Though he was familiar with the pink triangle, Newsome was initially unaware of its origins as a concentration camp badge. This realization sparked his research into the symbol’s transformation over the subsequent decades.
Newsome’s research revealed that the Nazis’ persecution of different groups was not a monolith; their motivations varied by target. While groups like Jewish people, people with disabilities, and the Roma and Sinti populations were viewed as “fundamentally flawed” and targeted for genocide, the approach toward the LGBTQ community was distinct.
“When it came to folks that we would today recognize as members of the LGBTQ community, the Nazis, and really most people at the time, didn’t believe that people were born queer or trans. They believed that it was a lifestyle choice,” Newsome said. “The Nazi’s focus was on essentially curing or reeducating these people.”
The regime believed that if individuals could be forced into heterosexuality, they could be reintegrated into the so-called “master race.” According to Newsome, “On paper the goal was not the murder of all queer people,” according to Newsome. “It was essentially very violent conversion therapy.”
This “reeducation” often began with imprisonment. For those whom the Nazis deemed beyond the deterrent of prison, the destination was the concentration camps. Approximately 100,000 LGBTQ individuals were arrested under the regime, with an estimated 7,000 to 10,000 eventually sent to camps.
The Nazis perceived gay men as particularly dangerous because of their potential to occupy positions of power in the military, politics, and the economy. Newsome notes that the regime feared gay men could “infiltrate” society in a way lesbians—who were largely excluded from power structures—could not.
While Paragraph 175 was used primarily to criminalize gay men, lesbians were still heavily marginalized and subjected to intense social scrutiny. The Nazi state focused its resources on hunting and identifying gay men, illustrating what Newsome describes as an intersection of homophobia and misogyny that expanded as the regime conquered other nations.
Despite the danger, queer life existed as an “open secret” until the Nazi rise to power made concealment a matter of survival. Many individuals attempted to hide their identities, often entering into “lavender marriages” to protect themselves from state violence.
“The history is really scary,” Newsome said. “One of the things that I have found in my research is that out of all of the LGBTQ folks who were arrested during the Nazi regime, about a third of them were turned in by their fellow citizens.”
Neighbors, co-workers, and even family members became informants. “They couldn’t necessarily find out who was queer or trans without ordinary people doing the spying and turning them in,” Newsome said. “The complicity of ordinary people was absolutely fundamental in the Nazis being able to identify who was gay or trans and then being able to go after them.”
Then, in the early 1970s during Stonewall in the United States and queer liberation movements emerging in West Germany, activists asserted that they shouldn’t have to hide their sexuality and gender identity in a democracy. At the time, they were arguing over what the gay logo should be because it was a matter of the utmost importance. “They’ll see this logo, they’ll see that we’re gay and we’ll force people to confront that there are, queer and trans people everywhere,” Newsome said.
West German activists adopted the pink triangle, popularized by the 1972 publication of The Men with the Pink Triangle, an account of a gay concentration camp survivor. The symbol served as a stark reminder that homophobia did not end with the fall of the Third Reich.
The symbol eventually traveled to the United States. In August 1974, the Gay Activist Alliance in New York became the first documented group to use the pink triangle in the U.S., cementing its role as a permanent fixture in the LGBTQ movement.
As LGBTQ activism expanded in the United States, Latino queer and trans leaders played a pivotal role in shaping the movement. Figures like Sylvia Rivera — a Puerto Rican and Venezuelan trans activist — helped lead early liberation groups such as the Gay Liberation Front and Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries. By the 1980s and 1990s, emerging organizations like Gay and Lesbian Latinos Unidos in Los Angeles and Latino Gay Men of New York were producing bilingual flyers, organizing Pride events, and building spaces where Latino identity and queer identity could coexist without contradiction. Their work ensured that the broader LGBTQ movement reflected the diversity of the communities it served.
Today, the Pink Triangle Legacies Project works to ensure this history serves as a tool for progress. “We are committed to uncovering and telling the stories of our queer and trans ancestors, we know that the best way to pay tribute to that is to continue fighting against queer phobia and phobia today,” the organization stated. They achieve this through teacher training and educational resources designed to integrate these narratives into school curricula.
On June 28, the project will launch its first traveling exhibit at the Holocaust Center for Humanity in Seattle. The exhibit aims to equip the public with the historical context needed to understand the current surge of anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and legislation in the United States.
“We want to be able to show we have had a lot of folks reach out to us over the past year and a half and say ‘Oh my gosh, it seems like there’s a lot of stuff in history that’s repeating,’” Newsome said. He wants people to be educated and to recognize the patterns, “because there are very clear and dangerous patterns in the way that politicians today are talking about and attacking queer and trans people that mirror the way that the Nazis targeted LGBTQ folks 100 years ago.”
“Remembering has to have consequences, and so we also create resources that help people not only again identify those lessons,” Newsome urged. “Being educated isn’t enough.”
The Pink Triangle: From Persecution to Pride was first published on Latino News Network and was republished with permission.
Alessa Alluin is a San Diego native currently in her third year at NYU. She is a writer and copy editor for her school newspaper, Washington Square News, where she covers arts, culture, and news. Alessa is also the editorial director of Bite Club, an online food publication at NYU, and a tutor helping kids with reading, math, and Spanish translation for immigrant children. When she’s not busy with school, work, or any of her other obligations, she enjoys watching movies as she did with her mother growing up, or spending time with friends exploring the city.
Alessa was a fellow with Fuente Latina, an organization that sponsors journalists and students to visit Poland and learn about the Holocaust and Jewish history in the region.
“It seems the only thing the party establishments can agree on is a love of Jeffrey Epstein, and a hatred of me,” he said. “I’m Graham Platner, and I approve this message because together, we will take back our government from the Epstein class.”
It’s not just Platner: In midterm races from Texas to Maine, Democrats and at least one Republican are running against Epstein and “the Epstein class,” a term Democratic Rep. Ro Khanna of California first used last year to describe the men among the economic and cultural elite who traveled in Epstein’s social circles and helped rehabilitate his reputation after the multimillionaire ex-financier became a convicted sex offender in 2008 for soliciting prostitution of a minor.
“I’ll give the survivors credit, but I did coin the phrase ‘Epstein class’ because they’re a group of rich and powerful people who are not playing by the rules, and it offends the sense that we have one tier of justice,” Khanna told The 19th.
The number of candidates highlighting Epstein in their campaign messaging, Khanna argued, “shows what a powerful issue this is to win the midterms and win back the trust of the American public.”
In two of the most competitive races to determine control of the U.S. Senate, Platner and Democratic Sen. Jon Ossoff of Georgia, who is running for reelection, have castigated the “Epstein class” and what they say is elite corruption in their ads and messaging. In Texas, Democratic Senate nominee James Talarico has criticized his opponent, Trump-endorsed Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, for approving what critics have called an overly lenient, “Epstein-style” plea deal for a defendant charged with sexually abusing a child. And in Ohio’s Senate race, both Republican Sen. Jon Husted and his Democratic opponent, former Sen. Sherrod Brown, have run television ads attacking each other by singling out campaign donations from those in Epstein’s orbit.
Last year, Epstein’s survivors fueled a bipartisan push in Congress led by Khanna and Republican Rep. Thomas Massie to compel the Justice Department to release over 3.5 million files from its investigation into Epstein, who died in prison in 2019 while awaiting trial on federal sex trafficking charges. The release of the files, following months of resistance from President Donald Trump and the White House, provided a rare look into how the wealthy and powerful operate behind closed doors.
Epstein’s death was ruled a suicide, but it’s continued to drive scrutiny, skepticism and conspiracy theories in the years since. During the 2024 election, top Trump allies, some of whom ended up in his administration, pledged to release the Epstein files. The Trump administration’s reluctance to do so frustrated and splintered the MAGA base, resulting in a rare rebuke of the administration by Congress. Republicans who bucked Trump by pushing for the release of the files have also faced political consequences: In May, a Trump-backed primary challenger ousted Massie from his seat in Congress.
Americans across the political spectrum have continued to ask about the late financier and convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein’s connections among the political elite. (Angela Weiss/AFP)
“I think the single most bipartisan issue in the country is the Epstein files investigation,” Rep. Robert Garcia of California, the top Democrat on the House Oversight Committee who has spearheaded Congress’ investigation into the Epstein case, told reporters this month. “And so I think we’re going to talk about it a lot.”
No one other than co-conspirator Ghislaine Maxwell, currently serving out a prison sentence for sex trafficking, has been prosecuted in connection to Epstein’s crimes in the United States. But Epstein courted influence and rubbed shoulders with prominent individuals associated with both parties in his efforts to rehabilitate his reputation.
Republicans have seized on Epstein’s ties to figures including former President Bill Clinton, who sat for a congressional deposition along with former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, and Democratic megadonor Reid Hoffman, who has expressed regret for associating with Epstein, to accuse Democrats of hypocrisy. It’s also provided some Democratic candidates with a way to hit on what they cast as corruption in both parties.
The revelations from the files further fueled the widespread, bipartisan exasperation among voters with the wealthiest elites. The Epstein issue, two Democratic pollsters told The 19th, is rare for its high salience and far reach even among less politically engaged voters — and for the high levels of bipartisan agreement on the need for more action.
Surveys released this year from Democratic-aligned firm Navigator Research and progressive pollster Data for Progress back that argument up. In both polls, majorities of voters, including a majority of Republicans, believe there hasn’t been enough accountability connected to Epstein’s crimes and want to see more arrests and prosecutions. In a Navigator poll released in March, the share of Americans who said they believed Trump administration officials should resign over the Epstein matter increased when they were informed about officials in other countries being arrested, fired or forced to resign over Epstein ties.
“What has happened with the Epstein files is such a clear distillation of the frustration that Americans across different partisan ideologies, even Republicans, even MAGA Republicans, and certainly independents, feel that there’s a different set of rules — or that really no rules at all — for the elite who just seem to get ahead,” said Melissa Toufanian, managing director at Navigator.
In the Navigator survey, half of Americans, including two-thirds of Democrats and 58 percent of independents, said they believed the government was “definitely” covering up additional wrongdoing by Epstein. Seventy-two percent of Americans, including 70 percent of independents, 67 percent of non-MAGA Republicans and 57 percent of respondents identified as MAGA Republicans, said there should be more arrests and prosecutions related to Epstein. Sixty-four percent of respondents, including two-thirds of independents and half of Republicans, said they believed Epstein’s crimes were “unsurprising and the result of a broader problem.”
“It really cuts across every political divide in a way that we almost never see on other issues,” Toufanian said.
The number of red state candidates running on Epstein and the “Epstein class” demonstrates this. In addition to Talarico and Brown, Noah Taylor, an Army veteran running as a Democrat for the Senate in Kansas, and Dan Osborn, an independent Senate candidate in Nebraska, have also framed their campaigns as opposing the “Epstein class.”
Osborn, who is challenging Sen. Pete Ricketts, issued a news release pointing to a campaign rally in which Ricketts and Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas appeared together, calling them “birds of a feather who are content to carry out the agenda of the billionaire Epstein class.”
Research from Data for Progress found that voters were not only highly aware of the Epstein files issue but named specific figures, including Trump, who they believed to be part of the Epstein class. In a Data for Progress poll released in March, a plurality of likely voters said they didn’t expect to see additional arrests connected to Epstein, and majorities of voters said they held both the Trump and Biden administrations accountable for a lack of action.
“What we found there is that people are immediately able to attach this to wealthy elites and corruption and people that are rigging the system in their own interests, and then finally, that voters find those messages to be pretty convincing,” said Ryan O’Donnell, Data for Progress’ executive director.
Inflation and the high cost of living consistently rank among voters’ top concerns ahead of the midterms, an advantage for Democrats aiming to win back control of Congress. Still, O’Donnell said, surveys show that Democrats have little trust advantage on which party voters trust more to tackle corruption. Candidates’ focus on “the Epstein class,” he said, aligns with that broader anti-corruption and anti-elite messaging push many Democratic candidates are centering in 2026.
“I think it directly fits in with voters’ top concern of cost of living right now,” O’Donnell said. “Broadly, Democrats, if they want to fight their way out of this, have to show that they’re actually willing to take on corruption in that way, and I do think that the Epstein class language is one way to do that.”
Why Democrats Are Running Against the ‘Epstein Class’ was originally published by The 19th and is republished with permission.
