XPost: me.politics, tn.general, neworleans.general 
 XPost: nm.general 
 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)