J.K. Rowling had another "middle-aged moment" Wednesday, claiming that the Nazis did not target trans people when they "burned early books on trans healthcare and research," as an online critic had put it—then threatening to sue another who claimed this amounted to holocaust denial. The Nazis did in fact do that, burning down the first sexology clinic and targeting trans people over the course of the Holocaust.
On the way to breaking out the lawsuit threats, Rowling squirmily defended her position. In the end, it's an argument over definitions and semantics: she isn't really denying that the Nazis killed these people or burned these books, she's arguing, weakly, that it wasn't about them being trans—and getting upset after this tortured notion is context-collapsed. As the plain intent of making such an argument is to exclude trans people from the history of Nazi victims, it implies nothing good about Rowling's intentions or the right-wing swamp her self-destructive social media persona now exists in.
The impulse to censor critics by threatening to sue them seems especially common with U.K. celebrities, too. Especially the insinuating yet showy way Rowling indulges here: it always reminds me of Piers Morgan snarling threats through a fixed smile on an old panel show there. A part of it is that it's effective (there, at least) due to England's plaintiff-friendly libel laws and the runaway cost of mounting a defense. But it's also a cultural thing, in that a) Brits are vague on censorship in general and b) the rich ones have a massive sense of entitlement to those libel laws due to England's vicious and mendacious tabloid press.
Previously: A simple handy guide to JK Rowling's transphobia
