White nationalist broadcaster Stew Peters praised the Nazi regime over their infamous book burnings and persecution of LGBTQ people. Peters, who denies the Holocaust and has given a platform to Neo-Nazis and other antisemites, claimed that these book burnings were “awesome,” and referred to Adolf Hitler as a “hero.”

On the latest episode of his Rumble show, Stew Peters devoted a segment to condemning Germany’s Weimar Republic for tolerating LGBTQ people.

“And Weimar, of course, was the birthplace of the transgenderism and gay rights movements that have once again reared their ugly heads to plague Western, Christian society,” he declared. “Especially America. All of this was happening with the full blessing of the Weimar government, which was largely controlled by Jews.”

Peters justified the actions of the Nazis by claiming that Jews “controlled the German court system” and the “German banking system,” and had “unprecedented overrepresentation in Germany’s government.” He also accused the Jewish people of controlling Germany’s communist movement.

“Sound familiar?” he asked.

He called Magnus Hirschfeld, a Jewish German sexologist and doctor, “one of the most disgusting, revolting figures of the entire Weimar Republic.” Hirschfeld was a pioneer for LGBTQ rights and founded the Institut für Sexualwissenschaft (or Institute for Sexual Research). In 1933, Nazi youth groups ransacked the Institute and burned its entire library as part of an “Action Against the Un-German Spirit.”

Other authors whose works were targeted for “cleansing” (or Säuberung) by fire included Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Mann, Erich Maria Remarque, Helen Keller, and Jack London.

After the Nazis took power, Hirschfeld’s citizenship was revoked and he was forced to live in exile. He died in France in 1935 at age 67.

Peters said that “Weimar Germany was full of people like” Hirschfeld, who “produced heinous forms of pornography” that were “plastered all over public spaces.” And he stated that this was the “atmosphere of complete and total perversion that really led to the National Socialists and Adolf Hitler being swept into power.”

“Because they promised a return to order,” Peters explained. “They promised a return to basic reality and a time of human decency. And so of course, millions of Germans supported them. They were looking to do anything that they could do to take back control of their country to protect themselves and the generations to come.”

He boasted that one of the “first remedies that Hitler and the National Socialists had to offer” was the destruction of the Institute for Sexual Research and its entire library.

“When it comes down to the old Nazi book burnings, as they call them, it was justified,” Peters declared.

“It was great. It was awesome. Period. Point blank. They went straight to the pornographers. They went straight at the perverts. They went straight to the purveyors of transgenderism and homosexuality, and they took their works and they set fire to them so they could not be used to destroy anyone else — to destroy any more children.”

He went on to call for a new round of Nazi-style book burnings of “pornographic filth.”

“Modern-day Americans should be having gatherings where they bring out a big burn barrel, and everyone shows up and fills it with this perverted, demented porn,” he proclaimed. “With these perverted books that are being peddled to our kids at school. They should all be torched. They should all be destroyed. We’re in desperate need of a public, societal cleansing ceremony.”

Following his monologue, Peters spoke with Peter Quiñones — a far-right podcaster who largely agreed with Peters’ conclusions. Speaking of World War II, Peters said “horrific things happened” and “lots of people died,” but suggested that Adolf Hitler may have been unfairly maligned as an “evil dictator” who “murdered millions of people.”

“But for this, wasn’t he a hero?” Peters asked. “Wasn’t Hitler doing the right thing when he ordered these books to be burned and these places to be stormed by force?”

“Well even if he didn’t order it, at least the people that followed him knew what to do and he wasn’t going to complain about it,” Quiñones replied. “Yeah, this is what needed to be done. If you’re going to save a civilization — I mean, the civilization was dying. … The German people were embarrassed to be German. The Prussian people — the Prussian spirit was lost.”

Quiñones also praised the Nazis for stamping out other political parties, remarking that “desperate times” called for “desperate measures.”

“You have to do that,” he continued. “If you think the only way to solve the problem is to put your country back on the right path, to put your culture back on the right path, your community back on the right path — you’re gonna do anything that it takes. And suspending the rule of law, I have no problem with that.”

He added that this is “exactly what [Nayib] Bukele did.” As part of a crackdown on crime, the Salvadorean president arrested thousands of people — amounting to 1% of the country’s population — many of whom are innocent. Bukele is popular among right-wing figures in the U.S. who wish to emulate his policies here. He even spoke at the 2024 Conservative Political Action Conference.