When the history of the US conservative movement is written, its conduct towards trans people will go down as one of the most shameful and ignorant parts of it. This ignorance isn’t morally neutral because there’s no excuse for being ignorant of the existence of trans people in the 2020s - or the 1980s for that matter.
As far as I can see they don’t want to eliminate trans people – they simply refuse to believe they exist. This would be fine (if dishonourable) if they just wallowed in willful ignorance and left trans people – including kids, parents and doctors alone. My guess is they’ve realized left wing people are sympathetic to trans people so have decided that the only honourable and correct thing to do is to campaign against them.
I’m an Australian and don’t know any American conservatives. But while I firmly believe it’s possible to be an honourable conservative, I’ve got to say that I find very few of the public representatives of the US conservatives to be honourable. At the moment I can't think of one. Sadly the more moderate Nikki Haley isn’t one of them. I’d hoped she was better than that.
"As far as I can see they don’t want to eliminate trans people – they simply refuse to believe they exist."
These are functionally the same thing, often. Listen to how Putin talks about Ukrainian identity; he denies it exists. Saying that someone's identity is nonexistent or invalid is often a justification for targeting them for elimination; they are not authentic or real, are therefore an abomination or an irrelevance, which means you can do anything to them.
I agree Noah, that one can lead to the other but 'elimination' and refusal to recognize a group's existence are conceptually and often practically distinct. Putin may not believe that Ukraine doesn't exist as a nation but he's oppressing them by calling them nazi's, terrorists, Russian haters (which indeed most of them are now!). He's not saying he's going after them because they have a mistaken national identity. In his case what he really wants is them to be absorbed (as junior and servile members) of the his fantasy modern Russian empire.
they aren't either conceptually or practically distinct. Putin does in fact say he's going after Ukraine because there is no real national identity; he says Ukraine's true national identity is Russian; that's the justification for invasion.
Insisting that someone's identity is fake or unreal or a deception is very often an excuse to target them and eliminate them.
Not conceptually distinct? The Nazis had some strange ideas about the Jews but they certainly believed they existed and set about eliminating them. I’d suggest that shows they are distinct and it takes a degree of intellectual heavy lifting to deny it. I’d also argue that settler whites recognized the existence of native peoples and cultures and often set about trying to turn their children into little white people (though conscious physical elimination did occur in some localities) but even then I expect they believed in the existence of the oppressed groups.
I agree if you believe another group doesn’t exist it makes it easier to oppress and even eliminate them but really how can one set about eliminating a group you don’t even believe exist? Or do you think the trans-don’t-exist mob really secretly believe trans people do exist and have decided to pretend they think otherwise as some sort of conspiracy or elimination at a later point strategy? You’d need evidence to prove that and it’s usually an error to put down to malice what can be explained by stupidity.
To take an analogy of crime, we all believe crime (eg murder) is a bad thing but criminals don’t all have the same motives. On my reading the trans-oppressors are different from the gay haters. Gay haters accept the existence of same sex attraction, hate it and would seek out and victimize gays even if they hid in the closet. The trans oppressors would be perfectly happy for trans people to remain in the closet, however destructive that would be for trans people.
The Nazis often claimed Jewish identity was inauthentic; that was one of their main points, even. Only the aryan volk's identity was real and authentic; Jewish people were interlopers and deceivers who tried to parasitically adopt other people's identities, according to Hitler.
I think the problem is that you're trying to make this work logically. But racism isn't logical. It's a collection of tropes designed to justify violence, not to cohere. It may not be logical to say a group doesn't exist and then set about eliminating it, but empirically, in the real world, racists say and do that all the time.
oh and transphobes and homophobes are mostly the same people, and their aims are the same. the distinctions you're making are I think mostly fictitious and largely serve as distractions.
The current right-wing crusade against transsexuals is not necessarily a build-up to another Holocaust, but it shares with many instances of pre-genocidal propaganda the tendency to deny that a socially or ethnically marginalized group is fully human. The Nazis denied humanity to Jews, slaveowners denied humanity to their human property, Hutu agitators in Rwanda denied the humanity of their Tutsi neighbors. The claim that any subset of humanity doesn't constitute a "real ontological category" is simply a transparent attempt to cloak the same old hatred of the "outsider" in Newspeak.
The parallels to Nazi treatment of Jews in the early part of their reign are obvious. Just watch The U.S. and the Holocaust. It's striking how similar. Dehumanization, gradual banning from public spaces, increasing limits on their ability to participate in society as a Jew/trans person. It's been clear since the Trump administration that they want to eliminate trans people from our society. It's utterly sickening. I had to say the Pledge of Allegiance at a graduation ceremony today and it struck me that Republicans can't say that pledge with sincerity now. They don't believe in liberty and justice for all. Only for people like them. Actually they want to be above the law, but that's another issue.
Noah, I happen to agree with your Nazi analogy, and feel that it does have many parallels. First of all, I want to say that after reading Prof. Kathleen Belew's book Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, is very helpful to understand the big picture of the agenda. I know she details how the plan of the White Supremacist groups globally, made in the 1980s, early 1990s was to tone down racist rhetoric and join mainstream politics using words like anti-immigration as a code for their true racist genocidal goals. We see a lot of success using anti-immigrant (code for racist) language is being really effective in Europe, and not just in Hungary and Serbia. To create an all White World, they want to first take over governments, then exterminate. They want to eliminate all people who do not fit with their agenda. Cis-gender, White "Christian" males with elements of Norse Gods in their worship who embrace violence are supposed to rule the earth. Their bible is The Turner Diaries https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2004/turner-diaries-other-racist-novels-inspire-extremist-violence
Plans to get rid of Muslims were made palatable with little protest from mainstream Americans after September 11, 2001 .Americans have not said much as Muslims have been incarcerated, killed, and vilified. Then women lost their rights to reproductive choice and there is discussion of making birth control illegal too. Part of the breeding agenda makes vilifying people who identify as LGBTQIA+ with a particular focus on trans people another piece of this puzzle. This is what German Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller famously talks about how each group that is come for can no longer protest, but members of other groups let this happen, until it is their group that is taken. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
This is the situation we find ourselves in. Let's hope that the Americans are alert to what is going on and will fight for a different outcome than the Germans because we certainly could rename the Republican Party, The American Nazi Party if we look at their goals to get rid of everyone who is not a White Cis-gender male, or a White female willing to be a breeder, and provide sexual congress with men on demand, and hold down the home front while the men conquer and rule. I think groups like the now infamous IBLP group exposed in Shiny Happy People epitomize this as a goal. They tell the women that they need to breed as many Christians as possible to overtake the world, when if you look at the stats, Christian is the dominant global religion. So, is there a threat there? No! This is really about White religious groups breeding as many "White" people if one can even believe in that peculiarly American concept to take over the Earth. Apparently they are unaware of other continents, with Africa having over 1.4 billion people, and Asia having over 4.5 billion people, contrast that with Europe, a continent of declining birth rates having about 750 million, so under a billion. North America has about 580 million, many of which are non-White. So, that is a big breeding plan for comparison, and even though we are destroying lives of the global south with our excessive consumption, the idea of the world as predominantly White is a far, far off into the future. In the meantime, people who are not thinking about themselves just purely in terms of breeding, are the enemy. That makes LGBTQ+ and trans people suspicious, because it is believed that if you are a trans woman or male you cannot make babies, which in the world view of the Right wing makes one useless. Trans and not white is a double whammy, and it goes on from there. So I agree they want to exterminate everyone who is not White, Christian (as they define it, in ignorance of Christ), and willing to breed to make the numbers grow.
When the history of the US conservative movement is written, its conduct towards trans people will go down as one of the most shameful and ignorant parts of it. This ignorance isn’t morally neutral because there’s no excuse for being ignorant of the existence of trans people in the 2020s - or the 1980s for that matter.
As far as I can see they don’t want to eliminate trans people – they simply refuse to believe they exist. This would be fine (if dishonourable) if they just wallowed in willful ignorance and left trans people – including kids, parents and doctors alone. My guess is they’ve realized left wing people are sympathetic to trans people so have decided that the only honourable and correct thing to do is to campaign against them.
I’m an Australian and don’t know any American conservatives. But while I firmly believe it’s possible to be an honourable conservative, I’ve got to say that I find very few of the public representatives of the US conservatives to be honourable. At the moment I can't think of one. Sadly the more moderate Nikki Haley isn’t one of them. I’d hoped she was better than that.
"As far as I can see they don’t want to eliminate trans people – they simply refuse to believe they exist."
These are functionally the same thing, often. Listen to how Putin talks about Ukrainian identity; he denies it exists. Saying that someone's identity is nonexistent or invalid is often a justification for targeting them for elimination; they are not authentic or real, are therefore an abomination or an irrelevance, which means you can do anything to them.
I agree Noah, that one can lead to the other but 'elimination' and refusal to recognize a group's existence are conceptually and often practically distinct. Putin may not believe that Ukraine doesn't exist as a nation but he's oppressing them by calling them nazi's, terrorists, Russian haters (which indeed most of them are now!). He's not saying he's going after them because they have a mistaken national identity. In his case what he really wants is them to be absorbed (as junior and servile members) of the his fantasy modern Russian empire.
they aren't either conceptually or practically distinct. Putin does in fact say he's going after Ukraine because there is no real national identity; he says Ukraine's true national identity is Russian; that's the justification for invasion.
Insisting that someone's identity is fake or unreal or a deception is very often an excuse to target them and eliminate them.
Not conceptually distinct? The Nazis had some strange ideas about the Jews but they certainly believed they existed and set about eliminating them. I’d suggest that shows they are distinct and it takes a degree of intellectual heavy lifting to deny it. I’d also argue that settler whites recognized the existence of native peoples and cultures and often set about trying to turn their children into little white people (though conscious physical elimination did occur in some localities) but even then I expect they believed in the existence of the oppressed groups.
I agree if you believe another group doesn’t exist it makes it easier to oppress and even eliminate them but really how can one set about eliminating a group you don’t even believe exist? Or do you think the trans-don’t-exist mob really secretly believe trans people do exist and have decided to pretend they think otherwise as some sort of conspiracy or elimination at a later point strategy? You’d need evidence to prove that and it’s usually an error to put down to malice what can be explained by stupidity.
To take an analogy of crime, we all believe crime (eg murder) is a bad thing but criminals don’t all have the same motives. On my reading the trans-oppressors are different from the gay haters. Gay haters accept the existence of same sex attraction, hate it and would seek out and victimize gays even if they hid in the closet. The trans oppressors would be perfectly happy for trans people to remain in the closet, however destructive that would be for trans people.
The Nazis often claimed Jewish identity was inauthentic; that was one of their main points, even. Only the aryan volk's identity was real and authentic; Jewish people were interlopers and deceivers who tried to parasitically adopt other people's identities, according to Hitler.
I think the problem is that you're trying to make this work logically. But racism isn't logical. It's a collection of tropes designed to justify violence, not to cohere. It may not be logical to say a group doesn't exist and then set about eliminating it, but empirically, in the real world, racists say and do that all the time.
oh and transphobes and homophobes are mostly the same people, and their aims are the same. the distinctions you're making are I think mostly fictitious and largely serve as distractions.
The current right-wing crusade against transsexuals is not necessarily a build-up to another Holocaust, but it shares with many instances of pre-genocidal propaganda the tendency to deny that a socially or ethnically marginalized group is fully human. The Nazis denied humanity to Jews, slaveowners denied humanity to their human property, Hutu agitators in Rwanda denied the humanity of their Tutsi neighbors. The claim that any subset of humanity doesn't constitute a "real ontological category" is simply a transparent attempt to cloak the same old hatred of the "outsider" in Newspeak.
The parallels to Nazi treatment of Jews in the early part of their reign are obvious. Just watch The U.S. and the Holocaust. It's striking how similar. Dehumanization, gradual banning from public spaces, increasing limits on their ability to participate in society as a Jew/trans person. It's been clear since the Trump administration that they want to eliminate trans people from our society. It's utterly sickening. I had to say the Pledge of Allegiance at a graduation ceremony today and it struck me that Republicans can't say that pledge with sincerity now. They don't believe in liberty and justice for all. Only for people like them. Actually they want to be above the law, but that's another issue.
"First they came for..." History is ALWAYS in our rear view mirror and if we're not very
careful, we're doomed to repeat it.
They always come for the marginalized first and move
up. Anything and anybody that is different than their
preconceived ideals of perfectionism, no matter
race, color of skin, beliefs,
physical and mental soundness, or age, is fair
game.
Mein Kampf, Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. HISTORY.
Noah, I happen to agree with your Nazi analogy, and feel that it does have many parallels. First of all, I want to say that after reading Prof. Kathleen Belew's book Bring the War Home: The White Power Movement and Paramilitary America, is very helpful to understand the big picture of the agenda. I know she details how the plan of the White Supremacist groups globally, made in the 1980s, early 1990s was to tone down racist rhetoric and join mainstream politics using words like anti-immigration as a code for their true racist genocidal goals. We see a lot of success using anti-immigrant (code for racist) language is being really effective in Europe, and not just in Hungary and Serbia. To create an all White World, they want to first take over governments, then exterminate. They want to eliminate all people who do not fit with their agenda. Cis-gender, White "Christian" males with elements of Norse Gods in their worship who embrace violence are supposed to rule the earth. Their bible is The Turner Diaries https://www.splcenter.org/fighting-hate/intelligence-report/2004/turner-diaries-other-racist-novels-inspire-extremist-violence
Plans to get rid of Muslims were made palatable with little protest from mainstream Americans after September 11, 2001 .Americans have not said much as Muslims have been incarcerated, killed, and vilified. Then women lost their rights to reproductive choice and there is discussion of making birth control illegal too. Part of the breeding agenda makes vilifying people who identify as LGBTQIA+ with a particular focus on trans people another piece of this puzzle. This is what German Lutheran Pastor Martin Niemöller famously talks about how each group that is come for can no longer protest, but members of other groups let this happen, until it is their group that is taken. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_they_came_...
This is the situation we find ourselves in. Let's hope that the Americans are alert to what is going on and will fight for a different outcome than the Germans because we certainly could rename the Republican Party, The American Nazi Party if we look at their goals to get rid of everyone who is not a White Cis-gender male, or a White female willing to be a breeder, and provide sexual congress with men on demand, and hold down the home front while the men conquer and rule. I think groups like the now infamous IBLP group exposed in Shiny Happy People epitomize this as a goal. They tell the women that they need to breed as many Christians as possible to overtake the world, when if you look at the stats, Christian is the dominant global religion. So, is there a threat there? No! This is really about White religious groups breeding as many "White" people if one can even believe in that peculiarly American concept to take over the Earth. Apparently they are unaware of other continents, with Africa having over 1.4 billion people, and Asia having over 4.5 billion people, contrast that with Europe, a continent of declining birth rates having about 750 million, so under a billion. North America has about 580 million, many of which are non-White. So, that is a big breeding plan for comparison, and even though we are destroying lives of the global south with our excessive consumption, the idea of the world as predominantly White is a far, far off into the future. In the meantime, people who are not thinking about themselves just purely in terms of breeding, are the enemy. That makes LGBTQ+ and trans people suspicious, because it is believed that if you are a trans woman or male you cannot make babies, which in the world view of the Right wing makes one useless. Trans and not white is a double whammy, and it goes on from there. So I agree they want to exterminate everyone who is not White, Christian (as they define it, in ignorance of Christ), and willing to breed to make the numbers grow.
The Haleys of this country, and there are many need to be removed from the equation, get them out permanently..