LGBT History Month – The beasts of Fascism and homophobia

Historian and member of QUAC, Joseph Healy, writes about LGBT history month

The symbol that Gays were forced to wear by the Nazis

This month is LGBT History Month and one of those being commemorated this year is the gay scientist and national hero, Alan Turing, whose cracking of the enigma code paved the way for the defeat of Fascism in World War II. The holocaust also included thousands of LGBT victims either of extermination or ‘Vernichtung durch Arbeit’, literally being worked to death as slave labour. It was not for nothing that the symbol of the early LGBT rights movement in the 60s, 70s and 80s was the pink triangle, the symbol which all LGBT people had to wear during the Nazi period, and which marked them out in the concentration camps.

Now the corpse of Fascism is stirring again. In Greece, the Fascist Golden Dawn party, are leading a wave of homophobic attacks against gay and lesbian Greeks in cities such as Athens and Thessaloniki. Although their main target has been immigrants they have made it clear that, according to their own slogans, “gays are the new Jews”. Once again this has parallels with the situation in Nazi Germany where the political opponents were the first targets, soon followed by the Jews and later the gays. All of this is creating huge anxiety and fear in the LGBT community in Greece. And it is not only in Greece that the spectre looms.

In Hungary, the Jobbik party parades through the streets in uniform and government ministers echo their views on anti-semitism and racism. Elsewhere in Europe there are also strong signs of the revival of Fascism, France being one of the obvious countries and consequent homophobia and homophobic attacks. Indeed one of the strongest opponents of LGBT rights in France are the Fronte Nationale and Le Pen.

Gay victims of the Holocaust

It is because of this spectre now haunting Europe that Queers Against the Cuts are organising an LGBT History Month event next Friday, February 22^nd, at Clapham Library around the issue of Fascism then and now in Europe. The evening includes readings from Christopher Isherwood’s novel ‘Goodbye to Berlin’, a firsthand account by a gay man of the descent into Fascism in Berlin in the dying days of the Weimar Republic. We are also performing a piece of music dedicated to the Battle of Cable Street, where London’s East End communities united in the 30s to drive the Mosley’s Blackshirts from the streets of London. There will also be speakers from Syriza, giving a firsthand account of the homophobic attacks being launched by Golden Dawn in Greece and an historical account of what happened to gays and lesbians in Hitler’s Germany. Further details  here 

I finish by quoting from Isherwood’s novel, which describes the terrible normality which Fascism acquired in 1933, and which holds a chilling warning to us today.

“This morning I even heard her talking reverently about ‘Der Fuhrer’ to the porter’s wife. If anybody were to remind her that, at the elections last November, she voted communist, she would probably deny it hotly, and in perfect good faith. She is merely acclimatizing herself, in accordance with a natural law, like an animal which changes its coat for the winter. Thousands of people like Frl. Schroeder are acclimatizing themselves. After all, whatever government is in power, they are doomed to live in this town.”