America’s Anti-Sex Stances Resemble Nazi Germany in 1933
How will history remember us when the future becomes the present?
May 6th, 1933, is a day forever etched into the annals of history as a dark day for intellectual freedom and human progress. Then, as now, the dark cloud of censorship descended, bringing forth innumerable boots that would soon trample all over free expression.
The date is probably meaningless to you. Understandably so.
No battles were fought that day. No economic meltdowns were kicking off.
We usually view history through the lens of military encounters, famous figures, and the foundations of nations. By this measure, not much was happening.
World War II wouldn’t begin for nearly another seven years with the invasion of Poland on September 1st, 1939. Hitler had just clinched his dictatorship on January 30th, 1933, solidifying himself as the Chancellor of Germany.
Life was ordinary.
There’s something terrifying in the ordinariness of the moment.
Incalculable horror lay just beyond the horizon. A Holocaust of nightmares was about to unfold—and no one knew what was coming.
The day was so unremarkable few were paying attention. Thanks to an anonymous photographer, we can see the events of May 6th, 1933, beyond written words on a page.
Two Nazis broke into the library of a German man named Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld and tore apart his books, probing for illegal materials. Though Hirschfeld was Jewish, the Nazis raided his library for a different reason.
Hirschfeld was a gay man. The Nazis were pitilessly anti-LGBTQ. They disapproved of his research into human sexuality.
As the director of the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin, Dr. Hirschfeld was a pioneer in the field of sexology and a staunch advocate for LGBTQ+ rights.
His institute was both a scientific haven and a sanctuary for sexual minorities, representing a beacon of hope in an era plagued by prejudice and discrimination. This was intolerable to the Nazis.
They’re books about human sexuality. The black one in the center is titled Die Ehe, meaning The Marriage in English, presumably a book about sexuality within the confines of marriage. Dr. Hirschfeld wrote extensivelyabout everything from sexuality in traditional family structures to LGBTQ.
His motto in his quest for LGBTQ equality was “through science to justice.”
Nazi officers and Hitler Youth took his book collection and research materials and burned them in the public streets to communicate that unapproved sexuality would be snuffed out.
Soldiers were warned not to be sexual with women as they occupied Paris and other parts of Europe:
In the middle of the sweet and easy life of the City of Lights… keep in your heart, as every German should, a motto: ‘Don’t fall into sentimentality; the strength of steel is what we need now; direct yourself to clear and sure goals; and be ready for combat.
Nuanced anti-sex stances would become a crucial component of Nazi ideology.
Hitler considered non-familial sexuality to be a cause of decadence among Germans. He felt the Jews a cause of sexual decadence and responsible for LGBTQ people and activities.
Nazi anti-sex propaganda mirrors today’s conservative climate, where movements have grown up predicated on the perceived evils of sex, pornography, and LGBTQ people.
In a moment eerily similar to the raid on Dr. Hirschfeld’s library, the State of Indiana defunded The Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender, and Reproduction, conspicuously one year after they established the Center for Gender Equity in Business.
Dr. Nicole Prause, Dr. Justin Lehmiller,and other prominent sexologists and sex researchers studied there.
Republicans have spearheaded a massive book-banning and burning campaign now in its third year.
They’re banning everything from “risk jokes and romance novels” to any book mentioning human sexuality, alongside an onslaught of anti-transgender bills. Between January and March 2022, they’d already put forth 238 bills in state legislatures to strip transgender rights.
Human Rights Campaign declared 2022 one of the “worst years on record” for LGBTQ rights. The so-called “Sex Wars” seem to be reaching their pinnacle in America, with Politico adjudging that they’ll never end.
Here in Florida, the Republican Party has issued bans on books deemed obscene, just as the Nazis did in the 1930s. They’ve also banned transgender treatments and restricted pronoun use.
Several other states have followed suit, and many have implemented fascistic punishments for anyone passing out books or other media the party has deemed “prurient” or “offensive.”
It’s top-down cancel culture at the highest levels.
In Arkansas, teachers and librarians in public schools or libraries who distribute “obscene” or “harmful” materials can be charged with a felony and imprisoned for six years or fined $10,000 for each violation.
What’s new isn’t American conservatives banning books. Conservative Evangelicals tried to ban Harry Potter when I was a child under the auspices it would teach children witchcraft.
As
pointed out, Kansas tried to banCharlotte’s Webin 2006.Enraged parents claimed the book was “blasphemous” because“talking animals contradicted their belief that humans were God’s most perfect creations.”If you’re a librarian who gets accused of providing books that are seen as “harmful to minors,” you can go to jail. A spate of new laws across the country targets school libraries in particular, and school districts are taking it dead serious. One district in Florida told librarians and teachers to take all of their books off the shelves until they could be reviewed. Some teachers were even told they had to remove every single book from their classrooms.
What’s new is the ungodly volume of such anti-speech legislation.
Seven states have passed these kinds of book bans in two short years. Two of those laws were thankfully vetoed by state governors, but another dozen have put forth 20 similar bills. Many more will vote on more in 2023 and 2024.
Here in Florida, we’re quickly becoming the epicenter of speech wars. Ron DeSantis is proudly “blazing a trail” on book bans. He hopes to make book banning one of the tenets of his presidential campaign.
Florida hasn’t passed statewide bans, but DeSantis has passed multiple laws that make it easier for local parents to get books banned on the county level.
Over 200 books were banned in Florida counties between 2021 and the summer of 2022. More than 350 more books have been banned between July 2022 and April 2023.
It’s unthinkable that a presidential hopeful is running on banning books as a winning message because he knows there is a base out there who will eat it up like Rocky Road ice cream, but here we are.
The creepiest part about these bans is people’s nonchalant attitudes. Mention book bans, and the usual response is, “Well, kids shouldn’t be reading about inappropriate things.” A glance reveals these books aren’t pornographic.
Their minds immediately think smut when they hear that books are being banned, which makes these bans so insidious. Any chance at stopping this grand silencing of speech cannot happen until the public equates the Nazi book bans with what’s happening here in the United States.
It’s just like the Nazis back in the 1930s. The only difference is the uniforms. They’re waiting to see men in uniform ban books before they’re willing to believe it’s real.
Book bans like this should be so despicable that their mere mention disqualifies politicians from office.
Yet, we’re letting it happen right under our noses. We’re pretending it’s not happening. Perhaps our American exceptionalism prevents us from believing that authoritarianism can happen here—but it is happening.
Life is ordinary.
We’re not paying attention.
It makes me wonder what day will be our May 6th, 1933, another ordinary day in America that will outlive us into history as a relic foreshadowing America’s downfall into atrocity.
Thank you for this well written summary.
I’m glad you wrote this, Joe. One day in 2016 when Trump was running, I was in the waiting room at my dentist’s office, and the TV was on. One of the news stations was talking about the presidential campaign. While making some small talk with a stranger in the waiting room about the campaign, I also said “we CANNOT put a Hitler in the White House.” The lady paused to collect herself, looked at me, and then said “I do not agree!” The dental hygienist then opens the door to have me come in for my appointment. After my teeth got cleaned and I got ready to leave, the receptionist then tells me of how offended she was at my comment. Of course I was not going to apologize for that; I told the cold hard truth, she didn’t want to acknowledge reality, and it’s not my problem if she’s too blind or not ready to even CONSIDER how similar Trump and his worshippers are to Hitler. I am a realist, not an optimist or a pessimist. I do not believe in sugarcoating. (It’s one of the many reasons I don’t want to have kids.)
If people don’t start paying enough attention, if people don’t learn to see more than just what meets the eye, if people don’t acknowledge even the ugliest of realities, if people will not allow themselves to believe that some people actually are capable of some inhumanly horrendous levels of evil, the horrors in history that we’ve tried so hard to keep from repeating WILL BE REPEATED.