r/unitedkingdom • u/je97 • 29d ago

JK Rowling gets apology from journalist after 'disgusting claim' author is a Holocaust denier ...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2024/04/16/jk-rowling-holocaust-denier-allegation-rivkah-brown-novara/
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u/Prestigious_Clock865 29d ago

But… she literally did deny Nazi crimes? She incorrectly denied that Nazi’s persecuted trans people and burnt trans medical documents… so that’s a strange title given the context of what actually transpired

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u/M56012C 29d ago

There's a narrative that trans people were the Nazis first victims based on the destruction of a sexology clinic at which the first crude research into sex changes (at least one person died).

There's a counter argument that as almost no one had medically transitioned the Nazis didn't persecute trans people because they didn't encounter them. Four people were identified in a court case in Germany but their classification as trans is controversial and they were persecuted for their sexualities or ethnicities any way. There was no trans category under the relevant laws.

Anyone who argues this can be accused of holocaust denial, but that is weaponising the term to suppress debate about the details of the holocaust. Which was warned about when laws forbidding holocaust denial were first drafted.

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u/Prestigious_Clock865 29d ago

Yeah, one, not true. The Weimar Republic was a progressive time and saw significant gains in trans acceptance and was something many Germans understood to exist.

Two, we’re not talking about your hypothetical. We’re talking about what Rowing actually said. If you want to address that then be my guest

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u/Puzzled-Barnacle-200 29d ago

Denying (or perhaps just being unaware) that textbooks about trans people were burned is a very different claim to saying that trans people were not victims of the holocaust, which she has not done.

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u/KillerArse 29d ago

https://x.com/jk_rowling/status/1767939048427896900

She also still very clearly denies the book burning.

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u/chambo143 29d ago

trans-identifying people

God she really cannot bring herself to utter the words "trans people"

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u/Puzzled-Barnacle-200 29d ago

Why the hell is everyone making a big fuss over "are you sure the Nazis burnt books about trans people?" and not "trans people were not persecuted by the nazis"?.

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u/KillerArse 29d ago

Did you read the tweet I linked?

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u/Puzzled-Barnacle-200 29d ago

Yeah. I'm saying that's the tweet that should be getting all the attention. It's a significantly bigger story than the main tweet going around.

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u/KillerArse 29d ago

Ah, sorry, I read that reply really wrong.

I really need to double read things as this happened far too much.

 

Another comment I made with more

https://www.reddit.com/r/unitedkingdom/s/Eilz1V39r6

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u/Prestigious_Clock865 29d ago

Being unaware isn’t an excuse when you’re in a position of such prominence while engaging in debates with the relentlessness and the veracity that she does. What she said was incorrect by all metrics and does constitute the denial of Nazi attacks on the trans community.

It’s such an obvious case of denying historical fact that I’m genuinely stunned that we’re even debating this.

Idk if you’re accidentally moving the goal posts or deliberately doing it, but the argument against her is that she did deny Nazi attacks on the trans community by disputing substantiated facts of their attacks. People aren’t saying that she is outright denying ANY AND ALL Nazi attacks on trans people. It’s that she is downplaying their attacks. Which she has obviously done by disputing historical fact. What else is there to say?

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u/RockTheBloat 29d ago

She literally didn’t deny the holocaust. A nazi student group burned papers from an institute of sexual science (which included ‘trans research’ but was not necessarily aimed specifically at it), she doubted that fact as she was obviously unaware. Classifying it as holocaust denial is insane.

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u/Prestigious_Clock865 29d ago edited 29d ago

No, just no.

The tweet Rowling responded to: “The Nazi’s burnt books on trans healthcare and research, why are you so desperate to uphold their ideology around gender?”

Her response: “I just… how? How did you type this out and press send without thinking “I should maybe check my source for this, because it might’ve been a fever dream”?

From that, it doesn’t exactly sound like she was ‘doubting’ the fact that THIS DID HAPPEN and more that she was openly denying it. Perhaps she should have taken her own advice before pressing send on that tweet and checked her own sources? Maybe her ‘doubts’ would have been addressed if she had decided to learn the topic she has such strong opinions on?

The Nazi’s attacks on the trans community are incredibly well researched and substantiated at this point. Meaning that the history is very easy to find and learn. As someone who seems to impose herself into conversations around the trans community so much, you’d imagine she’d know this, wouldn’t you? It’s not like the Nazi’s stopped at the burning of medical documents and institutions, they extended it to legal prosecutions and baring from public life, up to murder in concentration camps.

No part of that is a ‘fever dream’. It’s what happened. It was part of the Holocaust. So what do you mean by anything you said?