The ‘obnoxious mobilised minority’: homophobia and homohysteria in the British national party, 1982–1999

Abstract

This article examines the British National Party (BNP)’s opposition to gay men during the 1980s and 1990s. Drawing on the sociological concept of ‘homohysteria’, it examines written material from BNP publications during those decades, looking specifically at the AIDS crisis, the party’s belief in a ‘queer conspiracy’, and the role which homosexuality played in the decline of the National Front and the birth of the BNP. The first study dedicated to British fascism’s anti-gay prejudice, this article argues that the existing scholarship fails to understand the degree and nature of anti-gay sentiment in the BNP, concluding that the party was homohysteric from its inception.