A WELL-KNOWN neo-Nazi in the UK, who was an organiser for the far-right National Front in the 1980s, has come out as gay and has opened up about his Jewish heritage.
Speaking to Channel 4 News, Kevin Wilshaw said that he had been violent in the past and had seen instances where Jewish and gay people had been abused.
“It turned my stomach,” he said. “I rejected that, I pushed it to the back of my mind.”
Speaking at far-right rallies as recently as the beginning of this year, Wilshaw was also a member of the British National Party (BNP) and had contacts with groups such as the Racial Volunteer Force.
Wilshaw said that while his mother was part-Jewish, he had written on an application form to join the National Front that he hated “the Jews”.
Now though, he said: “That term ‘the Jews’ is the global faceless mass of people you can’t personalise it, not individuals. That’s the generalisation that leads to six million people being deliberately murdered.
Even though you end up being a group of people that through their own extreme views are cut off from society, you do have a sense of comradeship in that you’re a member of a group that’s being attacked by other people.
Wilshaw admitted that being a Nazi who is gay, and who has a Jewish background, was a contradiction.
“On one or two occasions in the recent past, I’ve actually been the recipient of the very hatred of the people I want to belong to,” he said. “If you’re gay it is acceptable in society but with these group of people it’s not acceptable, and I found on one or two occasions when I was suspected of being gay I was subjected to abuse.
You have other members leading National Front who are overtly gay. And nobody could see the contradiction of it that you have an overtly gay person leading a homophobic organisation. [It] makes no sense.
Now, Wilshaw says that he wants to “hurt” extremists because he feels “appallingly guilty” about his past.
“This is also a barrier to me having a relationship with my own family,” he said. “I want to get rid of it, it’s too much of a weight.”
Wilshaw added that he feared reprisals as “one or two” would “see it as betrayal”.
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