What the hell?

[selenak]

I've occasionally complained about the Angloamerican tendency to use the word "Nazi" just to mean "authoritative Person with whom I don't agree" instead of, well, Nazi, as in member of the National Socialist Worker's Party that ruled Germany between 1933 and 1945. But never mind such bizarre word creations as "fashion Nazi" or "Christmas Nazi", this morning I stumbled across something far more serious. Not only does it manage to combine homophobia with historical ignorance, it also insults a group who was among the victims of the Third Reich in a particularly vile way:

Spectacular bigotry in print to be found here. (Not the article but the piece of writing it reports.) Choice quotes: "Having forcibly – and understandably – rectified the Versailles-type injustices and humiliations foisted on the homosexual community, the UK's victorious Gaystapo are now on a roll. Their gay-rights stormtroopers take no prisoners as they annex our wider culture, and hotel owners, registrars, magistrates, doctors, counsellors, and foster parents … find themselves crushed under the pink jackboot."Thanks especially to the green light from a permissive New Labour government, the gay Wehrmacht is on its long march through the institutions and has already occupied the Sudetenland social uplands of the Home Office, the educational establishment, the politically-correct police. Following a plethora of equalities legislation, homosexuals are now protected and privileged by sexual orientation regulations and have achieved legal equality by way of civil partnerships. But it's only 1938 and Nazi expansionist ambitions are far from sated."

Was this written by some obscure blogger? No. It appeared in the 28th October 2011 edition of the Church of England newspaper. What. The. Hell?

Comments

[legionseagle]

What next? "Gypsy S.S. Behind Dale Farm Resistance", says Archbishop?

[selenak]

I wouldn't put it past everyone concerned. :(

[kalypso]

Oh lord... I note that the newspaper is independent of the actual Church of England, but the Church needs to disassociate itself from this nonsense pretty fast.

[legionseagle]

"Decisive action on moral grounds" and "Church of England". Hm. Not planning to hold my breath.

[selenak]

I hope they will.

[onyxlynx]

Ugh!

(As I understand it, the mossiest of the mossybacks never got over the update to the Book of Common Prayer.)

[selenak]

:(

[cremains]

I'm honestly shocked. At first I thought, maybe part of the problem is that people really don't know deeply or expansively what they did to queer people during the Holocaust. But that can't be it; Jews are called Nazis all the time. I don't know. Anyway it's telling that so often these really vicious, intensive comparisons with the Third Reich (as opposed to flip comments like "My mom is a total Nazi") are directed towards actual Nazis' actual victims.

[cremains]

One of the things I really hate here is that somehow it seems clear that a bunch of these assholes were sitting around complaining about gays and one of them came up with the word "gaystapo" and they totally loved it and built the whole piece around it.

[selenak]

Without even a second of reflection, undoubtedly, yes. Makes me wish someone would yell "have you no decency?" at them, but we know the answer to that one already.

[surexit]

Ugh ugh ugh ugh. I'm in full communion with the CoE, and sometimes I really fucking wish I wasn't.

[st_aurafina]

cremains is right - they've come up with the term "gaystapo" and thought it the best thing EVER. Like a bunch of schoolboys huddled together, saying "Bum!" and giggling. It would be pathetic and puerile if it wasn't something that will cause a lot of harm.

[selenak]

Indeed. Ugh.

[watervole]

" Following a plethora of equalities legislation, homosexuals are now protected and privileged by sexual orientation regulations and have achieved legal equality by way of civil partnerships."

Good! Though I doubt the writer intended it that way....

[fajrdrako]

Am I the only person around who rather loves the phrases "fashion Nazi" or "grammar Nazi"? I avoid mentioning "Christmas Nazi" because I haven't heard the phrase and don't know what it means... Is it people who think we shouldn't mention Christmas because they think Christmas is for Christians and excludes others?

Anyway... I kind of like the colourful language of the piece, and the way the egregious exaggerations in it shoot itself in the foot with its own ammunition.

It made me think of an interview I attended last night, in which a professor at Carleton University was interviewing Steven Pinker on his book about the lessening of violence in the world. The interviewer said, "Some critics take you to task for just tracking physical violence in your new book. Is that a fair question?"

"No," said Pinker. "It's an absurd one." His point was that we have gone far enough beyond accepting violence now that we use analogies of violence to cover things that in the past weren't considered violence at all. This reflects our concerns, and increased sensitivity to violence - and by extension, the atrocities of Nazi Germany. (See. I mentioned the real Nazis. Context is everything.)

I tend to think of this when I hear the phrases "linguistic genocide" or "cultural genocide". Not to trivialize either, but words are not lifeforms.

I will be glad when prejudice against gays is nothing but historical memory. I am also glad we're not being toted off to concentration camps these days.

[selenak]

"Christmas Nazi" I heard on the tv show Roswell where it was used to mean a Christmas shopping obsessed person.

Am I the only person around who rather loves the phrases "fashion Nazi" or "grammar Nazi"?

Well, considering their popularity, obviously you're far from the only one. But I live a city where you're half an hour away from Dachau when you take the metro, I'm friends with a woman who saw her father spat on and shouted at with a sign around his neck in this very city as a girl before she made it out alive because her parents put her on the Kindertransport to England, as opposed to her parents. It's not abstract history to me, or something from the movies. It's real, and the way the current English language trivializes it irritates me at best; at worst, it makes me physically sick.

[fajrdrako]

"Christmas Nazi" I heard on the tv show Roswell where it was used to mean a Christmas shopping obsessed person.

Ah, well. Beware the shopping-obsessed!

It's real, and the way the current English language trivializes it irritates me at best; at worst, it makes me physically sick.

I'm sorry it upsets you. Words have a way of slipping the traces of their old, literal meanings and changing to trivialities, or gaining weight they never started with. I don't think it's a diminishing of the original meaning, but a transposition - an analogy and a form of hyperbole with a somewhat self-conscious irony. Sometimes done, in fact, because the emotional burden of the original meaning is too much to face.