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   thomholwerda (thomholwerda@social.tchncs.de)'s status on Thursday, 14-Sep-2023 15:00:52 JST thomholwerda

   I'm vocal about trans rights because I grew up in a country that was absolutely devastated by the Nazis. The Netherlands had the highest per-capita death rate of any of the occupied countries in western Europe - 2.36% of all inhabitants were killed in the Holocaust, executed as resistance fighters, during uprisings, or during the Hunger Winter, which is exactly what it sounds like.

   1940-1945 seems long ago, especially for Americans. But for someone born in 1984 in NL? It permeated everything.

   • Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: and clacke like this.
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     thomholwerda (thomholwerda@social.tchncs.de)'s status on Thursday, 14-Sep-2023 15:01:39 JST thomholwerda

     in reply to

     So what I'm seeing happening to my fellow human beings who happen to be trans? I recognise this shit. I know the patterns. I hear the dog whistles, loud and clear. I've studied the vocabulary, the propaganda tricks, the methods they use to dehumanize trans people.

     And I'm not fucking standing for it. I'm just some regular dude, but it's been instilled in me that once the Nazis invaded, there were only two kinds of people: those that resisted, and everyone else.

     I will not be everyone else.

     Haelwenn /элвэн/ :triskell: and clacke like this.
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     thomholwerda (thomholwerda@social.tchncs.de)'s status on Thursday, 14-Sep-2023 15:01:40 JST thomholwerda

     in reply to

     Our education, media, family oral histories - it's drenched in what the Nazis and their Dutch collaborators did to my country. My parents took me and my older brothers to visit a concentration camp when I was like 7 - too young? Fuck no. I already understood damn well where I was, and the memories I made that day are still vivid today, more than 30 years later.

     Hate for Nazism wasn't something I only read about in books - I was societally injected with hate for Nazis from the day I was born.

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     thomholwerda (thomholwerda@social.tchncs.de)'s status on Thursday, 14-Sep-2023 16:11:47 JST thomholwerda

     in reply to

     My grandfather - my mom's father - was taken by the Nazis and used for slave labour in Germany. After the war, he had to find his way back home alone, on foot. His experiences fucked him up, and is one of the reasons my mother's upbringing was so difficult she effectively had to flee her parents at age 16, after having spent time in an abusive Catholic nunnery - unheard of in '60s Netherlands for a woman so young to strike out alone. It all destroyed the family.

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     thomholwerda (thomholwerda@social.tchncs.de)'s status on Thursday, 14-Sep-2023 16:11:49 JST thomholwerda

     in reply to

     Her sisters and her brother, of which many have sadly passed away due to cancer, never made amends. Didn't attend each other's funerals. Still don't talk to each other. It has caused lasting psychological scars in my mom - that I can see even today.

     So no, 1940-1945 is not "long ago", and we were just a regular white Catholic family. I can't even fucking imagine what Jewish families, Roma families, and the various other targeted groups are still going through today at the hands of the Nazis.

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     thomholwerda (thomholwerda@social.tchncs.de)'s status on Thursday, 14-Sep-2023 16:11:51 JST thomholwerda

     in reply to

     Punch Nazis. Fight Nazis. Kill Nazis. Do not tolerate intolerance, lest our society will be destroyed.

     As I always say - the only good nazi is a dead nazi.

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