Image: Noah Elio Weinmann - https://noah-elio.com/
Editor's note: This article was written by cultural anthropologist Patrick Wielowiejski from his academic perspective. Wielowiejski has specifically analysed the AfD as part of his research. It is important for us to emphasise that many of the ideologies and positions described here are not limited to the AfD, but can also be found in other parts of society, which is why we have decided to publish them for discussion in our community.
This article is a second publication that was kindly made available to us by Geschichte der Gegenwart. We would like to thank them for this. Source/first publication: https://geschichtedergegenwart.ch/wider-die-selbstbestimmung-geschlechtliche-und-sexuelle-vielfalt-von-rechts/
When it comes to gender identity, however, self-determination is a thing of the past for the AfD. It wants to repeal the "Law on self-determination with regard to gender registration" introduced by the traffic light coalition, which came into force on 1 November 2024. This law makes it easier for trans, inter and non-binary people to change their marital status and first name. In its definition of gender, it is not based on supposed biological facts, but on self-perceived gender identity. In contrast, the AfD demands: "The reality of bisexuality must be recognised again[.]" This expresses the AfD's anti-liberalism, as the idea of sexual and gender self-determination presupposes that the subject has a certain degree of freedom in relation to their own identity.
However, this does not mean that lesbians, gays, bisexuals and trans people are excluded from the AfD as such, which is often perceived as a contradiction by the public. In fact, the AfD mainly integrates homosexuals, especially gay men, into its ranks and right-wing trans people also organise themselves in the AfD. As long as they recognise the "reality of bisexuality" and thus reject queer views of gender and sexuality, LGBT people are tolerated by the AfD. How is this to be understood?
Between homonationalism and anti-liberalism
In ethnographic research between 2017 and 2019, I followed the connection between right-wing populism and homosexuality (Right-wing populism and homosexuality. An ethnography of enmity, Campus 2024, Open Access). I was interested in the ways in which the AfD refers to homosexuality today. The central protagonists of this political field are the "Alternative Homosexuals" (AHO) - a handful of gay AfD politicians whose aim is both to have an impact within the party and to convey to the outside world that being right-wing and gay at the same time is not mutually exclusive. Historically, this is nothing new - prominent right-wing homosexual men include the SA leader Ernst Röhm and the neo-Nazi Michael Kühnen. But while they were fought against from within their own ranks, members of the AHO are largely accepted in the AfD. At the time of my field research, it was even said that a prominent Berlin AfD politician claimed that he had never had to deal with as many homosexuals in his professional life as in the AfD.
"As a result, we are not primarily dealing with homophobia or trans-hostility (even if these have by no means disappeared completely), but above all with queer hostility."
One obvious reason for this shift is that support for liberal LGBT rights has become a badge of modernity par excellence and the moral flagship of the West. The US-American gender and queer theorist Jasbir Puar has labelled this situation "homonationalism" in her book Terrorist Assemblages called. Referring positively to the rights of gender and sexual minorities and claiming that they are endangered by an "Islamisation" of Europe is therefore simply strategically clever for the AfD - it is a rhetorical modernisation analogous to the dédiabolisation of the then French Front National (now Rassemblement National) by Marine Le Pen. The Islamophobic slogan "I have no desire to repeat the emancipation of women and gays", which the Dutch right-wing populist Pim Fortuyn formulated in the early 2000s, is now part of everyday right-wing thinking. With regard to the rights of trans people, a similar argument can be made, which political scientist Judith Goetz calls "Transchauvinism" labelled.
However, not everyone in the AfD and certainly not everyone on the far right can relate to "liberal Western values". Some do not see Islam as the greatest threat of the present day, but rather liberalism and US hegemony - such as the former history teacher and journalist Karlheinz Weißmann. LGBT people who make an issue of their "abnormality" (in the words of several of the people I spoke to) are still suspected of decadence. Anyone who speaks of emancipation assumes that unequal power relations can be changed - and this assumption is considered threatening by the far right. On the other hand, the ethnosexist figure of the patriarchal and homophobic Muslim man from the Middle East does indeed evoke a sense of decadence among some right-wing men. Fascination and admiration out.
This is why the LGBT right-wing populists of today present themselves as enemies not only of Islam, but also as enemies of the left. During an event organised by the AHO in Essen in June 2018, Matthias "the friendly face of the NS" Helferich, in which he said the following, among other things:
"When it comes to homosexuality, the concept of normality is always a point of contention. Do you know what I think? I think the Alternative Homosexual Organisation is terribly normal when I look at the left in this country. Because what belongs to normality is that you love your homeland and that you have a positive connection to your homeland and to your patriotic self. And I would much rather live in the normality of the alternative homosexual organisation than in the normality that is currently entering our country, in the normality of polygamous marriages, child marriages and forced marriages."
Right-wing homosexuals are therefore at least more "normal" than "the left in the country". For someone like Helferich, they should therefore be taken seriously as allies, at least strategically.
Essentialism instead of emancipation
A central element in the right-wing cultural struggle against the imagined left-wing hegemony is the fight against "gender ideology". The "exaggeration" of LGBT people and their concerns is part of this ideology in the eyes of the far right. LGBT people within the AfD must not only credibly demonstrate that they have nothing to do with this, but also refute the supposed assumptions of "gender ideology" in their arguments and performances. Accordingly, the guiding principle of their political action cannot be gender and sexual self-determination, but rather the orientation towards an essentialist understanding of gender and sexuality. A clear commitment to this is the inescapable condition for the integration of LGBT people into external rights and for their normalisation. As the aforementioned lead motion for the programme for the Bundestag elections states: "Femininity and masculinity [...] with their different potentials are something positive. This means that women and men can complement each other perfectly", then the LGBTs in the AfD must make it unmistakably clear that they see it the same way. In other words, they must be the biggest anti-genderists of all precisely because they are suspected of gender bias due to their gender or sexual identity.
For gay men, for example, this means that they have to affirm that they are unquestionably male. One of my dialogue partners - an AfD member of parliament, whom I'll call Andreas - once described it like this: "Loving a man as a man is a double decision for being male." Or in the words of Björn Höcke (in conversation with the artist and journalist Sebastian Hennig in the book Never in the same river twice): "There are quite a number of gay men who are more solidified in their masculinity than many 'straight' men - even in politics." As the aim of "gender ideology" is to equalise and ultimately abolish the sexes, the "alternative homosexuals" see their identity as gay men as a result. endangered.
These are arguments that were already shared by some parts of the homosexual emancipation movement at the beginning of the 20th century. Around 1900, for example, writer Adolf Brand's "Gemeinschaft der Eigenen" (community of one's own) was of the opinion that male homosexuality was a superior form of masculinity. It thus took a stand against Magnus Hirschfeld's theory of sexual intermediates and the idea of homosexuals as the "third sex". AfD member of the state parliament Andreas suggested I read Hans Blüher's The role of eroticism in male society from 1917, which was one of his sources of inspiration. Blüher was known as an anti-Semitic and anti-feminist writer and an early member of the German Wandervogel movement. He was of the opinion that the state and society were held together by masculine Eros - that is, the homoerotic male bond. However, the fact that Andreas himself did not conform to the image of the gay male hero and liked to flirt with a certain kind of behaviour towards me also points to the contradiction between political rhetoric and lived reality - not to mention the performativity of gender in the far right as well.
Gay antigenderism must therefore show that homosexuality has nothing to do with transgressing gender boundaries. While masculinity is even confirmed here, right-wing trans people have to argue differently, because for them the gender assigned at birth and the self-perceived gender fall apart. In her book, the social worker and gender researcher Katrin Degen Flexible normality biologistic, religious and pragmatic strategies that right-wing trans people use to argue that their own existence is compatible with a right-wing world view. For example, a woman who identifies as transsexual writes on the blog of the gay Catholic theologian and right-wing publicist David Berger that the only binary form of transsexuality exists in the world. "Brain gender" is "sometimes the opposite of genetic gender". It is therefore crucial for these actors to understand their own transgender identity in such a way that it confirms rather than refutes the gender binary: Even if it is a "Brain and genetics falling apart" gender identity is determined by biology and cannot be changed. Andreas described it like this: "It is precisely this knowledge that you are a woman in a male body or vice versa that proves that there are only these two genders."
Queer-hostile LGBTs - or would you prefer self-determination?
Gender and sexuality have always been central to the politics of the far right. In the anti-liberal culture war that the right currently invokes, this is expressed in such a way that an essentialist understanding of gender and sexuality is positioned against an emancipatory or constructivist one. The idea of self-determination is rejected as a left-wing fantasy of omnipotence. As a result, we are not primarily dealing with homophobia or transphobia (even if these have by no means disappeared completely), but above all with queerphobia. This means that some parts of the so-called community can be integrated into the historical bloc of the right - namely those who affirm the phantasm of a natural, stable, unambiguous identity. Or, in short, the least queer of them.
However, the right-wing alliances and their consensus remain contradictory and fragile. On the one hand, the AfD associates the integration of gender and sexual minorities with the hope of becoming more compatible with society as a whole. On the other hand, it is hard work for right-wing homosexuals and trans people to plausibilise both within the AfD and to the outside world why they fit in well with the right-wing camp. Above all, it is questionable whether the arguments put forward can convince LGBT people across the board. Perhaps self-determination is the more attractive political proposition after all.
