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For The Record  

FTR #979 Nazism, Anti-Gay and Anti-Feminist Propaganda and the Fritz Haarmann Incident

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This broad­cast was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

Intro­duc­tion: With the Trump admin­is­tra­tion mov­ing against gay rights and repro­duc­tive rights, and with the pub­lic atten­tion large­ly focused on yet anoth­er mass mur­der in Las Vegas, we delve back into the archives for the ben­e­fit of new­er and younger lis­ten­ers.

On 2/28/1988, we record­ed Mis­cel­la­neous Archive Show M13: Gay Rights, Repro­duc­tive Rights and the Third Reich, high­light­ing how the nascent, vig­or­ous gay rights move­ment in Weimar Ger­many was a focal point for Nazi pro­pa­gan­da and polit­i­cal action. Fur­ther­more, a mass killing by homo­sex­u­al Fritz Haar­mann ter­ror­ized Weimar Ger­many, fueled Nazi anti-gay pro­pa­gan­da and rein­forced the pub­lic per­cep­tion in the Ger­man pop­u­lace that the sit­u­a­tion was “out of con­trol.”

Dr. Mag­nus Hirschfeld was the lynch­pin of the strong gay lib­er­a­tion move­ment in Weimar Ger­many and, as a result, was a focal point of Nazi Par­ty pro­pa­gan­da, fueled with the addi­tion­al fod­der of the fact that Hirschfeld was Jew­ish.

(We note, in pass­ing, that the gay rights move­ment in Weimar Ger­many received con­sid­er­able sup­port from a seg­ment of the coun­try’s fem­i­nist com­mu­ni­ty grouped around Dr. Hele­na Stoeck­er.)

His­tor­i­cal­ly, Ger­man atti­tudes toward homo­sex­u­al­i­ty were mixed, with some regions man­i­fest­ing a rel­a­tive­ly lib­er­al atti­tude and enforce­ment pos­ture and oth­ers, an extreme­ly reac­tionary posi­tion in both respects. Para­graph 175 was the offi­cial Ger­man statute mak­ing sex between adults of the same gen­der ille­gal. Again, the enforce­ment of Para­graph 175 was high­ly selec­tive from a region­al stand­point.)

In a man­ner direct­ly fore­shad­ow­ing U.S. right-wing pro­pa­gan­da in recent decades, the Nazi Par­ty denounced Hirschfeld and homophile sex­u­al activ­i­ty as a prod­uct of, and a con­trib­u­tor to, the moral decay of the Weimar Repub­lic and democ­ra­cy in gen­er­al.

A major con­tribut­ing fac­tor to the impact of this Nazi pro­pa­gan­da was the Fritz Haar­man inci­dent.

In the city of Cologne, Ger­many, a mass murderer/serial killer named Fritz Haar­mann ter­ror­ized the city with a grue­some series of killings in which young­sters were lured to his dwelling, killed and their corpses butchered, pack­aged and sold as “horse meat.” The fact that Haar­mann was homo­sex­u­al con­tributed to the out­rage of many cit­i­zens. The grue­some kil­ings and lurid head­lines they gen­er­at­ed helped fuel the per­cep­tion that “some­thing was wrong with soci­ety.” (Although there appear to have been many dif­fer­ences, we won­der about the Las Vegas shoot­ing and its effect on the Amer­i­can pop­u­lace in the con­text of the Haar­mann inci­dent.)

This rein­forced the Nazi anti-gay pro­pa­gan­da.

Adding anoth­er dimen­sion to the case were the facts that:

  1. Haar­mann was an infor­mant for the Cologne police depart­ment.
  2. Haar­mann car­ried a Cologne p.d. badge.
  3. The head of the Cologne police depart­ment was Gus­tav Noske, who, as the defense min­is­ter of the fledg­ling Weimar Repub­lic, had formed the mil­i­tary for­ma­tions that crushed the social­ist upris­ings that occurred in Ger­many after the First World War. Those for­ma­tions, the Freiko­rps, the Ein­wohn­er­wehren and the Zeit Frei­willi­gen Ver­bande crushed the upris­ings and laid the foun­da­tion for what became known as “The Black Reich­swehr.” Those “under­ground” mil­i­tary for­ma­tions assas­si­nat­ed key polit­i­cal fig­ures in Ger­many (such as Walther Rathenau), lay­ing the ground­work for the rise of the Nazis.

The Nazi anti-gay pro­pa­gan­da fused with the par­ty’s anti-abor­tion stance, as gays, advo­cates for gay rights, women seek­ing abor­tions and abor­tion-rights advo­cates were tarred with the same ide­o­log­i­cal brush as being “anti-Ger­man” by virtue of the ide­o­log­i­cal con­cept that more births of “Ger­man stock” strength­ened the Ger­man nation.

Fur­ther­more, pro-gay rights and pro-abor­tion posi­tions were lumped into a larg­er, neg­a­tive ide­o­log­i­cal stance group­ing both view­points in with “Jew­ish” and “com­mu­nist” ‘ene­mies of the state.”

Discussion

One comment for “FTR #979 Nazism, Anti-Gay and Anti-Feminist Propaganda and the Fritz Haarmann Incident”

  1. Wow, it’s like a one-man big­otry show­down here: Roy Moore, the far right theo­crat­ic GOP nom­i­nee for the Alaba­ma sen­ate race to replace Jeff Ses­sions, clear­ly hates both gays peo­ple and African Amer­i­cans. So is there a hier­ar­chy to his his hatred or does he hate these groups about equal­ly?

    Well, per­haps these com­ments he made last Novem­ber about the Supreme Court’s Oberge­fell rul­ing that legal­ized gay mar­riage will help answer that ques­tion. Accord­ing to Moore, Oberge­fell was actu­al­ly worse than Dred Scott, the 1857 rul­ing that upheld slav­ery and is wide­ly con­sid­ered the worst Supreme Court deci­sion in his­to­ry. Yes, accord­ing to Moore, the rul­ing that legal­ized gay mar­riage is even worse than the rul­ing that legal­ized slav­ery.

    So after hear­ing that, is it clear who Moore hates more? Well, not real­ly. He basi­cal­ly belit­tled slav­ery and then act­ed like gay mar­riage is some­thing even worse. It’s like a com­ment designed to opti­mize the hate direct­ed towards both groups. So it’s still unclear, although its abun­dant­ly clear that he real­ly, real­ly, real­ly does like care about either group at all:

    Talk­ing Points Memo
    DC

    Roy Moore: Supreme Court Gay Mar­riage Rul­ing Was ‘Worse’ Than Uphold­ing Slav­ery In Dred Scott

    By Cameron Joseph Pub­lished Octo­ber 24, 2017 6:00 am

    Alaba­ma GOP Sen­ate nom­i­nee Roy Moore said late last year that the Supreme Court’s deci­sion legal­iz­ing gay mar­riage was “even worse” than the noto­ri­ous 1857 Dred Scott rul­ing that upheld slav­ery.

    Moore, a hard-right for­mer Alaba­ma Supreme Court Chief Jus­tice, has twice been removed from office for refus­ing to fol­low the rule of law — the sec­ond time for order­ing pro­bate judges in his state to dis­obey the U.S. Supreme Court’s Oberge­fell rul­ing legal­iz­ing gay mar­riage. Last Novem­ber he said that deci­sion was even worse than one that schol­ars wide­ly con­sid­er the worst Supreme Court deci­sion in U.S. his­to­ry.

    “In 1857 the Unit­ed States Supreme Court did rule that black peo­ple were prop­er­ty. Of course that con­tra­dict­ed the Con­sti­tu­tion, and it took a civ­il war to over­turn it. But this rul­ing in Oberge­fell is even worse in a sense because it forces not only peo­ple to rec­og­nize mar­riage oth­er than the insti­tu­tion ordained of God and rec­og­nized by near­ly every state in the union, it says that you now must do away with the def­i­n­i­tion of mar­riage and make it between two per­sons of the same gen­der or lead­ing on, as one of the dis­sent­ing jus­tices said, to polygamy, to mul­ti-part­ner mar­riages,” Moore said in a pod­cast inter­view last Novem­ber, short­ly after he was sus­pend­ed with­out pay from the court.

    “We’ve got to go back and rec­og­nize that what they did in Oberge­fell was not only to take and cre­ate a right that does not exist under the Con­sti­tu­tion but then to man­date that that right com­pels Chris­tians to give up their reli­gious free­dom and lib­er­ty,” he con­tin­ued.

    In Dred Scott the court denied cit­i­zen­ship to African Amer­i­cans and found the Mis­souri Com­pro­mise uncon­sti­tu­tion­al, trig­ger­ing a back­lash that helped lead to the Civ­il War.

    Moore’s com­ments were made in an inter­view with Here I Stand, a pod­cast run by the reli­gious con­ser­v­a­tive Chris­t­ian Emer­gency League, and shared with TPM by the Demo­c­ra­t­ic group Amer­i­can Bridge.

    Moore wasn’t the only one on the reli­gious right who com­pared Oberge­fell to Dred Scott. It became a talk­ing point from Chris­t­ian con­ser­v­a­tives like Mike Huck­abee and Rick San­to­rum two years ago. But Moore clear­ly went a step fur­ther by say­ing the deci­sion was worse, not just list­ing it as anoth­er deci­sion from the court he thought was ter­ri­ble.

    Moore’s remark isn’t the only time he’s wad­ed into murky racial waters in his polit­i­cal and judi­cial career. As TPM has report­ed, Moore suc­cess­ful­ly led the charge against remov­ing seg­re­ga­tion­ist lan­guage from the Alaba­ma state con­sti­tu­tion, his biggest backer is a neo-Con­fed­er­ate who wants the South to secede again, and Moore’s Foun­da­tion for Moral Law host­ed the neo-Con­fed­er­ate, pro-seces­sion League of the South’s annu­al “Seces­sion Day” events in 2009 and 2010, though Moore’s staff claim he didn’t know about the events.

    He’s also con­tin­ued to ques­tion whether Pres­i­dent Oba­ma was born in the U.S., and his cam­paign has recent­ly shared racial­ly charged memes dur­ing this Sen­ate run.

    “The Dred Scott deci­sion ranks as the worst Supreme Court deci­sion in Amer­i­can his­to­ry and it’s appalling that Moore doesn’t under­stand that, though sad­ly not sur­pris­ing con­sid­er­ing his his­to­ry of embrac­ing white suprema­cists and pro-Con­fed­er­ate groups,” Amer­i­can Bridge spokesper­son Alli­son Teix­eira Suli­er told TPM. “Roy Moore is not fit to serve in any capac­i­ty, and his hate­ful views are un-Amer­i­can.”

    ...

    In spite of his con­tro­ver­sies, Moore remains the favorite against for­mer U.S. Attor­ney Doug Jones ahead of the Dec. 12 elec­tion to fill Attor­ney Gen­er­al Jeff Ses­sions’ old Sen­ate seat. He hass held a lead in the mid- to high-sin­gle dig­its in most pub­lic and pri­vate polling of the race.

    The full inter­view can be heard here.

    ———-

    ““Roy Moore: Supreme Court Gay Mar­riage Rul­ing Was ‘Worse’ Than Uphold­ing Slav­ery In Dred Scott” by Cameron Joseph; Talk­ing Points Memo; 10/24/2017

    ““The Dred Scott deci­sion ranks as the worst Supreme Court deci­sion in Amer­i­can his­to­ry and it’s appalling that Moore doesn’t under­stand that, though sad­ly not sur­pris­ing con­sid­er­ing his his­to­ry of embrac­ing white suprema­cists and pro-Con­fed­er­ate groups,” Amer­i­can Bridge spokesper­son Alli­son Teix­eira Suli­er told TPM. “Roy Moore is not fit to serve in any capac­i­ty, and his hate­ful views are un-Amer­i­can.””

    Yep, it’s appalling, but not sur­pris­ing which makes it extra appalling because, of course, he’s the GOP’s nom­i­nee. It’s not like this kind of stuff was­n’t known about the guy when he won that pri­ma­ry a month ago. None of this is a sur­prise and yet he won the pri­ma­ry any­way.

    And that leads to the extra extra appalling aspect of all this: Moore is still the favorite to win the gen­er­al elec­tion and become Alaba­ma’s next Sen­a­tor:

    ...
    In spite of his con­tro­ver­sies, Moore remains the favorite against for­mer U.S. Attor­ney Doug Jones ahead of the Dec. 12 elec­tion to fill Attor­ney Gen­er­al Jeff Ses­sions’ old Sen­ate seat. He hass held a lead in the mid- to high-sin­gle dig­its in most pub­lic and pri­vate polling of the race.
    ...

    And don’t for­get, Doug Jones, the Democ­rats’ nom­i­nee, is a for­mer US attor­ney who pros­e­cut­ed the KKK.

    So we have a theo­crat­ic judge who thinks the gay mar­riage rul­ing was worse than the rul­ing that upheld slav­ery on track to defeat a guy who pros­e­cut­ed the KKK. It is indeed pret­ty appalling.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | October 24, 2017, 2:08 pm

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