#and the condemnation of the left and of people standing up against genocide as bigots that lie in bed with terrorists while also saying

[the-light-of-stars]

It took a while to translate but here is the link to an article that transcribed the German Vice-Chancellor's speech from yesterday evening, in which he makes clear his and the government's stance as completely on the side of Israel, saying that there are no 'both sides' but only one.

Mind, the points made about the horror of antisemitism and how antisemitic bigotry and violence have to be prevented are true, antisemitism is terrible and just like any bigotry cannot be tolerated, however the clearly one sided approach, the criminalisation of anticolonialist/pro-palestinian demonstrations as 'islamistic and glorifying terror' , the clearly biased, racist descriptions as only (!) Hamas' actions as barbaric and 'beastly' while completely endorsing Israel's attack on civilians as not only justified but as a safety measure whose support must be germany's main goal, the downplaying of palestinian deaths as sad but not as important as israeli lives, the threat that attending pro-palestine demonstrations will lead to prosecution by law and for non-german citizens to potential deportation, the claim that 'certainly muslims in germany have a right of protection from right wing attacks but if they don't condemn the protests now this right is waived' while at the same time stating there is no space for religious intolerance in germany , the condemnation of showings of solidarity after racist attacks being made quickly in contrast to solidarity with israel being rarer, are frankly terrifying and the use of antisemitism and the real fears and anxieties of jewish people as a moral shield - especially when so many jewish people are protesting for the rights of palestinians in New York and around the world, and especially considering Habeck's notion that antisemitism has come back to germany only now in the wake of the palestine protests, when for years the german government has done nothing to prevent far right antisemitism and in fact allowed and still allows white supremacist demonstrations under the right of free speech and with police protection - is upsetting and jewish people deserve so much better than to be used to justify racist and islamophobic crackdowns on minorities and people protesting genocide by politicians that only care about antisemitism when it can be used or the topic is making headlines.

Anyways, here is an english translation of the whole article under the cut - paragraphs in round brackets () are part of the article but not part of the speech, paragraphs in square brackets [] are context explanations by me for those readers who aren't german. Important to note that when the terms "jewish people" or "the jewish community" are used it is not a literal translation since the literal translation of the words Habeck , german vice chancellor, used ( "Juden und Jüdinnen" and "Judentum" ) literally translate to "jews and jewesses" and "jew-dom" which are the politicially correct terms in german but to my awareness are not politically correct to use in direct english translation, so I changed those. Boldening is mine as well.

(In a video Vice-chancellor and federal minister of economy Robert Habeck has expressed himself about the war in near-east and to antisemitism in Germany. His speech is much observed. Here it is in direct transcript.

Vice-chancellor federal minister of economy Robert Habeck has has called his much-observed video about solidarity with Isreal and the jewish people a contribution [of opinion] , of which there can't be enough. After many talks with representatives of the jewish community and jewish friends over the weekend he has given thoughts to "detangle the convoluted debate situation a bit" , as the Greens-politician said on Thursday.

In a video that his ministry had shared on X (formerly Twitter) on wednesday evening Habeck had admonished antisemitism in Germany harshly and urged for solidarity with jewish people in Germany. According to the platform until thursday morning this video has already been watched more than four million times and has been shared thousands of times. Politicians, also of the CDU [conservative/ center-right party] , have lauded the appeal.

Here the speech in direct transcript:)

"The terror attack by Hamas on Isreal has now been almost four weeks ago. A lot has since happened: politically though mostly for the people, so many people whose lives are eaten up by fear and sorrow. The public debate has heated up since the attack, in parts it is convoluted. With this video I want to make a contribution to untangle it.

(Habeck: Jewish people in Germany are afraid)

To me, too much seems to be mixed up too fast. The sentence "The security of Israel is german Reason of State" was never an empty phrase and must not become one. It says that the security of Israel is necessary for us as a state. This special relationship with Israel grows from our historical responsibility: it was the generation of my grandparents who wanted to exterminate jewish life in Germany and Europe. The founding of Israel was after this, after the holocaust, the promise of protection for the jewish people - and Germany is bound to help that this promise can be made reality. This is a historical foundation of this republic.

The responsibility of our history also means that jewish people in Germany can live free and secure. That they never have to be afraid again to show their religion and culture openly. But this fear has come back now.

Recently I have met with members of the jewish community in Frankfurt. In an intense and painful talk the community representatives told me that their children are afraid of going to school, that they don't go to sports club meetings, that they - on their parents suggestion - leave the necklace with the star of David at home. Today, here in Germany, almost 80 years after the holocaust.

(Contextualisation must not lead to relativisation)

They told me that they themselves are afraid of stepping into a taxi [for context: a lot of german taxi drivers are members of muslim minorities, mostly turkish] , that they aren't sending letters with their addresses on them anymore, to protect their recipients. Today, here in Germany, almost 80 years after the holocaust.

And one jewish friend told me about his fear, his despair, his feelings of loneliness.

The jewish communities are warning their members to avoid certain places - for their own safety. And this today, here in germany, almost 80 years after the holocaust.

The antisemitism shows in protests, it shows in statements, it shows in attacks on jewish stores, in threats. While there quickly are waves of solidarity when it comes to racist attacks , this solidarity is very brittle when it comes to Israel. Then it is said 'the context is complicated' . But here contextualisation mustn't lead to relativisation.

Certainly there is often too much outrage in our culture of debate. But here we cannot be outraged enough. It now needs clarity and no obfusciation. And part of this clarity is: antisemitism must not be tolerated in any form - in none of them.

(There is no space in Germany for religious intolerance)

The extent of the islamistic demonstrations in Berlin and other german cities is unacceptable and requires a hard political answer. It also needs it from the muslim communities. Some have decidedly distanced themselves from the actions of Hamas and from antisemitism, have reached out for conversation. But not all of them, and some too hesitantly and, in my opinion, generally too few of them.

The muslims living here have a right to be protected from far right violence, rightfully so. When they get attacked this right must be cashed in and they must now cash out the same thing, when jewish people are getting attacked. They must decidedly distance themselves from antisemitism now to not lose their own right on tolerance. There is no space in Germany for religious intolerance. Those who live here live here according to the rules of the country. And those who come here also must know that this is how it is and that it will be enforced.

(Habeck warns of 'entrenched antisemitism' in germany)

Our constitution protects and gives rights, but it also issues responsibilities that have to be fulfilled by everyone. You cannot separate one from the other. In this case tolerance cannot bear intolerance. This is the core of our living-together in this republic.

This means: the burning of israeli flags is a crime, the lauding of the terror of hamas is a crime as well. Those who are german will have to account for this in court, those who aren't german additionally risk their status of residence [that is, their right to stay living in germany]. For those who don't have a status of residence yet [that is, refugees] , this gives a reason to be deported.

(Anticolonialism mustn't lead to antisemitism)

The islamist antisemitism should not cover up that even in Germany we have entrenched antisemitism: it's just that the far right are currently holding back on it out of purely tactical reasons, so they can agitate against muslims [context: a lot of germany's far right tends to be pro-Israel] . The relativisation of the second world war, of the nazi regime as a 'fly's shit' [context: far right groups tend to deny the holocaust or call it 'just a fly's shit on history', 'fly's shit' here being a common phrase to mean 'an annoying but negligible tiny little issue'] isn't just a relativisation of the holocaust, it is a punch into the face of the victims and survivors.

Everyone that listens can and must know this. The second world war was a war-of-extermination against jewish people. For the nazi regime the extermination of the european jewish peoples was the main goal. And because there are quite a few Putin friends among the far right: Putin lets himself get photographed with representatives of Hamas and the iranian government and laments the civilian victims in the Gaza strip while creating civilian victims in Ukraine. His friends in germany are certainly not friends of jewish people.

But I am also worried about the antisemitism in parts of the political left , sadly especially amongst young activists. Anticolonialism shouldn't lead to antisemitism. Thus this part of the left should check their arguments and should not trust the great tale of [anticolonial] resistance. The 'both sides' argument here leads astray. The Hamas is a murderous terror-group who fights for the eradication of the state of Israel and the death of all jewish people. On the other hand the clarity with which for example the german section of Fridays for Future has stated this [that is, the aforementioned statement about Hamas as well as there not being two sides to the situation] even in disagreement with their international friends is more than commendable.

( It was Hamas that beast-like murdered children, parents, grandparents in their homes )

When I briefly was in Turkey, I was reproached about the fact that in Germany pro-Palestine demonstrations are prohibited. And that Germany should also extend its humanitarian efforts towards the people in Gaza. I explained that of course criticism of Israel is allowed here. And that it isn't prohibited to speak up about the rights of Palestinians and their right to their own state. But this call to violence against jewish people and this celebration of violence against jewish people are prohibited - and rightly so!

Sure, life in Gaza is a life without perspectives and in poverty. Sure, the settlement movement in the West Bank is causing strife and takes the hope and rights of Palestinians and increasingly also lives. And the suffering of the civilian populace now in war is a fact, an awful fact. Every dead child is one too many. Even I call for humanitarian aid and advocate for water, medicine and aid to come to Gaza and that the refugees are protected.

(Habeck: The security of Israel is our responsibilty, Germany knows this)

But together with our American friends we continually ensure Israel that the protection of their civilian populace is vital. Sure the death and suffering that now is coming over the people in the Gaza strip is bad. To say that is necessary and legitimate. But this does not legitimize systematic violence against jewish people. It does not justify antisemitism. Of course Israel should hold itself to international law and international standards. But the difference is: Who would ever formulate such demands towards the Hamas?

And because abroad I recently was confronted with how the attack on Israel from the 7th of October has been trivialised as an - quote - "unfortunate incident" , yes even the facts of it had been questioned, here once again to call it back to memory: It was Hamas who like beasts murdered children, parents and grandparents at home. Whose fighters have mutilated corpses, kidnapped humans and , laughing, exposed them to public humiliation. These are reports of pure horror - and still people celebrate Hamas as a freedom movement? That is a reversal of facts that we cannot leave standing.

And this brings me to my last point: The attack on Israel happens in a phase of an approach of multiple muslim states towards Israel. There is the Abraham-agreement between Israel and muslim states in the region. Jordan and Israel are working together on a big drinking water project. Saudi-Arabia was on its way to normalise its relation to Israel. But a peaceful cooperation of isreal and its neighbors, of jews and muslims, the perspective of a two-state solution - all of this the Hamas and its supporters, especially the iranian government, do not want. They want to destroy it.

Those who have not lost the hope for peace in the region, who believes in the palestinian's right to an own state and a true perspective - and we do - must differentiate in these weeks of trial. And to this differentiation belongs that the murderous deeds of Hamas want to prevent peace. Hamas does not want reconciliation with Israel, but the destruction of Israel. And that's why it is uncompromisable: Israel's right to existence must not be relativized. The security of Israel is our main responsibility, Germany knows this. "

[neverlandnightingale]

As a "progressive christian", do you spend more time smugly telling the victims of your religion "not ALL christians are bad", or more time doing anything at all to stop the vast vast majority of christians who are bigots? Guessing its the first based on your blog...

I’m not sure if you’ve come from a specific comment section or are just stopping by? I don’t typically respond to anonymous comments but I wanted to take this opportunity to detail a bit of my faith on my blog.

I sometimes leave comments about how I don’t believe being queer is a sin, not to be smug, but to bring hopefully a little encouragement to the many people who’ve been persecuted by the church for their queerness. I believe it’s my job as a Christian to give people the love and affirmation that the church has unfortunately denied them. I apologize if I said something that came off as snarky and self-righteous, I can assure that wasn’t my intent. It’s also been a part of my personal journey coming out of an evangelical upbringing to learn that it is homophobic for Christians to say it’s a sin to be queer even if they claim to love the queer person regardless, so I leave comments like that on the off-chance that someone in a position similar to where I used to be can have an opportunity to question the bigoted things they’ve been taught.

I leave “progressive Christian” in my bio because I do occasionally reblog posts about my faith but I want to reassure my non-Christian followers that just because I’m posting about my faith doesn’t mean I’m about to turn around and start condemning them. I also reblog stuff about queer Christians specifically so it’s a signal to queer Christians that my blog is safe for them. I also do have it there also to ward off the conservative evangelical Christians on Tumblr who occasionally come across my blog so they know I’m not a safe person for their bigotry. But ultimately I think it’s a bit more important and more radical to spread love and acceptance to those who who’ve been hurt by the church rather than to go out looking for fights on my blog.

As anyone in activism can tell you, you can’t accurately glean someone’s commitment to a cause by their online presence because so much of activism requires real-world application. I don’t typically come onto Tumblr to preach and my blog is a collection of just about everything I find interesting, so you don’t see a lot of me telling-off bigoted Christians here. I am excited to say I’ve recently left my childhood church and found an open and affirming church to join (and not one who just claims to be, but follows through by having queer people and women in leadership positions and regularly participates in real-world activism and community service). I’ve had a lot of tough conversations with Christians about my progressivism, some who’ve agreed and changed their views and some who haven’t. We all do the best we can to make the world a better place. I do my best to stand up against bigotry in the church, and for me that’s largely meant leaving the church that was a second home to me and that my family has a lot of influence in and instead supporting my trans brother to transphobic parents. It’s also meant advocating for Indigenous American communities since I’ve learned more about their genocide and mistreatment from the church specifically. I agree that it’s the responsibility of Christians to combat the bigotry that’s deeply rooted in much of modern Christianity and I hope to do my part to help in that.

[radfemandreadaly]

The news that Jorg Haider - the Austrian fascist leader - spent his final few hours in a gay bar with a hot blond has shocked some people. It hasn't shocked me. This is a taboo topic for a gay left-wing man like me to touch, but there has always been a weird, disproportionate overlap between homosexuality and fascism. Take a deep breath; here goes.

Some 10,000 gay people were slaughtered in the Nazi death-camps. Many more were humiliated, jailed, deported, ethnically cleansed, or castrated. One gay survivor of the camps, LD Classen von Neudegg, has written about his experiences. A snapshot: "Three men had tried to escape one night. They were captured, and when they returned they had the word 'homo' scrawled across their clothing. They were placed on a block and whipped. Then they were forced to beat a drum and cheer, 'Hurrah! We're back! Hurrah!' Then they were hanged." This is one of the milder events documented in his book. So the idea of a gay fascist seems ridiculous. Yet when the British National Party - our own home-grown Holocaust-denying bigots - announced it was fielding an openly gay candidate in the European elections this June, dedicated followers of fascism didn't blink. The twisted truth is that gay men have been at the heart of every major fascist movement that ever was - including the gay-gassing, homo-cidal Third Reich. With the exception of Jean-Marie Le Pen, all the most high-profile fascists in Europe in the past thirty years have been gay. It's time to admit something. Fascism isn't something that happens out there, a nasty habit acquired by the straight boys. It is - in part, at least - a gay thing, and it's time for non-fascist gay people to wake up and face the marching music. Just look at our own continent over the past decade. Dutch fascist Pim Fortuyn ran on blatantly racist anti-immigrant platform, describing Islam as "a cancer" and "the biggest threat to Western civilisation today." Yet with two little fluffy dogs and a Mamma complex, he was openly, flamboyantly gay. When accused by a political opponent of hating Arabs, he replied, "How can I hate Arabs? I sucked one off last night."

Jorg Haider blasted Austria's cosy post-Nazi politics to rubble in 2000 when his neo-fascist 'Freedom Party' won a quarter of the vote and joined the country's government as a coalition partner. Several facts always cropped up in the international press coverage: his square jaw, his muscled torso, his SS-supporting father, his rabid anti-Semitism, his hatred of immigrants, his description of Auschwitz and Dachau as "punishment centres". A few newspapers mentioned that he is always surrounded by fit, fanatical young men. A handful went further and pointed out that several of these young men are openly gay. Then one left-wing German paper broke the story everybody else was hinting at. They alleged Haider is gay. Rumours of an Indian waiter with "intimate details" of Haider's body broke into the press. The Freedom Party's general manager Gerald Miscka quickly quit, amid accusations that he was Haider's lover. Haider's close gay friend Walter Kohler - who has been photographed showing off a holstered pistol while Haider chuckled - declared his opposition to outing politicians. Haider - who was married and has two children - kept quiet while his functionaries denied the rumours. The revelation that he died after leaving a gay bar suggests these rumours were true.

On and on it goes. If you inter-railed across Europe, only stopping with gay fascists, there aren't many sights you'd miss. France's leading post-war fascist was Edouard Pfieffer, who was not batting for the straight side. Germany's leading neo-Nazi all through the eighties was called Michael Kuhnen; he died of AIDS in 1991 a few years after coming out. Martin Lee, author of a study of European fascism, explains, "For Kuhnen, there was something supermacho about being a Nazi, as well as being a homosexual, both of which enforced his sense of living on the edge, of belonging to an elite that was destined to make an impact. He told a West German journalist that homosexuals were 'especially well-suited for our task, because they do not want ties to wife, children and family.'" And it wouldn't be long before your whistlestop tour arrived in Britain. At first glance, our Nazis seem militantly straight. They have tried to disrupt gay parades, describe gay people as "evil", and BNP leader Nick Griffin reacted charmingly to the bombing of the Admiral Duncan pub in 1999 with a column saying, "The TV footage of gay demonstrators [outside the scene of carnage] flaunting their perversion in front of the world's journalists showed just why so many ordinary people find these creatures repulsive."

But scratch to homophobic surface and there's a spandex swastika underneath. In 1999, Martin Webster, a former National Front organiser and head honcho in the British fascist movement, wrote a four-page pamphlet detailing his 'affair' with Nick Griffin. "Griffin sought out intimate relations with me," openly-gay Webster explained, "in the late 1970s. He was twenty years younger than me." Ray Hill, who infiltrated the British fascist movement for twelve years to gather information for anti-fascist groups, says it's all too plausible. Homosexuality is "extremely prevalent" in the upper echelons of the British far right, and at one stage in the 1980s nearly half of the movement's organisers were gay, he claims.  

Gerry Gable, editor of the anti-fascist magazine 'Searchlight', explains, "I have looked at Britain's Nazi groups for decades and this homophobic hypocrisy has been there all the time. I cannot think of any organisation on the extreme right that hasn't attacked people on the grounds of their sexual preference and at the same time contained many gay officers and activists."

Griffins' alleged gay affair would stand in a long British fascist tradition. The leader of the skinhead movement all through the 1970s was a crazed, muscled thug called Nicky Crane. He was the icon of a reactionary backlash against immigrants, feminism and the 'hippy' lifetsyle of the 1960s. His movement's emphasis on conformity to a shaven, dehumanised norm resembled classical fascist movements; Crane soon became a campaigner and leading figure in the National Front. Oh, and he was gay. Before he died of AIDS in the mid-1980s, Crane came out and admitted he had starred in many gay porn videos. Just before he died in 1986, he was allowed to steward a Gay Pride march in London, even though he still said he was "proud to be a fascist." The rubber-soled friction between gay fascists and progressive British gay people sparked into anger in 1985 when the Gay Skinhead Movement organised a disco at London's Gay Centre. Several lesbians in particular objected to the "invasion" of the centre. They felt that the cult of "real men" and hypermasculine thugs was stirring up the most base feelings "in the very place, the gay movement, where you would least expect them." And this Gaystapo has an icon to revere, an alternative Fuhrer to worship: the lost gay fascist leader Ernst Rohm. Along with Adolf Hitler, Rohm was the founding father of Nazism. Born to conservative Bavarian civil servants in 1887, Ernst Rohm's life began - in his view - in the "heroic" trenches of the First World War. Like so many of the generation who formed the Nazi Party, he was nurtured by and obsessed with the homoerotic myth of the trenches - heroic, beautiful boys prepared to die for their brothers and their country.   He emerged from the war with a bullet-scarred face and a reverence for war. As he put it in his autobiography, "Since I am an immature and wicked man, war and unrest appeal to me more than the good bourgeois order." After being disbanded, he tried half-heartedly to get a foothold in civilian life, but he saw it as alien, bourgeois, boring. He had no political beliefs, only prejudices - particularly hatred of Jews. Historian Joachim Fest describes Rohm's generation of alienated, demobbed young men humiliated by defeat as "agents of a permanent revolution without any revolutionary idea of the future, only a wish to eternalize the values of the trenches." It was Rohm who first spotted the potential of a soap-box ranter called Adolf Hitler. He saw him as the demagogue he needed to mobilize support for his plan to overthrow democracy and establish a "soldier's state" where the army ruled untrammelled. He introduced the young fascist to local politicians and military leaders; they knew him for many years as "Rohm's boy." Gay historian Frank Rector notes, "Hitler was, to a substantial extent, Rohm's protégé." Rohm integrated Hitler into his underground movement to overthrow the Weimar Republic. Rohm's blatant, out homosexuality seems bizarre now, given the gay genocide that was to follow. He talked openly about his fondness for gay bars and Turkish baths, and was known for his virility. He believed that gay people were superior to straights, and saw homosexuality as a key principle of his proposed Brave New Fascist Order. As historian Louis Snyder explains, Rohm "projected a social order in which homosexuality would be regarded as a human behaviour pattern of high repute... He flaunted his homosexuality in public and insisted his cronies do the same. He believed straight people weren't as adept at bullying and aggression as homosexuals, so homosexuality was given a high premium in the SA." They promoted an aggressive, hypermasculine form of homosexuality, condemning "hysterical women of both sexes", in reference to feminine gay men. This belief in the superiority of homosexuality had a strong German tradition that grew up at the turn of the twentieth century around Adolf Brand, publisher of the country's first gay magazine. You could call it 'Queer as Volk': they preached that gay men were the foundation of all nation-states and represented an elite, warrior caste that should rule. They venerated the ancient warrior cults of Sparta, Thebes and Athens.

Rohm often referred to the ancient Greek tradition of sending gay solider couples into battle, because they were believed to be the most ferocious fighters. The famous pass of Thermopylae, for example was held by 300 soldiers - who consisted of 150 gay couples. In its early years, the SA - Hitler and Rohm's underground army - was seen as predominantly gay. Rohm assigned prominent posts to his lovers, making Edmund Heines his deputy and Karl Ernst the SA commander in Berlin. The organisation would sometimes meet in gay bars. The gay art historian Christian Isermayer said in an interview, "I got to know people in the SA. They used to throw riotous parties even in 1933... I once attended one. It was quite well-behaved but thoroughly gay. But then, in those days, the SA was ultra-gay." On June 30th 1934, Rohm was awoken in a Berlin hotel by Hitler himself. He sprang to his feet and saluted, calling, "Heil Mein Fuhrer!" Hitler said simply, "You are under arrest," and with that he left the room, giving orders for Rohm to be taken to Standelheim prison. He was shot that night. Rohm was the most high-profile kill in the massacre known as 'the Night of the Long Knives'.   Rohm had been suspected by Hitler of disloyalty, but his murder began a massive crackdown on gay people. Heinrich Himmler, head of the Gestapo, described homosexuality as "a symptom of degeneracy that could destroy our race. We must return to the guiding Nordic principle: extermination of degenerates." German historian Lothar Machtan argues that Hitler had Rohm - and almost all of the large number of gay figures within the SA - killed to silence speculation about his own homosexual experiences. His 'evidence' for Hitler being gay is shaky and has been questioned by many historians, although some of his findings are at least suggestive. A close friend of Hitler's during his teenager years, August Kubizek, alleged a "romantic" affair between them. Hans Mend, a despatch rider who served alongside Hitler in the First World War, claimed to have seen Hitler having sex with a man. Hitler was certainly very close to several gay men, and never seems to have had a normal sexual relationship with a woman, not even his wife, Eva Braun. Rudolph Diels, the founder of the Gestapo, recorded some of Hitler's private thoughts on homosexuality. "It had destroyed ancient Greece, he said. Once rife, it extended its contagious effects like an ineluctable law of nature to the best and most manly of characters, eliminating from the breeding pool the very men the Volk most needs." This idea - that homosexuality is 'contagious' and, implicitly, tempting - is revealing. Rohm is venerated on the Homo-Nazi sites that have bred on the internet like germs in a wound. They have names like Gays Against Semitism (with the charming acronym GAS), and the Aryan Resistance Corps (ARC). Their Rohmite philosophy is simple: while white men are superior to other races, gay men are "the masters of the Master Race". They alone are endowed with the "capacity for pure male bonding" and the "superior intellect" that is needed for "a fascist revolution." The ARC even organises holiday "get-togethers" for its members where "you can relax amongst the company of our fellow white brothers." So it's fairly easy to establish that gay people are not inoculated from fascism. They have often been at its heart. This begs the bigger question: why? How did gay people - so often victims of oppression and hate - become integral to the most hateful and evil political movement of all? Is it just an extreme form of self-harm, the political equivalent to the gay kids who slash their own arms to ribbons out of self-hate?   Gay pornographer and film-maker Bruce LaBruce has one explanation. He claims that "all gay porn today is implictly fascist. Fascism is in our bones, because it's all about glorifying white male supremacy and fetishizing domination, cruelty, power and monstrous authority figures." He has tried to explore the relationship between homosexuality and fascism in his movies, beginning with 'No Skin Off My Ass' in 1991. In his disturbing 1999 film "Skin Flick', a bourgeois gay couple - one black, one white - are sexually terrorised by a gang of gay skinheads who beat off to 'Mein Kampf' and beat up 'femmes'. He implies that bourgeois gay norms quickly break down to reveal a fascist lurking underneath; the movie ends with the black character being raped in front of his half-aroused white lover, as the racist gang chant, "Fuck the monkey." I decided to track down some gay fascists and ask them directly. Wyatt Powers, director of the ARC, says, "I always knew in my heart racist and gay were both morally right. I don't see any conflict between them. It's only the Jew-owned gay press that tries to convince us that racialism is the same thing as homophobia. You can be an extreme nationalist and gay without any contradiction at all."   One comment board on a gay racist website goes even further into racist lunacy. One gay man from Ohio says, "Even if you are gay and white, or retarded and white, YOU ARE WHITE, BOTTOM LINE! Instead of letting the white race go extinct because of worthless races such as the Africans or Mexicans popping out literally millions of babies a day, we have to fight this fucked up shit they are doing. They are raping our country." It's true that racism and homophobia do not necessarily overlap - but as Rabbi Bernard Melchman explains, "Homophobia and anti-Semitism are so often part of the same disease." Racists are usually homophobic. Even after reading all their web rantings, I didn't feel any closer to understanding why so many gay men ally themselves with people who will almost always turn on them in the end, just as the Nazis did. Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has a sensitive and intriguing explanation. "There are many reasons for this kind of thing," he says. "Some of them are in denial. They are going for hyper-masculinity, the most extreme possible way of being a man. It's a way of ostentatiously rejecting the perceived effeminacy of the homosexual 'Other'. These troubled men have a simple belief in their minds: 'Straight men are tough. Queers are weak. Therefore if I'm tough I can't be queer.' It's a desperate way of proving their manhood." 'Searchlight' magazine - the bible of the British anti-fascist movement, with moles in every major far-right organisation - offers an alternative explanation. "Generally condemned by a society that continues to be largely hostile to gays, some men may find refuge and a new power status in the far right," one of their writers has explained. "Through adherence to the politics espoused by fascist groups, a new identity emerges - one where they aren't outcasts, because they are White Men, superior to everyone else. They render the gay part of their identity invisible - or reject the socially less acceptable parts, like being feminine - while vaunting what they see as superior." But there's another important question: will fascist movements inevitably turn on gay people? In the case of the Nazis, it seems to have been fairly arbitrary; Hitler's main reason for killing Rohm was unrelated to his sexuality. From my perspective as a progressive-minded leftie, all fascism is evil; but should all gay people see it as inimical to their interests? Is it possible to have a gay fascist who wasn't acting against his own interests? Fascism is often defined as "a political ideology advocating hierarchical government that systematically denies equality to certain groups." It's true that this hierarchy could benefit gay people at the expense of, say, black people. But given the prevalence of homophobia, isn't that - even for people who don't see fascism as inherently evil - a terrible risk to take? Won't a culture that turns viciously on one minority get around to gay people in the end? This seems, ultimately, to be the lesson of Ernst Rohm's pitiful, squalid little life. The growing awareness of the role gay men play in fascist movements has been abused by some homophobes. In an especially nutty work of revisionist history called 'The Pink Swastika', the 'historian' Scott Lively tries to blame gay people for the entire Holocaust, and describes the murder of gay men in the camps as merely "gay-on-gay violence." A typical website commenting on the book claims absurdly, "The Pink Swastika shows that there was far more brutality, rape, torture and murder committed against innocent people by Nazi homosexuals than there even was against homosexuals themselves." Yet we can't allow these madmen to prevent a period of serious self-reflection from the gay movement. If Bruce LaBruce is right, many of the mainstream elements of gay culture - body worship, the lauding of the strong, a fetish for authority figures and cruelty - provide a swamp in which the fascist virus can thrive. Do some gay people really still need to learn that fascists will not bring on a Fabulous Solution for gay people, but a Final Solution for us all?

Johann Hari is a writer for the Independent newspaper. To read more of his articles, click here.

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PSA: If You Exploit The Death of Children, You Are Literal Human Garbage

On Monday evening, a bomb exploded at an Ariana Grande concert in Manchester, England, in what is now being described as a terrorist attack. 22 people perished, with several more injured, in the most deadly incident of terror to strike the U.K. since 2005.Heartbreakingly, several of those targeted and injured were young girls out to enjoy an unforgettable evening of pop music, many with their families. In a message posted online, ISIS claimed responsibility for the attack.

The event struck a sorrowful chord with the entire world, and solidarity, grief and support were quick to pour in. However, with the hurt and heartbreak also came the inevitable ugly reactions from hate-mongers on the right, who were eager immediately to turn the deaths of young concert-goers into political capital. Piers Morgan, Britain’s bigot-in-chief, took less than twenty-four hours after the attack to condemn the ‘Muslim community’ for not ‘weeding out’ those whose brains had been ‘warped.’ Vitriolic newspaper columnist Katie Hopkins, meanwhile, took it two rungs up on the Pyramid of Hate from discrimination to a call for genocide, tweeting that the U.K. needed a “final solution“—  you read that right— to the problem of Muslim terrorism. Hopkins has been reported to the police for her words. Meanwhile, another newspaper columnist, Allison Pearson, called for a Japanese internment style mass internment of Muslims in response to the attack. And because Fox News can never be left out of the fun, anchor Geraldo Rivera chose to use the grief of families losing teenage girls to paint the entire city of Manchester as a ‘hotbed of Islamic radicals.’

We’ve been reminded time and again that such dramatic, bigoted and sweeping remarks feed right into the strategies employed by terrorist groups, and are exactly the kind of divisive reaction they seek from their attacks. We’ve been consistently told that Islamophobia plays right into the terrorist narrative, and makes the soil fertile for further growth of domestic and international terrorism.

But it isn’t just strategic choices that must guide our response to the attacks. It must be our sense of empathy, for the victims and the grieving families, and the city of Manchester — one of England’s most diverse. It must be our sense of ethics, from refraining from using violence to feed convenient political narratives at the helm of a general election. It must be our sense of basic human decency, to recognize the humanity of the victims who deserve to be cherished and not used, and to recognize the humanity of the Muslim community who form an integral part of Manchester and who were quick to condemn the attack, help people back to safety, raise money for those affected, and live now in fear of additional hatred, violence and backlash.

It is the lowest, basest form of reactionary political cowardice to exploit the slaughter of young girls to further a narrow-minded political agenda.

This argument is not to say that no political analysis should be given to the causes of any tragic incident, or that we should not be thinking about the ways in which further violence can be stopped. Large scale violence that targets women, for example, must be analyzed for the links it has to toxic masculinity. We cannot ignore how the lessons that we teach young men can influence the ways in which they grow up to enact violence on to women. Mass shootings must prompt a discussion on gun ownership because we must understand how easy access to guns is directly, statistically and verifiably correlated to increased deaths. That fix is legislative and relatively uncomplicated.

What we face here is an entirely different situation. What chauvinists like Hopkins or Morgan desire is not an honest analysis of the complex geopolitical roots of terrorism, but an excuse to demonize an entire ethnicity of people. There’s no analogy between asking for a cultural change in patriarchal attitudes, or for laws regulating the purchase of an item, and asking for multiple communities of people — who only have a religion in common — to be incarcerated, increasingly surveilled and discriminated against.

The use of young girls is especially vile. Not only are young women always exploited to be an excuse for bigotry — see for example transphobic bathroom policies — but the policies that these right wing commentators push for have a direct impact on the lives of other young girls — the women and children who suffer under Islamophobic policies. To pit the lives of some young girls against others and in the name of some sort of feminist protection of these girls is both divisive and disgusting.

The good news is that the city of Manchester seems to have overwhelmingly rejected this divisive, bigoted and hateful politics. When protestors from the English Defense League  — a xenophobic ‘Britain First’ right-wing group — attempted to hold a display in the city following the attack, they were outnumbered by Mancunians condemning their message. Reuters recorded one man saying to the protesters, ‘‘The people of Manchester don’t stand with your xenophobia and racism.’ Messages of #standtogether abound on social media, while faith leaders are planning a unified action to reassure and console their respective communities.

It is in times of deep despair that the character of society is truly tested. We must ask ourselves not only how we will emerge after an incident like this, but also how we will quell hate in the wake of such horror. We must condemn, banish and exile the likes of Piers Morgan, Katie Hopkins and Geraldo Rivera from the public eye. There must be consequences for callously exploiting the death of children, and we cannot let them do so in vain and throw it in our faces. In the wake of Monday evening in Manchester, we cannot stand for any forms of terrorism that follow.

Header image via

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Pamela Geller -> CUNY is standing by its decision to honor pro-terror, sharia activist Linda Sarour. The norming of evil.

http://www.hoaxandchange.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/woman_in_saudi_arabia_beheaded.mp4

ISIS Terror Allahs law – beheading

ISIS Head Syrian Refugee at HoaxAndChange.com

ISIS heads on a fence @ HoaxandChange.com

  AFDI PROTEST SARSOUR AT CUNY

  CUNY is standing by its decision to honor pro-terror, sharia activist Linda Sarour. The norming of evil.

  They disinvited Ayaan Hirsi Ali, Nonie Darwish, Ann Coulter, Milos, legions of conservative thinkers and voices in defense of freedom, but a vicious, pro-sharia, Jew hater they will defend to the death and that is it right there. They fear jihad. They fear Islamic supremacists. They know no harm with come to them if they smear, defame, libel or cancel us. They know we don’t destroy, maim, behead like Sarsour supporters and their violent running dogs on the left.

  Such sanction is so malignant and so evil, it cannot be ignored. There is a responsibility for the time we are living in. Ayn Rand said, “evil is made possible by the sanction youn give it. Withdraw your sanction.”

  We will be there. We will protest — this will not stand. Be there —

June 1st, Harlem’s Apollo Theater at 253 West 125th Street, from 5 – 7:30pm. RSVP on Facebook (click here) .

Let’s call upon President Trump to stop taxpayer funding of terror supporting universities.

Here is Sarsour’s twitter feed:

The left’s chokehold on the nation’s most powerful institutions continues despite a Trump presidency and a Republican Congress, but this is a step too far. My colleagues and I are blacklisted from speaking at almost everywhere because we stand in defense of freedom and oppose jihad terror and sharia. Anytime we are scheduled to speak, terror-tied Islamic groups and their supremacist leaders demand we be cancelled. But this annihilationist is being given the honor of commencement speaker?

     The mainstreaming of evil leads to an unimaginable end. My colleagues and I have been demonized, marginalized and defamed by the enemedia and the cultural elites, while terrorists and their promoters enjoy promotion by these same quislings. Anyone who doesn’t think academia is aligned with the jihad force is deluded. Stop taxpayer funding of these hotbeds of radical inculcation.

Adolf Hitler and his violent, antisemitic political party the Deutsche Arbeiterpartei – DAP (German Socialist Workers’ Party) — were on the outer fringe of German society until he was invited to join mainstream parties in opposition to the Versailles Treaty. Inviting Hitler to join mainstream political parties in supporting the German referendum of 1929 was key, as it gained the Nazi Party recognition and credibility it could never have hoped to have gained on its own. Influential German businessman and politician Alfred Hugenberg made a coalition with Hitler, which gave Hitler huge legitimacy. After failing at the ballot box, Hitler, like Islamic supremacists in the West, came to understand that that power was to be achieved not through revolution outside of the government, but rather through legal means, within the confines of the democratic system.

How appropriate that she be a darling of the left now.

An outspoken critic of Israel, Sarsour avidly supports the Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement, a Hamas-inspired initiative that uses various forms of public protest, economic pressure, and lawsuits to advance the Hamas agenda of permanently destroying Israel as a Jewish nation-state.

Vis-a-vis the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, Sarsour favors a one-statesolution where an Arab majority and a Jewish minority would live together within the borders of a single country. She made clear her opposition to Israel’s existence as a Jewish state when she tweeted in October 2012 that “nothing is creepier than Zionism.”

In 2004, Sarsour acknowledged that a friend of hers as well as a cousin were both serving long sentences in Israeli jails because of their efforts to recruit jihadists to murder Jews. Moreover, she revealed that her brother-in-law was serving a 12-year prison term because of his affiliation with Hamas.

Speaking of creepy realtives, Sarsour’s husband, Maher Judeh, mourned the 1998 death of the Hamas “master terrorists” Adel and Imad Awadallah; hepraised the heroism of a Palestinian Authority police officer who had carried out a shooting attack at a checkpoint in Israel; he has expressed support for the terrorist organization Fatah; and he has lauded the founder of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a Marxist-Leninist revolutionary organization.

In October 2011, Linda Sarsour, who holds free-market economics in low regard, expressed, on behalf of “Muslim New Yorkers,” “solidarity and support” for the pro-communist Occupy Wall Street movement. In 2011 as well, the Obama Administration honored Sarsour as a “champion of change.” Not surprisingly, Sarsour visited the White House on at least seven different occasions during her beloved president’s tenure.

In May 2012 Sarsour tweeted that the so-called “underwear bomber,” an Al-Qaeda operative who in 2009 had tried to blow up a Detroit-bound passenger jet in mid-flight, was actually a CIA agent participating in America’s “war on Islam.”

In November 2012 in Baltimore, Sarsour—ever eager to peddle her woeful tale of Islamic victimhood—spoke at a Muslim Public Affairs Councilconference titled “Facing Race: Xenophobic Hate Crimes.” This is the same Council that views the murderous Jew-haters of Hezbollah as members of “a liberation movement” that is “fighting for freedom.”

Sarsour was outraged when a police officer and an FBI agent shot and killed a young black Muslim named Usaama Rahim in Boston on June 2, 2015, when Rahim lunged at them with a military-style knife as they attempted to question him about suspected terrorism-related activities. Naturally, Sarsour’s assessment of the incident confidently traced everything back to race: “At the end of the day, a Black man was shot on a bus stop on his way to work and we should treat this like any other case of police violence.” Period. End of story.

In August 2015 Sarsour spoke out in support of the incarcerated Palestinian Islamic Jihad member Muhammad Allan, a known recruiter of suicide bombers.

According to CounterJihad.com, Sarsour has attended and spoken at numerous rallies sponsored by Al-Awda, a group that views Israel as a terrorist, genocidal state whose very creation was a “catastrophe” for Arab peoples.

Sarsour has also solicited donations for the Hamas-affiliated Palestine Children’s Relief Fund.

There’s more.

She lied and wrongly portrayed the honor killing  of Shaima Alawadi by her husband as a racist-islamophobic-anti-Muslim killing.

She faked a hate crime against herself, scoring political points nationally by portraying a mentally ill black homeless man as a violent racist.

CUNY Defends Decision to Host Anti-Israel Activist as Commencement Honoree

Linda Sarsour will deliver commencement at taxpayer-funded school

By Adam Kredo, Free Beacon, April 26, 2017:

The City University of New York (CUNY), a taxpayer-funded institution, is doubling down on its decision to host a leading anti-Israel activist who has been accused of anti-Semitism as its honored commencement speaker next month, a move that has generated calls for New York Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo to step in and cancel the address.

CUNY is set to host Linda Sarsour, a leading voice in the anti-Israel movement who has been condemned by human rights groups for her rhetoric and promotion of terrorism against the Jewish state.

Sarsour, a Palestinian American and executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, is scheduled to give the commencement speech for CUNY’s Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy.

Local lawmakers and pro-Israel activists have expressed outrage over the decision, calling on CUNY to cancel Sarsour’s appearance. CUNY leaders have continued to praise Sarsour and maintain the speech will take place as scheduled.

Sarsour has earned a reputation as one of the country’s most virulent anti-Israel activists. She has attacked Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a “bigot” and routinely condemns the Jewish state as racist. Sarsour attracted outrage in 2015 when she tweeted out a picture of a Palestinian child with a rock in his hand accompanied by the caption, “the definition of courage.”

Sarsour became a darling of the activist left as a participant in the Women’s March against President Donald Trump and other demonstrations. She also has embraced and partnered with Rasmea Odeh, an anti-Israel activist and convicted terrorist who was recently found guilty of immigration fraud in the United States for failing to disclose her ties to terrorism.

Dov Hikind, a New York City assemblyman and pro-Israel advocate, told the Washington Free Beacon that Americans across the country should be outraged that a taxpayer-funded school is celebrating an individual who once praised child terrorism.

“This is a woman who not so long ago put out a tweet with a picture of a young child holding rocks in his hand and Linda Sarsour put in that message, ‘the definition of courage,’” Hikind said in an interview with the Free Beacon.

“The idea this woman would get this honor at a CUNY commencement, a place my tax dollars pay for, is unbelievable audacity.”

Sarsour “is someone who is an apologist for terrorists, and that’s who we need to be an example for graduate students at a tax-funded university here in New York?” Hikind asked. “How do you justify in any way [these views]? People should speak out everywhere. This should be a no brainer.”

While Hikind and other pro-Israel voices have spoken out against Sarsour’s appearance at CUNY, Cuomo and activist voices such as the Anti-Defamation League have remained silent.

“The ADL speaks out 24/7 on defamation of the Jewish people and nothing can be more defamatory than Linda Sarsour’s statements about Jews and her glorification of Arabs throwing rocks at Israelis,” Hikind said in a statement. “But following the invitation from CUNY for Sarsour to address their graduates, the ADL’s silence has been deafening and shameful.”

One senior official at a national Jewish organization told the Free Beacon that Sarsour’s appearance at CUNY demonstrates that anti-Israel activism is still being mainstreamed.

“Linda Sarsour advocates a version of feminist intersectionality that, by design, excludes liberal Jews who support Israel but welcomes radical Muslims who deny women’s rights,” said the official, who was not authorized to speak on record. “In that sense she’s perfect for today’s upside-down academy. That doesn’t make what she says or what CUNY’s doing any less disgraceful. It makes the whole thing more disgraceful.”

CUNY has defended its decision to host Sarsour, telling students in a community message it is committed to all types of free speech.

Ayman El-Mohandes, the dean of CUNY’s Graduate School of Public Health and Health Policy, said in a statement that CUNY is committed to academic freedom.

“I hope you all join me in my firm view that a diversity of viewpoints and an open exchange of ideas is at the heart of our country’s strength, and our university’s strength,” El-Mohandes said in a statement. “It is why we at CUNY are so committed to academic freedom, a bedrock principle of our university.”

“This will be a very special and meaningful commencement for all of us,” El-Mohandes added. “I hope to see you all there to celebrate women in leadership.”

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Attention: Pamela Geller

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Pamela Geller -> CUNY is standing by its decision to honor pro-terror, sharia activist Linda Sarour. The norming of evil. Pamela Geller -> CUNY is standing by its decision to honor pro-terror, sharia activist Linda Sarour. The norming of evil.