A month ago, a short article on Medium1 came up that asserted that the term groomer was of Nazi origin, a kind of spiritual successor to the German terms Jugendverführer and Jugendverderber. The article makes no attempt at all to explain the etymology and history of the terms, and just spews claims without making any effort to back them up. Half of the article is just quoting other writings to let the words of others do the work. This article also uses such ridiculous phrases as “Republican fascism,” talking about how the American right-wing apparently parallels 20th century fascism. I’ll just give the reader a couple of quotes from the article to emphasise my point:
“Ideas about defending masculinity and the traditional family, and about protecting youth from indoctrination, were key to Nazi propaganda campaigns.”
“Those words, Jugendverführer and Jugendverderber, sure seem notable. At least 15 states are currently working to pass Florida-style “Don’t Say Gay” bills. When reasonable people object, Republicans respond by calling them “pedophiles” and “groomers.”
One wonders whether people like Ron DeSantis consciously realize they are pulling plays straight out of the Nazi playbook, or if it’s just some instinct.”
More recently, a few days ago, someone on Twitter, Eli Erlick, made a short thread2 asserting the same thing. They made the bare minimum of an effort of explaining the etymology of the words, providing at least a translation, and made an intentionally terrible attempt of detailing the terms’ history. The thread completely ignores the origin of the words while not actually showing any primary sources of the asserted usage of the terms. I should also like to add, that a couple of days after posting this thread, the person made a tweet,3 which I shall include both a picture of and a link to, as well as the text, which read the following:
“As I’ve said before, if anyone needs hormones who can’t get access, message me. I have a network with years’ of extra doses. This is only a Band-Aid solution to an ongoing political problem but we can’t rely on the state or medical institutions to keep us safe and healthy.”
It is, without a doubt, a horrible idea to imply that Americans, hardly at all really acquainted with the Weimar era or the pre-war Third Reich, independently came up with a similar term. Such a claim has implications that I don’t think were considered by those who championed it. Also, the assertion that this is a word unique to the right-wing, and an heir to some Nazi term, is, again, a bad idea as well as being just outright wrong. Groomer has been being used in reference to predators far longer than the recent spotlight, there’s even a 2008 article from the BBC4 which efforts to detail the history of this specific usage of the word. This article posits that according to the Oxford English Dictionary the first usage of groomer in this way was by the Chicago Tribune in 1985, with the following quote:
“These 'friendly molesters' become acquainted with their targeted victim, gaining their trust while secretly grooming the child as a sexual partner.”
As the article notes, in the 90s with the rise of the internet and the fear of pedophiles on the internet, the usage of groomer regarding sexual grooming entered common parlance. Even more recently, and still before its current controversy, groomer’s common usage in regards to predators was typically whenever a YouTuber or some other popular figure on the internet had become embroiled in a controversy, and also frequently about Discord and its infamous grooming problem.
As for the etymology of the subject terms, Jugendverführer could be translated literally as “seducer/corrupter of the youth,” while Jugendverderber would literally mean “ruiner/destroyer of the youth.” Both seem to have been traditionally used as a word similar to pederast, but with more particularly negative connotations. I’ve seen them in several older, pre-WW2 20th century books regarding both Nietzsche and Socrates, specifically referring to pederasty. I’ve also seen it used in articles of recent years in reference to Mick Jagger and Marilyn Manson, which in this case probably parallels the English word groomer. So it’s clear that, as is the nature of language, it has multiple meanings, and typical meaning has probably changed over time. The earliest usage of Jugendverderber that I’ve seen is from Matthias Claudius’ translation of Plato’s “Apology of Socrates,”5 which I’m not sure when was originally written but it can be found in the 1790 volume of Claudius’ collected works. The part which Claudius translated as Jugendverderber is from section 24b,6 and though my Greek is not at all what it should be the specific line is νέους διαφθείροντα, which I believe literally means “destroyer of youth,” and so Claudius translated it quite directly. The earliest usage of Jugendverführer I’ve seen is from an 1824 German translation of de Lamartine’s “Death of Socrates,”7 and Jugendverführer seems to carry essentially the same meaning as Jugendverderber. In fact the line from de Lamartine is a specific reference to the events of Apology of Socrates, as it refers to Socrates’ condemnation as a traitor to the gods and a corrupter of the youth.
Regarding the purported usage of these terms by Nazis, Virgil himself could not have led me through the bowels and bolgias of the internet to actually find a primary source. Every work I come across merely references an unending chain of secondary sources; books upon books, all referencing one another with no actual primary source given nor any remote indication of one. The work I do believe may have some of my answers though would seem to be Exclusion of Homosexuals from the 'Volksgemeinschaft': The Persecution of Homosexuals in National Socialist Cologne8 by Jürgen Müller, however there’s no digitised version available, and the only physical copies able for me to obtain are to be borrowed in a college halfway across my state or to be purchased and shipped for $120. I’ve seen this work referenced more frequently, and it may have the details on primary sources that I’d like to have, however, most authors who referenced it simply repeated essentially the same information, which is merely the claim that Nazis used Jugendverderber/verführer without any actual primary backing, and so it could very well be that this work merely posits it without real evidence. I have found only one mention of either of the terms during the Nazi era. Otto Rothstock, the assassin of Hugo Bettauer, apparently wrote an open letter in August of 1938 defending his actions in which he called Bettauer “the prominent, Jewish corrupter of youth of Vienna.”9 This letter was apparently published on August, 7th 1938, in the Illustrierte Kronen Zeitung, p.18, however I cannot find a digitised version of the paper, and so I must place some trust in those who’ve mentioned the work, but it is so incredibly specific, and I do at least greatly appreciate the assertion of a primary source, even if I myself am unfortunately unable to access it or share it. With all of this, I’d say it’s entirely possible, and probable, that Nazis did use the terms and use them particularly against homosexuals/transgenders, however this doesn’t support the notion that the terms were invented by Nazis and are expressly Nazi terms, a claim that I believe I’ve disproven here.
To conclude, Jugendverderber and Jugendverführer are significantly older than any purported invention by the Nazis. The usage of groomer in regards to sexual grooming is older than its current controversy, the term isn’t descended from Jugendverderber/verführer and its origins aren’t political. If anything it would seem that Jugendverderber/verführer have been influenced by groomer, taking on a new meaning today.
Claudius, Matthias. Asmus omnia sua secum portans, oder Sämtliche Werke des Wandsbecker Boten (Wandsbeck: Self-published, 1790), p.62
Plato. Platonis Opera, ed. John Burnet. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1903)
de Lamartine, Alphonse. Der Tod des Sokrates (Druckerei von F. Kaufmanns Witwe, 1824), p.45
Ausgrenzung der Homosexuellen aus der 'Volksgemeinschaft': Die Verfolgung der Homosexuellen im nationalsozialistischen Köln
“dem prominentesten jüdischen Jugendverführer Wiens”
Groomer & Jugendverführer/verderber
I think this misses the forest for the trees. The point of that article and those tweets weren't "The concept of slurring minority groups as pedophiles with the purpose of ultimately oppressing and possibly killing them was a uniquely Nazi-originated phenomenon." The point was to point to a historical parallel where the allegation of sex crime/sexual violence or abuse was used as a tool of propaganda against minority groups. Of course this wasn't a Nazi-originated concept, anyone could tell you that, not the LEAST of which being the Jewish people, who have been slurred as pedophiles and child-killers throughout all of history. In a sense, you could certainly make the argument that this concept (slurring minorities as sexual predators) hit America far before it hit Nazi Germany - the lynching epidemic of the 1800s, as Ida B. Wells noted in her extensive coverage, used rape allegations as one of their primary tools; through this kind of slurring, black men were, in the South, associated with rape and sexual violence implicitly. Then, in order to lynch any given black person, all a white man had to do was allege that the black man had raped some white woman, and the whole community would be behind him in the lynching. Taken to extremes, we see the case of Emmet Till, which bears within it the same prejudicial internal logic that the "groomer" slur of queer people has. I don't think the intent was to claim specifically that the Nazis came up with the idea of calling people pedos, because obviously that's not true, but that the current "groomer" panic follows a similar formula as the transitive property of the Nazis' propaganda and bigotry; if pedophile=evil (as is commonly accepted, and I wouldn't argue against) and queer=pedophile, then queer=evil. Perhaps a more salient example IS the lynching epidemic of the 1800s, wherein rapist of white women=evil, black men=rapist of white women, and thus black men=evil. There are much more recent historical examples, for instance the slurring of gay men as pedophiles in the 60s, 70s, and 80s (and to a lesser extent all the way to the present day), *but* that's not quite as rhetorically effective as it needs to be, because anyone who's fine with slandering trans people as "groomers" certainly wouldn't care about slandering gay men as "groomers" either. They also deflect discussion of the gay panic in those years with "it turned out to be nothing," or "it was all alright in the end," which is false, but something like the Holocaust has much more tangible damages that are evident, blatant, and unequivocally evil, so it's easier to point to and say "This is what happens if we let this go on" and have someone recognize that we need to be acting now on these types of things, and preparing for the worst as queer people, because it's on its way.
Some other notes:
- If you're not going to say something about Eli's alleged distribution of hormones, don't bring it up. It's bad practice to leave something that you seem to imply is consequential hanging like that.
- "Republican fascism" is not a "ridiculous term," in terms of political philosophy, there is a completely valid argument that the establishment Republicans inch closer and closer to fascism as their openly fascist radicals (MTG, the "Christian Nationalist" being one such example, alongside the hundreds of thousands of voters who openly support fascist groups ranging from the Oathkeepers to the Patriot Front) pull the party ever rightward and upward.
That's all I have to say, I think. Nice article.