Brutes ostracize, ridicule, beat and malign young queers everyday. Thrown into the edges of society, these victims of homophobia and transphobia often engage in self-destructive behavior in their quests for meaning. Recently, I encountered a mid-twenties bisexual, transgender-identified person who had aligned herself with the Nazi party. My heart broke when I realized in her attempt to deal with social ostracism regarding her sexual and gender identity she grasped for power in whatever she could find—German Nationalism, the National Socialist Party, and a tiny swastika pin to be precise.

At the edges of society, we often suffer from a need to identify with powerful counter-cultural elements. For me, growing up queer meant I identified with the Southern white working class. While I actively fought the racism considered integral to that culture, I appreciated the rebellious, anti-capitalist and anti-authoritarian attitude espoused by the sexy, bearded men in the Waylon Jennings T-Shirts. Proudly, I listened to country music, rebelling against the prim-and-proper ruling class tolerance surrounding me, moving from Christian towards liberalism, socialism, and ultimately anarchism.

In my bisexual, transgender identified Nazi acquaintance, I hear her express a similar tendency to retreat towards a marginalized, loathed culture, to feel power in rebellion, and to refuse the dominant culture’s capitalism, faux-Democracy, and culture of violence. Despite unsound political logic, her perspective reveals the depressing trend of oppressed people uniting in violence to oppress others.

For years I fought hate groups—Nazis, the Klan, World Church of the Creator, the Minute Men and the John Birch Society. I actively confronted members of these groups at their rallies, demonstrations and protests and struggled to disrupt their uncontested access to the media and the public. I never argued that the state should repress their views but I did argue that the police had no obligation to protect them from anti-racist opposition.

What I never considered, in those years of anti-fascist demonstrations, is that many of those violent racists might be retreating into a powerful subculture because of the ridicule they experienced as children. I wonder how many of them are closeted; I wonder how many identify under the queer umbrella.

My heart breaks when I think of the damage a homophobic/transphobic/misogynist society unleashes on us daily. I wonder how many acts of violence have occurred by a person forced into the closet, ridiculed because of their identity, and unable to cope.

I long for a day when victims of violence refuse to build terrorist nations ala Israel, Germany, and the United States, ascend to power, and engage in acts of genocide. I long for a day when those who might have journeyed from oppressed to oppressor rather choose to maintain their own liberation by striving for liberation with others.