So J.K. Rowling is a Holocaust denier now.
Since she first kicked the door of her right wing closet open a good few years ago now to launch an unprovoked 'total war' against transwomen, Rowling started taking large steps - you might say goose-steps - up the staircase of fascism, and with each step, the sound becoming increasingly reminiscent of the ominous stomp of jack-boots.
Even before Rowling started crowing the anti-science TERF rhetoric which gathered to her a new base of transphobes to feed from the trough at her feet, there were those who had reservations about her anti-Semitic characterizations of the goblins in her stories, just as much as there were those who undoubtedly enjoyed and approved of them.
But as I watched over the past few years, I saw Rowling being increasingly fawned over by the sort of low-brow creatures like those who cheered on while Magnus Hirschfeld's institute and all his pioneering work in understanding and helping transgender women was fed to the incinerator of base national-socialist populism.
So you see, for some time, I've had a pretty fair idea that it wouldn't be too long before she went full neo-Nazi.As it turns out, I wasn't wrong.
I was surprised to learn that, a few days ago, this venomous woman had again become embroiled in a fresh round of drama, unsurprisingly resulting, again, from an astonishing pearl of ignorance that had come straight from her own poison pen. Or toxic keyboard, or whatever.
This new furor came about through a series of tweets which started with Rowling (once again) publicly using her social media platform to attack transwomen - as one does when you're so insulated by wealth, success and fame, that you have no real problems in your own life to complain about, and instead devote your time and resources to making people you despise even more miserable than you are - even if they've never actually done anything to you personally - and even if they'd hitherto been counted among your literary fan-base.
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The tweet in which Rowling gleefully whacked the giant red, glowing self-destruct button, seemingly without a second thought, is one in which she retweeted her response to a post which asked: "The Nazis burnt books on trans healthcare and research, why are you so desperate to uphold their ideology around gender?"
In her own re-post of the tweet, Rowling claimed the person who dared to confront her hadn't verified their sources, and she went on to rubbish actual historical facts - before plunging over the cliff of her own loud, fetid and apparently all-encompassing ignorance about transgender issues.
Imagine that.
One possible - even likely interpretation of Rowling's response in this case, is that Rowling had rushed to the defense of the Nazis against a perceived attempt to slander them - and if the nauseating imagery of this isn't setting off any alarm bells, what will it eventually take?
I could only imagine the contents of that speech-bubble over her head as she typed her response, but it was probably something like this: "How dare that ignorant defender of those trans-freaks say that about my heroes? I'll show 'em I know more about history than they do! Watch this!"
And the world, as it turned out, was watching. It always is when it comes to celebrities - especially ones who love to wrap themselves up in controversy and scandal - or try desperately to spin every successive PR disaster into her favor, as she does.
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Like I said, what will it take? Does she first have to write another book, one which directly demonizes transwomen - or celebrates our demise? Perhaps it might take the form of a survivalist apocalyptic fantasy where the acceptance and decent treatment of transwomen in society has caused a collapse of civilization? Or, maybe it could be a gut-wrenching tale of right-wing historical revisionism - one wherein the "heroine" dances like Mary Poppins on a sprawling, silent gray field of ashes at Auschwitz?
That might make a poignant scene if it ever got made into a movie, but it might be too evocative of the works of Leni Riefenstahl. But, as I so often do, I digress.
All the effort it would've taken Rowling to find out the truth of what the Nazis did to transgender people under their "care", was a five-minute trip down Google Lane, replete with photographs, articles, and even personal accounts, and links to documentaries. Instead, well, as they the old saying goes, the rest is history - and assumption is the mother of all fuck-ups.
I have no doubt that the tenacity of her defense of the Nazis in this case was motivated by her clearly documented open hatred for transwomen, and - given her subsequent utterances in which she doubled-down on her rectal haberdashery, that she's only sorry the Nazis never got to actually finish the job.
Given the tendency of people of that ilk - Rowling and her slavering TERF acolytes - to dismiss anything that doesn't suit their particular narrative out of hand, it's unlikely she would've taken the vast amount of documentary evidence to confirm what she so vehemently denied, seriously. After all, the inconvenient facts contradict her views that transgender people aren't and haven't been victims throughout history, and science itself supports the principle that transwomen are, in fact, women - and she, like any narcissist, doesn't like to be contradicted.
Therefore it's not a goose-step too far to consider that she might even think of history and science - as many right wing conspiracy theorists do - as having been influenced, distorted - or corrupted, by "the gay agenda".
One of the things Rowling apparently didn't know - or doesn't believe, is that the Nazis persecuted transgender people, burned books and research about queer and trans people, or torched the clinics and research facilities and institutes which had sprung up in Weimar Germany to study and help them - or sought to exterminate LGBT people from the face of the Earth in death camps alongside Jews, Poles, gays - and frankly, anyone they didn't approve of. There are literally galleries of photos and even videos to prove that these things happened, just in case growing up in the decades since the end of the war in question, and being constantly made aware of it, weren't illuminating enough.
To be a genuine Holocaust denialist in 2024, you'd have to be a special sort of determined and willfully ignorant specimen.
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And while I've seen some people actually commenting that Rowling "isn't technically a Holocaust denier" because her remarks in this case weren't directly about Jewish victims, this seems to be because they themselves aren't aware that transgender people were also incarcerated in the death camps, also for the purpose of exterminating "lives not worth living" - just that they were a smaller group, and that then, and for many many years before and since, they were a group nobody cared about - and many still don't.
Students of history will know that the Nazis tried their level best to wipe out everyone they hated - and they hated quite a lot of different kinds of people. It's quite ironic then, isn't it - even coincidental, that these seem to be the same sort of people hated on by J.K. Rowling?
Given the amount of hatred that seems to seethe beneath the veneer of the accomplished children's author, it's frightening to think that so many of today's young adults grew up reading Harry Potter books, and watching the movies - and that today these are all framed with a nasty (or should I say, Nazi) lining of subtle hatred, exclusion and marginalization.
Looking back, I also wonder how those LGBT people - and "allies" - who defended her thus far, and remained loyal readers and fans and resisted calls to ban and "cancel" this demagogue of transphobic hatred and persecution, feel about her now? Bearing in mind, that continuing to buy, read, or promote her or her books is EXACTLY the same as supporting her messages of hate?
She herself has said that no matter how intensely she incites hate against transwomen, people don't seem to care, and continue to buy her books. And for as long as that continues to be the case, she won't see any reason at all to even pretend to try to clean up her act.
That's why it's so important to de-platform celebrities who abuse their platforms to do ill, or to incite hatred against already marginalized and vulnerable groups suffering persecution. It's a civic duty - a human rights imperative. But even more so, it's important for good people to speak out in the face of evil, in order to ensure that evil does not triumph - and right now, the appropriate thing to say would be something like "Enough of this shit! Enough!"
I don't know about you, but I don't feel inclined to support anyone who uses their platform to try to destroy me - and I'm pretty sure that to do so would be a sign of some deep-seated form of self-loathing, or other psychological issues that would need more professional help than I can muster.
Moving on, it's really ironic, I think, that the person who authored hitherto much-loved tales about heroes and heroines like these in her books turned out to have been more like the villains they defeated in the end - and that somehow, she doesn't seem to realize it.
That said, as an author, I find it sad to witness a writer who had obtained everything we all hope to attain, willingly just chuck it all away in poorly thought-out literal acts of spite, for nothing more substantial than the support and adoration of people who lap up the venom dripping from her lips, like starving, frenzied dogs baying for blood before a hunt.
The scary thing about this all, I think, is that she seems to be so deafened by the cacophony of the baying of her loyal hounds and the blowing of the hunting horn, that she doesn't seem to even realize what this all looks like from outside.
But - as a transwoman, it's most satisfying to me when an arch-villain who's enjoyed public support for so long, regardless of who she spews hatred against, finally self-destructs in this way.
I've often wondered, what it would take for people to stop supporting and heaping adoration upon J.K. Rowling. Just what marginalized, persecuted group does she have to bully, slander, defame or incite hatred against before the media, publishers, movie-makers - or her legions of adoring fans - will care enough, before she will finally stumble over an invisible line in the sand and fall flat on her face?
Will openly and voluntarily exposing herself as a Holocaust denier finally be enough of a wake-up call? Will it?
Being labeled a TERF clearly wasn't enough, but will the applicability of the sinister label of "Holocaust denier" to those who still so strongly support her, finally be enough to tip the scales?
I'd like to hope so. I mean, there really isn't much more room for growth in Rowling's particular field of "specialization", is there? She's already goose-stepped her way almost to the top of the stairs.
After all the real-world and measurable hate, harm and hostility that TERF terrorism has brought against transwomen, who are persecuted and murdered globally, their blood spilled as a result of exactly the sort of slander she spouts, shares and circulates - and profits from - within earshot of every keystroke of every transphobic tweet she posts, she deserves to finally be cancelled.
It's about bloody time.
Rowling's career death-spiral, whether it happens now - or later, is sure to be an extravaganza of note, a fantastic show featuring fireworks, sheets of flame, a measure of smoke, and a good few pops, bangs and even fizzes on the way down.
It's bound to be spectacular.
All material copyright © Christina Engela, 2024.
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