Fist they came for the trans people

[Rigatone]

Someone I am close to in real life has just posted this on social media. I have some issues with this meme and I would be grateful to hear others thoughts on this?

Will share my thoughts but will let others comment first to help me check my reaction.

My thoughts:

Who has "come for" trans people?
In what sense have they come for trans people first and what have they done to them?
Is it appropriate to use Levi's poem about the holocaust to compare to something happening to trans people?

Simply displays a lack of knowledge and a propensity to take issues at face value. What is really happening is that males with sexual fetishes are coming after women and children, as usual. Same old shit, different outfit.

Thread title is suposed to say "First" not fist, sorry

Equating the Holocaust with saying "no, that's unreasonable" to some of the most entitled people on the planet is quite a reach.

Bit dramatic, innit?

Who’s ‘they’, anyway? A baying mob, or just the one person called Oak or something? Hard to tell nowadays.

If trans people were being rounded up into concentration camps I would be hugely concerned.

In reality it's just tasteless, meaningless hyperbole.

Is that straight person saying 'have a gay day'?

Can't they just get their own identity instead of nicking other people's?

It's a straight man yes.

It’s incredibly poor taste whatever the intent of the poster, gay men were persecuted and murdered by the Nazis in concentration camps and even if you are a trans ally ,to compare the treatment of trans people currently to nazi persecution is absolutely inappropriate. I utterly agree that lgbtq+ people face persecution in many countries of the world but as we are in the uk I would ask your friend ,why are they not standing up for women and girls…after all, first they came for women’s rights to have dignity and privacy in previously safe spaces!

It is all about forced teaming.

And it is emotionally manipulative.

And sadly, it is a feature not a bug.

I just clicked through to the person who originally posted the about (and my relative has shared it) and some of the comments on the original post are quite chilling

There are lots of idiots on social media. Ignore them

It's a very dear and close family member and he's clearly captured. Another person on that side of the family is too.

I am debating what to say if anything. Will not engage on SM though.

Of course it is 🙄

Like a significant number of transwomen

Martin Niemoller, not Primo Levi.

And being pedantic, it’s not really a poem either.

Honestly? I'd probably scroll on by, and if I found myself getting really annoyed and wanting to leave a snarky comment then I'd put my phone down and go and chill out somewhere, possibly with a glass of wine as its Friday.

With reference to "have a gay day" ask him to watch this. It explains how and why trxns ideology is homophobic It is Andrew Doyle on the Dad saves America podcast if you would rather google it.

Seems strangely appropriate.

I think the addition to the poem should, instead, go

first they came for the women,
And then they came for the women,
Finally the came for the women.
And no one said a fucking thing because everyone was so used to screwing women over it had become the norm

You need to separate the lgbt+ in your post. Many of those countries have no problem with trans people but they do with the gays because they are actually homophobic as a society.

OP - when people post shite like that it's best not to engage by sm or text. It has to be face to face.

You are confusing Primo Levi "If this is a man" with Martin Niemoller "First they came".
You're welcome.
And the author of your so called poem, is neither.

Well Esther McVey made a similar comparison last week so I hope those who made comment about McVey will apply the same arguments.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c703nlle72wo

Here's the McVey story.

She got a lot of abuse from the Left.

Now trust me, I loath McVey (she's a particularly awful MP of any rosette) and think what she said was bad taste, but somehow I don't think we are going to see similar criticisms from the same quarters.

It's easy to bash McVey cos she a Tory and that's an approved thing to do. It's not approved to do the same for the approved causes from the left.

I actually find this MORE objectionable than the inappropriate use of the poem for other political causes because it's tone deaf to the meaning of the poem about authoritarian rule and terrifying consequences of the mob mentality of going with the bandwagon rather than using your own judgement and standing up to abuses of power.

It's worse than ahistorical and melodramatic - it's offensive because the original piece is about the murder of millions of Jewish people; In Niemoller's 'poem' the culmination of not speaking up about other groups who suffered, namely socialists and trades unionists, is the Holocaust.
That's what Martin Niemoller was addressing, specifically.

The idea that it's in your own interest to stand up for persecuted groups because they might get around to persecuting you too is a valid one, but I'd like to leave the 'First they came...' piece as we found it from Pastor Niemoller's pen, i.e. addressing the murder of millions of Jewish people, not every passing grievance. Even the valid ones...