I'm always fascinated by the rush to 1930s Germany as a parallel for the peril trans people in the US face given the subjugation we're enduring is neither unique to us now or, even if it were, unique to this moment in US history.
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I've read a lot of books and it's the closest parallel. The last backlash from 1977-1983 where clinics were closed en masse and care restricted was part of the modern conservative revolution but the US was still a democracy. This moment is unique but the closest parallel is Weimar Germany.
David Sacks for example the punk bitch i call him , likes Russia and hates the war in Ukraine for one reason. Russia has lax crypto regulations of not none at all.
Fascist now seem to want to emulate Vladimir Putins Russia cause in reality alot of these Fascist are Neoliberals they just want to do it a different way while maintaining Neoliberalism. Marie LA Pen for example her policies have alot of austerity in them.
Putins Russia is a modern model for alot of far right authoritarianism because the Fascism of old just isn't working out , the last imo Fascist movement that was actually following in the footsteps of Hitler and Mussolini was Golden Dawn in Greece , they had Paramilitary, Etc.
The oligarch-autocracy is a variation of the naked fascist autocracy model.
It has even more criming and corruption. Plus modern age police state suppression technology.
Excalty, same logic matter a fact these guys basically want to return to the time of the crisis of the Roman Republic where Oligarchs ( Senate ) elect a dictator to keep the masses in line while the wealthy amass their pockets.
I'm a Classical buff , this is giving me Roman Empire in Crisis after Marcus Aurelius and power is handed down to his narcissistic, vile and lunatic son who parades himself has if he's Heracles reborn and murders and silences opposition and is surrounded by sycophants that bow at his feet
I disagree. The parallels between rn and Weimar Germany are stark. Same outgroups targeted first, same language being used. Declaring the president makes, interprets, and enforces the law. Nazis.
I think you are missing the point completely.
The parallel doesn't have to be a 100% match to 1930's, even trans people aside, once every institution fails, and every court allows this to continue, what's stopping, for example, the US from walking into Canada like it was Austria?
It’s not just trans the parallels extend to all non-white Americans, current Executing efforts to grab power, economic states, and political climate. Make no mistake, America is very similar to the Weimar Republic.
I think Chanda's point is accurate as well as, like you said, a lack of historical literacy. People compare them to Nazis because they are today's Nazis, but also because our popular consciousness of historical villains is severely limited and drawn mainly from fictional, tropey portrayals
It’s because, just like now, in the 1930s it spilled over to affect ‘regular’ people. They happily overlook our suffering if there’s no chance it will effect them
I think another useful comparison in American history is the McCarthyism and the HUAC. The conflation of LGBT Americans as communists and as inherently disloyal and untrustworthy. The creation of blacklists and witchhunts, the denial of government jobs.
I mean, let's think about it specifically with this election. Trump decides he's going to campaign about deporting 11 million people, Hitler "deported" 12 million. Elon is the richest man on earth, his family had/has interest in Nazis. Trump just basically pulled the enabling act of 1933
Which we'll see how long that one gets blocked. The institute of sexology was burned before everything happened, here we got the scrub of trans people from existence. I don't see how you can't make the parallel. Like, sure there's other events similar but this is one I thought we regularly taught.
But we appear to just not teach about shit like Operation Paperclip where we decided to ignore orders about not hiring Nazis and hired Nazis anyway. I'm calling it Nazis and 1930s Germany because this all may as well be a direct result. We hired Nazis for the space race.
But it's not just about the books the speaker's read. It's also about the audience.
If I said that Trump's 2020 loss caused an accelerated change in governance, effectively collapsing Putin's changes in Russia from 1996-2014 into 4 yrs, then BOOM enacting them in 5 weeks - who would hear what?
You're not wrong that there are other relevant parallels, perhaps even better ones, but if they are far lesser known then they have academic/analytic power but not *rhetorical* power and thus will not see use in mass media (or social media).
A Black person just made the same argument above you in my timeline, "why are you talking about Germany when we have our own history of the same thing happening here?"
I think there's not been enough discussion about the Jim Crow South being the model for what's happening now. Erode legal protections and encourage enough stochastic violence to cow an underclass into compliance.
I've become slowly more amenable to the comparison in the sense that it a) has genuinely grown more accurate, and b) is a form of rhetoric that reaches most Americans in their propagandized state, wherein Nazis are bad (enemy of America) but Joseph McCarthy is not (proud American)
It was the urgency of Palestine where I really started to internalize this degree to which language was a strategy. Are we trying to educate the slumbering giant of American moderates (over years, decades), or activate them (tomorrow, now, at this rally)?
I think people having a strong association with 1930s Germany is pretty logical given that this presidential administration opened with a vigorous Nazi salute. I agree there are other comparables but they’ve literally told us what their playbook is.
1) Hitler was literally inspired by American racism and American racist atrocities
2) The deliberate destruction and repression of information about LGBT topics, particularly trans topics, directly parallels early Nazi actions
part of it is definitely people trying to put evil in the Nazi Germany box, so we can ignore / pretend it doesn't come from American systems and structures (among others). Definitely the same unintended consequence was served by all the (good, necessary, useful!) holocaust remembrance.
I think part of what people are looking for is an incident that captures the total remaking of government in tandem with targeted attacks on specific minority populations and I don’t know that there is an American equivalent. One could point to the end of Reconstruction but I don’t think it does it.
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Perhaps we do not have enough information / literature / data / studies on Putin's Russia to draw a conclusion...?
It has even more criming and corruption. Plus modern age police state suppression technology.
The parallel doesn't have to be a 100% match to 1930's, even trans people aside, once every institution fails, and every court allows this to continue, what's stopping, for example, the US from walking into Canada like it was Austria?
If I said that Trump's 2020 loss caused an accelerated change in governance, effectively collapsing Putin's changes in Russia from 1996-2014 into 4 yrs, then BOOM enacting them in 5 weeks - who would hear what?
2) The deliberate destruction and repression of information about LGBT topics, particularly trans topics, directly parallels early Nazi actions
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Institut_für_Sexualwissenschaft