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.
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.