Inexplicably, Scott Lively, co-author of The Pink Swastika, has been invited to speak at an evangelical church this coming weekend in Oklahoma City. Draper Park Christian Church plans to have him in for three days of meetings.
Evangelical organizations Exodus International (scroll down) and Campus Crusade removed links to Lively’s article on the Pink Swastika in 2009. Even NARTH removed the article.
During the summer of 2009, with the help of historian J.D. Wyneken, I reviewed the claims of Lively and his co-author Abrams made in the Pink Swastika (click the link to read those posts).
With the Oklahoma appearance coming up, I reviewed those posts and here want to point out two which demonstrate Lively’s selective approach to the Holocaust. Unless something changes, Draper Park’s families will be exposed to Holocaust revisionism for three days.
The first is my post on how Lively and Abrams used Gunter Grau’s book The Hidden Holocaust. In this post, I point out how Lively and Abrams read all the way through Grau’s section on how the Nazi’s treated gays to pick out a segment more friendly to their position. No real historian does that. Real historians report what happened in toto. Grau reports the horrible treatment many gays received and Lively and Abrams do not.
The second is Lively and Abram’s treatment of German Nobel Prize winning author, Thomas Mann. Mann never came out as homosexual but disclosed same sex fantasies in his diaries which were barely hidden in some of his literature. Because of Mann’s interest in Nietzsche, Lively and Abrams view Mann as a contributor to the National Socialism, albeit indirectly. Although no one knows whether or not Nietzsche was gay, Lively assumes he was and because Nietzsche’s sister used some of his later writings (probably under the influence of mental illness) to praise National Socialism, Mann, the same-sex- attracted-married-to-a-woman man, is an indirect contributor to Nazism because he wrote favorably of Nietzsche. Pretzel logic much?
The strange moves don’t stop there. Mann, who we know was not completely straight, was an ardent enemy of Hitler and the Nazis. He recorded messages beamed in by Allied forces to the German people, urging them to resist Hitler and promising that help was on the way. Summarizing the post, I wrote in 2009:
First, it is worth noting how Lively and Abrams’ devotion to their thesis leads them to treat Thomas Mann. Apparently the primary reason he is mentioned at all is to make a stronger case that Nietzsche was homosexual. Mann was a great writer, one of the best fiction writers in modern history. He was a resolute opponent of Hitler and the Nazis. He left his homeland in service of his convictions and used his fame and gifts to try to bring down Hitler. In The Pink Swastika, his personal life is disparaged and he is discounted as an apologist for Nietzsche and thus an unwitting contributor to Nazism.
Lively and Abrams thesis collapses into absurdity when one considers the vigor of Mann’s opposition to Hitler’s fascism. People of all orientations and worldviews supported and opposed Hitler. The Nazis used anyone, gay or straight, religious or not, to get to power. And once they attained power, they systematically crushed opposition both gay and straight, religious and not.
The revisionist cannot rest on one or two revisions. He must continue until the revisions lead to absurd twists and turns. In the case of Mann, it is the same-sex attracted man who actively combats the Nazis. This glaring contradiction, along with so many others, must be either avoided or explained away.
Revising the Holocaust is not the same thing as denying it, but it is morally objectionable. Revising the causes and course of the Nazi evil does a disservice to an accurate view of human nature. Lively locates this evil in a variation of sexual attraction, thereby exonerating others. Such revision is a massive exercise in deception.
In 1961, Yale psychologist Stanley Milgram began his famous experiment on obedience to authority figures. Much to the astonishment of his peers, Milgram found that 65% of his sample consented to supply what participants perceived to be dangerous shocks to another person in obedience to an experimenter. This and other studies provide ample evidence that many of us, straight and gay, are capable of terrible evil under certain conditions. Revisionism takes our eyes off of this ball, and reassures the self-serving urges in us that we would never do something like that. Only those other people (insert the group you dislike) could do that.
Thus, such faulty revisionism also leads to stigma directed at the scapegoated group. As we have seen through history, ancient and recent, stigmatizing people based on their group affiliations or innate characteristics has led to the most awful atrocities.
When will we learn?
Revisionism is so persistent & scapegoating so popular I’m beginning to suspect it must be motivated by a universal human reaction to something. It really is astonishing to me that in a post-holocaust world we could even have further scapegoating much less additional genocides & atrocities.
So to answer your question:
I suspect never. All the more reason people of every political stripe & character should feel morally obligated to speak out against prejudice wherever it is encountered. Well done, Dr. T.
Revisionism is so persistent & scapegoating so popular I’m beginning to suspect it must be motivated by a universal human reaction to something. It really is astonishing to me that in a post-holocaust world we could even have further scapegoating much less additional genocides & atrocities.
So to answer your question:
I suspect never. All the more reason people of every political stripe & character should feel morally obligated to speak out against prejudice wherever it is encountered. Well done, Dr. T.
Unfortunately, there are jaw-dropping errors on every page, if not in every paragraph. The definitive refutation of this “work” has yet to be written, probably because it would take up 500 pages.
Here’s 2 more:
– Lively cites William Shirer’s huge work, The Rise and Fall of the 3d Reich. That work consists of over 1200 pages of writing from a former CBS reporter who witnessed Nazism’s ascent. In the entire book, homosexuals are mentioned a few times, perhaps a half dozen, and nearly all of these references are to a single individual and his lover. Although I haven’t done the search, it is possible that there are more frequent references to kittens and wienerschnitzel than there are references to gays. The remainder of the 1264 pages has nothing to say about homosexuals or homosexuality. Apparently, Shirer missed Lively’s discovery that homosexuality was the organizing force behind the Nazi party and was the cause of Nazi atrocities. Lively ignores the entirety of the book and happily cites the few references to homosexuals.
– Lively claims that German soldiers who occupied France were brutal because they previously served as police in Berlin in the 20s, where they were forced to engage in homosexual prostitution to make money. Lively claims that this experience with homosexuality filled the soldiers with rage and made them amenable to committing brutal acts. Of course, to begin to make this argument, you would have to identify the individual soldiers serving in the occupying units in France, research the employment history of those soldiers, identify those soldiers who served as policemen in Berlin, identify those former policemen who had engaged in homosexual prostitution and who became chronically enraged as a result, determined that those soldiers had also engaged in acts of brutality in France, and finally, adduce some evidence that the acts of brutality in France in 1940-44 were caused by homosexual prostitution in Berlin 20 years earlier. And if you did all of that for even a single soldier, it wouldn’t even be close to sufficient, as you would need to show that this phenomenon was sufficiently pervasive to cause atrocities throughout the sizable occupation force. Take a guess as to whether Lively even tries to make this case.
As always Warren, Bravo!
My only wish, if I had such, that the sheeple(if you will), would only be allowed to hear the debunking of Lively et al. Alas, I know that will never happen. I have become increasingly aware of the reactions of the RR community around me. It is sad, but true, that everything they hear from the pulpit is perceived as “Gospel”.
This is the danger of people like Lively. Most people wouldn’t dare question the authority of a preacher, thereby, why even feel the impetus to research the topic itself. Ergo, my vigilant watchful eye over the prevaricators and charlatans like David Barton, Linda Harvey, Peter Sprigg, Tony Perkins, Peter LaBarbera, et al.
For as long as the Lord God Almighty allows me to breathe, I will watch these people who engage in dissemination of falsehoods(LIES), misinformation(LIES), prevarications(LIES)…..there’s no way to politely put it but Lies. My you, as equally as Jesus gives me strength, I will call them on their lies. Their sole purpose is paint us as deviants, a purpose of the antichrist. As a devout Christian, I friggin beg to differ. Yeah, I cursed, not in my usual NY fashion, but if it’s shock value that seems to be part of the mainstream, then so be it!
The one question that I beg of all these pontificating self-righteous preachers is simply this,”Which do you hold more in esteem, The Bible, or, God Himself?” Or, more pointedly,”Do you believe in The Bible, more than you believe in the very Christ, or God Almighty himself?”
Secondly, I’d love to approach these Gentlemen, whom always seem to have a mic, and ask,” What are you doing to, in your ministry, to employ the ‘infinite’ inconclusiveness of Christ’s Love? And by that, I mean, teh Gays, Muslims, Hindus, et al?
Unfortunately, there are jaw-dropping errors on every page, if not in every paragraph. The definitive refutation of this “work” has yet to be written, probably because it would take up 500 pages.
Here’s 2 more:
– Lively cites William Shirer’s huge work, The Rise and Fall of the 3d Reich. That work consists of over 1200 pages of writing from a former CBS reporter who witnessed Nazism’s ascent. In the entire book, homosexuals are mentioned a few times, perhaps a half dozen, and nearly all of these references are to a single individual and his lover. Although I haven’t done the search, it is possible that there are more frequent references to kittens and wienerschnitzel than there are references to gays. The remainder of the 1264 pages has nothing to say about homosexuals or homosexuality. Apparently, Shirer missed Lively’s discovery that homosexuality was the organizing force behind the Nazi party and was the cause of Nazi atrocities. Lively ignores the entirety of the book and happily cites the few references to homosexuals.
– Lively claims that German soldiers who occupied France were brutal because they previously served as police in Berlin in the 20s, where they were forced to engage in homosexual prostitution to make money. Lively claims that this experience with homosexuality filled the soldiers with rage and made them amenable to committing brutal acts. Of course, to begin to make this argument, you would have to identify the individual soldiers serving in the occupying units in France, research the employment history of those soldiers, identify those soldiers who served as policemen in Berlin, identify those former policemen who had engaged in homosexual prostitution and who became chronically enraged as a result, determined that those soldiers had also engaged in acts of brutality in France, and finally, adduce some evidence that the acts of brutality in France in 1940-44 were caused by homosexual prostitution in Berlin 20 years earlier. And if you did all of that for even a single soldier, it wouldn’t even be close to sufficient, as you would need to show that this phenomenon was sufficiently pervasive to cause atrocities throughout the sizable occupation force. Take a guess as to whether Lively even tries to make this case.
As always Warren, Bravo!
My only wish, if I had such, that the sheeple(if you will), would only be allowed to hear the debunking of Lively et al. Alas, I know that will never happen. I have become increasingly aware of the reactions of the RR community around me. It is sad, but true, that everything they hear from the pulpit is perceived as “Gospel”.
This is the danger of people like Lively. Most people wouldn’t dare question the authority of a preacher, thereby, why even feel the impetus to research the topic itself. Ergo, my vigilant watchful eye over the prevaricators and charlatans like David Barton, Linda Harvey, Peter Sprigg, Tony Perkins, Peter LaBarbera, et al.
For as long as the Lord God Almighty allows me to breathe, I will watch these people who engage in dissemination of falsehoods(LIES), misinformation(LIES), prevarications(LIES)…..there’s no way to politely put it but Lies. My you, as equally as Jesus gives me strength, I will call them on their lies. Their sole purpose is paint us as deviants, a purpose of the antichrist. As a devout Christian, I friggin beg to differ. Yeah, I cursed, not in my usual NY fashion, but if it’s shock value that seems to be part of the mainstream, then so be it!
The one question that I beg of all these pontificating self-righteous preachers is simply this,”Which do you hold more in esteem, The Bible, or, God Himself?” Or, more pointedly,”Do you believe in The Bible, more than you believe in the very Christ, or God Almighty himself?”
Secondly, I’d love to approach these Gentlemen, whom always seem to have a mic, and ask,” What are you doing to, in your ministry, to employ the ‘infinite’ inconclusiveness of Christ’s Love? And by that, I mean, teh Gays, Muslims, Hindus, et al?
Thomas Mann was ardently anti-Nazi. Isn’t that the main reason he ended living in the United States before returning to Europe in 1952?
(Was he gay? Maybe, although I’m not sure that it was so much sexual and/or emotional relations with another man that interested him – rather a somewhat odd ‘subliminal obsession’ with ‘the beauty of youth’.)
Thomas Mann was ardently anti-Nazi. Isn’t that the main reason he ended living in the United States before returning to Europe in 1952?
(Was he gay? Maybe, although I’m not sure that it was so much sexual and/or emotional relations with another man that interested him – rather a somewhat odd ‘subliminal obsession’ with ‘the beauty of youth’.)