If you have ever wondered why the police ever thought it acceptable to investigate a journalist for her gender-critical beliefs, arrest a woman for ‘misgendering’ or record a non-crime hate incident for a trans-sceptical limerick, then an internal document circulated by Police Scotland may offer a clue. Apparently, some officers genuinely believe that people who believe in biology are really just like the Nazis.
The Daily Mail this week revealed an internal document by Police Scotland, which was written to mark ‘Trans+ History Week’ from 5 to 11 May. It states that a belief in the ‘gender binary’ – that is, the scientific truth that there are only two sexes in humans – was a ‘key feature’ of the Nazi regime in 1930s Germany. ‘Right now, some 88 years later’, it continues, ‘the gender-critical movement has a strong voice and presence’. It then asks whether this movement is ‘an echo of how past hostilities arose’. It suggests that allowing gender-critical beliefs to flourish unchecked would represent a failure to ‘understand the lessons we should have collectively learned from our shared history’.
This isn’t a line lifted from a blue-haired student’s Bluesky account – it is from a document circulated by a national police force, which has powers to arrest and detain people. You could hardly ask for clearer evidence that the police have abandoned any pretense of impartiality and that officers today have become uniformed activists.