every fucking time someone talks about Nazi Germany and "first they came", they always, ALWAYS fail to mention disabled people.

they always forget to mention how disabled people were among the first people to be explicitly targeted. they were deemed "unfit" to the "Aryan" image.

(strange parallel: a lot of people became disabled as a result of the Great Flu. a mass death and disabling event. kind of like what we've got going on today with COVID, which isn't over...)

(another strange parallel: a lot of people already believe that disabled people are a "burden" on society, and that they should have their benefits cut to serve some "greater good." a lot of those people either already believe, or could be convinced to believe, that disabled people should "just die" for the same reason. this rhetoric was also popular back then, given the economic turmoil that the world - and, in particular, Germany - was in.)

(one more thing: these attitudes - and some of the actions - towards disabled people were in no way unique to Germany at the time. and they are in no way unique to any one country now.)

in 1933, forced sterilizations began on disabled people. pretty much immediately upon the Nazis claiming power.

as for when people started getting killed en masse: look up "Aktion T4". fucking sit with it. absorb it. they emptied the fucking hospitals and asylums. where do you think those people went?

how many of our precious "leftist" voices even bother to look into this, let alone inform people of it - and not as a gotcha or some quick aside?

no, instead, we remain silent on the atrocities done to disabled people. every fucking time.

this is not said as some sort of """oppression olympics""" bullshit, this is said because so few people bother to remember this.

they aren't even in the goddamn poem.

Edit: I failed to address/clarify some thoughts here.

I personally don't believe in the "first they came" framing. These are incredibly linear and simplistic terms to think in, and while I do absolutely believe that some groups were persecuted more harshly than others - they were all hated for being "un-German." For "desecrating" the "Aryan race."

What I mean here is not that "they sat down and wrote down a list of who was the easiest to go after, and didn't do anything to anyone else until then." What I mean is that "among all the other groups they were actively targeting for discrimination and violence, they recognized that disabled people were often derided and left behind by society, and therefore, fairly easy to go after." Think "floating the balloon," to see what they could get away with - not just against disabled people, either.

What I also mean is that a lot of people, at least outside of Germany, may not have learned about atrocities like Aktion T4. They may not have learned about how the Nazis weaponized disablities resulting from WWI and The Great Flu, and used them to further their various agendas.

As for the "precious leftists," I mean the people who tend to get the largest microphone in ostensibly leftist spaces (online and offline). They're usually able-bodied, cis, white men, and they may use those privileges to uplift other voices. It does happen! But often, even they fail to go into depth about the targeting of disabled people, beyond an aside or a gotcha statement, or to make themselves look good.

A lot of left-leaning types do fight fervently for disabled people, and I am incredibly thankful for that! But often times, disabled people don't get access to a large platform, or they're talked about, and never to. Algorithms are much less likely to show their content to the able-bodied viewer, and people may hold subconscious biases around whose voices they choose to listen to. Much like how white people tend to listen to other white people when it comes to issues of racism, or cis people tend to listen to other cis people when it comes to trans issues: able-bodied people tend to listen to other able-bodied people when it comes to disabled issues.

As leftists, we need to recognize this and try to subvert/weaponize it, wherever we possibly can, so we can better educate others that may be politically elsewhere - as well as ourselves!

I recognize that the post was maybe a bit inflammatory; it probably wasn't helpful for actually doing anything, but at the same time: I do believe that people are allowed their anger over issues like this.