A British group that advocates for transgender people is facing charges of Holocaust revisionism after it called a former Parliament member a Holocaust denier.
It all started, evidently, when former politician Mike Gapes liked a tweet that stated, in part: “The LGBTQ+ lobby likes to claim trans people were a key target of the Nazis. They weren’t.”
A group called Labour Campaign for Trans Rights responded that it was “completely appalled” to see the Labour member “liking a tweet that claims that trans people were not key targets of the Holocaust,” the group tweeted. “This is absolutely disgusting, and we cannot stand by.” (It shared a link for readers to complain to the Labour Party.)
“Gapes’ endorsement of this tweet crosses the line from usual ‘gender-critical’ bigotry to something far more sinister. This is straightforward Holocaust denial,” the group added. “As fellow Labour Party members, it is absolutely terrifying to see where the discourse has moved to.”
“Looks like I’m about to face another Twitter pile on. This time it is for simply liking an interesting tweet thread. Oh dear. What a stupid waste of time,” Gapes responded. “I will not be bullied off Twitter by these historical revisionists, or any other cranks or ideological extremists.”
The British Jewish journalist Nicole Lampert came to the defense of Gapes.
“You are the ones engaged in Holocaust revisionism,” Lampert wrote to Labour for Trans Rights.
“I can’t blame people for confusing the Holocaust with the many other crimes of the Nazis,” she added, noting she had to explain that to her son’s history teacher. “But it is a word which means solely the genocide of the Jews. Antisemitism was central to Nazi thought and behavior.”
Anne Marie Scanlon, an author and journalist, tagged Labour Party leader Keir Starmer and tweeted: “Please get a grip on this offensive ahistorical hogwash. It is deeply offensive to many and does little to convince people that Labour doesn’t have a problem with antisemitism.”
