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Westboro Baptist Church. So much I could write. So little time...

Where to begin? WBC is a fundamentalist religious organisation, based in Topeka, Kansas, part of the so-called Bible-belt of the United States. It's headed by Pastor Fred Phelps, a disbarred lawyer. They are behind such websites as GodHatesFags.com, preaching hatred towards homosexuals, bisexuals, and transgender people, as well as Jews, Roman Catholics, and Muslims, and condemning those countries it sees as supporting the aforementioned groups (Great Britain, America, Sweden etc). They are renowned for picketing the funerals of homosexuals who have been victims of hate crimes or died of AIDS. They have also been known to picket stores selling Swedish vacuum cleaners (whilst being filmed by Louis Theroux!) because the Swedish government had recently imprisoned a pastor for preaching against homosexuality, and also the funerals of American soldiers, since they believe the death of these soldiers to be God's way of punishing America, and that the soldiers only joined the military because they were "lazy, incompetent idiots" who could not find other work. Nice guys, I'm sure you'll all agree.

There's so much that could be written about this bunch of crazies that I'm not even going to attempt it all in one go. Instead, I'm going to tackle one particular area:- Westboro Baptist Church and the use of the word "Nazi".

On the subject of extremist organisations such as the KKK, their FAQ states:

"We don't believe in physical violence of any kind, and the Scripture doesn't support racism... The only true Nazis in this world are fags."

Wrong! Sorry sunshine - even for the moment ignoring what he's trying to say, he's plain incorrect. The only true Nazis are those who were members of the Nationalsozialistische Deutsche Arbeiterpartei which was active in Germany between 1933 and 1945. That's where the word comes from - it's shorthand. Other groups may be referred to as neo-Nazi, but not actually Nazi.

Moving on to the fact that he's actually trying to label homosexuals as Nazis. What an amazingly ill-informed comment. Homosexuals were persecuted under the Nazi Party (despite several members of the Party, for example Ernst Röhm, being openly homosexual). Approximately 100,000 were arrested after Hitler became Chancellor, with an estimated 50,000 being sent to concentration camps. Of that number, between 5,000 and 15,000 are believed to have died. Whilst in camps, homosexual men were forced to wear an inverted pink triangle so that they could be easily identified, much like the yellow star of David worn by the Jews.

Phelps goes on to refer to the Holocaust as "miniscule" and in 1996 led a protest at the United States Holocaust Memorial in Washington D.C., stating:

"Whatever righteous cause the Jewish victims of the 1930s-40s Nazi Holocaust had... has been drowned in sodomite semen. American taxpayers are financing this unholy monument to Jewish mendacity and greed and to filthy fag lust. Homosexuals and Jews dominated Nazi Germany.... The Jews now wander the earth despised, smitten with moral and spiritual blindness by a divine judicial stroke.... And God has smitten Jews with a certain unique madness... Jews, thus perverted, out of all proportion to their numbers energize the militant sodomite agenda... Jews are the real Nazis."

Now, once again, this is completely ridiculous. Yes, a number of prominent Nazis were homosexual, as mentioned above. Yes, certain prominent Nazis even had Jewish roots. However, the Nazi Party systematically exterminated European Jews.

It gets better:

"Fag Jew Nazis are worse than ordinary Nazis. They've had more experience."

WBC don't seem to understand what a Nazi actually is, and they don't seem to care. Essentially, everyone who isn't them is a Nazi, yet their beliefs (anti-semitism, anti-catholicism, anti-homosexuality etc) are strikingly similar in parts to those of the Nazi party.

So what conclusions can we draw from this? It would appear that if you're not a racist, anti-semitic, homophobic, ill-informed biggot then you're a Nazi, so far as the Westboro Baptist Church is concerned. Well then, by that definition and that definition alone, I'm proud to be a Nazi.

Disclaimer:- If anyone has read that and completely missed the point of what I was saying, let me make it perfectly clear that I am not, in fact, a Nazi sympathiser, nor do I subscribe to any extreme right wing viewpoints. I am strongly opposed to such groups.