A Republican politician who is campaigning to become the governor of Massachusetts once wrote a book claiming that the Nazi Party was run by homosexuals.

Scott Lively will face Charlie Baker in September's primary for the state after gaining enough support at the Republican Party convention in Massachusetts last week.

However, he has a very patchy record when it comes to equality and homophobia. In 1995 he wrote a highly controversial book called The Pink Swastika.

In the book, he claimed that the German National Socialist Party led by Adolf Hitler was run by "militaristic" homosexuals who instigated the Holocaust.

Of course, Lively's claims are utterly ridiculous and have been widely criticised and debunked by historians since the publication of the book.