The anti-trans movement has a Nazi problem

between nazis on the steps of Victorian parliament and JK Rowling's casual holocaust revisionism, people are probably wondering exactly why this keeps happening

You’re not insane if you have noticed nazis and the so-called “gender critical” movement continually sharing headlines.

Last year, on 18 March 2023, the world was in shock as around twenty members of the National Socialist Network (NSN) marched down Spring Street in Melbourne and performed Nazi salutes on the steps of Victoria’s Parliament House during a “Let Women Speak” rally by anti-trans campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen.

This action was among the most public shows of support for fascism in Australian history since the Second World War, and many media outlets were scrambling to comprehend how such an event came to be, and why Nazis are openly walking our streets. Everyone knows the Nazis are the bad guys.

Many scholars have charted the course of far-right ideology over the last century and a heap of very dense literature has been written on the subject. In any case, it’s clear that such a display horrified not just the media, but both sides of politics as well. John Pesutto immediately distanced himself from the event, indirectly resulting in a still ongoing defamation case with a former member of his own party, while the Labor government passed legislation to criminalise public displays of Nazism, such as the Hakenkreuz, the Schutzstaffel logo, and the Nazi salute.

An official media release stated that “This is the first legislation of its kind and will ensure no one in Australia will be allowed to glorify or profit from acts and symbols that celebrate the Nazis and their evil ideology”

So there we go. We can rest easy knowing that our politicians are taking Nazism very seriously and doing everything they can to stop it in its tracks. Lol.

I might have dropped out of university twice, but even I read enough to know that it wasn’t the symbols that slaughtered millions of people in the Holocaust. It was people, holding power over a government, and shaped with an intense, virulent hatred of anyone who didn’t fit their idea of a “perfect human”.

Harry Potter and the Holocaust Denial

In case you missed it, the world’s favourite TERF, J.K. Rowling, has again attracted a lot of headlines for… well, I’m not even sure. She seems to get headlines no matter what she says or does, because anything she says qualifies as news for the simple fact that she said it. Even the Star Observer, an Australian outlet which represents the queer community, has taken to platforming J.K. Rowling, despite her rhetoric becoming more and more dangerous.

Only this year, the wizard author, already notorious for platforming far-right figures such as Matt Walsh, began openly spreading Holocaust denial and revisionism, and daring police to arrest her for misgendering and mocking several British trans women. Her Twitter rants caught attention from the world’s media, of course, and provided an easy avenue for The Australian and Sky News to reiterate her hateful rhetoric. Sky’s Liz Storer even said “I would follow this woman into battle”…. Yeah, thanks J.K. Doesn’t feel inflammatory at all.

The Holocaust denialism that JK has been spreading is particularly upsetting, claiming that trans people were not victims of the Nazis during the Holocaust. This kind of revisionism of historical facts is worrying, especially when you consider her personal platform on social media is larger than most mainstream media outlets.

All of this raises the question of, “why?”

J.K. Rowling might be the darling of so many millennial hearts, but does that really mean that she needs to be a gateway to placing disgusting transphobic rhetoric – to the point of Holocaust denial – uncritically in the media? If so, what if it keeps going?

As much as I don’t believe that you gotta hand it to the TERFs, getting such a high-profile and beloved figure with a cuddly English image as J.K. Rowling to be the face of their ideology has been great for their movement. It means that one of the most popular children’s franchises of all time is forever going to be associated with the gender critical ideology, it means that an audience of middle class white cis women who identify so strongly with J.K. Rowling will be easier to radicalise, and it means that the media will be chockers full of her face advertising their ideology, with her seemingly getting even more platforming the more dangerous and outrageous her comments get.

It seems impossible to think that – to quote the Tenth Doctor – “good old JK” could be, as her many TRA haters say, spouting literal Nazism. The toxic ideology that the UK proudly defeated and which committed history’s worst genocide, being associated with universally loved philanthropist and Labour Party darling J.K. Rowling, is unthinkable. It seems to make a mockery of the atrocities.

And yet, here we are, with that same J.K. Rowling spreading Holocaust denial, encouraging her followers to violate the Hate Crime Act, and enabling the environment that shut down the conversion therapy ban and prompted the Cass Review. With the damage that Terfist ideology is doing to trans rights in the UK, and the potential for fundamental aspects of women’s rights such as Gillick competence, which allows minors access to contraception, being under threat, the dangers of her celebrity anti-trans campaigning become very clear.

The creator of millennial feminist icon Hermione Granger, and patron of many women’s rights and children’s rights charities, suddenly supporting the work of far-right figures determined to strip away those same rights, is the type of heel turn that would make diehard wrestling fans cringe, but sometimes truth is stranger – or in this case, scarier – than fiction.

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Trans people vs the nazis

In 2022, the Regional Court of Cologne ruled that denying that transgender people were victims of the Nazis qualifies as a “denial of Nazi crimes” which can be an offence under German law. The Museum of Jewish Heritage themselves have explored this fact, stating that:

“Hitler’s Nazi government, however, brutally targeted the trans community, deporting many trans people to concentration camps and wiping out vibrant community structures”

But we don’t even need to look at history to know the extent to which Nazis target trans people. As I said at the start of the piece, neo-Nazis are targeting trans people right now.

Every trans person, particularly those brave (or stupid) enough to use Twitter these days (hi follow me), or those of us who were protesting the #LetWomenSpeak event, know that only too closely. Being met with a large sign reading “DESTROY PAEDO FREAKS” is not fun, especially when you know that the media at large is just as likely to accurately report this as a disgusting anti-trans hate crime as they are to claim that the neo-Nazis are making a serious statement against child sex abuse.

Earlier this year, at the anniversary event #WomenWillSpeak, the neo-Nazi connection was even more stark. Not only were several attendees of the rally seen wearing visible neo-Nazi symbols, but the PA system was supplied by a former member of the Lads Society, a precursor of the NSN. While he has stated he no longer identifies as a neo-Nazi, the White Rose Society, an organisation which tracks neo-Nazi involvement in Australia, remains sceptical and points out that his new organisation, the National Workers Alliance, preaches similar ideological goals such as  preservation of “Western Culture & Identity” and “Return to the Natural Order”. And therein lies the problem.

No matter how much the media struggles with the framing of self-described “women’s rights” events when they also court neo-Nazi attention, it’s not an excuse to mislead the public. When neo-Nazis are marching across the streets of Melbourne with a banner calling for the murder of “paedo freaks” at an anti-trans rally, we can’t downplay their presence, as ABC Media Watch’s Paul Barry did, as “right-wing crazies” who “muscled in”. It’s indefensible to omit any mention of neo-Nazi presence at the #WomenWillSpeak rally at all, but that’s exactly what the ABC did. I wonder if the ABC editors literally thinks “cherrypicking” is when journalists actually just go and pick cherries. It’s not, guys.

Banning Nazi symbols may bring comfort to those who don’t want to see Nazism, but it’s small comfort to those of us who have been under direct attack from the ideology for years under the blue-eyed image of a wealthy white cishet woman. We may as well ban glitter to stop drag shows.

If our politicians are serious about tackling this threat, as they should be, the target needs to be the ideology, the rhetoric that spreads genuine hatred, the fascist delusions such as calling trans people “paedo freaks”, and the open threats of violence on Spring Street. But in tackling the ideology, they’ll be forced to realise how deeply the call has been coming from inside the house.

What responsibility does the media have when it comes to Nazis?

It’s confronting to accept how deeply an icon such as J.K. Rowling has been channelling neo-Nazi rhetoric such as Holocaust denial, but confronting realities such as this is the exact purpose of the media. Or it should be, anyway.

If our outlets are interested in understanding the rise in neo-Nazism, there’s a responsibility to understand what neo-Nazism actually is and not baulk to report on it when it comes in a form that’s hard to swallow. If the media shirks its own responsibilities, then there are no limits to the extent such rhetoric will be platformed uncritically.

There’s free reign to call for our “reduction” as much as they like, provided they replace their swastikas with smiles, black hoods with suffragette colours, and call themselves “women’s rights supporters”. Typically, women’s rights activists wouldn’t advocate for the removal of Gillick Competence or abortion.

Thanks to the tireless work of queer activists, trans people do enjoy more rights and protections now than we’ve had in the past. Conversion therapy has been banned in most states, public opinion is on our side, and we have more representation than we’ve ever had. But as British trans femme writer Shon Faye says, with representation comes harmful visibility too, and we’ve never stopped being the punching bags of society during a time of immense economic instability and geopolitical tension. This particular aspect of the present situation isn’t new. It’s exactly the same.

Society has never moved on from its tendency to throw marginalised people under the bus to consolidate control during periods of deep instability, and history has rarely, if ever, been more unstable than right now. Neo-Nazism has certainly become much more public since lockdown but in truth, it has been alive and breathing in many varieties across the decades. Nazism is not an aesthetic, it doesn’t begin or end with a salute, it’s an ideology. As research shows, it’s crafted by emotion, primarily a desire to control, and an entitlement to kill.

We are at a crossroads of history. Do we support fascism or fight against it?

If we support it, we do exactly what we’re doing, and listen to those espousing such dangerous rhetoric comforted in the knowledge that at least they can’t do it underneath a Hakenkreuz.

If we fight against it, we need to acknowledge that a purple-haired trans woman might actually have better opinions about her own existence than a billionaire cishet woman from England.

We can live according to an image that brings comfort to the wealthy and powerful, or we can live according to love and justice. I know which world I’d rather live in. Plus purple-haired trans women are cute as hell, as well as being smart.

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Natalie Feliks is a writer and activist originally from Adelaide, now living in Melbourne. She's written for the likes of Junkee, Crikey, and Overland, and spends her time listening to pop music and eating chocolate.

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