666 with HOMOCOMMUNIST
6 questions, 6 answers and 6 pics with our favorite (homo)communist.
Hey wicked pisser,
I’ve always loved those horny Soviet propaganda posters featuring burly young guys and their international communist friends, with their homoerotic industrial scenes and little gay families to go along with it. But it wasn’t until I came across @homocommunist on Instagram that I realized there was so much more going on with the intersection of queerness and communist liberation than just muscle men in military uniforms.
Homocommunist (A.K.A. Alexander) filled a gaping hole in my understanding of my own queerness, where its power comes from and exposed me to powerful and hot imagery of resistance against the boot of capitalism in a sexy, gay way. His website contains his own brilliant writing on photographer Andreas Fux (and more!) and a free digital library of essential homocommunist theory for you to read. In other words, run! Don’t walk.
Since we’re all about sharing the fruits of our collective labor towards liberation, here’s a preview of the homosexual propaganda found in our interview with Homocommunist to get you horny for revolution and our first PISSUE:
PISS: What can we learn about liberating the body from Andreas Fux and others who documented gay sex after the collapse of the Soviet Union (and what should we watch for our lesson)?
Homocommunist: Andreas Fux’s photos of Russian twinks after the dissolution of the Soviet Union are innocent and fun, but others were much more exploitative in the way they took advantage of the new access they had to young men (and women) there, hence the expression “he has that sadness in his eyes that you only see in Eastern European gay porn.”
The influence geopolitics had on erotic commodities at that time is just one specific testimony to the fact that our bodies, our sexualities and our desires are never really fully ours. They’re the products of our social and political environments. Looking at the outcomes for queer people in the region 30 years later, not to mention the precarious state of queer rights in the west, the lesson for queer liberation remains: we won’t get it under capitalism.
P: We hate money but love things… What is your advice on resisting the temptations of heterocapitalism?
HC: Sodomy is free.
P: How do we keep homocommunism sexy in 2024?
HC: Nothing is sexier than solidarity. Take action not just for your fellow queers but for all other marginalized people. Also, avoid corporate Pride. That will just never be sexy.
P: Is there a piece of gay propaganda you love the most?
HC: Rosa von Praunheim’s film It Is Not the Homosexual Who Is Perverse, But the Society in Which He Lives. It’s a queer manifesto that is very specific to gay men in West Germany in 1973 but, at the same time, so many of its lines remain completely relevant:
“Fairies and leather men should end their feud and fight for their freedom side by side. Let's unite with the Black Panthers and Women's Lib and fight the oppression of minorities! Get out of the toilets and take to the streets!”
P: Who should we be reading/following/watching?
HC: Read Towards a Gay Communism by Mario Mieli and everything by Leslie Feinberg and follow some of these great Instagram accounts:
P: What’s got you pissed off the most right now?
HC: Pinkwashing, homonationalism, the right’s co-option of identity politics, and their feigned concern for queer people when it helps advance imperialist and fascist agendas. Also the fact that New Fire Island is a thing.
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