Gay people were behind the rise of the Nazi party during World War II. And now, they’re trying to suppress a book about their role.

If you believe the right-wing web site World Net Daily, this isn’t wingnut fiction, but historical fact. And independent-media site AlterNet is reporting that World Net Daily is not only continuing to sell “The Pink Swastika” — a widely discredited book promoting the gay-Nazi “theory” — but is capitalizing on recent controversy “by claiming that the gay community is trying to silence the book’s ‘findings.’”

In an unsigned story headlined “Were Nazis a Homosexual, Pagan Cult,” World Net Daily calls the book “disturbing, compelling and persuasive on its major point — that homosexuals dominated the German Nazi Party from its birth through its catastrophic demise. It’s a book that is vilified by America’s ‘gay’ activist establishment.”

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As Alternet points out, though, “The Pink Swastika” hasn’t just been vilified by gay people. “It’s been vilified by everyone with a working brain and seen for what it is — the latest attempt by a homophobe (i.e. Scott Lively) who has carried his vendetta against the LGBT community to the corners of the globe.”

While scholars around the world have demolished the arguments that Lively and co-author Ken Abrams make in the book, World Net Daily editor Joseph Farah claims to have read the book and “found it to be accurate,” according to Alternet. “They say this book has been discredited,” has said. “But I’ve read the book and I’ve read all the criticism. The book more than stands up to all the attacks I’ve seen, most of which are completely baseless.”

Farah doesn’t exactly bring sterling credibility to the table, however. As Alternet notes, Farah helped promote a video pushing conspiracy theories about the death of Clinton White House counsel Vincent Foster at $35 a pop, and now runs a cottage industry exploiting “birther” conspiracies around President Obama, including the sale of bumper stickers, yard signs, postcards and videos.

To put it in cynical terms, the World Net Daily editor “can be described as a sort of degenerate P.T. Barnum, seeking to reap the benefits of fear, xenophobia, and homophobia,” Alternet writes.

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