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This belief in the superiority of homosexuality had a strong German tradition that grew up at the turn of the twentieth century around Adolf Brand, publisher of the country’s first gay magazine. You could call it 'Queer as Volk': they preached that gay men were the foundation of all nation-states and represented an elite, warrior caste that should rule. They venerated the ancient warrior cults of Sparta, Thebes and Athens.
Rohm often referred to the ancient Greek tradition of sending gay solider couples into battle, because they were believed to be the most ferocious fighters. The famous pass of Thermopylae, for example was held by 300 soldiers—who consisted of 150 gay couples. In its early years, the SA—Hitler and [ernst] Rohm's underground army—was seen as predominantly gay. Rohm assigned prominent posts to his lovers, making Edmund Heines his deputy and Karl Ernst the SA commander in Berlin. The organisation would sometimes meet in gay bars. The gay art historian Christian Isermayer said in an interview, "I got to know people in the SA. They used to throw riotous parties even in 1933 ... I once attended one. It was quite well-behaved but thoroughly gay. But then, in those days, the SA was ultra-gay."
Rohm is venerated on the Homo-Nazi sites that have bred on the internet like germs in a wound. They have names like Gays Against Semitism (with the charming acronym GAS), and the Aryan Resistance Corps (ARC). Their Rohmite philosophy is simple: while white men are superior to other races, gay men are "the masters of the Master Race." They alone are endowed with the "capacity for pure male bonding" and the "superior intellect" that is needed for "a fascist revolution." The ARC even organises holiday "get-togethers" for its members where "you can relax amongst the company of our fellow white brothers" ...
Gay pornographer and film-maker Bruce LaBruce has one explanation. He claims that "all gay porn today is implictly fascist. Fascism is in our bones, because it's all about glorifying white male supremacy and fetishizing domination, cruelty, power and monstrous authority figures" ...
Gay rights campaigner Peter Tatchell has a sensitive and intriguing explanation. "“There are many reasons for this kind of thing," he says. "Some of them are in denial. They are going for hyper-masculinity, the most extreme possible way of being a man. It's a way of ostentatiously rejecting the perceived effeminacy of the homosexual 'Other.' These troubled men have a simple belief in their minds: 'Straight men are tough. Queers are weak. Therefore if I'm tough I can't be queer.' It's a desperate way of proving their manhood."
Searchlight magazine—the bible of the anti-fascist movement, with moles in every major far-right organisation—offers an alternative explanation. "Generally condemned by a society that continues to be largely hostile to gays, some men may find refuge and a new power status in the far right," one of their writers has explained. "Through adherence to the politics espoused by fascist groups, a new identity emerges—one where they aren't outcasts, because they are White Men, superior to everyone else. They render the gay part of their identity invisible—or reject the socially less acceptable parts, like being feminine—while vaunting what they see as superior."
- johann hari, "The strange, unexplored overlap between homosexuality and fascism," Attitude via arts and letters daily june 24, 2004
posted July 01, 2004 in politics, print, sex.