J.K. Rowling’s Legal Threat to Journalists for Calling Out Holocaust Denial Backfires

J.K. Rowling’s denial of the Holocaust’s impact on trans people has taken another turn (or two): the author has successfully threatened a journalist into retracting a tweet in which she called Rowling a Holocaust denier.

Just when you think J.K. Rowling couldn’t possibly sink any lower, she proves us wrong by pulling another heinous take out of the trash receptacle where her brain should be. This time, there’s an unsurprising twist to her transphobic rhetoric: Holocaust denial. After she referred to the Nazis regime’s burning of books on trans healthcare and research as a “fever dream,” several social media users, including UK journalist Rivkah Brown, called Rowling out for denying a documented event from the Holocaust—or, to put it in simple terms, for engaging in Holocaust denial. Rowling responded by threatening to sue Brown for libel. Brown has now deleted the original post and issued the following statement:

UK laws make it easier for people (with money) to sue over libel and defamation, thus making it easier for certain public figures to effectively silence their critics.

Of course, Rowling’s legal threats have only brought more attention to the issue, particularly on social media sites like X, where “JK Rowling is a Holocaust” is trending.

The whole thing started—where else?—on X, where Joanne Rowling referred to the Nazis’ burning of books containing trans healthcare and research as a “fever dream.” Rowling re-posted a comment that reads, “The Nazis burnt books on trans healthcare and research, why are you so desperate to uphold their ideology around gender?” It’s a reasonable question, Joanne!

“I just… how?” writes Rowling, a professional author. “How did you type this out and press send without thinking ‘I should maybe check my source for this, because it might’ve been a fever dream’?”

The commenter is referring to a well-documented incident: In 1933, just months after the Nazi government of Germany opened its first concentration camps, the Nazis organized book burnings. A group of students participating in the Nazi government censorship program attacked the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft, or the Institute for Sexual Science. Located in Berlin, the ISS was the first of its kind in the world, a research center dedicated to sexology, or the study of human sexuality. Headed by Magnus Hirschfeld, the ISS conducted groundbreaking research and developed treatments for issues affecting gay, transgender, and intersex people, among others.

The institute had been open for well over a decade when the Nazis destroyed it and burned its archives, which contained books pertaining to sexuality and research materials—including, notably, materials related to trans healthcare. As the only facility of its kind, you can probably understand why the destruction of the ISS archives was so devastating; it’s impossible to know how different things might be for the trans community had these documents—and their implications for trans healthcare—survived.

Six million Jews were killed during the Holocaust. An estimated 10-15,000 gay men were sent to concentration camps, where the majority of them died. Due to the Nazis’ recordkeeping it’s impossible to know exactly how many queer people—including trans men and women—were killed during the Holocaust. Based on court documentation and research, we know that some trans women were persecuted based on the Nazi government’s criminalization of homosexuality.

According to Joanne Rowling, the Nazis didn’t burn the ISS archives, nor did they specifically target trans people. She even re-posted a thread filled with blatant misinformation about Hirschfeld (to call its contents “offensive” would be an understatement), much of which is often parroted by conservatives in their attacks on trans rights.

For a professional author and someone who generally appears to be literate, Rowling is very bad at reading comprehension. It is well known that, in addition to Jews, the Nazi regime targeted Roma, disabled people, and gay and queer people. (I learned this in grade school. In Texas.) To suggest that Nazis did not burn books and research materials related to trans (and queer) healthcare is to engage in Holocaust denial. And I’d be surprised, except that Rowling is a proud transphobe, an ideology shared by neo-Nazis, so it was only a matter of time before she stopped living around the corner from Nazis and started sharing an address with them.

And it probably goes without saying, but it is wild to see a woman who wrote a whole series of children’s books about the dangers of fascist regimes subscribe to Nazi ideology and casually engage in Holocaust denial.

This article has been updated.

(featured image: Stuart C. Wilson, Getty Images)