Fascist Gays vs. Gay Neo-Fascists

When analysing the riddle of gay fascists, the question we must ask again and again is of course Which comes first, the fascism or the homosexuality? And not in terms of historic psychological or political development! Rather, is a man a fascist who happens to be gay or a gay who happens to be a fascist? Is fascism merely a means to achieving a more gay-friendly world, or is homosexuality part and parcel of his fascist mentality? If a man is a gay xenophobe, for example, is he for real? Is he genuinely concerned that hordes of foreigners (i.e. Muslims) will not "accept his sexuality" and are determined to kill him? (After all, normally the intrinsic Marxism of most gays makes it quite unusual for them to take any sort of right-wing political stance about anything. And if he's in the closet then, is the xenophobia just a ploy to put other right-wing people off the scent?) Or could he at a certain level be using his homosexuality as a cover for his bigotry? (Now that homosexuals are a protected group, could the racists ones be starting to push their luck?)

Fascist Gays
These are really right-wing liberals (or possibly neocons). My feeling is that normally they use their gayness to justify their xenophobia. In England certainly, right-wing gays tend to be very much of the liberal right/left. They're often academics and intellectuals, such as David Starkey and Alan Sked (the founder of UKIP), or Madsen Pirie (of the Adam Smith Institute) or Douglas Murray (who before he became almost the only English intellectual to out himself as a neoconservative, wrote a literary biography of Lord Alfred Douglas, who, like his gay lover Oscar Wilde, ended up becoming a devout Catholic). I'm sure there are similar people in America. Chris Crain and Jeff Gannon, anyone? - not to mention the Log Cabin Republican, GayPatriot and GOProud gangs - not to mention the notorious Peter Thiel, who is so right-wing in a libertarian sense that he is actually anti-democracy - which, if you think about it, is even more right-wing! But the American Left is much more homogenous and tightly knit, in keeping with America's duolithic society. There is very little room for any sort of split between gays and Muslims, for example. (Witness the hilariously awful film-version of V for Vendetta, where Muslims are such obvious, natural allies of the gays in their struggle against the Christian fascists!) On the continent, however, these sorts of people do exist, though they tend to be labelled "far right". Really they're neoconservative liberals. Geert Wilders is a good example, even though he isn't gay, because his politics are very much in the footsteps of Pim Fortuyn. Wilders is also a lapsed Catholic, and in France too the "far Right" FN are ditching traditionalist Catholicism in favour of racism of the neo-libertarian variety.

Closet Cases
Often of course adopting "right-wing" positions can, potentially, be a way of disguising one's sexuality. In Europe still there are people like Jorg Haider - another lapsed Catholic - who just happened to be gay. Haider was more of a closeted "traditionalist" rather than an openly gay neocon. The German post-war nationalist right has also had its fair share of secret poofs in high places. Michael Kühnen had to quit when he found out, so did Bela Ewald Althans. Similar things, it is now quite clear, used to go on in the old British National Front. Nicky Crane was notorious in his day. Martin Webster hasn't improved with age. And looking further afield, Terreblanche was presumably supposed to fit into this tradition, though to be honest liberal post-mortem fantasies about him probably owed more to the ongoing gay liberal sex fantasies about fascism (i.e. P J O'Rourke's famous nostrum but applied to homosexuals). Perhaps Ian McKellen will end up playing Terreblanche in the anti- biopic: it could be his version of Martin Shaw's Rhodes! Either way, I'm sure Peter Tatchell will enjoy it. (The implication of the film JFK, would seem to be that these were the sorts of people who killed Oliver Stone's hero.) And let's not forget Frank Collin!

Gay Neo-Fascists

In reality, as we have seen, fascism is a good means and end when it comes to justifying all sorts of whacky sorts of sexual deviancy. Then again, of course, there are the genuinely right-wing, genuinely gay pederasts. Michel Caignet would be a good example for France, Jessie Dumanch (perhaps) for Germany. James O'Meara (formerly of Where the Wild Boys Are) seems to think along similar lines.You can't really tell me that Dr. Fredrick Töben isn't a bit of a woofter on the side. And it's worth bearing in mind quite how many boylovers have been from a conservative, militaristic background. (For some reason Nona leaves General Gordon and Wilfrid Owen off his list of famous perverts and doesn't mention the famous Verlaine/Rimbaud relationship at all.) Think of T E Lawrence and Laszlo Almasy. Think of the Round Table Conspiracy - which the Marxist Left tried to associate with the Catholic Church of St Pius X - see here, here and here, and so on! (Then of course there are always modern right-wing gay classics such as American Psycho and Fight Club!) The 2005 German documentary film Männer, Helden, schwule Nazis sounds as if it gave a good overview of modern "Far-Right" gay subculture. (I haven't actually seen it.)