https://www.takimag.com/article/john-wayne-did-nothing-wrong/
Judging by today’s crazy standards on ‘gender’ issues, just about every actor, artist, director, and etc. in the not-too-distant past was a ‘homophobe’ and definitely a ‘transphobe’. Or, more accurately, 'homo-disdainer' and 'trans-ridiculer'. Even 90% of Liberals in the 60s thought homosexuality was deeply problematic. Even most Liberal publications dared not to broach the subject. Psychology department was convinced homosexuality is a mental disorder. Susan Sontag's piece on Camp was controversial(even in an ultra-liberal magazine like PARTISAN REVIEW) because it discussed homosexuality. So, there was nothing strange about what John Wayne said on that issue.
As for Wayne’s ‘white supremacist’ view that blacks need to undergo further civilizational process before fully partaking of democracy, is it really all that outrageous? After all, how is it all that different from Samuel Huntington's theory that Third World nations would do better to undergo process of modernization under iron-fisted Enlightened Autocrats before gradually transforming into functional democracies? If anything, even many Liberal political scholars came to the same conclusion. Many social scientists and political scholars came to believe that sudden democratization can actually do more harm than good among peoples who are as yet culturally and economically unprepared to take on burdens of electoral politics(that can only work with rule of law and civic responsibility). Such dictator-supremacist theory became quite vogue in political science departments. That is why many came to appreciate Deng over Gorbachev following the implosion of the Soviet Union. Deng maintained Party supremacy and worked on economic development, whereas Gorbachev favored political reforms. Russia did even worse in the 90s when it fully went ‘liberal democratic’ without the institutions and attitudes necessary for a functional liberal democracy. And after the Rwandan disaster, the West enthusiastically supported the iron-fisted autocrat that kept tight order in that troubled nation.
Denial of democracy in such nations doesn’t seem to bother Westerners. Indeed, Obama aided Egyptian military against democracy headed by Muslim Brotherhood. The idea was that Military supremacism was better than democracy in a nation that was, as yet, not ready for democracy and freedom. Also, after the debacles of Iraq and Libya, many(on both left and right) came to the conclusion that some nations are better off under the supremacism of an Iron-fisted leader than with experiments in ‘liberal democracy’. While democracy may be ideal for modern nations, not all nations and peoples have the values, habits, knowledge, and developmental levels to make democracy work. They just aren't cut out for it. In such cases, iron rule is often preferable to democracy. Indeed, that was precisely why Fidel Castro’s Cuba got favorable press from American Progressives during the Cold War. They admitted he was a dictator and that Cuban politics was about One-Party Supremacy, but they also emphasized that Cubans were better off under a tough ruler than many people in willy-nilly Latin American democracies where ‘leaders’ are are little more than shills of transnational corporations and organized crime. It’s oft-been duly noted that blacks in Cuba lived healthier lives than blacks in freer Latin American nations(and even in the US).
So, John Wayne’s views were along similar lines. There was not ONE America but TWO Americas. White America was sufficiently advanced for full democracy, but blacks had yet to attain full civilizational outlook to function properly in a free and democratic society. They had to undergo a process of modernization, not unlike peoples in pre-democratic developing nations, before they could take part in democracy.
Granted, this line of argument was somewhat disingenuous because whites had had lots of time to civilize blacks since the end of the Civil War but mainly used political muscle to keep blacks down and marginalized. But then, as we’ve witnessed since the 1960s, even with best intentions of progressive whites, liberated blacks tend to use their freedom to act wild and destructive than sound and constructive. With blacks, you can’t win. If you keep them in line with an iron hand, you are the oppressor. But if you give them freedom, they run wild and degrade society.
Indeed, even Wayne’s civilize-the-blacks idea wouldn’t have worked in the long run because black problems are less cultural than biological. Blacks evolved in Africa over 100,000s of years to be warriors, hunters, and jivers. With freedom, even civilized blacks eventually revert to their ugabugery.
Now, there may have been another reason why Wayne argued for denying blacks full freedom. Though he didn’t say it, he surely noticed that blacks are more muscular, more macho, and got bigger dongs. As a famous tough guy, he couldn’t honestly say, “We white guys will lose our manhood and our white women to the muscular and bigger-donged Negroes if we give them full freedom.” He had too much pride. But in fact, his ‘white supremacism’ was really a crutch against the threat of black supremacism. The 1970s movie MANDINGO with Ken Norton shows that black men are tougher than white guys, and white women get jungle fever the moment their eyes set upon some big Negro with more muscle and bigger dong. So, biology is black supremacist when it comes to raw manhood. Nature favors black manhood over white manhood in the thumping-and-humping department. But Wayne, like most white men of his period, had too much pride to speak honestly and say, “What I’m really freaked out is about black supremacism over us white guys. Did you see Woody Strode? I’m a big strong guy, but he’s twice as muscled and probably has a dong twice the size as mine. And that’s why we need segregation cuz integration will mean black supremacist manhood turning us white guys into a bunch of wussy white boy cucks.”
But it would have been better for the white race and the truth if he had said as much. All stable and lasting orders are based on truth, not fantasy.
