Image: The Australian
The Australian has recently published a cartoon by Bill Leaks depicting goose-stepping Nazi soldiers in rainbow-coloured uniform. The caption underneath reads “Waffen-SSM”: a play on the Waffen-SS, who were an armed faction of Hitler’s SS responsible for running the concentration and extermination camps of Nazi Germany, and same-sex marriage (SSM).
It is obvious that the point of this is to illustrate Leaks’ thoughts that the plebiscite and push for marriage equality as being pushed by LGBT+ advocates in a military-like manner. There is no question that this has gone past the point of controversial to being universally decried as offensive.
A similar situation arose earlier when Leaks published a cartoon of Aboriginal Australians last month, with Leaks saying that opponents were “sanctimonious Tweety birds having a tantrum”.
David Pope, cartoonist of another prominent Australian newspaper – The Canberra Times – threw his own outrage into the mix, tweeting about Richard Grune, a gay cartoonist famously imprisoned by the Nazis.
Hey kids. Today’s lesson is on drawing, Nazis, and homosexuality…
— David Pope (@davpope) September 21, 2016
Richard Grune, a German artist, spent almost 8 years in Nazi concentration camps for the “crime” of homosexuality pic.twitter.com/bRowJdN0pu
— David Pope (@davpope) September 21, 2016
Grune survived the Nazi campaign of “extermination through work” and made lithographs of his experience in the camps pic.twitter.com/5750OPPqPC
— David Pope (@davpope) September 21, 2016
Between 5,000 and 15,000 gay men were interned in Nazi camps pic.twitter.com/nutSafhjfV
— David Pope (@davpope) September 21, 2016
Richard Grune will be remembered long after the world has forgotten Bill Leak
— David Pope (@davpope) September 21, 2016
Leaks may want to apply some ice for that final burn.
