AIDS–Holocaust metaphor

The comparison was popularized by Larry Kramer and ACT-UP, especially the organization's French chapter, as a way to garner sympathy for AIDS sufferers and spur research into the disease.

[2] The AIDS epidemic began in 1981 when young, healthy men from the LGBTQ+ community in the United States were diagnosed with Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia.

Kramer considered the lack of press coverage in American newspapers of the AIDS epidemic to be similar to its tepid response to the Holocaust.

He also criticized some LGBT organizations, such as Gay Men's Health Crisis, for not being militant enough in the struggle against the AIDS epidemic; in Kramer's opinion, this was comparable to the reaction of the Judenräte, 'Jewish councils' set up by the Nazis, to the murder of their communities.

Alain Emmanuel Dreuilhe [fr] proposed that AIDS was a turning point in LGBT history, similar to what the Holocaust had been for the Jews.

[12] In 1997, Steven Epstein argued that the comparison of AIDS and genocide was growing less commonplace as activist groups accommodated themselves with the medical establishment.