25 Oct 2008
Dead right wingers
What is it about far right politics and gays? I had an immediate knee jerk dislike of Pim Fortuyn, the murdered gay far-right Dutch politician, and the revelation (his far-right party colleague and lover out-mourning his wife at the funeral was the subtle give away) that Jorg Haider, the dead Austrian far-right leader, was also a gay, made me feel queasy.
Immediately, the idea of homosexuals supporting and building far-right organisations within democracies just seems plain wrong. Why are they consorting with our 'natural' enemies? Are they so self-hating that they want to make life a little harder for their 'fellows'? Are they subconsciously seeking revenge for being rebuffed by some hot guy or series of hot guys when they were young and vulnerable?
That's seems a bit easy. If you look at the policies both Pim Fortuyn and Jorg Haider were most concerned with, they are all to do with immigration and the place of religion in Dutch and Austrian society. Both claimed that allowing many thousands of Muslims to settle in their respective countries and, because of lazily applied ideas of political correctness and tolerance, to allow them to live entirely by the moral systems of their countries of origin (so for example, Sharia law in Muslim-dominated areas - an idea that has been mooted in the UK), it would result in damage to the secular coherence Westerners take for granted.
Of course, it's not much more than a little goose step from this point of view to a more active fascist place and we don't have much choice but to continue with the liberal hope that people relieved of state or religious oppression, while maintaining their cultural heritage, will also absorb and even begin to believe ideas of personal freedom and the individual's right to dignity.
However, the lesson for gays of Haider and Fortuyn is that we shouldn't take anything for granted. Gays have it relatively easy in the West right now, but who knows what it will be like in the near future, as the apparently inevitable demographic shift to a more 'Southern' society happens?