Nazi-era rage against gays emerges at Leipzig Pride event

“I stopped reading my Facebook feed,” one queer Jewish American friend told me. I won’t name names, but they are among the many who expressed similar sentiments.

We were talking about the rise in anti-Semitism among the LGBTQ community, and they were devastated.

Unfortunately, recent events in the Gaza Strip have created a strange situation in which all Jews are responsible for the brutal response of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government. LGBTQ Jews face microaggressions and direct violence, are humiliated, and attackedeven in Pride.

First and foremost, I would like to say that the indiscriminate massacre of Gaza civilians is definitely a war crime, which should be condemned and avoided in the future, but I would like to say that the There are many articles written. This time, I intentionally do not discuss Hamas and Israeli politicians here. Because this story isn’t about them. This story is about how the LGBTQ community currently treats our Jewish brothers.

There aren’t many prominent queer politicians among Netanyahu’s supporters, and they don’t spend much time in queer social media groups.

Furthermore, right-wing LGBTQ people with ties to the Israeli government have little interest in the LGBTQ communities in the US, UK, and Russia.

LGBTQ people who suffer from anti-Semitism on a daily basis are the ones who need community the most. Unfortunately, we live in a world where many families do not accept LGBTQ children, and for many queer people, the LGBTQ community has been their only family support.

And now anti-Semitism is stealing away this support.

Why political opposition to the Israeli government has turned into medieval-style bigotry is a very good question, but there is no simple answer.

double standards

To someone who is not deeply interested in political and social issues, this situation may seem very typical. After all, people are often used to judging entire countries based on what their government has done, right? Actually, they’re wrong.

As someone from Ukraine, I often spoke to LGBTQ and Western progressive activists about the Russo-Ukrainian war, and I might say that most of them expressed very high levels of sympathy for “ordinary Russians.” I don’t know. The majority of the Russian population I support Russia-Ukraine war. Furthermore, even after Russia in 2022, intentionally bombed There are Ukrainian children in the Mariupol theater, Russians in large numbers are not called “child killers” by the LGBTQ community in America and Europe, and Russian activists are still welcomed with pride.

So this is in no way about bombing children.

Also, as far as I know, all the LGBTQ organizations in the US, UK, and European Union that currently openly support Palestine and call themselves anti-Zionists have openly opposed concentration camps, ethnic cleansing, and anti-Zionism. I never raised my voice. genocide The Muslim Uyghur population lives in East Turkestan, which is currently under Chinese occupation.

However, LGBTQ groups and activists have never called themselves anti-China, and they have also given rise to the “Queer East Turkestan” movement, which has been used to support Chinese LGBTQ people on campus to denounce the actions of the Chinese government. He never pushed people.

Therefore, it is not about combating Islamophobia either.

What is it about? I have been a refugee in three different countries and been involved in some form of LGBTQ activism in Russia, Ukraine, the UK, and the US. One could argue that anti-Semitism in the LGBTQ community exists in some form in all of these countries. .

And anti-Semitism is expressed differently among LGBTQ people from different cultural backgrounds.

antisemitism in eastern europe

In 2018, I and three other LGBTQ activists staged a small demonstration in the center of St. Petersburg on Victory Day, a major national holiday where Russians celebrate the Soviet Union’s victory over Nazism. . We held posters about common threats between Nazi Germany and the modern Russian Federation, including the persecution of LGBTQ people.

Suddenly, a man who seemed to be highly respected came up to us and accused us of an anti-Russian Western conspiracy just because we criticized the Russian government, and then said that the Holocaust never happened. I started. When I yelled back at this man, telling him that I too was Jewish and daring him to repeat the anti-Semitic accusation, the man said that Jews “paid to live in Auschwitz, and later They will form their own nation.”

No one said anything against this guy, but the Russians got furious at me for “ruining the holiday.”

Holocaust denial and everyday anti-Semitism are very evident in Eastern Europe, from Poland to Russia. Especially strong in Russia.

Russia’s pride in its “victory over the Nazis” is not about fighting Nazi ideology, but rather about being proud of its Soviet heritage. Simplifying the Nazis is bad just because they killed the Russian Soviets.

The Nazi propaganda book “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion” was also available for purchase in the Russian Orthodox National Church.

Although Russian LGBTQ activists are generally less anti-Semitic than the majority of people, they still tolerate anti-Semitic jokes and share Russian supremacist ideas because they were raised in this culture. Sometimes.

So, for them, anti-Zionism is another, new, more appropriate way to hate Jews, and especially since many prominent Jewish LGBTQ people have immigrated to Israel and the United States, they He made no attempt to hide his rhetoric. Most of the community is non-Jewish.

Anti-Semitism in Western Europe and America

The situation is quite different in America and Western Europe.

“Why would you support Palestine if you have never supported people in other conflict areas, including other Muslim lands?” I asked a friend and activist from Sheffield, England.

“Because this is the first time in modern history that a state has carried out such an attack on civilians!” they answered me. “Especially with government support.”

I closed my eyes and suddenly remembered a city in Iraq. mosul It has been wiped out on the ground by the US-led allies, leaving not only ISIS fighters but also peaceful townspeople stranded under occupation by the self-proclaimed “caliphate” and the Syrian town of Bakhuz Forkani, home to families of ISIS fighters. was also killed. including babies and pregnant women, bombed Along with Syrian civilians.

And again, Russian “Liquidation” operation and bombing In Chechnya and Ukraine, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad crime Syria’s own nationals, crimes committed by ISIS, or crimes in progress. war In Mali.

My friends have no idea how wrong they were.

Modern warfare is extremely brutal, and problems such as the dehumanization of the enemy and war crimes continue to be resolved. This is a much broader issue than just the actions of Israelis, but as one of my Jewish non-binary friends says, “If there are no Jews, there is no news.”

Western anti-Semitism in the LGBTQ community, including the idea that all Jews are extremely privileged white oppressors, is based on simple ignorance as well as bigotry. If in Russia we see more activists who hate Jews and just want to be anti-Semitic in a modern way, then in the LGBTQ community in the UK and US we see more people who are generally interested in war crimes. Ta. But they refused to conduct their own analysis and refused to use the same standards against Jews as they use against other minorities. For example, don’t force them to blame a crime they didn’t commit.

The Palestinian rights movement has waged one of the most extensive and successful PR campaigns in modern history, while Jewish organizations have struggled to promote their policies to non-Jews. has failed.

“Most of them [LGBTQ activists and friends] “To be truly anti-Zionist, you don’t even know what Zionism is,” my queer American friend realized.

But just like in Russia, some queer people are just bigots and now they can publicly display their hatred in a way that doesn’t get them condemned by the community.

Ayman Eckford is a freelance journalist, autistic ADHDer, and transgender person who has known he is trans* since he was three years old.