It's possibly important to point out that in reality, the earlier years of Nazis in power were quite confused and hypocritical in this, and that homosexuality among the loyal men was - in fact, if not always in name - actually encouraged as a way of binding them more closely together. It was only after (and not unrelated to) the Night of the Long Knives (weirdly suggestive in itself, as a name) that the "party line," as it were, became quite unanimous and energetic about this.
The speaker's point was quite separate from this, and wasn't linking homosexuality with the Nazis at all, but rather saying that religious leaders of the time had trusted Hitler with the spiritual welfare of the nation and had been betrayed thereby (not, interestingly, by a seduction into evil ways, but because Hitler could not keep his promise to protect and the bombs "fell not only on the people of Germany but on its churches). Similarly (he claims), at this time, religious leaders in the US are "in danger" of not taking action and of letting the government handle even those things which concern the spiritual/moral welfare of the nation, which by analogy he claims will inevitably lead to that spiritual and moral welfare being betrayed.
It's a call to action based on a, "On another occasion like this, people like us did not take action and as a result they were bombed," premise, not a "Nazi Germany was soft on homosexuals, and they were evil, so if we're soft on homosexuals, we'll be evil" premise. Either would be revolting, but one may as well be arguing with what's actually there.
What's really interesting about this is that Godwin's Law and its corollaries conflate the particular brand of fascism/totalitarianism put into effect by the Nazi party and Hitler as a person and statesman. Any comparisons to Hitler or Nazi policy are seen as identically, perhaps indistinguishably, condemnations of something as being a repressive, cruel, and bigoted abuse of power.
This guy is saying that the problem was not evil but failure.
As in, it would have been okay, if Hitler could have produced what he promised.
I mean, I doubt that the speaker in this clip, if called on this, would publicly agree that all the actions of the Nazi party as a whole and Hitler in particular were only problematic because, in the end, they lost the war, but that is the clear and inescapable conclusion from his speech.
Not sure how many people listening to him really followed that.
Also interesting is that that's not as obvious an argument as the other, and the people listening to this man speak could not have known where he was going with it - but they were cheering him before he'd spoken more than five words. It's all in the delivery. Guy's probably a pretty effective preacher, at a guess. Lot of attention paid to image - clean-cut, short hair, conservative suit, mid-Atlantic accent...prayer-tent conversion techniques in speaking. And I have a lot of respect for good preaching; it's an art. In this case, it's an art I'd rather see in someone else's hands.
Thank you for listening to the guy's actual words and dissecting them. I break out in hives when I listen to preachers of that style, even when they're not saying (or implying) that my friends are less than fully human, so I couldn't get through it myself.
The speaker's point was quite separate from this, and wasn't linking homosexuality with the Nazis at all, but rather saying that religious leaders of the time had trusted Hitler with the spiritual welfare of the nation and had been betrayed thereby (not, interestingly, by a seduction into evil ways, but because Hitler could not keep his promise to protect and the bombs "fell not only on the people of Germany but on its churches). Similarly (he claims), at this time, religious leaders in the US are "in danger" of not taking action and of letting the government handle even those things which concern the spiritual/moral welfare of the nation, which by analogy he claims will inevitably lead to that spiritual and moral welfare being betrayed.
It's a call to action based on a, "On another occasion like this, people like us did not take action and as a result they were bombed," premise, not a "Nazi Germany was soft on homosexuals, and they were evil, so if we're soft on homosexuals, we'll be evil" premise. Either would be revolting, but one may as well be arguing with what's actually there.
What's really interesting about this is that Godwin's Law and its corollaries conflate the particular brand of fascism/totalitarianism put into effect by the Nazi party and Hitler as a person and statesman. Any comparisons to Hitler or Nazi policy are seen as identically, perhaps indistinguishably, condemnations of something as being a repressive, cruel, and bigoted abuse of power.
This guy is saying that the problem was not evil but failure.
As in, it would have been okay, if Hitler could have produced what he promised.
I mean, I doubt that the speaker in this clip, if called on this, would publicly agree that all the actions of the Nazi party as a whole and Hitler in particular were only problematic because, in the end, they lost the war, but that is the clear and inescapable conclusion from his speech.
Not sure how many people listening to him really followed that.
Also interesting is that that's not as obvious an argument as the other, and the people listening to this man speak could not have known where he was going with it - but they were cheering him before he'd spoken more than five words. It's all in the delivery. Guy's probably a pretty effective preacher, at a guess. Lot of attention paid to image - clean-cut, short hair, conservative suit, mid-Atlantic accent...prayer-tent conversion techniques in speaking. And I have a lot of respect for good preaching; it's an art. In this case, it's an art I'd rather see in someone else's hands.
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