http://www.advocate.com/new_news.asp?ID=79...991&sd=03/11/03

http://www.365gay.com/NewsContent/031103ho...olocastGays.htm

You want my two cents--this guy needs to go back under whatever rock he crawled out from under

What a nitwit.

It's beyond nitwit, it's willfully ignorant. Dangerous, very dangerous....

The oddest denier of them all has to be Arthur Butz, profesor of electrical engineering at Northwestern.

http://pubweb.acns.nwu.edu/~abutz/
http://www.leaderu.com/ftissues/ft9402/rev...iews/berke.html
http://www.adl.org/Sih/SIH-holocaust.asp

>>
....
Holocaust "revisionism" emerged as an organized propaganda movement in 1979 when Willis Carto, the founder of Liberty Lobby -- the nation's largest anti-Semitic organization -- established the Institute for Historical Review (IHR). Based in Southern California, IHR enables professors with no credentials in history, writers without academic certification and career anti-Semites to engage in pseudo-academic efforts to deny the Holocaust.

Bradley Smith's Campus Campaign

IHR has found its niche on campuses through its Media Project Director, Bradley Smith, who leads the so-called Committee for Open Debate on the Holocaust (CODOH). In the spring of 1991, Smith submitted a full-page paid advertisement to The Daily Northwestern of Northwestern University (the academic home of Arthur Butz, an electrical engineering professor who wrote a book in 1976, The Hoax of the Twentieth Century, arguing that the Holocaust never happened).
....
<<

Arthur Butz? Are you serious? It sounds like a name Bart Simpson would use when he calls up Moe's and says stuff like "I'm calling for Seymour Butz" and Moe'll be all "I have a call for See More Butz" etc.

And now people are starting to blame the impending war on the International Jewish Conspiracy, so this is of a piece.

Doesn't he know about the National Holocaust Museum?

And when these people deny the Holocaust, they don't even bother to mention (for obvious reasons) that it affects/concerns us as LGBTs and our history, as well. :mad: :mad:

Just to be clear, guys, the man in this article isn't denying that the Holocaust happened. He denies that homosexuals were systematically killed. Not that I agree with this, but I wouldn't simply call him a "denier".

I wonder if there are solid numbers about how many homosexuals were killed during the Holocaust. All I know is that they're usually lumped in with the "other" 6 million (non-Jewish) victims, such as the mentally and physically handicapped, the Gypsies, and the Poles.

Conor500, not only are there solid numbers, but there is EXTENSIVE documentation on the Nazi persecution of homosexuals. The Nazis also used anti-homosexual laws to attack the Roman Catholic Church, and arrested numerous monks and Catholic priests who expressed dissent against the regime. If you would like to read some books on this topic, written by authorities and survivors and full of extensive documentation, consider these:

--Richard Plant. The Pink Triangle: The Nazi War Against Homosexuals, 1988.
--Gunter Grau and Claire Schoppman. The Hidden Holocaust, 1997.
--Heinz Heger (David Fernbach, translator). Men with the Pink Triangle: The True Life-and-Death Story of Homosexuals in the Nazi Death Camps, 1994.
--Pierre Seel (Joachim Neugroschel, translator). Liberation Was for Others: Memoirs of a Gay Survivor of the Nazi Death Camps, 1997.
--Gad Beck (Allison Brown, translator). Underground: Memoirs of a Gay Jew in Nazi Berlin, 1999.

Also see the movie Bent by Martin Sherman.

It should also be noted that the Nazi code against homosexuals survived into the early Federal Republic of Germany, so homosexuals initially had no means of redress for what they had suffered at the hands of the monster Hitler and his barbaric system.

Ignorance is not bliss.

[ March 12, 2003, 10:26 AM: Message edited by: fantomas ]

In another thread, Allen posted

This story about one of the MN state senators claim that homosexuals weren't tortured during the Holocaust.

He wants to repeal sexual orientation out the the hate crimes law and take away civil rights since we "already have enough law to protect" homosexuals. He isn't a favorite MN son right now.

Allen

I want to hear some of the Republicans on the board defend their party after the Republican governor of Minnesota has said that he wants this guy to remain in the state legislature.

I'm sorry, I couldn't hear you. I was listening to Congressman Jim Moran (D-VA) going on about how the Jews are forcing us into War with Iraq.

Okay, okay. I'm not doubting this happened. I know about the "pink triangle" and all that. It just seems that it would be harder to come up with a definitive number of homosexuals that were killed, because it's not as easy to identify a gay person as it is to identify, say, a Jew. Do you see what I'm saying? This is the same reason we don't really know how many homosexuals there are in this country, or what percentage of the population is gay. That's all I'm saying.

There was a similar uproar among the gay community a few years ago in Georgia, when the woman who oversees the approval & distribution of textbooks in the state's public schools (her name was Sylvia Wygoda; I forget her official title) ordered a reprinting, at public expense, of a textbook to remove reference to homosexuals being persecuted along with Jews, Gypsies, dissidents & others. I guess she figured that we aren't as deserving of sympathy as the other groups. It was eventually resolved through a "compromise", under which the mention of homosexuals would be put back in, through a second reprinting paid for by the Georgia Equality Project. But Ms. Wygoda never apologized.

[ March 13, 2003, 07:15 AM: Message edited by: Billy ]

posted by conor500:

The other problem with measuring the number of homosexuals \"killed\" by the Nazis is that gay men, in general, were not sent to extermination camps, but just regular good old concentration camps, where they tended to die of hunger, disease, rather than being actively executed.

posted by Charlie in the Trees

I am surprised no one else has really mentioned this little fiasco. I have no idea if Moran is an anti-Semite, but I do know he has made miserable choices (the unscrupulous "loans" from lobbyists, initially refusing to turn back money from groups linked to terrorism) and he was dead wrong in a factual sense in what he said. If anything it is the "Christians" who are driving us toward war.

the quote you pulled up, but chose not to respond to asked about the politician's party's reaction to the assinine comments made by one of their own. it is a valid point. when lott's mouth got out of control, republicans high and low responded, "aw, shucks, you know he didn't mean nothin' by it. you mean people was offended? they musta misinterpetted his comments." and the silence of the republican response to the latest outburst has been deafening.

in contrast, on the day the democratic dunderhead made his "jews are pushing us to war" comment, nancy pelosi and other dem congressional leaders condemned the statement. pelosi went so far as to say (quoted in the ny times, can't provide a link, sorry.) that there was no place in the democratic party for such views. this is a good start. i hope the dnc abandons the fool when he's up for re-election, even if it costs the dems a seat!

even if they don't, the difference in reactions is striking, non?

No...given the number of LGBTs they killed, I don't think that the Nazis had too much "trouble". After all, Hitler's right-hand man was reportedly gay (and there are people who have, with some reason questioned Hitler's sexuality [would Hitler's personal secretary know?]), and he probably set out a plan for his and Hitler's review.

- - - - -

I'd like to see a link/proof that LGBTs were not persecuted as heterosexuals were. I have never heard this.

My information (DIRECTLY from a National Holocaust Museum scholar) says that, even when Jews and LGBTs tried to escape, the rest of the world changed their immigration quotas to keep fleeing victims out and control the number of flights leaving Germany/Austria/Poland, etc.

Italy is the ONLY nation that I understand was open and welcoming to victims; and, that is why there was a lot of mixing of Jews and Italians (at that time).

[ March 13, 2003, 09:19 AM: Message edited by: bluebird48234 ]

Ernst Röhm headed the SA (Sturmabteilung), the NASP brown-shirt shock troops, which were the predecessors to the SS (Sturmsoldaten). In the famous "Night of Long Knives," Hitler used the pretext of Röhm's homosexuality to murder him and purge the SA of several other chief leaders. Hitler was, it seems, willing to overlook homosexuality among the upper ranks of the aristocracy (which bankrolled and provided him with social cover), the business community, and some of his officers.

Italian Jews were quite integrated into Italian society by the time of the Holocaust, and while there was anti-Semitism in Italian culture and politics, it was far less virulent than say early 20th century Austria or Germany. (The Garden of the Finzi-Continis is a very moving film about this subject.)

Yet Mussolini's alliance with Hitler led him to authorize the deportation of Italian Jews. A number of non-Jewish Italians, however, hid Jews or otherwise worked against their deportation. This also happened in Bulgaria, in parts of Hungary, and in Greece. Croatia, on the other hand, had its own fascist, anti-Semitic organization, which sought to kill Jews (and other non-Catholics) as readily as the Nazis.

Actually, this did come up on another thread and I condemned Moran unequivocally. His comments were repellant and unforgivable. Whether he is an anti-Semite or not, his comments are inexcusable, and especially vile coming from a member of the Democratic Party. AS you say, the two top Democratic leaders condemned the comments as soon as they heard about them, which is more than can be said for initial Republican responses to the anti-Semitic and anti-gay comments of Dick Armey, or Trent Lott's Confederophilia and racism.

This is a circular argument. I said it's hard to tell how many gay people were killed, because you can't always identify gay people easily. You say, yes you can, because they killed a lot. Do you have an exact number? Does anyone?

I'm not being argumentive here, I'm just curious. (And obviously, too lazy to do the research myself.)

So much revisionist history, so little time.

Selective memory loss, fellas? If you go back and check, it actually was the CONSERVATIVE media (Andrew Sullivan, the National Review) that was most upset initially with Sen. Lott's remarks and made this into a big issue. Democratic politicians (I recall specifically Tom Daschle) were initially dismissive of the comments (as, unfortunately, were the Republican politicos).

President Bush, in particular, was ahead of the curve in attacking Lott's comments. He gave a very strong speech separating himself from Lott (when Lott was still Majority Leader) and making it clear that the Republican party did not support such statements.

You could look it up.

[ March 13, 2003, 11:41 AM: Message edited by: Charlie in the Trees ]

As a Minnesotan I can say that on all levels I accept an individuals choice to the inalienable right of free speech.

The "good" MN senator has every right to speak his mind. However he is now up for ethics review and faces possible centure. The Governor has to defend the person's right to speak however the senate has the right to "rip his tongue out" I suspect we won't hear from him much anymore as those who've not been to MN may not know of the many "out" politics have here, and the "live let live" mid-west mind set.

FYI: He's got his Master's from a Bible College in Texas and Texas is his home state.

Texans have a unique political style, that's as PC as I'm going to get today boys!

:cool:

My arse! It was several days after the controversy began to develop before W. criticised the remarks--& then it was a transparent attempt at damage control as the story refused to go away. Even after he, shall we say, "distanced himself" from Lott's remarks, he & Ari Fleischer insisted that this didn't necessitate his removal as majority leader. It was only after the Republicans came to the conclusion that the issue would hinder their agenda & cost them politically--weeks after the fact--that they sacked him. In any case, the Shrub must have had his fingers crossed when he said those words, because shortly after his waxing about racial equality & such, he signaled that he didn't mean a word of it by promptly renominating Charles Pickering to the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals. I'll grant them this--they've got chutzpah!

[ March 13, 2003, 12:04 PM: Message edited by: Billy ]

i did!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/artic...-2002Dec16.html

Thank you, Thersis! A WEEK--it took Bush a WEEK, and even then he wasn't sure. Daschle and Pelosi were on Moran's ass the next day! Six Jewish Democratic Congresspeople have just asked him to resign and told him that cannot support him. There's ZERO equivocation.

I also see CITT didn't reply to my mention of the Armey comments....

Much like neither of you mentioned how the story about Lott's remarks was first broken by Andrew Sullivan and the boys at the National Review, back when Tom Daschle was saying it was no big deal.

(And Bush was ahead of the curve on that one ... until he spoke, most people thought Lott would be able to continue as Majority Leader, despite the damage.)

Now about Armey. I didn't respond because I didn't know which "offensive remarks" from Dick Armey you were referring to. There have been so damn many, y'know. wink

[ March 13, 2003, 02:46 PM: Message edited by: Charlie in the Trees ]

I recognized Butz's name, having read his book 'Hoax of the 20th Century' about 15 years ago. Among the lies I recall, he claimed that only a few thousand Jews actually died during the war, and that they were treated no worse than other political prisoners. He said the 6 million figure is grossly exaggerated because there were nowhere near that many Jews living in Europe before the war. And he dismissed the ghastly pictures of corpses in the concentration camps as 'trick photography' and 'propaganda'. Overall, the book was a pathetic attempt to deny what really should be called 'Crime of the 20th Century', not 'Hoax' of same.

Here in Canada, we are again cursed with the presence of Ernst Zundel, who has been spreading his anti-semitism for years. He was recently kicked out of the US on a visa violation, and is now fighting to stay in Canada rather than being deported to his native Germany, where he could go on trial for his hate-mongering.

An interesting historical side note is that Eisenhower himself was concerned about the potential for denial of the Holocaust, and made certain that the evidence was recorded to prevent such denials. As I understand it, the Holocaust Museum even uses one of his quotes on remembering this horrific *crime* (although crime seems like such a meaningless word when dealing with something of this proportion).

Nonetheless, denial of, at least, the gay persecution by the Nazis is a common tactic among the "Religious" Right. It is simply another method of dehumanizing gays and ensuring that "normal" people do not sympathize with us.