04/05/2025
Over the next couple of days, many people across Europe will be marking VE Day (Victory In Europe Day), being the day in 1945 which fell after the fascist German government conceded total and utter defeat to the Allied Armies of fifty one countries, who had resisted the fascist empire established by dictator Adolf Hitler during the thirties and the early forties. After five and a half years of war, around fifty million people had perished. The Nazis (which is largely another term for fascist) had engaged in mass slaughter of minorities - their ideal person was once described by the UK National Union of Students as the "white, able bodies, right wing capitalist male". Everyone else was to be destroyed, and in their horrific death camps across Europe, around 6.5 million Jews, 600, 000 Sinti and Roma Gypsies, 15,000 Gay and Bisexual Males, together with thousands of lesbians, disabled people, people with learning disabilities, Jehovah's Witnesses, communists and socialists, and other political opponents, were all put to death. The cruel and often unusual punishments meted out to LGBT+ people by the fascist powers means that the history of the European continent during this terrifying - and all too recent - chapter in its history should be studied and appreciated by LGBTQIA+ people, regardless of ones political affiliations or moral outlook. There are few people who are still alive who suffered during the Second World War and the holocaust against minorities, and their warnings that dictatorial attitudes and neo-fascism are spreading across Europe once again, should be heeded. Britain's war time Prime Minister, Winston Churchill (admittedly a complex, controversial and contradictory man) was clear in defining fascism as an "evil" regime based on fear, ruthlessness and death. Television scriptwriter Russell T Davies spoke for many currently when he said of the Trump administration in the United States was "an evil rising in the West". An eighteenth century statesperson (no one is sure who) once quipped "The price of democracy is eternal vigilance (against dictatorship)". That sentiment has particular resonance in a period of misinformation, misrule and demagoguery. As in the nineteen forties, fascism needs to be opposed, exposed and fought.
