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JK Rowling is Anti-Rights (quokk.au)
submitted 3 months ago by [A] to c/comics@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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[–] -1 points 3 months ago (6 children)

Jk Rowling's? The UK government that places the burden of proof in libel cases on the defendent to prove that their statement is true in a court of law, while the plaintiff just has to show their reputation was damaged?

I'm not at all a fan of them removing the report, but it's not exactly a mystery who else you could blame for the situation.

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  • [–] 17 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    If only Amnesty were a massive organization with a budget in the hundreds of millions, and an opportunity to use this fight as a massive PR coup and fundraising opportunity.

    No. I place the blame on Amnesty. They're just doing the Nazi "I'm just following orders" line.

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  • [–] -3 points 3 months ago (2 children)

    Retracting a report that they didn't think they could legally defend in court is a long way from justifying comparisons to Nazis.

    Personally I would have rathered that they removed the report and released the information from the perspective of the US chapter with mildly revamped wording, but I get the course of action.
    I'm not convinced it would be a pr coup or net financial win for them to publicly be unable to prove that "gender critical" organizations are defacto anti-rights in general, or that Rowling's sexual violence charity that was mentioned in specific was.
    When the argument is that they over generalized and named organizations as guilty by association without justification, they wouldn't be arguing trans rights or equality but specific public policy stances.
    Appearing to argue that a rape support center is in violation of human rights by catering to cis women isn't going to be the pr coup.
    It doesn't matter that they're clearly anti trans and founded because the alternative didn't exclude trans women and had a trans director: amnesty would need to show they were an an anti rights organization.

    I'm not saying that I like that they took down the report or apologized. Nor am I saying that any of the groups are accepting or good.
    I'm just saying that Rowling and the stupid uk libel laws are better targets for ire.

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  • [–] 13 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    No, the comparison to Nazis is perfectly appropriate. If you don't want to be compared to Nazis, don't pick up where they left off. If you do the work of the Nazis, you are a Nazi.

    You ever seen this photo before? It's often included with little context in school history books. It was one of the first major Nazi book burnings.

    What history books often leave out is that this book burning was the torching of the archives of the Berlin Institute for Sexual Science. This was an early queer and transgender support and research center. They provided some of the first trans hormone and surgical treatments. The institute's founder, Magnus Hirschfeld was an early pioneer of trans studies and even coined the term "transsexual."

    In 1933 the Nazis raided the institute and burned its archives. Magnus had to flee for his life to France. Many of those involved in the institute fled the country as well. And countless trans people in Germany ended up rounded up and dying in Nazi concentration camps.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Persecution_of_transgender_people_in_Nazi_Germany

    This purge actually predicated much of the advancements in trans healthcare in the US. Just like how many German physicists fled to the US, many of the early pioneers in trans science ended up in the US and helped start programs here.

    This has actually been adjudicated in court:

    In 2022, the Regional Court of Cologne ruled that denying that transgender people were victims of the Nazis qualifies as "a denial of Nazi crimes".[127][128] The ruling was an outcome of the civil libel suit of German biologist Marie-Luise Vollbrecht, who alleged libel against the German Society for Trans Identity and Intersexuality over their response to comments she made calling transgender people not "true victims" of Nazi crimes.[129][130][131] The court ultimately ruled that she had to accept the response made to her comments labelling her as a denialist.

    If you don't want to be compared to the Nazis, don't do Nazi shit.

    And yes, the comparison with Amnesty is perfectly valid. Amnesty aren't themselves involved in the persecution of trans people, but they're looking the other way, just as countless regular Germans did.

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  • [–] 0 points 3 months ago

    The disagreement about a comparison to Nazis isn't about what the Nazis did, or that doing what they did would justify comparison, it's that I fundamentally disagree that taking down an allegedly libelous document is the same as mass murder.

    I'm familiar with the horrors of the Nazis, you don't need to rehash.

    I'm not sure how a German court case about denying Nazi crimes has bearing on a theoretical UK court case about if an organization has a specific policy position.

    You earlier mentioned that the case could be a PR and fundraising opportunity.
    Have you considered if you would want them to fight it if they thought it would do the opposite? What if they just spent a bunch of money giving the assholes a platform to spew hate?

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  • [–] 8 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    So Amnesty's reputation was damaged by rowling's forcing the retraction, does that work for a revenge libel case?

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