Nationalism, masculinity, and the targeting of gay men

Authoritarian governments have historically treated gay men as destabilizing elements within the social order they seek to impose, revealing how deeply such regimes rely on the regulation of gender, sexuality, and private life to maintain political dominance. Central to authoritarian rule is the construction of a disciplined, obedient citizen whose identity aligns with the state’s ideological vision. Gay men are frequently positioned as incompatible with this vision because they disrupt the regime’s preferred model of masculinity, which is typically grounded in militarism, heterosexuality, and patriarchal authority. This dynamic reflects what scholars describe as state‑engineered masculinity, a political project in which the regime defines normative male behavior as a symbol of national strength. As a result, gay men become targets of authoritarian repression not merely for moral or cultural reasons but as part of a broader strategy of consolidating power.

Criminalization, surveillance, imprisonment, and public denunciation function as tools through which the state demonstrates its capacity to police both public conduct and private identity. These mechanisms appear across diverse ideological contexts: Nazi Germany expanded Paragraph 175 and sent thousands of men to concentration camps; Francoist Spain classified homosexuality as a “dangerous social condition” and confined gay men to labor colonies; Stalin’s Soviet Union criminalized male homosexuality in 1934 and used it to justify political purges; and Latin American military dictatorships deployed police terror, disappearances, and moral‑hygiene campaigns to suppress queer communities. In each case, repression served as a political instrument that reinforced the regime’s monopoly over social norms and legitimized its coercive apparatus.

Yet the relationship between authoritarian governments and gay men is marked by a revealing contradiction. While ordinary gay men were persecuted, some regimes quietly tolerated or even relied on closeted gay men within their elite circles. This paradox exposes the fundamentally performative nature of authoritarian morality. Public condemnation of homosexuality served ideological and disciplinary purposes, but private tolerance of loyal insiders demonstrates that repression was never solely about sexual behavior. Instead, it was about the state’s need to define deviance, enforce conformity, and eliminate alternative forms of social belonging. Gay subcultures—whether underground networks in Eastern Europe, clandestine meeting places in Latin America, or urban queer communities in fascist Europe—were perceived as dangerous not only because they violated moral codes but because they represented autonomous social spaces outside state control.

Authoritarian governments fear such spaces because they create networks of solidarity that cannot be easily surveilled or absorbed into official ideology. This is why gay men, more than lesbians, were often singled out: authoritarian regimes obsess over male behavior because it symbolizes national strength, military discipline, and patriarchal continuity. The policing of gay men thus reveals the deeper logic of political control and the ways in which authoritarian states weaponize gender and sexuality to sustain their rule. Ultimately, the history of gay men under authoritarianism illustrates how repression operates not only through violence and legal sanctions but through the construction of normative identities that define who belongs to the nation and who must be excluded from it.

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