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Uhh... no it doesn't? This is the entire principle behind defending scoundrels. Just because X is currently oppressing group Y (a group you consider your enemies), doesn't mean they won't eventually turn on your in-group too.
The author of the "first they came" poem was an anti-communist priest who hated Jews, and yet two groups listed in the poem are communists and Jews. Your claim that the logic breaks down when the group is a group you consider your enemy is literally the exact reverse of the intended meaning of the poem.
Thank you, however, for giving me a presumably unintended insight into your worldview. The message you took from that poem was not "you must defend the civil rights even of people you consider your outgroup, because if you don't, there'll be no one left to defend your civil rights". The message you took from it was "you must defend the civil rights of groups you feel no animosity towards, because if you don't, there'll be no one left to defend your civil rights. However, if someone wants to trample on your outgroup's civil rights, that's 100% A-OK and not at all a cause for concern." By your logic, the priest who wrote this poem was right to look the other way when the SS were rounding up Jews and communists.
Thank you for saying the quiet part out loud.
sigh Again, it depends on what you mean by "came for". I do not think that my outgroup should be oppressed or have their civil rights ignored. But this does not mean "you can't anything at all against your outgroup, ever". The poem was not intended as anarchist apologia that says you can never outlaw, or even oppose, any evil behavior whatsoever because "coming for" anybody in any way, ever, is too much of a slippery slope.
To put it another way, if you think "first they came" applies to "first they came for the people who refuse to rent rooms to Negroes, but I did not speak out, because I was against refusing to rent rooms to Negroes" then I do not see how you cannot extend it all the way to "first they came for the people who lynched Negroes in the streets, but I did not speak out, because I was against lynching Negroes in the streets", or "first they came for murderous paedophiles, but I did not speak out, because I was not a murderous paedophile", at which point it loses all meaning. I think clearly the poem only works if by "came for" you mean "sent to a gas chamber en masse"; but no one was suggesting sending the racist old lady to a gas chamber in a cattle wagon.
That does seem pretty analogous to the communists. "First they came for the omnicidal would-be-tyrants".
This is why I think "came for… and I did not speak out" has to mean something like "they got sent to Auschwitz, which no one ever should be for any reason, and I let it happen", rather than "I myself did something, anything, to oppose them". With the benefit of hindsight, the writer does not think he should have allowed the Nazis to do whatever they wanted to the communists; but I don't think it follows that he regrets ever criticizing communists in any way, and I don't think it even follows that he thinks no amount of police action against communist terrorists was ever justified.
Therefore I do not think "first they made laws preventing bigoted old ladies from renting rooms to Negroes…" is a valid application of the poem, because I am not a hyper-libertarian and I do not think that 'the power to forbid people to rent rooms to minorities based on personal prejudice' is an inherently immoral weapon for the government to wield. I am not turning a blind eye to unconscionable evil being done to my enemies. I can conscion outlawing discriminatory business practices, I can conscion it just fine. It's what I would have been campaigning for already, no ominous "they" required.
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