Of course "queer depraved Nazi" is a really common trope. I wonder about the origins of it, considering how homophobic Nazi policy was. Of course there was Rohm and his circle, but the Nazis purged them all and used Rohm's homosexuality as part of their justification. And there's a lot of homoerotic imagery in Nazism, but alongside the brutal persecution of men who had sex with men. I wonder if it's just that "queer" has long been treated as a synonym for "depraved," so in wartime and postwar depictions of depraved Nazis, queerness was a useful shorthand?
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timeasmymeasure
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Date: 2011-06-28 05:17 pm (UTC)Of course "queer depraved Nazi" is a really common trope. I wonder about the origins of it, considering how homophobic Nazi policy was. Of course there was Rohm and his circle, but the Nazis purged them all and used Rohm's homosexuality as part of their justification. And there's a lot of homoerotic imagery in Nazism, but alongside the brutal persecution of men who had sex with men. I wonder if it's just that "queer" has long been treated as a synonym for "depraved," so in wartime and postwar depictions of depraved Nazis, queerness was a useful shorthand?