Woke Church Group and Freedom of Speech (lack of)

[MagdalenNoName]

I'm sharing a post I made as part of a thread in a religious discussion group on FB.

I made the post there because I was - and continue to be - disturbed by the way in which some kinds of speech are being privileged within the church, while other kinds of speech are being marginalised and suppressed.

As the descendant of German-Jews, I have been reading a lot about the way in which one ideology - originally very much a minority viewpoint - came to control society as a whole, and felt that there are some disturbing similarities between then and now.

I did not expect that everyone would agree with my viewpoint, but I saw it as a contribution to an important conversation. This post was deleted by the moderators and I was also removed from the group itself.

Here is the post.

"A lot of Aryan Germans sincerely believed that Jewish people were a threat to the new Germany of the Third Reich, which would take them away from the bad chaotic days of unemployment and hyper-inflation. If a few people were inconvenienced by new laws, that was their problem for being resistant to the truth and they needed to be re-educated. Then, any group that threatened the new ideas was hateful and must be weeded out for the greater good. In this Brave New World are gender critical women the new Jews/gays/Jehovah's Witnesses/Roma people/communists?"

I agree.

They removed you for that? Wow. I like that you ended on a question, inviting them to discuss. But they can't and won't, there can be no rational discussion about an essentially irrational subject. You talk of 'the church': would it be outing to say which denomination?

Begins with a letter between 'P' and 'R'....

Oh my. Excellent post, good historical parallel and by removing you they seem to have proved your point but still, oh my. Is nowhere now a safe haven for discussion?

While I believe in free speech I do think that declaring yourself to be GC and then comparing yourself to groups of people who were shot, gassed, worked to death and made to dig their own graves when the most you can expect is a robust "fucking --redacted T word" , is a tad insensitive.

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you seem to have missed this part of the OP

As the descendant of German-Jews

So am i, so what?

comparing yourself to groups of people who were shot, gassed, worked to death and made to dig their own graves

How do you think acceptance of this started?

As a descendent of German Jews, is the OP not allowed to draw parallels with her ancestral history and what is happening today? There always has to be a start and OP is pointing out that the current othering of women unwilling to bow to trans ideology could be the start of something much worse.

I thinks it's a little disingenuous to suggest that all women have to fear is being called a "terf" (we are allowed to use the term on this way I believe) when the very act of being labelled thus is what begins the othering process. What then follows is that violence and intimidation is viewed as an acceptable retaliation (I don't need to give examples, we have threads and threads of them). So acceptable that half the press won't report on it, and the police can't be relied upon to protect women.

Some of the issues which came to my mind when thinking about the resemblances were:-

• The dodgy science. Hijacking of ideas that are in the zeitgeist, pushing them way beyond the limits that were originally envisaged.
• Capture of the media. BBC, Guardian etc
• Capture of educational and public institutions, NHS, universities and schools (BBC materials, No Outsiders programmes, Mermaids training etc
• Strong appeal to disaffected youth
• Capture of political parties (Labour, Green, Plaid Cymuru, Womens Equality Party, some Conservatives, some SNP.)
• Deceiving people into thinking it’s essentially a positive philosophy – any use of violence is just an aberration.
• Demonisation of opponents (gender critical feminists, gay people who won’t accept partners of opposite biological sex who simply ‘identify as men/women’
• Capture of public and private spaces – eg toilets, clubs that were formerly only open to people of one sex.

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Why do you think the public voted for the Nazi party, do you think that concentration camps were part of the manifesto??

OR do you think media capture, othering and propaganda very similar to what's going on today played a part?

OP can I ask if it was the young person FB group?

Not a youth group - though a Page/group which is very popular with younger people within the larger movement.

So the point the OP is making (I think) is that the Nazis didn’t go straight to mass murder, their ideology was drip dripped in, and it started with the curtailing of free speech, and the marginalisation of a group.

The point isn’t to compare GC women to Jews it’s to discuss how dangerous policing speech can be as a tool of ‘othering’ .

I sorry x posted with all of you !

I am historian, my FIL wrote a well known book on this deplorable part of history which is used as a text book, it's a part of our family's own personal history and one that I have a great deal of knowledge of. I don't have to justify why I think that the OP's use of this terrifying period of ignorance, fear, horror and misinformation is misjudged.

We must be vigilant to not repeat the worst paths of history but to suggest that a GC feminist in this country is ever going to be on the receiving end of more than a bit of nasty swearing is hyperbole and to use those genuinely oppressed and tortured groups as a direct comparison is insulting to them. Whatever your background.

Could you perhaps be a little less patronising?

o suggest that a GC feminist in this country is ever going to be on the receiving end of more than a bit of nasty swearing is hyperbole

People have already been arrested for wrong think, this is already in schools.

feminist have been attacked physically.

"punch a terf posters" have been put up and the police have used similar "Report transphobes" posters.

The word "woman" and "Girls" is being removed from products relating to periods and Pregnancy education, the BBC has managed to do a show on domestic violence without once mentioning women.

This is not just a "bit of swearing" on twitter.

you now get toilets for men and toilets for everyone. Women are having safe spaces removed from them.

Services such as woman's shelters are not getting funding if they don't allow Males who self ID access to the service.

Rapists are being put in womans prisons, where they are attacking women with their lady penis....

Notice any parallels Ebook?

You know history so you will know what happened in that 8 year period when the Nazi party went from being a joke to being in power.

And you know what, Autistic children were experimented on then, and they are still being experimented on now.

I think it's always a bit alarming when people draw parallels to the rise of the nazis, and it's an easy and lazy accusation to make. But, like someone said they didn't go straight to concentration camps, they started small, and that is always the danger we face. I think it would have been wiser of the OP to cite her examples, maybe in separate posts, building up a case gradually. There's plenty to go on!
Then draw out what the parallels are.
Most times when people fling accusations of Nazism around it's hyperbole, and people are understandably offended, regardless of the background of the person doing the accusing. So I think it's better to be careful. Ideally, lead people to draw their own conclusions.