War, sexual freedom and fascism in Germany – Lavender and Red 4 & 5
www.workers.org
In addition to the legislative attacks on women, gender-nonconforming people and LGBTQ+ lives, in June white-supremacist groups like the Proud Boys have attempted a military-style raid on Pride in the Park in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, and invaded public libraries— in Wilmington, North Carolina, and San

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At the same time the German counterrevolution — headed by Hitler and bankrolled and backed by a segment of the industrial and banking class — had obtained a base in the middle class.

This fascism targeted the gay/trans/lesbian and women’s rights movements, even before anti-Jewish and anti-gay laws, codified in 1933-35, officially marked the unleashing of the widespread campaign of terror.

Hirschfeld was targeted by the Nazis because he was Jewish and gay, as well as a movement leader and socialist. . . . On May 6, 1933, fascist youth were organized to march on his Institute for Sexual Science, accompanied by a brass band. They trashed the international archive, making a mountain of the many thousands of books, journals, photographs and charts — at that time the largest collection [on sexuality and gender] in world history. Storm troopers showed up and took over the ransacking. Four days later, the enormous heap of archive materials was publicly burned in Opera Square. . . .

After 1933 the Nazis forcibly dismantled all independent youth organizations, even the Catholic ones, by denouncing their leaders as “homosexual degenerates.” . . . A harsh new antigay edict issued in 1935, Paragraph 175A, criminalized kisses, embraces, even homosexual fantasies. The law gave the fascist state license to carry out arrests and internment in camps with impunity. . . . Although laws against lesbianism had not been codified, women were snared in the state web, rounded up in SS raids on lesbian bars, sentenced and sent to concentration camps where they faced horrific brutality.