The ‘Conspiracy of Homosexualisation’: Homosexuality and Anti-Semitism in the United States,1970s–1990s

In June 1992, the far-right magazine Instauration published an article titled ‘The Wizard of ZOG’ – ZOG is the acronym for ‘Zionist Occupied Government’ and refers to the anti-Semitic idea that Jews control the government of the United States. ¹ The title is clearly adapted from the famous children's book, The Wizard of Oz. Due to its numerous statements that praised the diversity of human beings, The Wizard of Oz became a cultural product that was adored by LGBTQIA + and which is referred to by many artifacts of queer culture. However, ‘The Wizard of ZOG’ in Instauration turned the ‘queer utopia’ into a racist, homophobic and anti-Semitic dystopia. ² In the article, the author tells the story of a white girl named Dorothy. Dorothy lives in Manhattan, Kansas, which is depicted as a place where only white, non-Jewish, heterosexual people live and which thus constitutes a place of longing for white supremacists. However, one day, a cyclone hits Manhattan and picks up Dorothy's house with her still in it. Eventually, the house crashes down and strikes a living being dead. When Dorothy leaves the broken house, a group of ‘dwarf-like persons’ called ‘Goykins’, who are ruled and exploited by ZOG, surrounds her. ³ Suddenly, a beautiful, blond and blue-eyed woman, the ‘Good Witch of the North’, arrives. She explains to Dorothy that the person killed by her crashing house was the ‘Wicked Witch of the East Coast’: ‘She was a socialist, a feminist and a lesbian.’ One of the Goykins adds: ‘A real New York Jew’. ⁴ Since no one knows the way back to Manhattan, they advise Dorothy to contact a wizard who resides in the wealthy and affluent ‘Satellite City’. On her way to the wizard, she meets an African American, a ‘Heavy Metal Kid’ and a homosexual man, all of whom join her on the journey. The African American wants to ask the wizard for a brain, the metal kid for music skills and the homosexual, who is depicted as unmanly, for courage. ⁵

After their arrival, the wizard, who is marked as a Jew, promises to make their wishes come true if Dorothy and her companions solve a problem beforehand. ⁶ They have to kill a ‘rabble-rouser’ in ‘Jewsiana’, who incited the people to rebel against the oppressive regime of ZOG. The ‘rabble-rouser’ was a reference to David Duke, an influential white nationalist and anti-Semite, who had been elected into the Louisiana House of Representatives in 1989. ⁷ Upon accomplishing their mission, the four return to the wizard to receive the reward for their murder. However, the wizard is unable to keep his promises and offers them some substitutes. Instead of a brain, he offers the African American civil rights, well-paid jobs and access to elite colleges, while the heavy metal kid gets a contract with ‘ZOG-records’. Finally, instead of courage and masculinity, he promises the homosexual man a ‘top job in the media’. In addition, to make homosexuality the social norm, the wizard offers the following: ‘I’ll keep pounding home the theme of overpopulation until people realize that it's the heterosexuals who are the real enemies of this planet.’ ⁸ Only the wish of the white, heterosexual girl Dorothy, the return to her ‘white paradise’, remains unfulfilled. Instead of bringing her back to Manhattan, Kansas, the wizard takes her to his hometown, Manhattan, New York, where Dorothy is immediately robbed, raped and murdered by three African Americans.

The briefly sketched story ‘The Wizard of ZOG’ provides a glimpse into the anti-Semitic discourse on the alleged oppression of white people that was circulated among white supremacists and white nationalists in the United States during the last decades of the 20th century. As the story shows, anti-Semitic far-rightists posed Jews as dominating the country. Furthermore, they linked the supposed Jewish domination to the fantasy that Jews constituted the driving forces behind manifold social and cultural developments and phenomena, which they conceived of as undermining the supposedly natural social order. In the case of ‘The Wizard of ZOG’, such developments and phenomena are, first, the erosion of white supremacy by the civil rights and Black Power movements and the supposedly resulting (sexual) threats on white women; second, the alleged decay of the youth embodied by the heavy metal kid; and, third, the struggle of LGBTQIA + people against discrimination and for ‘homosexual rights’. ⁹

The aim of this article is to examine the role of homosexuality in far-right anti-Semitic conspiracy narratives in the United States during the period between the 1970s and the 1990s. According to Kathleen Belew and Leonard Zeskind, white supremacist and white nationalist movements consolidated and expanded since the second half of the 1970s. ¹⁰ The membership of Ku Klux Klan groups almost tripled during the 1970s and paramilitary organizations such as the Covenant, the Sword and the Arm of the Lord (CSA) intensified their campaigns against ‘ZOG’. This was especially the case after parts of the white power movements went underground and declared war on the state in 1983. ¹¹ Movement texts such as The Turner Diaries – a racist novel written by William Pierce, the leader of National Alliance, and initially published in serial form in 1974 – served as a template for the new strategy of leaderless resistance and, according to Kathleen Belew, ‘worked as a foundational how-to manual for the movement, outlining a detailed plan for race war.’ ¹²

In December 1975, another important far-right publication came out with its first issue: the monthly magazine Instauration, which I use as the main source. Instauration was edited between 1975 and 2000 by Wilmot Robertson. In contrast to the great majority of far-right publications of the 1970s and the 1980s, the magazine was characterized by its ‘intellectualized rhetoric of racism and white supremacy’, as sociologist Mitch Berbrier states. ¹³ At first glance, Instauration's relatively small circulation of only 10,000 copies could be misunderstood as a sign of the magazine's irrelevance. ¹⁴ However, three aspects point to the long-lasting effects of the magazine and its editor. First, although its contributors and readers mainly came from the United States, Instauration also managed to serve as a platform of exchange for far-rightists from different national backgrounds. In addition to the United States, subscribers and authors who published in the magazine came from countries such as West Germany, Great Britain, France, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. Its character as an international contact zone enabled Instauration to act as a vehicle for knowledge transfer. During the late 1970s, when the far-right movement in the United States was ‘dominated by white supremacists who conspired about race wars’, ¹⁵ Instauration introduced to its readers the various developments and intellectual debates that took place among far-rightists abroad. Consequently, Instauration became a force in processes of reshaping far-right discourses in the United States by introducing ideas, concepts and strategies circulating in European far-right spheres – some of the transferred ideas remain at the heart of alt-right thinking nowadays. The role of Instauration as a programmatic and intellectual pacemaker, manifests itself, for instance, in the introduction of the French Nouvelle Droite to its readers. According to a member of the French New Right think tank Groupe de Recherche et d’Études pour la Civilisation Européenne (GRECE), Instauration was ‘the first English-language publication to examine the French New Right, the magazine Nouvelle École, and the organisation GRECE.’ ¹⁶ Furthermore, Instauration published reports on the French ‘New Right philosopher-in-chief’ Alain de Benoist as well as on Jean Raspail, the French author of the dystopian fiction novel The Camp of Saints – both de Benoist and Raspail are still cherished in present alt-right circles. ¹⁷

Second, Wilmot Robertson also contributed to the shaping of white nationalist thinking during the late 20th and early 21st centuries through his own writings. He published influential books such as The Dispossessed Majority and The Ethnostate that posited the idea of ‘white dispossession’ and the advocation of ethnostates, both of which became and remain cornerstones of far-right worldviews. Against this backdrop, present important far-rightists such as Jared Taylor, the editor of the magazine American Renaissance, and David Duke have praised Robertson's political work. ¹⁸ In 2014, Hubert Collins lauded Robertson for ‘keep[ing] the torch going between the collapse of organized Southern resistance in the early ‘70s and [the] rise of American Renaissance and paleoconservatism in the ‘90s.’ ¹⁹

Third, Instauration was able to attract a readership beyond the limited circles of white supremacists and reach into parts of conservative milieus. Its influence on some conservatives manifested itself, for instance, in a column published in 1986 in the National Review. ²⁰ In it, Joseph Sobran, then-senior editor of the conservative-libertarian magazine, praised Instauration as ‘an often brilliant magazine, covering a beat nobody else will touch, and doing so with intelligence, wide-ranging observation and bitter wit.’ ²¹

The rise of far-right ideologies and of Instauration was fuelled by societal changes that took place during the 1970s and the 1980s. Economic developments such as the relocation of factories outside the United States, the oil shocks and sharp price declines for farmers’ products as well as the political struggles and social changes related to the feminist movements and the Black Power movements, had shaken the social and cultural landscape and (partially) weakened the social power of white, heterosexual men. ²² In consequence, a great number of white people in general and white men in particular considered themselves victims of political measures such as affirmative action. ²³

During these decades, the struggles of LGBTQIA + movements and the ‘AIDS-crisis’ made homosexuality and other non-heteronormative sexualities another topic of heated social and political debates and gave rise to diverse notions of a fundamental social and cultural crisis that reached far beyond the far-right into the political mainstream. ‘Homosexual rights’ and HIV/AIDS were racialized and framed as threats for white people, both in conservative and white supremacist discourses. ²⁴ However, white supremacist discourses and conservative ones differed significantly in the degree and explicitness of racialization. The integration of these topics into explicitly anti-Semitic conspiracy narratives was another important difference. According to far-right anti-Semitic discourses, homosexuality and HIV/AIDS constituted further tools in a concerted Jewish-led attack on white people that aimed to strengthen a supposed regime of ‘minority racism’. This fantasy was embedded in a broader narrative of a ‘sexual conspiracy’ that made Jews responsible for manifold changes in sexual morals including the spread of pornographic materials and feminist debates about women's sexuality. ²⁵

1. Homosexuality and anti-Semitism before the 1970s

White supremacists in the 1970s did not invent the association of Jews with homosexuality, but they modified and reshaped this linkage by setting it in relation to the ongoing struggles of LGBTQIA + against discriminations. The discursive connection between Jews and homosexuality reaches back far beyond the age of ‘homosexual liberation’ and beyond the borders of the United States. As early as in the second half of the 19th century, gender and sexuality became important aspects in discourses on the ‘racial’ otherness of Jews in Europe. ²⁶ During the late 19th century, anti-semites in German-speaking countries already attributed to Jews a same-sex desire and blamed them for spreading homosexuality. ²⁷

In the early 20th-century United States, when, according to historian Margot Canaday, ‘homosexuality’ was ‘not yet a meaningful category’ and when ‘the homosexual was […] a perverted type whose perversion was defined primarily by gender inversion’ and not by his sexual desires and acts, discourses on ‘sexual perversion’ were often racialized. ²⁸ Important actors in the shaping of these discourses were state agencies such as the Bureau of Immigration. ²⁹

Among the different ethnic groups linked to ‘sexual deviance’ were Jews. In the Leo Frank case – an anti-Semitic affair that took place in Atlanta, Georgia, between 1913 and 1915 and which resulted in the lynching of the Jewish superintendent Leo Frank – racialized sexualities played a crucial role and significantly influenced the development of the case. In the context of the Frank case, the anti-Semitic figure of the ‘Jew Pervert’ or the ‘Jew Sodomite’ played an important role. ³⁰ Only a decade later, sexuality constituted an important topic in debates that revolved around the Leopold and Loeb case in 1924. At the core of the case was the murder of a 14-year-old boy. During the trial against Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb, the prosecution repeatedly pointed to their alleged ‘abnormal’ sexuality and suggested that same-sex desires might have been the motive for the crime. ³¹ According to historian Paul B. Franklin, the case shows ‘that the distance between the positions ‘homosexual’ and ‘Jew’ might be traversed in a heartbeat.’ ³²

Against the backdrop of the Cold War, homosexuality became an important aspect in discourses on national security in times of the so-called Lavender Scare during the long 1950s. Claiming that homosexuals constituted a national security risk, immense efforts were undertaken to discover homosexuals and remove them from federal jobs. ³³ Although anti-Jewish resentments had not disappeared in the United States after the Holocaust, explicit anti-Semitism did not play a role in the hysterical debates about the ‘homosexual threat’. ³⁴ However, the way the topic was negotiated showed some analogies to anti-Semitic discourses. The subjectivity attributed to male homosexuals during the Lavender Scare had some overlaps with the way that male Jews were described in anti-Semitic discourses. According to Republican congressman Arthur L. Miller, homosexuality was closely related to an upper-class background and intellectuality. ³⁵ Both of the attributes were standard elements of anti-Semitic discourses and, furthermore, played an important role in shaping the figure of the ‘Jew Pervert’ in the Leo Frank case. The overlaps between discourses on homosexuality and anti-Semitic discourses did not go unnoticed by contemporary observers. In 1955, famous sociologists Nathan Glazer and David Riesman analysed the role of (homo-)sexuality and the figure of ‘the intellectual’ in the political right's fight against political liberalism. Attributing the ‘combining of the image of the homosexual with the image of the intellectual’ an immense political power and acknowledging the similarities between the anti-Semitic figure of ‘the Jew’ and the figure of the ‘intellectual homosexual’, the authors claim that ‘the State Department cooky-pusher Harvard-trained sissy […] becomes the focus of social hatred and the Jew becomes merely one variant of the intellectual sissy.’ ³⁶ By describing the ‘Harvard-trained sissy’ as the new main target of the right, Glazer and Riesman seem to assume that the hysterical debates about ‘effeminate elites’, due to the significant overlaps in the constructions of ‘the Jew’ and the ‘intellectual sissy’, caused a decrease in the significance of anti-Semitism – a perspective that corresponded with the general decline of anti-Semitism in the United States during the late 1940s and the 1950s. ³⁷ However, whereas anti-Semitism became less important in the time of Lavender Scare, the similarities between the figures of ‘the Jew’ and ‘the intellectual sissy’ might have contributed to the strengthening of the close association between Jews and homosexuality in anti-Semitic discourses at the same time.

As we will see, the rise of ‘homosexual liberation’ since the late 1960s provided the discursive linkages between Jews and homosexuality with an additional and renewed appeal. In contrast to the early decades of the 20th century, when the alleged ‘perverted’ sexuality stood at the centre of the discursive connection between Jews and homosexuality, the idea that Jews spread homosexuality became another important aspect in anti-Semitic far-right discourses.

Before tracing how Instauration devised Jews as forces that aimed at the spread of ‘homosexual rights’ and, by extension, at ‘homosexualizing’ white people, I will situate this idea within the notion that Jews undermined the sexual order in order to weaken the ‘white race.’ However, I will first sketch how the alleged ‘sexual conspiracy’ was embedded into a broader discourse of ‘minority racism’, which helped Instaurationists to make sense of contemporary social and cultural conditions and developments.

2. Sexuality, ‘white reproduction’ and anti-Semitism

According to Instauration, the ‘American Majority’ – a racialized term that included ‘the Nordic, Alpine, Nordic-Alpine and Nordic-Mediterranean elements of the population’ and that was terminologically close to contemporary conservative and racially coded keywords such as the ‘silent majority’, which Richard Nixon coined and popularized during the late 1960s ³⁸ – lived in a state of a fundamental crisis during the second half of the 20th century. ³⁹ In line with other white supremacists and white nationalists, Instauration conceived of ‘the American Majority’ as the cornerstone of the ‘Americanized version of Western civilization’, and linked the prosperity and well-being of the United States to the social dominance of white people in general and white men in particular. ⁴⁰

Constructing the social dominance of white men as being grounded in ‘nature’, Instauration could only make sense of the already-mentioned social, cultural and economic developments by drawing on conspiracy theories. ⁴¹ The magazine claimed that white men had become the victims of an anti-white, anti-male regime of ‘liberal-minority racism’ that allegedly had taken control of the United States, discriminated against white men in all social, cultural and economic fields and aimed at the reduction of ‘the American majority to drone status’. ⁴² Instauration imagined liberals, African Americans and Jews as the main protagonists of this regime. With the last category of people, first, described as the main protagonists of liberalism and, second, posited as a powerful and cunning group that dominated and directed African Americans, Instaurationists posited Jews as the main actors of the alleged rule of ‘minority racism’. ⁴³ They claimed that Jews used their supposed overwhelming power in the economic and political fields as well as their alleged control over the media, the entertainment industries and the cultural spheres to discriminate against white men and thereby stabilized and strengthened their powerful social position in the United States. ⁴⁴ Regarding the primary motivation of Jews’ alleged striving for social and economic dominance, Instaurationists imagined an ‘ethnic Elitism’ and a ‘higher degree of ethnocentrism’ among Jews. ⁴⁵ Interestingly, in Instaurationists’ minds, the Jews’ desire for power was linked to a deviant sexual desire. Instaurationists attributed to Jews ‘an orgasmic delight in regulating, controlling, legislating, adjudicating, manipulating, censoring and imposing.’ ⁴⁶ However, Instauration did not only describe social dominance as a source of sexual pleasure for Jews, but also imagined sexual politics as an important means through which Jews would stabilize and strengthen their social dominance.

As historians such as Peter W. Bardaglio and Martha Hodes have shown, sexual politics had already begun to play a crucial role in white supremacy since the age of slavery. ⁴⁷ Against this backdrop, it is not surprising that sexuality was also of great importance in Instauration. The ideal framework for ‘white sex’, according to Instaurationists, constituted the patriarchal family that corresponded with their racialized and gendered notions of sexuality. In this framework, white men were supposed to serve as family patriarchs. They acted as breadwinners and protected the female members of their households against sexual attacks from non-white men, who were conceived of as sexual threats to white women. White women were primarily defined as caring, moral mothers as well as ‘sexually pure’ and attractive wives, where ‘sexual purity’ is conceived of as a heterosexual, monogamous activity with their husbands. ⁴⁸ Against this backdrop, Instaurationists saw the patriarchal white family as the ideal framework for the reproduction of a ‘pure white race’ since it was supposed to serve as a bulwark against so-called miscegenation and to ensure the birth of white children.

Embedded in the phantasm that a Jewish-led regime would discriminate against white people, Instauration accused Jews of aiming to weaken and even cause the extinction of the ‘white race’ via sexual politics. The decline in birth rates of white people, which was also a concern for white conservatives, constituted the historical background of this phantasm. Whereas in 1957, the birth rate of white people was 24.0 – the birth rate counts the number of live births per 1000 people in a specified group – it declined to 13.6 in 1976 and then remained relatively stable between 14.0 and 15.8 between 1977 and 1994. ⁴⁹ Negotiating this development in terms of a crisis in ‘white reproduction’ and ignoring the fact that the birth rates of people of colour also decreased during the same period – in the case of African Americans the drop in birth rates was even slightly bigger than among people categorized in the statistics as white ⁵⁰ – Instaurationists were highly alarmed by this development. ⁵¹ In his book The Dispossessed Majority, Wilmot Robertson lamented that the immigration of non-white people and the ‘below-replacement birth rate of most American whites are fostering a rapidly increasing proportion of non-whites that is making an indelible imprint on the American racial mould. Not imperceptibly, the nation's complexion grows darker year by year.’ ⁵²

According to Instauration, Jews constituted the main force responsible for the crisis in ‘white reproduction’ by causing modifications in the patriarchal and heteronormative gender order and, closely related, by causing changes in the sexual morals, desires and practices of white people. According to this fantasy, Jews tried to achieve their goal in a twofold way. First, they did it by promoting ‘interracial sexuality’. It can hence be observed that the notion that Jews paved the way for African American men to white women had been part of anti-Semitic discourses since the Leo Frank case. ⁵³ The appeal of this idea, especially in the South of the United States, was enhanced by contemporary social processes – including the (partial) desegregation during the Civil Rights Era and the implementation of measures such as affirmative action as well as changes in the representation of African Americans in some cultural products – that resulted from the various struggles of people of colour and their liberal and left-wing white allies. ⁵⁴ Instaurationists feared that the changes in daily life caused an increase in sexual contacts across the Colour Line and made Jews responsible for it. ⁵⁵ They accused Jews of using their alleged control over the media and the cultural industries to spread the ‘liberal-minority dogma’ of ‘equalitarianism’ and thereby caused white women to engage in relationships with non-white or Jewish men. ⁵⁶ In this sense, they blamed the ‘Jewish bosses of Disney Studios [for] plan[ning] to beef up the cinematic muddying of the American gene pool.’ ⁵⁷ Instauration also imagined the feminist movements, which became highly visible and vociferous since the late 1960s, as being created and directed by Jews to cause ‘interracial’ sexual contacts, both consensual and forced. ⁵⁸

Second, Instaurationists contrived the spread of feminism as an important tool for Jews to decrease the birth rate of white people in the United States. A fundamental aspect of this assumption was the Instaurationists’ understanding of feminism as a rejection of motherhood per se. ⁵⁹ In this vein, an Instaurationist complained that in ‘liberal-minority America, a woman hangs her head in shame as she apologetically admits that she is ‘just a housewife’’ whereas it would be a source of ‘defiant pride’ to declare herself a ‘sexually promiscuous ‘non-parent[s]’’. ⁶⁰ Furthermore, in accordance with other white supremacists, the Instaurationists closely linked feminism to homosexuality of women – a connection that materialized in the figure of the ‘Jew dyke’ or the Jewish feminist lesbian, as it was the case, for instance, in the ‘Wizard of ZOG’. ⁶¹ The connection of Jews with lesbianism points to another strategy, which Jews allegedly used to undermine the reproduction of the patriarchal family and, by extension, of the ‘white race’: the spread of homosexuality.

3. ‘Homosexual liberation’ and anti-Semitism in Instauration

The publication of The Kinsey Report in 1948 and the already-mentioned Lavender Scare made homosexuality a topic of debate during the late 1940s and the 1950s. ⁶² Against this backdrop, the Mattachine Society was founded in November 1950. The society published a magazine and organized lectures, discussion groups and protests to fight discrimination against homosexuals. Furthermore, in 1955, some homosexual women founded the Daughters of Bilitis, which engaged in social and political work. ⁶³ During the late 1960s, the character of the struggles against homophobic discriminations changed significantly. Fuelled by the protests against the Vietnam War, various countercultures emerged that very often linked social and cultural problems to sexuality and made the autonomy over one's own body an important political topic. Influenced by the radical politics of the 1960s and so-called sexual liberation, the homosexual liberation movements radicalized the struggles against discrimination and did not shun highly confrontational strategies that included militant resistance against police harassments. The so-called Stonewall Riots, which took place in New York in June 1969 and were caused by police raids in gay and lesbian bars in Greenwich Village, became the epitome of the shift in the rhetorics and politics of homosexual activism. ⁶⁴ Organizations such as the Gay Liberation Front and the Gay Activists Alliance, both founded in 1969, were convinced that the improvement of the social situation of homosexuals required (sometimes spectacular) interventions in the public sphere. ⁶⁵ In addition to the political groups and occasionally in conflict with them, religious homosexuals in the 1970s also started to build up what historian Jim Downs calls the ‘gay religious movement’, which mostly worked behind closed doors. ⁶⁶ Whereas the gay religious movement often received only little media attention, organizations such as the Gay Activists Alliance and succeeding groups including the National Gay Task Force managed to gain a lot of media interest and, thus, confronted millions in the United States with their political agenda. ⁶⁷ However, the huge media coverage did not only cause an increased attention, but also contributed to the shaping of a highly sexualized public reputation of LGBTQIA + milieus. Media channels frivolously reported on places such as gay male bathhouses and colourful spots of nightlife. Against this backdrop, homosexuality and LGBTQIA + lifestyles became important topics in social and political struggles in the United States that revolved around changes and ruptures in the moral fabric, often focussing on transformations in the gender and sexual order. Evoking severe backlashes, the homosexual movement and LGBTQIA + rights became topics that not only contributed to the rise of the Christian Right during the 1970s, but also caused negative reactions among Orthodox Jews and Catholic Hispanics. ⁶⁸

The politics of ‘homosexual liberation’ also had significant repercussions on far-right perspectives on homosexuality. Whereas the National Socialist League (1974–1984), a Neo-Nazi group with several 100 gay members, openly embraced homosexuality, the overwhelming majority of white supremacists were vehemently opposed to it. ⁶⁹ As it was the case with other far-right magazines, Instauration depicted homosexuality, as already mentioned, as a part of the ‘sexual conspiracy’ that was perpetrated by Jews. ⁷⁰ Closely linking Jews to homosexuality, Instaurationists repeatedly invented parallels in the subjectivities and activities that they attributed to homosexuals and Jews and, additionally, inscribed Jew’s homosexual desires. ⁷¹ For instance, the writer of a letter published in the magazine in September 1993 wonders: ‘[…], it remains a mystery to me why Jews are such homophiliacs. Are Jewish women really that obnoxious?’ ⁷²

Despite the seeming similarities and continuity, the way that Instauration connected Jews to homosexuality differed from earlier anti-Semitic discursive associations made between Jews and same-sex desires. Against the backdrop of the struggles of homosexual movements against social and legal discriminations, the fantasy about the supposed striving of Jews to normalize and spread homosexuality was at the heart of the linkage between Jews and homosexuality in Instauration.

In general, Instaurationists did not share a homogeneous explanation for the causes of homosexuality. Some opined that changes in genetics, among others resulting from ‘miscegenation’, could be the cause for homosexuality. ⁷³ The majority, however, assumed that the social environment and the society's attitudes towards homosexuality constituted important factors in the development of homosexuality. They argued that same-sex desires and a ‘homosexual mind and character’ were acquired during childhood or adolescence. Some considered growing up in a family that did not correspond to the ideal of the patriarchal family to be an important factor in the process of becoming homosexual. ⁷⁴ Others emphasized the influence of the broader social environment during puberty. ⁷⁵ Consequently, a social environment that acknowledges LGBTQIA + people as an equal part of society, Instaurationists claimed, paved the way for an ongoing spread of homosexuality in the United States. According to them, the non-prejudiced representation of homosexuals and the open participation in daily life as homosexuals did not only threaten to turn young people into homosexuals, but could also ‘homosexualise’ the minds and habits of heterosexual people. According to an article published in December 1985, ‘the homosexual’ ‘infects it [the society, K. K.] spiritually with loathsome habits, loathsome tastes and loathsome thoughts.’ ⁷⁶ Echoing this sentiment, an article lamented in September 1991 that the ‘homosexual attitudes towards life, morals, duty and sex seep into the minds of those who will never become, in a sexual sense, fruits.’ ⁷⁷ Against this backdrop, Instaurationists requested, in line with conservatives, to put homosexuals ‘back in their historic closet.’ ⁷⁸

Aiming, at least, at reinforcing the stigmatization of homosexuality, Instauration constructed Jews as mighty opponents who acted in manifold ways as driving power behind the struggles of homosexuals against discriminations. ⁷⁹ In August 1977, the magazine published an article about David Goodstein, who was the editor of the national homosexual news magazine The Advocate. Marking Goodstein as a Jew, the article called him the ‘king of the gays’ and ‘one of the lisping leaders of the gay liberation movement’. ⁸⁰ Twenty years later, at the end of the 1990s, Instauration still depicted Jews as the main promoters of homosexual rights by describing them as ‘catalysts of gay rights’ and as being ‘largely responsible for homosexuality becoming a pillar of respectability’. ⁸¹

According to Instauration, Jews used their alleged power in different social fields to make homosexuality respectable and to implement rights that aimed at preventing discrimination against homosexuals: in the politics, the media, the educational sectors and the entertainment industries. This notion manifested itself, for instance, in articles reporting on the successful campaign of Save Our Children (SOC) in Dade County, Florida, in 1977. After the Dade County Commission had passed a civil rights amendment that banned discriminations based on sexual preferences, SOC, a group of religious conservatives, was founded in January 1977. SOC's figurehead was the famous pop musician, former model and media celebrity Anita Bryant. Along with Catholics, Orthodox Jews and other conservatives, SOC started a campaign to repeal the amendment. The campaign centred on the claim that homosexuals were a threat to children because they would try to turn them into homosexuals. Drawing on the rhetoric of child protection and parents’ rights, as historian Gillian Frank argues, the campaign became very successful. ⁸² On 7 June 1977, 69.3% of the votes cast by almost 300,000 voters were against the gay rights amendment. ⁸³ Due to Bryant's huge media presence in the campaign, Instauration celebrated this decision as ‘Anita's scorching victory’ and as a ‘smashing victory of Anita Bryant’. ⁸⁴ However, believing in the societal dominance of Jews, Instaurationists expected the vote to be overturned by the Jews’ hidden power. In the issue of August 1977, this fantasy was expressed by quoting Goodstein – a rhetorical strategy often used by anti-semites to give a statement the appearance of objectivity and immunize it against the charge of being anti-Semitic. According to Instauration, Goodstein, who ‘is now deep into Bay Area politics’, believed that ‘Anita Bryant will be stopped, ‘if not in Dade County, then higher up’’. ⁸⁵ The article ‘The Homosexual Contagion’, published in September 1977, put the idea that the ‘average citizen’ was powerless against the supposed striving of Jews to implement homosexual's rights into more explicit terms:

If given a chance, the average citizen both in the United States and Britain would quickly sweep homosexuals down the manholes from which they have recently emerged. We may recall the recent smashing victory of Anita Bryant over Gay civil righters in Dade County, Florida. But the power – the courts, the media and the politicians – prop up the homosexual crowd. The Unassimilable Minorities want to build up another minority, one that has served and will continue to serve as a Majority fifth column. ⁸⁶

Besides inventing the impression that Jews were hiding their actual objective to stabilize their social dominance behind their alleged campaigning for homosexual rights – I will come back to this claim later – the quote articulates the phantasm that Jews tried to force homosexual rights on the ‘American majority’.

The notion that Jews were leading and funding the struggles against discrimination and for homosexual rights was also expressed in many other contexts. ⁸⁷ Apart from claiming that the concept ‘homophobia’ was an invention of Jews, Instaurationists described Jews as the organizers and supporters of gay pride events, and posed ‘Hollywood's top producers, agents and schlockmeisters’ as the main financiers of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force. ⁸⁸ Posing Jews as driving forces behind the struggles for homosexual rights, Instauration conceived of this engagement as a threat for heterosexuals. This notion clearly manifests itself in a caricature published in the magazine in June 1984. It shows a figure named Marv, who is marked by his nose and his lascivious lips as a Jew. The caption of the caricature says: ‘Heterosexuality may be unlawful because the mere fact of its existence is an insult to homosexuals.’ ⁸⁹

According to Instaurationists, another means that Jews used to spread homosexuality was their supposed power in academia. Since the early 1970s, activists started to publish books exploring topics such as ‘homosexual history’. Furthermore, although the attitude of universities towards ‘homosexual topics’ can be described in the words of Jeffrey Escoffier as ‘apparent institutional dormancy’, homosexuality became a subject in some university classes since the early 1970s. ⁹⁰ The newly founded women's studies also offered a safe space for women to discuss female homosexuality. Furthermore, gay and lesbian caucuses were founded in a number of academic professional associations. ⁹¹ Against this backdrop, Instaurationists lamented that Jews, after they had played ‘Everybody's Jewish’ and ‘Everybody's Black’ invented a new game:

In the same sense, Instauration described the institutionalization of Lesbian and Gay Studies, which took place at some universities during the second half of the 1980s, as the result of Jews’ power in the academic system. ⁹³ However, Instauration did not only blame Jews for using academia to normalize and spread homosexuality; it also accused non-university scholars with a Jewish background of being involved in that project. When feminist Shere Hite published her book The Hite Report on the Family in March 1994, it took Instauration only 2 months to publish an anti-Semitic and antifeminist polemic. In the article ‘End of the Two-Parent Family’ the author accused the ‘Chosenite sexologist’ of undermining the patriarchal family and of promoting homosexual families. ⁹⁴

The supposed control of Jews over the media and entertainment industries also played an important role in the narrative about the Jews’ plot against heterosexuality. As already briefly mentioned, the visibility of LGBTQIA + people in television increased since the 1970s. Despite this development and although the portrayal of LGBTQIA + was often ‘sympathetic’ during the 1970s and the 1980s, the patterns of their representation still often followed the logics of heteronormativity. ⁹⁵ Nonetheless, Instauration was highly concerned about this development. Due to their belief in the Jewish control over the media and entertainment industries, Instaurationists often linked Jews to the increased visibility of LGBTQIA + on screen and blamed them for promoting homosexuality via television, cinema and print media. ⁹⁶ In February 1978, a reader complained in a published letter about the all too attractive and feminine depiction of a lesbian teacher in the sitcom All in the Family, which was produced by Norman Lear. According to the writer, the supposed misrepresentation of the lesbian woman points to a hidden agenda of Jews: ‘Now that they have shoved the blacks down our throats, they are working on the homosexuals.’ ⁹⁷

In addition to the supposed idealization of homosexuals and homosexual relationships, Jews were also accused of using their control over the media industries to alter the sexual desires and practices. In this context, the aforementioned alleged control of Jews over the porn industries played an important role. By the late 1960s, nudity and the explicit depiction of sexual acts had entered mainstream cultural productions. ⁹⁸ During the early 1970s, watching pornographic movies, which had found the way into regular cinemas and mainstream culture, became a way to represent what historian Whitney Strub calls ‘hip sexual sophistication.’ ⁹⁹ Taking up the anti-Semitic fantasy that Jews undermined the sexual morals of Christians by distributing ‘obscene’ materials – an idea that reaches back into the late 19th century ¹⁰⁰ – Instaurationists made Jews responsible for the spread of erotic and pornographic cultural products. ¹⁰¹ In addition to linking pornography to feminism, miscegenation and the undermining of a virtuous, white manhood, the ‘pornographisation’ of the United States also served Jews in their supposed objective of ‘homosexualising’ the country, since the depiction of same-sex acts would incite homosexual desires. In September 1977, an Instaurationist lamented:

The minority pornographer quickly departs from the normal, if he was ever there in the first place, and plunges wholeheartedly into the perverse, the bizarre or the violent. The implication is clearly painted that the normal sex act, with all its intensely pleasurable nuances, is really only for ‘squares’ and is fundamentally drab and uninteresting. There is good evidence that at present there are already hundreds of thousands of white women in the U. S. who can't find white mates because so many men have gone ‘gay’. ¹⁰²

The linkage between the alleged porn-induced spread of homosexuality and the notion of a crisis in the reproduction of white people makes clear that Instauration linked the supposed spread of homosexuality by Jews to the alleged critical condition of white people in the United States. It contrived the supposed struggle of Jews against homophobic discriminations as a means to stabilize the rule of the Jewish-led regime of ‘minority racism’. Although Instaurationists attributed a homosexual desire to Jews on several occasions, they mainly understood the supposed Jewish attempts for homosexual rights as a strategic means that aimed at stabilizing their powerful position in the United States by weakening ‘white people’. ‘Why isn't the gay or lesbian crusade generally attacked for what it really is – just another fantastic tool to destroy white fecundity and hence destroy the white race?’, asked an Instaurationist who accused the ‘liberal-minority regime’ for its alleged ‘massive drive to legalize, render honorable and otherwise push homosexuality, particularly on our young people’. ¹⁰³

Instauration blamed Jews for having double standards in the issue of homosexual rights. It contrasted the supposed leading role of Jews in the gay liberation movement in the United States with ‘homophobic Israel’ and with the supposed family centredness of ‘Jewish religion and culture, which consistently affirms that homosexual acts are wrong.’ The magazine explained the alleged double standard in the following words:

That enduring feature is Judaism's private acceptance of a ‘dual code of morality’ - one law for ‘our crowd’ and one law of the ‘goy polloi.’ Friedrich Nietzsche understood very well how the Jews can create and champion social movements designed to splinter and weaken the host majorities among whom they dwell well. ¹⁰⁴

In the same sense, the magazine described ‘gay liberation’ as an important part in the ‘carefully chauffeured juggernaut of resentment’ that was even more helpful to Jews for gaining and strengthening their social dominance than their ‘incalculable arsenal of cash, stock and credit’. ¹⁰⁵ Due to their instrumental stance towards homosexuality, Instauration claimed, Jews took the side of homosexual people in so far that it would serve their own interests. For instance, in 1997, an Instaurationist reported on a supposed conflict between Jews and homosexuals about the effects of the Holocaust on both communities. Assuming that Jews would instrumentalize or even invent the Holocaust to strengthen their social dominance, ¹⁰⁶ Jews, according to the author, vehemently attacked homosexuals for also claiming the status of being victims of the Holocaust:

Whereupon Jews quickly let it be known that queers were trespassing on private property. The ferocious Jewish reaction left homos and lesbians a tad shell-shocked. Although Jews had been their allies and champions since day one of the Age of Diversity, the queers suddenly found themselves damned as noxious sexual deviates for taking one tiny step on Jewish turf. ¹⁰⁷

4. Anti-Semitism and homosexuality in the age of the ‘AIDS-Crisis’

The fantasy that Jews advocated and promoted homosexual rights to foster their own societal power and dominance gained another aspect with the rise of HIV and AIDS during the early 1980s. After the first cases of HIV became public in the United States in 1981, the discourse on the disease rapidly got racialized and gendered. Whereas ‘AIDS’ was often labeled the ‘African disease’, its spread in the United States was often conceived of as being caused by homosexual males. For religious conservatives such as Pat Buchanan and Jerry Falwell, HIV and AIDS was God's punishment for homosexuals. ¹⁰⁸ In Instauration, the attitude towards AIDS/HIV was ambiguous. On the one hand, Instaurationists rejoiced that the disease reduced the population growth on the African continent and might help to stabilize white supremacy by restrengthening the Colour Line. ¹⁰⁹ Furthermore, Instaurationists described HIV as a means of ‘nature’ to prevent the spread of ‘unnatural’ homosexuality. ¹¹⁰ On the other hand, they feared that an increasing number of white, heterosexual people in the United States were becoming infected such that HIV contributed to the ongoing decline in the numbers of white people living in the United States.

Instauration linked Jews to the spread of HIV in the United States by presenting them as the primary actors that prevented an effective containment of the virus. In addition to the accusation that ‘the people who will never let us forget the WWII Holocaust’ would use propaganda to let HIV-infected immigrants into the country, Jews were also blamed for defending the civil rights of infected citizens in the United States. ¹¹¹ Against the backdrop of a rabid homophobic backlash caused by the virus and the indifference of high-rank politicians such as President Ronald Reagan towards its victims, AIDS activists created organizations that coordinated self-help, provided information about the disease and demanded basic health care and the protection of civil rights. In 1987, Larry Kramer founded the AIDS Coalition to Unleash Power (ACT UP), which due to highly visible protests achieved successes in a short time and was able to improve the situation of infected people. ¹¹² Instaurationists understood the fight of people with HIV against legal discrimination and for their civil rights as a threat to white, heterosexual people and blamed the ‘ACLU-dictated legal system’ for enabling the spread of HIV. ¹¹³ Since the magazine understood the civil rights organization ACLU to be ‘a minion of ZOG’, it becomes clear that it depicted Jews as a significant force involved in the struggle for the civil rights of infected people. ¹¹⁴ This point of view can also be observed in the definition of Jews as driving forces behind ACT UP and in describing Larry Kramer as a ‘chosenite AIDS activist’. ¹¹⁵

In addition to their supposed political power, Jews also used their control over the media, Instauration claimed, to help to improve the situation of infected people. ¹¹⁶ The close connection that Instaurationists made between HIV and homosexuality manifested itself in the accusation that, by misrepresenting the suffering of the infected people and the reactions of their families, the Jew-controlled media sought to combat and reduce ‘the homophobia latent in most viewers of the nightly news.’ ¹¹⁷ Moreover, it was alleged that Jews did not only use their power over the media to misrepresent infected people. Rather, the ‘media elites’ and ‘the anarchist media controllers’ also used their influence, as Instauration claimed, to animate HIV-infected people to have unsafe sex and to pass the virus on to non-infected people. ¹¹⁸

As it was the case with the ‘conspiracy of homosexualisation’, Instaurationists closely linked the way that the media reported about HIV and the alleged reason for Jews’ fight for the civil rights of infected people to the fantasy of a Jewish-led regime that exploited and oppressed white people. According to Instauration, HIV had the potential to undermine the alleged ideology of social equality, which the supposed liberal-minority regime used to discriminate against white people. In a reader's letter, this idea was expressed in the following way: HIV threatened the ‘lib-min agenda’ and could have the effect of ‘nullify[ing] the goal of our [white people's] final eclipse’, since it contributed to the reinforcement of the Colour Line. Against this backdrop, the allegedly Jewish-controlled media aimed at downplaying the seriousness of the virus because it feared the ‘loss of control of the minds and beings of whites everywhere.’ ¹¹⁹ In the same sense, another writer, who described Jews as a ‘social virus’ and compared them to AIDS, fundamentally linked HIV to the ongoing existence of the regime of ‘minority racism’:

Jews are positively frantic in their efforts to ensure that AIDSters are not isolated from the mainstream. Should an isolationist attitude prevail, WASPs might grow fond of the benefits provided by discrimination and segregation, such as marked reduction of physical fear and psychological turmoil. They might start thinking about other burdensome segments of American society that warrant countermeasures, especially that one segment of the population that is to social organisms what AIDS is to individuals. ¹²⁰

5. Conclusion

Since the second half of the 1970s, white supremacist and white nationalist groups and organizations started to gain new ground in the United States. In the landscape of rising white nationalism, the monthly magazine Instauration as well as Wilmot Robertson's books such as The Dispossessed Majority occupied an important place, which enabled Robertson to become an influential actor in reshaping far-right discourses. By serving as a nodal point in international far-right networks and by introducing new concepts and ideas such as the ‘ethnostate’ to its readers in the United States, Robertson's publications constituted a force that was involved in the shaping of worldviews that still circulate among present alt-rightists. Moreover, the significance of Instauration for the contemporary alt-right manifests itself in the fact that the issues of the magazine are digitized and made available at websites such as Big Lies. ¹²¹

Against the backdrop of significant social, cultural and economic changes, ideas such as the phantasm of ‘white dispossession’ appealed to an increasing number of white Americans. White nationalists in general and Instauration, in particular, made the allegedly Jewish-controlled government and the rule of ‘minority racism’ responsible for the alleged crisis of white people. According to far-right fantasies, Jews used their social and economic power in various ways to subjugate white people, who, according to white nationalists and white supremacists, were designated by ‘nature’ to hold the dominant social positions. In addition to measures such as affirmative action, Instauration claimed that sexual politics constituted another powerful tool, which Jews used to weaken and even exterminate white people. Against the backdrop of declining white birth rates, Instaurationists accused Jews of promoting interracial sexual contacts and feminism in order to destabilize the white, patriarchal family and, thus, to undermine ‘white reproduction’. The fight for ‘homosexual rights’, which has been a hot topic in public debates since the 1970s, was understood by white nationalists as another strategy used by Jews in their alleged ‘sexual conspiracy’ – a claim that continues to circulate in large parts of present alt-right spheres. ¹²² In addition to ascribing Jews with homosexual desires, Instauration posed Jews as the central forces behind LGBTQIA + 's struggles against discrimination. Jews supposedly used their power in the media, the politics and the educational sector to promote ‘homosexual rights’ and undermine heteronormativity. Furthermore, Instaurationists posited Jews as leading forces that ‘homosexualized’ white people.

With the rise of HIV since the early 1980s, Instauration added another aspect to the anti-Semitic association between Jews and homosexuality. Although AIDS was often referred to as the ‘African disease’, the spread of HIV in the United States was often linked to the alleged promiscuity of homosexual men and this assumption fuelled homophobic resentments. According to Instauration, Jews contributed in different ways to the spread of the virus, for instance, by supporting infected people to defend their civil rights. Similar to the case of the alleged campaigning by Jews for ‘homosexual rights’, the struggle for the civil rights of people infected with HIV and against their discrimination constituted another strategy used by Jews to weaken the ‘white race’ and to consolidate their own power.

By posing Jews as driving actors behind the struggles of LGBTQIA + people against discrimination and as advocates of civil rights of HIV-infected people, Instauration sought to discredit political ideas such as liberalism and social equality. In particular, such ideas were depicted as being used and even invented by Jews to conspire against white people. Such accusations enabled the Instaurationists in manifold ways to restore the social dominant position of white, heterosexual men. First, the fantasy that Jews were the alleged main forces behind the spread of homosexuality and the struggle for LGBTQIA + rights – in addition to the depiction of feminism as a Jewish plot against the patriarchal family – made it possible for Instaurationists to link changes in the patriarchal and heteronormative gender order to the alleged aggression of Jews against white people. Consequently, anti-Semitism afforded Instauration the possibility of (re-)stabilizing the patriarchal, heterosexual family, which had been under attack by LGBTQIA + and feminist movements since the late 1960s. Second, the construction of Jews as people who used their alleged social power to cause the annihilation of white people by, among others, spreading homosexuality made it necessary to replace Jews from their alleged powerful positions and bring back white men into power.