Is the 'christian' Right participating in Holocaust 'Revisionism' (AKA Holocaust Denial)?

[ck4829]

For decades now, "Holocaust revisionists" in the U.S. and Europe have published pseudo-scholarly papers and books claiming to prove that the Nazis never carried out a systematic extermination of Jews. In 1995, a book called The Pink Swastika made similar claims about the Nazis' treatment of homosexuals during the Holocaust.

Written by fundamentalist activists Scott Lively and Kevin Abrams, The Pink Swastika says that rather than being victimized by the Nazis, gay men in Hitler's inner circle actually helped mastermind the Holocaust.

"While we cannot say that homosexuals caused the Holocaust, we must not ignore their central role in Nazism," write Lively and Abrams. "To the myth of the 'pink triangle' — the notion that all homosexuals in Nazi Germany were persecuted — we must respond with the reality of the 'pink swastika.'"

Historians agree that this "reality" is utterly false. But many anti-gay crusaders have used the "gay Nazi" myth as proof that gay people are immoral and destructive.

Some examples:

"When lawlessness is abroad in the land, the same thing will happen here that happened in Nazi Germany," Pat Robertson once warned viewers of his 700 Club. "Many of those people involved with Adolf Hitler were satanists. Many of them were homosexuals. The two seem to go together."

The Pink Swastika has been promoted by anti-gay groups like the Family Research Council. The FRC's Dr. Howard Hurwitz called the book "a thoroughly researched, eminently readable, demolition of the 'gay' myth, symbolized by the pink triangle, that the Nazis were anti-homosexual."

Reality Check:

In fact, while the number of homosexuals who died in the Holocaust does not approach the number of Jewish or Gypsy victims, the historical record shows that between 50,000 and 100,000 men were arrested for homosexuality (or suspicion of it) under the Nazi regime. They were routinely sent to concentration camps and marked with a pink triangle on their prison garb.

http://www.splcenter.org/intel/intelreport/article.jsp?sid=328

Although there was no mass slaughter of gay people in the Holocaust that matched the levels that the Jewish people or the Gypsies had to go through, it is perfectly reasonable to say that 10's of 1000's of gay people died in the Holocaust. Is the 'christian' Right denying this?

[John Gauger]

1. According to German laws,

the pink triangle represented the crime of homosexuality. Were they lying about one of their categorizations of criminals? Why would they lie to themselves? What crime were those emblazoned with a pink triangle really being punished for?

[booley]

2. It's really quite simple..

The Theo-Cons need the jews.

They need th idea of a holocaust to lump it in with abortion.

They need Israel so it can be destroyed so jesus can come back.

They need conservative Jews to use thier influence on thier behalf (and to keep turing a blind eye to just how anti-semitic ther ideological brethren really are)

But just as importantly, the Theo-cons need Gays. as a scapegoat, to fear monger and demonize.

So yes they are denying that gay people suffered under the Nazis. If the suffering of gay people is comparable to jews under the Nazis then that ruins the Theo-Cons whole carefully crafted world view. The Thoe-cons want "never again" to only mean what will work for thier purposes.

It also helps that hating gays seems to be one of the few things theo-cons from all three of the abramaic religions seem eager to agree on.

[zbdent]

4. The only holocaust they seem to acknowledge is abortion

[MistressOverdone]

3. I'd be surprised as many of them lost their lives for their

fundamentalist beliefs.

[ayeshahaqqiqa]

5. Twisting history to fit their own form of hatred

No, the Nazis didn't like homosexuals. And yes, there was a Holocaust. I know the family of one person who was tortured and murdered at Dachau, and I respect their varacity and feel with them the sorrow of losing a loved one who was young.

[Behind the Aegis]

6. Gay Jews got a special, bigger than other, triangle.

See my avatar.

[cool user name]

7. Ummm, Hitler killed Ernst Rheume ...

and other "leftist" elements in the party during the Night of the Long Knives.

Why are these people spouting falsities?

[booley]

8. You mean ernst Rohm?

he was hardly a leftist element. He was a brutish thug who just happened to also be gay.

[cool user name]

11. Yes, that is what I meant and note leftist in quotation marks in my post.

Leftist being relative especially in an organization like Nazi Party.

However, I did massacre his name.

[rman]

9. how does masterminding the holocaust equate to denying it happened?

does not compute.

Btw, remember Hoover? Gay as can be privately, officially anti-gay as can be.

Could it be that some Nazis in high places were just such hypocrites?

[greyl]

10. Give the article another read through.

It's about the present day Christian right.

[booley]

12. Denying part is just as bad as outright denial

First, the case that gays masterminded the holocaust is empiracaly weak at best. The authors can't even prove that the high ranking nazi officials who planned and carrid out the genocide even were gay.

Among thier 'proofs' is that many Nazi leaders liked opera. It goes down hill from there.

But even more importantly is the idea that the authors that are trying to get thier readers to buy..that Gay people weren't victims, they were the villians.

And as I said , that's as bad as outright holocaust denial. Because then the holocaust becomes an abberation. The authors want to delink the holocaust from the actual lessons of the holocaust.

While we often look at the evil of the holocaust, it did lead to some good (and no, i am not justifying the holocaust, in case any goobers are misreading my words. Lots of bad things can have positive consequences)

For instance, anti-semitism and eugenics, once considered reputable, are now the fringe ideas of looneys and bigots.

But genocide has hardly been confined to Jews. it's not a Jewish problem. or an African problem or a Muslim problem. It's a Human problem.

and that's a lesson the Theo-Cons dont' want people to learn. Becuase acknowledging that gay people were victims as well might help make homophobia as repugnant to mainstream America as anti-semitism is today.

And this is as bad as outright denial. It not only strives to have us ignore what lessons we should have learned from the Holocaust, it also implies that certain people are acceptable targets of 'cleansing"

[rman]

13. How does that reflect on those who mention only Jewish victims

of the Holocaust? Isn't that denying part of it?