sidenote: my first contribution to booman trib, but I am also going to dupe this at dkos, even though I fully expect it to roll into obscurity despite the belief that these are issues that should be discussed at length – bk
Leave to a fellow Texan to drag me back into the fray of the Hitler/Bush comparisons. I’ve stayed relatively low profile of late, in part because I’m curious to see what historical connections – if any – others may make with our current state of the union, and also in part because I’m currently plowing through an old copy of “The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich” searching for greater details with which to continue my parallels in the Fascism, American Style series.
So, I can’t say for certain which detail I was more shocked by: That Texas Governor Rick Perry would actually make a statement that gays should leave Texas if they don’t like the way they’re treated here, or that his words bore an echo of familiarity to the myriad of historical anecdotes that have taken up residence in my noggin.
Now, keep in mind that the only meaningful distinction between Rick Perry and Dan Quayle is that Perry has better hair. The man is, for the uninitiated, a rich white bread idiot whose only interest (and ability) is in getting other people to give him money. So I’m not going to bother with giving him any credit within the GOP machine as anything other than the beggar that he is.
The problem, specifically, is with what he said. And it’s not just because his words, and the idea(s) brimming behind them, are ethically and morally outrageous to anyone who hasn’t sold his soul, but because someone once observed that “words build bridges into unexplored regions.”
Care to guess who that was? None other than our little buddy Hitler.
Forget for a minute that Ranger Rick signed a ceremonial anti-faggot edict in a private Christian school with an amen-shouting audience of 600, or that he did it with Rod Parsley (Christian televangelist), Donald Wildmon (American Family Association) and Tony Perkins (Family Research Council) in attendance to bless the event. Instead, let’s focus on the fact that an elected official of a rather large member state has, through his actions, furthered the enactment of laws designed to create a hostile environment for gays, lesbians, and anybody sympathetic to their cause because, in the state-sanctioned view of things, Texas is anti-fag Christian territory with rulership blessed by God’s elite.
If you don’t like it, then leave.
I think that is it a bit more than coincidental that in 1933, when the Nazis came to power in Germany, Hitler attempted to make life so unpleasant for Jews in Germany that they would emigrate.
It started with boycotts, “Jews not admitted” signs and social pressure orchestrated by the SA. Two years later, the Nuremberg laws made Jews non-citizens. Then 1938 begat Kristallnacht, and I think we all know what happened after that.
But honestly, I’m not here to go on about how the Jews were treated, cause hey, as some of you have maligned it cheapens the Jewish experience during that time to make any comparisons with what is happening in our country now; for the same numbers of you, in fact, there is no comparison.
Fair enough. I am, after all, more interested in the plight of homosexuals right now. So let’s compare queers with queers, shall we?
I think we’re all pretty much aware of the fact that the U.S. has, in the last 30 years or so, experienced a sexual revolution. Birth control, women’s rights, gay rights, and so on have become integral in our culture. It’s one of the great horrors that drove Leo Strauss to Neoconservativism, and Pat Robertson to the little voice in his head, details of which I am so certain we are all well-acquainted with that I won’t bother to cite them ad nauseum.
But how much do we know about German sexuality before Hitler? Details on the subject are thin, but I managed to find some opinions.
My, my, my, isn’t that interesting? A sexual revolution followed by a conservative movement that advocated a return to repressive sexuality for the sake of social stability. And fundamental to this agenda was the production of German (read: white) babies and the villification of gays, all in the name of protecting the people. I’m sure the fact that the “convervative revolution” also happened to be Fascist was just coincidental.
In 1933, when Jewish business were being boycotted, Hitler’s government enacted the Law Against Dangerous Habitual Criminals and Measures for Protection and Recovery, and The Amendment to the Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases which “defined homosexuals as ‘asocials’ who were a threat to the Reich and the moral purity of Germany.”
Just for fun, substitute “America” for “Reich” and “sanctity of marriage” for “moral purity of Germany.” Neat, huh?
The idea that homosexuals were social freaks whose mere existence posed an inherent threat to the stability of German culture was to be a continuing theme for the Nazis. In fact, in 1936 “the definition of ‘public morality’ was made a police matter” and “Himmler created the Reich Central Office for the Combating of Homosexuality and Abortion…” According to Himmler:
In other words, the wacky notion of privacy is against the interests of the state; Lo, it could even be said to undermine the most fundamental institution of civilization.
In Germany, the next logical step was “an intricate network of informants was developed. School children were encouraged to inform on teachers they suspected of homosexuality, employers on employees and vice versa. Homosexuals who were arrested were used to create lists of homosexuals or suspected homosexuals. The clear intention was to identify every homosexual in Germany and move them to concentration camps.”
Granted, getting arrested for walking-while-gay hasn’t quite caught on yet, and school children aren’t encouraged to turn in their gay teachers or classmates (yet), however there is quite a bit of “outing” homosexuals happening these days. So my question becomes how long do we have until this turns into a rounding up of collaborators of the militant homosexual agenda?
You scoff, but that day is coming. History teaches us that this is how it begins.
Remember that Germany’s first concentration camp, Dauchau, started in 1933 as a prison for political dissidents and homosexuals. Not many scholars have bothered investigating the fatality rates of those marked by pink triangles between 1933 and 1944, but one source postulates that the death rate for homosexual prisoners (60 percent) was one and a half times as high as for political prisoners (41 percent) and Jehovah’s Witnesses (35 percent).
Instead of shying away from drawing these parallels, we need to jump in and scream about them at each and every opportunity. I have, and will continue to, make these comparisons because not doing so means we have learned absolutely nothing from the events sixty years ago. Even Hitler observed that “the man who has no sense of history, is like a man who has no ears or eyes.”
Here endeth the lesson.
Good diary.
It’s not that these issues aren’t important at dK, there’s just a “Dean rocks”-“No, he doesn’t” thread along with the continuing pie custard.
I consider this stuff to be paramount. In many old comments on dK you’ll find me saying, “they came for the gays first” on (to me, it starts with gay marriage) gay rights issues. I also show how Hitler used Christianity, even though many people still think he was an atheist or at the minimum, paganist.
I’m very concerned about fascism, Sinclair Lewis wrote in 1935 that fascism if it comes to the U.S. will be “wrapped in the flag and carrying a cross.”
Rec’d.
Sinclair Lewis’ “It can’t Happen Here” was also the first gay-hating book that I ever read, as a teenager.
The “fascist dictator” who takes over the US is gay and lives outrageously with his boyfriend in the White House.
…Sinclair Lewis, the satirist, right? Am I thinking of the right author? Yeesh, I have gotten forgetful these days…
I loved The Jungle, though the first time I read it (in high school), I almost threw up, and not just because of the slaughterhouse stuff…I can read it today and still literally feel my temperature rise in anger at the explitation and injustice.
I will have to go look for “It Can’t Happen Here” (unless it is actually gay-hating, in that case, I don’t want to)
Scary and dead on! Thanks for your hard research. They can dig thier head in the sand, but the parrallels are creepy.
And what an important lesson it is, indeed. Thank you for you have written what I have known since the day GW War Criminal Bush and company stole the election of 2000. That fascism is alive and well and residing in many of the mega churches, the White House, the Senate and House. It is railing its ugly head and spewing its ugliness from sea to shining sea. It is fascists such as Perry, Perkins, Robertson, Falwell, Frist, Santorum, Brownback and Dobson that legitimatize the outright denial of human rights to an entire segment of our population, who will deny privacy and the right to associate with whomever we choose. I learned very early when someone tells you they are going to hit you, it is time to move away from that person. I won’t move away from this battle, but I will defend myself and every other human being, male, female, gay, bi, transgendered, black, white, red, yellow, brown, young or old, from this insidious disease that has infected my country. I urge all our citizens to look around you, do these fascists really represent what you believe, and if you are christian, how can that be so, the Christ says hate the sin, love the sinner. I personally believe that Christ was an ascended Master, who gave hope, love and joy to all he came in contact with during his short life. I believe that if he came to the US today, he would be appalled at the distortion and prostitution of the religion that bears his name.
and the Buddha, and Mohammed (no one has actually convinced me they aren’t all the same person, but I digress) not only would he be appalled, he would be crucified all over again for trying to spread his message.
And ghostdancers way, you write the most beauftiful posts, even when talking about something as ugly as fascism.
is to ask people if they remeber those touching newsreels from the end of the ware, where the American troops came in and freed all the gays from the concentration camps.
No, you don’t remember that ?
Well, the reason might be that they DIDN’T – they just transferred the gays to other German prisons.
To say nothing of what happened to war heroes – like Alan Turing – who were later discovered to be inconveniently gay.
(For those that don’t know, Turing was forced onto a regime of psychoactive drugs in an attempt to “cure” his gayness, which was considered to be unacceptable in a public figure at the time. These drugs eventually drove him to suicide.)
Gays have very definitely been the target of hostile, lethal persecution throughout recent history. Any claims that what they’ve suffered is somehow less in degree than what blacks or Jews went through are simply wrong. The question is how we’re going to stop it.
Yeah, the Turing story is a little mind-blowing.
Q: How did the UK reward a person who by cracking the Enigma code made a decisive contribution to the Battle of the Atlantic, before laying the theoretical foundation for computer technology?
A: By forcing him to develop breasts, until he hanged himself.
I always like learning new historical facts…well almost because it seems that most history I learn that was unknown to me is usually another inhumane piece of history. Like learning the true and appalling history of Columbus.(and his son)
There’s a basic flaw in most of these ‘GWB’ and Repubs = Hitler arguments. And I’m not just talking about the huge difference in degree. Simply put, just because Hitler enacted radically homophobic laws and that many on the Christian Right would like to do the same does not mean much. The argumentation is the same as that of the radical British and Polish Euroskeptics who note how during WWII the Nazis talked about a united Europe and then argue that the EU is a crypto Nazi German plan to reimpose the Third Reich on Europe. Or the US righties who note that the Nazis favoured significant government interference in the economy as well as a welfare state and then say that thus social democracy is similar to Nazism cf. Hayek.
The assault on gays also cannot be seen out of context. It was part of the general ‘gleichschaltung’ of German society that began tentatively immediately after Hitler came to power in Jan. 1933 and was then pursued with a vengeance after the March elections.
btw. a minor historical correction. Weimar’s reputation for sexual liberation is much exaggerated. In reality the relaxed sexual mores celebrated in the myth of Weimar Berlin mostly affected a small, mostly bourgeois minority of 1920’s Germany. There was some change in society at large but nowhere near the scale that we’ve seen in the US and Europe over the past forty years.
Great, great diary. To me this is going to be a paramount issue in the coming elections and I’m hoping the democrats don’t wimp out with their mealy-mouth answers on gay marriage this time..I can hope can’t I.
I’m sick and tired of my gay friends paying taxes and simply wanting equal rights and being continually shit on over/over again by politicians and whacko ‘christians’ and anyone else who is an ignorant bigot.
Although I’m still a bit shell schocked that Perry did his bill signing in a church and there seems not to be any collective outrage by the public over this egregiously vile and anti-constitutional act.
It didn’t help any that I got a letter from my assembleyman here yesterday(a republican) who in response to my letter urging him to vote for a bill here in CA. concerning gay marriage that his response was of course he disagreed with me and he would vote against the bill as he wanted to ‘uphold the institution of marriage’…god I’m sick of that brain dead phrase…which signifies absolutely nothing. Guess he’d want to uphold the ‘institution’ of slavery also.
Just like the phrase ‘militant homosexual agenda’ will send me into a tailspin..I guess if wanting equal rights is militant then yeah that’s militant…most of my gay friends are about as unmilitant as you can get..unless simply living their life and being gay is militant…well I can see that this has gone into a little mini rant for me so will stop while I’m still not to pissed off.
I think the first thing that has to be asked is whether Rick Perry himself is gay. And, how many gays does he have on staff and in his campaign staff (c.f. Jesse Helms).
And I’m serious about this.
Once we move down through the list: Mehlman, Bobby Eberley (c.f. Jimmy Guckert), Scotty, Karl Rove, dubya’s Yale roomie, Drier (sp), etc., etc. etc. and then start down through the list of local “outted” Repubs of late, the so-called “gay agenda” starts taking on a slightly different tint.
Rove and the RNC are using German Socialist tactics, no debate there, but who are the ones defining the strategy and driving the tactics?
One of Rove’s methods is to attack his own “weakness.” If the Republican party attacks gays, you would never think to question if Republican gays were actually behind it… And driving it.
If patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel; what is moral self-righteousness the refuge for?
Ya gotta ask the right questions to get the right answers…
It always seems to come back around to the question, how did Jimmy Guckert get to sit four rows from the President? And why was he used to disseminate the daily spin and work on the Thune campaign, unofficially.
How?
Who is driving the agenda?