XPost: or.politics, rec.arts.movies.current-films, alt.politics.europe   
   XPost: sac.politics   
   From: jewbee@nytimes.com   
      
   The news that Jorg Haider - the Austrian fascist leader - spent   
   his final few hours in a gay bar with a hot blond has shocked   
   some people. It hasn’t shocked me. This is a taboo topic for a   
   gay left-wing man like me to touch, but there has always been a   
   weird, disproportionate overlap between homosexuality and   
   fascism. Take a deep breath; here goes.   
      
   Some 10,000 gay people were slaughtered in the Nazi death-camps.   
   Many more were humiliated, jailed, deported, ethnically   
   cleansed, or castrated. One gay survivor of the camps, LD   
   Classen von Neudegg, has written about his experiences. A   
   snapshot: “Three men had tried to escape one night. They were   
   captured, and when they returned they had the word ‘homo’   
   scrawled across their clothing. They were placed on a block and   
   whipped. Then they were forced to beat a drum and cheer,   
   ‘Hurrah! We’re back! Hurrah!’ Then they were hanged.” This is   
   one of the milder events documented in his book.   
      
   So the idea of a gay fascist seems ridiculous. Yet when the   
   British National Party - our own home-grown Holocaust-denying   
   bigots - announced it was fielding an openly gay candidate in   
   the European elections this June, dedicated followers of fascism   
   didn’t blink. The twisted truth is that gay men have been at the   
   heart of every major fascist movement that ever was - including   
   the gay-gassing, homo-cidal Third Reich. With the exception of   
   Jean-Marie Le Pen, all the most high-profile fascists in Europe   
   in the past thirty years have been gay. It’s time to admit   
   something. Fascism isn’t something that happens out there, a   
   nasty habit acquired by the straight boys. It is - in part, at   
   least - a gay thing, and it’s time for non-fascist gay people to   
   wake up and face the marching music.   
      
   Just look at our own continent over the past decade. Dutch   
   fascist Pim Fortuyn ran on blatantly racist anti-immigrant   
   platform, describing Islam as “a cancer” and “the biggest threat   
   to Western civilisation today.” Yet with two little fluffy dogs   
   and a Mamma complex, he was openly, flamboyantly gay. When   
   accused by a political opponent of hating Arabs, he replied,   
   “How can I hate Arabs? I sucked one off last night.”   
      
   Jorg Haider blasted Austria’s cosy post-Nazi politics to rubble   
   in 2000 when his neo-fascist ‘Freedom Party’ won a quarter of   
   the vote and joined the country’s government as a coalition   
   partner. Several facts always cropped up in the international   
   press coverage: his square jaw, his muscled torso, his SS-   
   supporting father, his rabid anti-Semitism, his hatred of   
   immigrants, his description of Auschwitz and Dachau as   
   “punishment centres”. A few newspapers mentioned that he is   
   always surrounded by fit, fanatical young men. A handful went   
   further and pointed out that several of these young men are   
   openly gay. Then one left-wing German paper broke the story   
   everybody else was hinting at. They alleged Haider is gay.   
      
   Rumours of an Indian waiter with “intimate details” of Haider’s   
   body broke into the press. The Freedom Party’s general manager   
   Gerald Miscka quickly quit, amid accusations that he was   
   Haider’s lover. Haider’s close gay friend Walter Kohler - who   
   has been photographed showing off a holstered pistol while   
   Haider chuckled - declared his opposition to outing politicians.   
   Haider - who was married and has two children - kept quiet while   
   his functionaries denied the rumours. The revelation that he   
   died after leaving a gay bar suggests these rumours were true.   
      
      
   On and on it goes. If you inter-railed across Europe, only   
   stopping with gay fascists, there aren’t many sights you’d miss.   
   France’s leading post-war fascist was Edouard Pfieffer, who was   
   not batting for the straight side. Germany’s leading neo-Nazi   
   all through the eighties was called Michael Kuhnen; he died of   
   AIDS in 1991 a few years after coming out. Martin Lee, author of   
   a study of European fascism, explains, “For Kuhnen, there was   
   something supermacho about being a Nazi, as well as being a   
   homosexual, both of which enforced his sense of living on the   
   edge, of belonging to an elite that was destined to make an   
   impact. He told a West German journalist that homosexuals were   
   ‘especially well-suited for our task, because they do not want   
   ties to wife, children and family.’”   
      
   And it wouldn’t be long before your whistlestop tour arrived in   
   Britain. At first glance, our Nazis seem militantly straight.   
   They have tried to disrupt gay parades, describe gay people as   
   “evil”, and BNP leader Nick Griffin reacted charmingly to the   
   bombing of the Admiral Duncan pub in 1999 with a column saying,   
   “The TV footage of gay demonstrators [outside the scene of   
   carnage] flaunting their perversion in front of the world’s   
   journalists showed just why so many ordinary people find these   
   creatures repulsive.”   
      
   But scratch to homophobic surface and there’s a spandex swastika   
   underneath. In 1999, Martin Webster, a former National Front   
   organiser and head honcho in the British fascist movement, wrote   
   a four-page pamphlet detailing his ‘affair’ with Nick Griffin.   
   “Griffin sought out intimate relations with me,” openly-gay   
   Webster explained, “in the late 1970s. He was twenty years   
   younger than me.” Ray Hill, who infiltrated the British fascist   
   movement for twelve years to gather information for anti-fascist   
   groups, says it’s all too plausible. Homosexuality is “extremely   
   prevalent” in the upper echelons of the British far right, and   
   at one stage in the 1980s nearly half of the movement’s   
   organisers were gay, he claims.   
      
   Gerry Gable, editor of the anti-fascist magazine ‘Searchlight’,   
   explains, “I have looked at Britain’s Nazi groups for decades   
   and this homophobic hypocrisy has been there all the time. I   
   cannot think of any organisation on the extreme right that   
   hasn’t attacked people on the grounds of their sexual preference   
   and at the same time contained many gay officers and activists.”   
      
   Griffins’ alleged gay affair would stand in a long British   
   fascist tradition. The leader of the skinhead movement all   
   through the 1970s was a crazed, muscled thug called Nicky Crane.   
   He was the icon of a reactionary backlash against immigrants,   
   feminism and the ‘hippy’ lifetsyle of the 1960s. His movement’s   
   emphasis on conformity to a shaven, dehumanised norm resembled   
   classical fascist movements; Crane soon became a campaigner and   
   leading figure in the National Front. Oh, and he was gay. Before   
   he died of AIDS in the mid-1980s, Crane came out and admitted he   
   had starred in many gay porn videos. Just before he died in   
   1986, he was allowed to steward a Gay Pride march in London,   
   even though he still said he was “proud to be a fascist.”   
      
   The rubber-soled friction between gay fascists and progressive   
   British gay people sparked into anger in 1985 when the Gay   
   Skinhead Movement organised a disco at London’s Gay Centre.   
   Several lesbians in particular objected to the “invasion” of the   
   centre. They felt that the cult of “real men” and hypermasculine   
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)