Visual Collective Memories of National Socialism: Transatlantic HIV/AIDS Activism and Discourses of Persecutions

Abstract

Focusing on Bavarian policies and analysing the pages of gay and lesbian written-communication networks, this article demonstrates how a memory of the national socialist persecution of homosexualities fed a collective fear of state repression in homosexual circles in the 1980s and 1990s. It argues that comparisons between HIV/AIDS policies and National Socialism not only originated in a German national context, but were also anchored in a transatlantic story, linking queer emancipation movements in Europe and North America. It furthermore underlines how this history of queer political thought goes beyond the textual. In order to make this claim, the article traces a genealogy of the Pink Triangle in the northern transatlantic world. The symbol was originally used to brand non-heteronormative men in concentration camps, but it was recuperated in the 1970s both in Europe and in North America. AIDS activists reinterpreted the symbol for a new political context in the 1980s. All in all, using examples and analysis emanating from queer history, the article shows how the history of social movements needs to be understood in a global perspective. This analysis further proves the role of images and symbols as third idioms for the flow and translation of ideas across the Atlantic.