In the face of extremism, liberals must snap out of their complacency
With neo-Nazis on the steps of Victorian Parliament, liberals can tolerate intolerance no longer
Several years ago I found a copy of Mein Kampf in a second-hand bookstore in country Victoria. Better my bookshelf than a neo-Nazi’s, I figured, so I coughed up the $90 asking price. I confess I thought about burning it, but the irony of doing so would have simply been too much.
I didn’t think it was possible to like Hitler any less, but the preface in which he wrote “every great movement on earth owes its growth to great speakers and not to great writers” did the trick. His diatribe now sits alongside other reference texts filled with hateful nonsense that condone genocide, and which so happen to prove Hitler was wrong about the power of the written word to change the world — the so-called ‘holy books’.
It’s no coincidence that political and religious ideologues inevitably find themselves bedfellows. It’s also no surprise that neo-Nazis turned up in support of a hateful anti-trans rally held recently on the steps of Victorian Parliament.
In 1919, a gay, Jewish doctor called Magnus Hirschfeld founded the world’s first gender clinic in Germany. The Institute of Sexual Research provided LGBTIQ+…
