Germans

I saw a posting from a gay German who was upset that Germans were being unfairly stereotyped when American gays draw analogies of our own political right to the Nazis. I don't know if my posting were considered among the offenders, but I would like to assure our German friends that there is no intent whatsoever to imply that barbarism or Nazism are traits having anything to do with contemporary Germany, or represent any particular reflection on the German people.

When right-wing talk-show host and former Watergate felon Gordon Liddy displays an affinity for German language and culture, it happens in his particular case that it does in fact stem from outright Nazis sympathies. There is not, however, any automatic suspicion attached to things German.

I am half-Russian, and half-German, so I would certainly hope that this is true. However, the events taking place in Germany earlier in this century are possibly the foremost example of how a civilized country can lose its grip when a minority is allowed to become dehumanized. The need to analyze and understand this period of time is of utmost relevance to our movement.

There is a great deal of feeling in this country that the term "Nazis" is misapplied and is merely of form of name-calling. Many Jewish people think that their own experience is trivialized when the term is applied by virtually any other group in the world, today.

There is a flip-side to this coin. When a society does in fact begin to show signs of something that is properly termed Nazism, the last thing in the world that you want to do is to be silent about it. You have, in fact, a duty to raise your voice about it, shout it from the rooftops, if it is real enough. I would like to debate in this essay what the term means and when it is valid to apply the term. The term, as it applies to gays in the world today, is hardly something frivolous.

Some folks say that what "Nazis" means is that you have people getting rounded up wholesale, bodies getting stacked like cordwood, so if you don't see this, it is obviously not a "Nazis" situation.

This outlook would be fine if we wanted to recognize Nazism only by its final aftermath, with 20-20 historical hindsight. It's fine to have historical hindsight if you want to get a good view of the Hind End of History, as we sometimes seem to be approaching, but what is more important is to recognize the danger symptoms in advance for a change. When the Nazis were first coming into power, there weren't stacks of bodies yet, either. At this point, there was mostly a pattern of hostile language and twisted ideas.

Some folks think that the term "Nazis" is ridiculous, because they know that most Americans do not harbor murderous hatred toward gays. Supposedly, they have merely "moral reservations" about them, while not wishing them to be abused.

This outlook would be fine, too, if "Nazis" meant that you need to have a nation full of bloodthirsty murderers, but this is not the case. What you need is a minority that is on a hateful vendetta and a majority that is merely apathetic and willfully blind. This characterization fits the American profile quite well.

I have full faith and confidence that the American people would be tremendously on the ball, and full of good conscience, if a candidate appeared to them and said, "Hi, my name is Adolph Hitler, and by the time I'm done, there will be 50 million people dead and I'm going to send all of the Jews to the ovens".

Where I have very little faith in the American people is for them to take seriously the signs of extremism, or even criminality, when it isn't spelled out for them in blaring headlines, when the crafted image getting presented to them is folksy, grandfatherly, and radiating an appearance of wholesome virtues.

In our country today, one of the Republican Presidential contenders belongs to the Family Research Institute, which is headed by Paul Cameron. Again, Cameron is a man who wants to arrest literally all gay people, and close gay establishments of any kind. What percent of the gay community, much less the general public, even knows this, or can tell you which candidate it is? The Boston Globe ran a major article on the background of this candidate and didn't even bother to mention this fact.

I think that some sensible criteria for assessing a "Nazis" situation might be:

• Is there a minority that is commonly viewed in a dehumanizing way? Not merely criticized, not merely disagreed with, but literally considered a threat to the foundations of the society and frequently seen as something less than fully human?

• Is the dehumanization carried out merely on the part of "fringe" groups, or does this seep into the country's actual political-establishment and power structure?

• Is the minority subject to widespread acts of violence and threats of violence specifically because of their minority status?

The difference between gays labeling the Christian Coalition as "Nazis", and the Christian Coalition labeling gays as "Nazis" is that gays are getting murdered and threatened with violence from Mississippi to Texas to Oregon.

If it were mere hate groups at work, it would be one thing. But in Texas, a state legislator said that gays did something that "even animals didn't do", while a judge once declared that killing a gay man is like "killing a prostitute".

Globally, the situation is even more extreme. Gays are chased by death squads in Columbia, are murdered every few days in Brazil, executed in Iran, tortured in Romania, called "less than pigs and dogs" in Zimbabwe.

Christian Coalition members are not getting murdered by anyone. For all of their outrageous demagoguery, they are not even having their campaign contributions returned. They are getting courted actively in Congress and by every Republican Presidential candidate.

Journalists who have the notion that the exchange of names is "all the same thing" and that everyone should stop are missing the point. One side has serious reasons to say what it says and the other side is spouting absurdly phony hate propaganda.

Are there not enough signs of madness and hate in America? We have Congress being led in prayer by Lou Sheldon, who has advocated camps for gays. The mainstream press didn't even mention this, as far as I've seen.

We had a former Supreme Court Chief Justice who referred to gay sex as "more heinous than rape" and referred to ancient Roman death penalties. The press didn't even bother to quote these most blood-chilling references, acting at most as if he had merely said something "intolerant," not the stuff of sheer madness that it truly is. Warren Burger went on to head our country's bicentennial celebration without so much as a word of comment about his insane dehumanization of gays. When Burger died, President Clinton praised him as being a "visionary."

I once asked two Jewish acquaintances about their assessment of the Holocaust, whether brutality is something universally human, whether it could happen anywhere. To my surprise and dismay, they said that they thought the Germans to be a particularly brutal people. A Jewish columnist at the Boston Globe argued that anti-Semitism is more virulent than any other strain of bigotry.

A few examples point to the contrary. A Jewish columnist, Don Feder of the Boston Herald, hinted at a conservative convention in Virginia Beach last year that gays should be wiped out as the Jews had "wiped out the Canaanites," drawing a strong, positive reaction from the crowd for his statement. The Boston papers decline to mention this, printing something instead from a gay conservative who testified what a "decent person" Don Feder is. Feder has also termed gay rights as the "most potent moral virus," and fretted about gays parading in front of children, dressed like "Carmen Miranda."

Another prominent Jewish columnist, Normal Podhortez, once printed an article about gay men "buggering one another by the thousands."

I recall a study of Israeli children, in which a not-insignificant percentage replied that extermination of all Arabs would not be wrong.

No, there is no anti-Semitic intent here. Many Jewish people have a great sense of common cause with gays. The point is that no race, no religion, no country and no class of people are above the tendencies toward dehumanization, indifference and violence.

That applies to gays, no less. I once briefly knew a Cuban-American gay man who loved German culture much as Gordon Liddy did. He wore German helmets, owned German guns that he could disassemble and reassemble right before your eyes, praising their quality. I stopped associating with him when I discovered to my horror that he also had Nazis sympathies. It was an unforgettable image to watch him saying that "only" 2 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust, holding up two fingers as if it were only two Jews.

I'm not saying that all individual humans are equivalent in their character. Some individuals are certainly more violent or less violent in nature than others. But when you are talking about large groups of humans, you are invariably talking about the full range of human traits. For individuals, the lesson is that our tendencies toward indifference and violence are greater than we care to imagine, if not at the level of Nazis, and the degree to which our smaller prejudices can give leverage to groups harboring more virulent strains of similar feelings.

When Japan or Germany or the American region that was once the Confederacy are asked to face up to their failings of the past, they sometimes seem to feel as if they are being singled out and asked to wear a unique badge of shame. The same is true of the United States, when asked to admit to it's injustices toward Native Americans or its not-infrequent tendency in history to support brutal regimes in Third World countries.

The universality of indifference and cruelty is not an excuse, allowing us to dismiss ourselves from the need to contemplate such things. The realization that the viruses have stained us all should make it easier to try to confront, recognize and control the traits that will inevitably lead us to extinction if we fail to do so.

It is sometimes said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce. This is memorable more for cuteness value than for literal truth. History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as exponentially greater tragedy. If people should say, how dare I raise a comparison to anything so horrific as the Holocaust?, what gives me the right?, I would say: You have seen the things of which human beings are capable. How dare you suggest that they might not be capable of it again, here or anywhere?

I do believe that if there were a WWIII, that gays and the HIV+ might play a similar role to that which Jews played in WWII, and blacks played in the American Civil War. An astute observer might have looked at 1930's Germany, knowing nothing other than what was the rhetoric concerning Jews, and deduce from this not only that a calamity was coming for the Jews, but that war was also coming that would destroy the country, as well.

There is indeed a struggle going on for the soul of America. Gays are at the center of that spiritual crisis, but it is in the same sense that the Jews were at the center of the German crisis of spirit in the 1930s. Again, it will be true that the same people who most hate gays will also hate a broader range of human categories, will be the most militaristic and the most inspiring of unquestioning patriotic fervor.

In WWIII, the human race would finally find it's common bond, because, in WWIII, all human beings will become Jews. All left alive will be left feeling violated, feeling like a severely abused child, wondering where God has gone, wondering if God ever really existed, having lost all vain delusion that they are God's favored and protected ones. All will know exactly how it felt to be a Jew in a concentration camp, the helpless plaything of implacable sadists. All will say the same things that the Jews have said, and the gays have said:

"How could they not see our decency?"
"How could they not see our humanity?"
"How could they not see how much like themselves we are?"

Such will it be, if we do not do a better job of finding our better natures.

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Auch der Mensch

Auch der Mensch verdient, geschutzt zu sein
Und nict nur Wald und Flur
Auch der Mensch will nicht vernichtet sein
Auch der Mensch ist ein Stuck Natur
Auch der Mensch verdient, geschutzt zu sein
Gefahrdet is auch er
Und er sollte wieder sauber sein
Wie die Flusse und wie das Meer.

Es wird gekampft
Man setzt sich ein
Fur die Erhaltung der Natur
Und es is gut
Dab man das tut
Manche ubersehen dabei nur

Auch der Mensch verdient, geschutzt zu sein
Und dab man ihn erhalt
Ihn mit aller Sorgfalt
Hegt und pflegt
Denn mit ihm steht und fallt die Welt

Auch der Mensch verdient, geschutzat zu sein
Sonst stirbt er einmal aus
Auch der Mensch verdient, bewahrt zu sein
Wenn es sein mub, auch vor sich selbst.

Tom Keske.