The latest controversy began when Rowling shared a screenshot of a reply to one of her posts reading: “The Nazis burnt books on trans healthcare and research, why are you so desperate to uphold their ideology around gender?”

“I just… how?” Rowling wrote. “How did you type this out and press send without thinking ‘I should maybe check my source for this, because it might’ve been a fever dream’?”

Commenters immediately corrected Rowling, noting that The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum disproves her claim. Nazis targeted Magnus Hirschfeld, a doctor who pioneered “groundbreaking and radical” research into gender and sexual identity. They destroyed Hirschfeld’s Institute for Sexual Science and obliterated “most of the archives” in the well-documented Berlin Book Burning.

In response to criticism, Rowling linked another X thread claiming that only gay and lesbian people were persecuted during the Holocaust, not transgender people. When commenters directed her to academic writings like those from the Holocaust Memorial Museum and Smithsonian, she insisted the social media thread had “sources.”

“The thread has sources. Please show your evidence that trans-identifying people were persecuted, as distinct from gay people, who were indeed victims of heinous treatment by the Nazis.”