assessment from the other side of what we'd be missing if we lost Di Canio in terms of tactics, passion, and entertainment compared to other managers out there.

If you are the sort of person likely to find their patience wilting in the face of the next perceived managerial outburst, then it is worth taking a deep breath, coming back to all these points again, and remembering how good we have it compared to how things could be under someone else. If it is truly a world beating rant then use these thoughts in conjunction with this picture of an owl and a lion.

http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/01658/lion_1658835c.jpg