++++++ In reading the quotes from Stein I don’t think she is being fair in her own comparisons of some things to Nazi propaganda. For example, here: “During these initiative campaigns, the Christian right at times deployed rhetoric and imagery that echoed European anti-Semitism. The Oregon Citizens Alliance film, The Gay Agenda, closely resembled the 1940 Nazi propaganda film The Eternal Jew. Echoing traditional anti-Semitic propaganda which deliberately inflated the power of Jewish bankers, international Jewish conspiracies, and so forth, conservatives suggested that lesbians and gay men have higher incomes than others.”

++++ What Stein claims that Lively and Abrams did she did herself by claiming that the Christian activists used “rhetoric and imagery that echoed European anti-Semitism.” These close resemblances are not close except in her mind. She herself takes a partisan viewpoint in referring to the “Christian Right” as if that is the only group represented. As we saw recently in California’s Proposition 8, there was a coalition of Evangelicals, Fundamentalists, Roman Catholics, Mormons, and a large representation of African Americans. It is very probable that other groups took part as well, such as Muslims and Orthodox and Hasidic Jews, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Copts, Jehovah’s Witnesses, etc. Many of those who voted for Prop. 8 also voted for Barack Obama for President. I’d say that it’s probably the case that the political battle in Oregon that Stein discusses had a similar makeup.

+++++ Moreover, I did not see an analytical breakdown of the Lively and Abrams book from Stein, so it comes off as more of an example of polemics than persuasive refutation. For someone who doesn’t have the time to research and verify the claims made by Lively and Abrams it is a disappointment. It certainly isn’t “a historian’s analysis because THERE WAS NO ANALYSIS! Maybe a little here an there, but it’s a pretty partisan review and the appeal to authority only goes so far. It’s sort of like one group of Jefferson historians insisting that Locke was the biggest influence on his draft of the Declaration whereas I think it likely that a larger influence came from Henry St. John, 1st Viscount Bolingbroke. In this case I made a little time to do my own research, which is made easier by the fact that the source materials are in English. To do primary research on “The Pink Swastika” would take knowledge of German, which I don’t have. I don’t have a dog in this fight, I just want to know the truth. Thanks.

Just wanted to add, I saw a documentary last night on the peat-bog mummies, and how the Nazis tried to use mummies as a part of their “archeological evidence” that the Aryans once founded civilization 10, 000 years ago.

Himmler referred to the Dutch mummies as homosexuals who had been drowned for their “disordered state”.

Of course this is but one interpretation of what most experts call sacrificial customs, and therefore it’s not archeology, but ideology.

In any case, it seriously challenges the notion that homosexuality was never or hardly mentioned by the Nazis.

I keep questioning, what is so different between such “hardening” texts and conventional “conspiracy theory”? I think the latter goes into the superlative, sometimes to the point of science fiction. The former responds to liberal discourse as it understands it. Texts like TPS actually purport to equal the playing fields in a liberal context. However, the reader must first realize that they have been unequally tipped, and here such texts fail to be convincing. I don’t think too many people are convinced that gays or aborigines have enjoyed too many rights in the past 100 years, rather than too few, or unequal rights!

I’m talking wider context here, and outside the specific texts. What they do attempt to say is that if one can link groups of people with certain judicial interests to e.g. Nazis or cannibalism, or STD viruses, then their other arguments for civil rights should be reconsidered to protect “society” at large. What is then also implied is that victimization is concocted by these groups, who are themselves perpetrators. However, that is an unsound (yet powerfully emotive) argument. Surely historical treaties and constitutions forbid collective punishments, and at least in the US “all men are created equal”. So perhaps “hardening” the narrative type texts show a degree of anti-government sentiment where current cultural constructs are reinforced through populism to the point where “out-groups” become visible symbols of disatisfation with constitutional and juristic processes. Unlike blatant hate-speech, they are usually softened by the odd sentence that highlight appeals against extremism (it’s the other side that is, after, all painted as “extreme”). Perhaps the “hardening” is escapism for the (white) middle classes. I do think that faction of global society needs a bit of an ego-boost, but going the path of how bad the world is, and how bad other groups are, is the ultimate hallmark of cult-speak.

Perhaps a perk of internet overflow is that we can tailor-make our own prejudiced narrative these days. We can pick and choose from the vast array of the conspiracy buffet.

What is quite hypocritical and annoying is when Muslims and Christians use each other’s texts to condem homosexuality, but yet in the next book they condem each other!