When the Auschwitz-Birkenau liberation ended the Jewish Holocaust of World War Two, it didn't bring liberation for everyone. Gay men were not recognised as victims of the Nazi regime, and, in fact, were mostly removed from Auschwitz to regular prisons in their home countries, to continue to serve a "normal" sentence for the "crime" of homoseuxuality.
As anyone who has experienced gaslighting from a parent, a partner, or a business colleague, knows very well, being told that an experience you have directly had "isn't really" that experience does at least as much damage as the experience itself. Going through the trauma of Auschwitz - which, for gay men who didn't die in the camps, included chemical and physical castration, practices which are known to lead to suicidal depression in cisgender men - only to be told "You weren't actually victims of this regime; yes, they were bad people, but, when it comes to you, specifically, they were actually justified in what they did to you, and we're going to do more of the same" is going to be an extremely impactful blow. It's going to add to feelings of shame, of "wrongness", to a genuine belief that you don't deserve even the very basics of a tolerable life.
Believing that you "deserve" to be punished, to be denied opportunities and success, to believe that you don't deserve peace and comfort, doesn't just affect the individual whose mental health is suffering; it impacts their career opportunities, as they shy away from seeking promotion, broader opportunities in their current role, better paid opportunities, strategic connections, all of which means they have less money to spend in their home economies, they will return less tax to their government's Exchequer, meaning that their country as a whole is limited in its ability to achieve its ambitions and goals, and it prevents them fully supporting their friends, family, and community.
Being declared to be essentially legitimate prisoners, rather than victims of an unjust regime, also meant that gay men who survived Auschwitz-Birkenau were not eligible for remunerations paid to those who were recognised as victims of the Holocaust.
And it wasn't just the camps which essentially silenced generations of LGBTQ+ people, and forever altered the narrative about sexuality and identity, a narrative which has become more vitriolic, and is leaning ever farther back to those first days of 1930s Germany which eventually lead to the Holocaust, for many societal groups, not just Jewish or LGBTQ+ people; while lesbianism and transgender identity were not acknowledged (and therefore not punished in the same way as gay maleness was), the destruction of Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute - which was pioneering research into transgender experience (referred to at the time by its historical terms of transvestism and transsexualism, terms which are widely outdated in 2025, and often considered offensive by individuals in the trans community) - essentially destroyed any evidence that people who were not cisgender existed, and, if they were supported to live securely and safely as the gender they experienced themselves as being, would live "normal", productive, happy lives, as engaged contributors to their societies - allowing the accusations that continued through the decades that followed the destruction of the 1930s, and which have reached fever-pitch now, that trans people are "dangerous", "delusional", that we are "deliberately deceiving other people", that our very real, very complex experience is equivalent to "a toddler dressing up in a costume, and 'believing' they're a dinosaur". (Except that the ability to recognise "I am still myself even when I am dressed as someone/something else" only actually starts to enter childhood cognition around the age of 5, so yes, your toddler is a dinosaur, a princess, a fireman while they're wearing those costumes. We also don't have a problem believing adults who tell us they're firemen when they're in "regular" clothes, even though we have no way of confirming their assertion... "You don't look like a fireman!" would be a ridiculous statement; however, statements such as "I didn't realise that XYZ body type would be able to join the fire service", or "I didn't realise people with ABC disability could be firemen" are less problematic - because they enable you to learn about other people, and to challenge your assumptions. Likewise, saying "I've never met a woman as tall as you", "I didn't realise men could sing soprano ranges", etc are observations which allow for education - "Women don't look like that!" "Men don't have high voices!" are statements we should have left in childhood - because they have a significant number of exceptions, even among the cisgender population.)
This year (2025) will also see the 30th anniversary, on 11th July, of the Srebrenica genocide, which saw over 8,000 Bosnian Muslims murdered for their religious and ethnic identity.
Whenever a group is attacked for their shared identity, culture, ethnic background, or beliefs, the attack is made against the entire world. The attack isn't "this is happening to you, because your identity has outraged our sensibilities", although that is very much how it is perceived by those immediately affected; rather, every massacre, every genocide, every Holocaust, is an attack rooted in a threat levelled at everyone: "If anyone challenges us, we will destroy you. So; you're either with us, or against us - and remember what happens to those who stand against us."
The only way to respond to that threat? Stand against those seeking to do immense harm. They are already intending to kill and harm as many people as possible anyway; it would be nice, from their perspective, if some people were cowed enough by them to go along with them, but eventually they plan to create a situation where they can turn on those people as well; the 'standard' for 'being with us' will become narrower and narrower, with more and more people "falling foul" of restrictions and expectations. No one is getting out of bigotry alive.
However, "standing against" bigotry, in a real sense, doesn't look the way many of the chronically online believe it looks.
Anne Frank did nothing but hide, write her diary, and, eventually, die in Auschwitz.
Most German Jews, and other German people who fell foul of the Nazi party's "idealisms", and were identified for transportation to the camps, could only keep their heads down, stay off the radar, and, eventually, die in the camps.
Germans who were not reviled by the Nazis stood against an evil they didn't necessarily perceive, and certainly didn't fully comprehend, by helping those they could. They hid families like the Franks. They helped neighbours and friends flee Germany. In Britain, they took in children sent on Kindertransport - children who often never returned to Germany again, and have become adults who are fully engaged with and contributing to British life.
Standing up can be quiet - but it cannot be risk free. If you are a genuine ally, if you are actually on the side of the oppressed, you have to put your skin in the game - because the people you stand for and with already have skin in the game, simply by being who and what they are. You cannot nope out with pleas that it's "too much", or whimpers that you "wouldn't want to take space from those who are actually suffering" - if you won't make space behind the shield of your privilege, then you damn well need to take space in the firing line.
I can't do much - I don't have money, I don't have space in my home to house others, I can't travel easily, my disabilities make it almost impossible for me to deal with protests, other people will be harmed if I am arrested (I'm a spousal carer, and neither my wife nor I have any other family).
What I can do is write - provide the facts behind the rhetoric.
What I can do is refuse to be drawn in to the distraction debates raging online.
What I can do is listen to peoples' genuine grievances and concerns, and direct them to solutions which don't involve people like Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, or Elon Musk.
What I can do is to say, with absolute conviction: "If it comes to a point where violence is the only solution, I will be violent" - because I know my wife will be violent alongside me, and, for both of us, dying in battle is noble, glorious, and an ambition for life.
Currently, my "battle" is against poverty, and the impacts of disability.
My wife's is against transphobia, ableism, and misogyny.
But if the battlefield we need to be on becomes a physical, rather than socio-political intellectual one? That's fine - death is inevitable, and, for both of us, is seen as a liminal transition point, rather than an end. Death isn't the worst thing; right now, there are things we can do to stand up against what's happening in the world that are not dying; but one day, dying in the fight against intolerable intolerance may be the only thing left that might make a difference.
Anne Frank's diary - the raw, unedited thoughts of a teenage girl, her observances of the increasingly limited life she saw around her - have stood for 80 years. She did nothing but hide, write, and, eventually, die - but her legacy is still a powerful motivator for all who stand against tyranny.
She didn't worry that she "wasn't qualified to be talking about this". She didn't "consider her audience". She didn't edit herself "to be as relatable to as many people as possible." She just wrote. She wrote what was real - and her voice still carries today.
Her diary was never read by anyone else in her lifetime.
And I feel those are the lessons we need to learn, but are too often missing; that we need to just be real; not the curated "faux-thenticity" of social media, not the "realness" of the humble-brag, but the reality of "This major stuff is going on...but I saw a robin today, and had spaghetti Bolognese for dinner." We need to assume we are the only people who are ever going to read what we write, the only people who are ever going to watch our videos, or listen to our podcasts. There may be no future audience. We may never get rich from our observations and opinions. And we need to be okay with that.
The one thing everyone over the age of 18 can do is this:
Recognise that every government goes into debt, every government spends money they don't actually have.
The choice isn't "debt or prudence", but "going into debt to support as many decent people to contribute to, engage with, and enjoy life as fully as they can, in a country that works well for the majority of people, and benefits health, wellbeing, happiness, and financial security for everyone who is willing to engage on their own account as far as they are able", or "going into debt to ensure that those who already have enough can acquire even more, at the expense of those who only just have enough, and those who have so little they can't even meet their own basic needs."
Vote accordingly. Politicians aren't supposed to be "relateable" or "likeable" - they are meant to be competent, intelligent, and with a track record of successfully getting the job done.
I am a disabled, currently unemployed, trans man.
I'm not ashamed of any of those things, and I do not believe there will ever be a government, or a movement, which is genuinely on my side, and will genuinely support me to succeed in the ways I want to; that certainty protects me from extremism, because it removes the persuasion of promise, which is what draws so many vulnerable, frustrated, frightened, and disappointed people to deeply harmful movements around the globe.
If I can help even one person realise that the Elon Musks, Donald Trumps, and Nigel Farages of this world don't even realise they exist, much less give a shit about their welfare, and draw them to community initiatives, grassroots action, and mutual support, then I will have succeeded.
As anyone who has experienced gaslighting from a parent, a partner, or a business colleague, knows very well, being told that an experience you have directly had "isn't really" that experience does at least as much damage as the experience itself. Going through the trauma of Auschwitz - which, for gay men who didn't die in the camps, included chemical and physical castration, practices which are known to lead to suicidal depression in cisgender men - only to be told "You weren't actually victims of this regime; yes, they were bad people, but, when it comes to you, specifically, they were actually justified in what they did to you, and we're going to do more of the same" is going to be an extremely impactful blow. It's going to add to feelings of shame, of "wrongness", to a genuine belief that you don't deserve even the very basics of a tolerable life.
Believing that you "deserve" to be punished, to be denied opportunities and success, to believe that you don't deserve peace and comfort, doesn't just affect the individual whose mental health is suffering; it impacts their career opportunities, as they shy away from seeking promotion, broader opportunities in their current role, better paid opportunities, strategic connections, all of which means they have less money to spend in their home economies, they will return less tax to their government's Exchequer, meaning that their country as a whole is limited in its ability to achieve its ambitions and goals, and it prevents them fully supporting their friends, family, and community.
Being declared to be essentially legitimate prisoners, rather than victims of an unjust regime, also meant that gay men who survived Auschwitz-Birkenau were not eligible for remunerations paid to those who were recognised as victims of the Holocaust.
And it wasn't just the camps which essentially silenced generations of LGBTQ+ people, and forever altered the narrative about sexuality and identity, a narrative which has become more vitriolic, and is leaning ever farther back to those first days of 1930s Germany which eventually lead to the Holocaust, for many societal groups, not just Jewish or LGBTQ+ people; while lesbianism and transgender identity were not acknowledged (and therefore not punished in the same way as gay maleness was), the destruction of Magnus Hirschfeld's Institute - which was pioneering research into transgender experience (referred to at the time by its historical terms of transvestism and transsexualism, terms which are widely outdated in 2025, and often considered offensive by individuals in the trans community) - essentially destroyed any evidence that people who were not cisgender existed, and, if they were supported to live securely and safely as the gender they experienced themselves as being, would live "normal", productive, happy lives, as engaged contributors to their societies - allowing the accusations that continued through the decades that followed the destruction of the 1930s, and which have reached fever-pitch now, that trans people are "dangerous", "delusional", that we are "deliberately deceiving other people", that our very real, very complex experience is equivalent to "a toddler dressing up in a costume, and 'believing' they're a dinosaur". (Except that the ability to recognise "I am still myself even when I am dressed as someone/something else" only actually starts to enter childhood cognition around the age of 5, so yes, your toddler is a dinosaur, a princess, a fireman while they're wearing those costumes. We also don't have a problem believing adults who tell us they're firemen when they're in "regular" clothes, even though we have no way of confirming their assertion... "You don't look like a fireman!" would be a ridiculous statement; however, statements such as "I didn't realise that XYZ body type would be able to join the fire service", or "I didn't realise people with ABC disability could be firemen" are less problematic - because they enable you to learn about other people, and to challenge your assumptions. Likewise, saying "I've never met a woman as tall as you", "I didn't realise men could sing soprano ranges", etc are observations which allow for education - "Women don't look like that!" "Men don't have high voices!" are statements we should have left in childhood - because they have a significant number of exceptions, even among the cisgender population.)
This year (2025) will also see the 30th anniversary, on 11th July, of the Srebrenica genocide, which saw over 8,000 Bosnian Muslims murdered for their religious and ethnic identity.
Whenever a group is attacked for their shared identity, culture, ethnic background, or beliefs, the attack is made against the entire world. The attack isn't "this is happening to you, because your identity has outraged our sensibilities", although that is very much how it is perceived by those immediately affected; rather, every massacre, every genocide, every Holocaust, is an attack rooted in a threat levelled at everyone: "If anyone challenges us, we will destroy you. So; you're either with us, or against us - and remember what happens to those who stand against us."
The only way to respond to that threat? Stand against those seeking to do immense harm. They are already intending to kill and harm as many people as possible anyway; it would be nice, from their perspective, if some people were cowed enough by them to go along with them, but eventually they plan to create a situation where they can turn on those people as well; the 'standard' for 'being with us' will become narrower and narrower, with more and more people "falling foul" of restrictions and expectations. No one is getting out of bigotry alive.
However, "standing against" bigotry, in a real sense, doesn't look the way many of the chronically online believe it looks.
Anne Frank did nothing but hide, write her diary, and, eventually, die in Auschwitz.
Most German Jews, and other German people who fell foul of the Nazi party's "idealisms", and were identified for transportation to the camps, could only keep their heads down, stay off the radar, and, eventually, die in the camps.
Germans who were not reviled by the Nazis stood against an evil they didn't necessarily perceive, and certainly didn't fully comprehend, by helping those they could. They hid families like the Franks. They helped neighbours and friends flee Germany. In Britain, they took in children sent on Kindertransport - children who often never returned to Germany again, and have become adults who are fully engaged with and contributing to British life.
Standing up can be quiet - but it cannot be risk free. If you are a genuine ally, if you are actually on the side of the oppressed, you have to put your skin in the game - because the people you stand for and with already have skin in the game, simply by being who and what they are. You cannot nope out with pleas that it's "too much", or whimpers that you "wouldn't want to take space from those who are actually suffering" - if you won't make space behind the shield of your privilege, then you damn well need to take space in the firing line.
I can't do much - I don't have money, I don't have space in my home to house others, I can't travel easily, my disabilities make it almost impossible for me to deal with protests, other people will be harmed if I am arrested (I'm a spousal carer, and neither my wife nor I have any other family).
What I can do is write - provide the facts behind the rhetoric.
What I can do is refuse to be drawn in to the distraction debates raging online.
What I can do is listen to peoples' genuine grievances and concerns, and direct them to solutions which don't involve people like Donald Trump, Nigel Farage, or Elon Musk.
What I can do is to say, with absolute conviction: "If it comes to a point where violence is the only solution, I will be violent" - because I know my wife will be violent alongside me, and, for both of us, dying in battle is noble, glorious, and an ambition for life.
Currently, my "battle" is against poverty, and the impacts of disability.
My wife's is against transphobia, ableism, and misogyny.
But if the battlefield we need to be on becomes a physical, rather than socio-political intellectual one? That's fine - death is inevitable, and, for both of us, is seen as a liminal transition point, rather than an end. Death isn't the worst thing; right now, there are things we can do to stand up against what's happening in the world that are not dying; but one day, dying in the fight against intolerable intolerance may be the only thing left that might make a difference.
Anne Frank's diary - the raw, unedited thoughts of a teenage girl, her observances of the increasingly limited life she saw around her - have stood for 80 years. She did nothing but hide, write, and, eventually, die - but her legacy is still a powerful motivator for all who stand against tyranny.
She didn't worry that she "wasn't qualified to be talking about this". She didn't "consider her audience". She didn't edit herself "to be as relatable to as many people as possible." She just wrote. She wrote what was real - and her voice still carries today.
Her diary was never read by anyone else in her lifetime.
And I feel those are the lessons we need to learn, but are too often missing; that we need to just be real; not the curated "faux-thenticity" of social media, not the "realness" of the humble-brag, but the reality of "This major stuff is going on...but I saw a robin today, and had spaghetti Bolognese for dinner." We need to assume we are the only people who are ever going to read what we write, the only people who are ever going to watch our videos, or listen to our podcasts. There may be no future audience. We may never get rich from our observations and opinions. And we need to be okay with that.
The one thing everyone over the age of 18 can do is this:
Recognise that every government goes into debt, every government spends money they don't actually have.
The choice isn't "debt or prudence", but "going into debt to support as many decent people to contribute to, engage with, and enjoy life as fully as they can, in a country that works well for the majority of people, and benefits health, wellbeing, happiness, and financial security for everyone who is willing to engage on their own account as far as they are able", or "going into debt to ensure that those who already have enough can acquire even more, at the expense of those who only just have enough, and those who have so little they can't even meet their own basic needs."
Vote accordingly. Politicians aren't supposed to be "relateable" or "likeable" - they are meant to be competent, intelligent, and with a track record of successfully getting the job done.
I am a disabled, currently unemployed, trans man.
I'm not ashamed of any of those things, and I do not believe there will ever be a government, or a movement, which is genuinely on my side, and will genuinely support me to succeed in the ways I want to; that certainty protects me from extremism, because it removes the persuasion of promise, which is what draws so many vulnerable, frustrated, frightened, and disappointed people to deeply harmful movements around the globe.
If I can help even one person realise that the Elon Musks, Donald Trumps, and Nigel Farages of this world don't even realise they exist, much less give a shit about their welfare, and draw them to community initiatives, grassroots action, and mutual support, then I will have succeeded.
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