Gay Neo-Nazis in the United States

Abstract

Scholars often describe the heteropatriarchal relationships that prop up fascist political ideologies and practices. This emphasis is rooted in counter-reading other historical texts, which often conflate homosexuality and fascism as (1) one and the same or (2) linearly related along a spectrum, between the “moral degeneracy” of homosexuality and the atrocities produced by fascist regimes. These traditional models fail to describe the National Socialist League (NSL), a US neo-Nazi organization operating from 1974 until the late 1980s, which was explicitly structured to incorporate and include gay men into the white supremacist and fascist far right. By exploring how the NSL situated itself within the broader US fascist movement, this article examines how public-private distinction, whiteness, and hegemonic scripts of masculinity shaped NSL recruitment. These mechanisms provide discursive space for white gay men to position themselves as responsible citizens and important actors within the cultural, social, and military mechanisms of an imagined fascist state. Confronting this political and historical reality is critical to understanding the neo-fascist political configurations that incorporate white gay men that we see today.