Fear of a straight planet

“The Homo and the Negro” is a slightly bizarre book, written by James J O'Meara, who describes himself as a Traditionalist, but seems to have created an eclectic philosophy all his own. He should not be confused with Michael O'Meara, another far right writer. At one point, James O'Meara describes his “comprehensive worldview” as a mixture of “wild boys to drugs to pop and Heavy Metal to imaginal realms to Traditionalist metaphysics to the Aryan Männerbund to the New Right”.

O'Meara's main claim to fame is the notion that White homosexual males are the pinnacle of civilization. This has supposedly been suppressed by Judaism and Christianity, and the author is therefore both anti-Semitic and anti-Christian. The antithesis to the “Homo” is the “Negro”, so naturally, O'Meara is a White supremacist, as well. In what sense White homosexuals were really bearers of culture is much less clear. The author does eulogize ancient Athens and Renaissance Florence (where male homosexuality was tolerated), but his real ideal is the ancient Männerbund, a (supposed) Germanic warrior-band of Odin-worshipping berserks. In O'Meara's interpretation, the Männerbund was homoerotic or homosexual. Taking a cue from Baron Evola, O'Meara suggests that the Männerbund was the real authority in Germanic society, an initiatory order representing the inner essence of the warrior caste. Since the state is derived from this caste, the band of beserkers somehow represents the state in its true form. More disturbingly, the Männerbund is said to be needed today to restore order and authority in a world where democracy and the law no longer works… This sounds like a call for vigilantism and the creation of rump militias.

Despite eulogizing the Männerbund, the author also has a soft spot for dandified or decadent homosexuals, and one article deals extensively with Oscar Wilde. While O'Meara claims to support “masculinist” homoeroticism as against the left-wing “gay” identity, some of the homosexual expressions he mentions are androgynous rather than masculine. What is “masculinist” about Wilde, the effeminate aesthete who charms hard boiled miners and cowboys in the Old West, the gender-fluid cowboys themselves, or Hindu boy prostitutes dressed in drag? When describing contemporary American subculture, O'Meara turns out to be fascinated by long-haired men (long hair usually being a female preserve) and various forms of decadence, both “bourgeois” and “working class”, which doesn't exactly suggest a Männerbund. On the religious side, the author mentions Loki more than Odin, Loki of course being the transgressive trickster (who sometimes dresses like a woman). He is also interested in shamanism, but, once again, shamans are shape shifters, not stable masculine types.

“The Homo and the Negro”, apart from being racist and frankly weird, is a very confusingly written and badly edited work. It seems to be based on the author's blog posts. Occasionally, O'Meara does say interesting things (I liked his archetypal reading of “The Untouchables”), and the autobiographical chapter is very forthright, but overall, this is not a book I like or would recommend, unless you are extremely interested in the more exotic spin offs from Traditionalism. I will therefore only give it two stars.

Ironically, Amazon has paired the work with real gay erotica, so perhaps I must point out that this is *not* in any sense a suggestive book…