“LGBTQ scapegoating is not random. It is not a natural consequence of polarization or an expected backlash to rights advancements, but rather a strategy to deepen divisions and erode democracy.”
That’s a line from a new report on the deliberate, careful and focused attacks on gay people and gay rights that are now so common in the autocratic world, and indeed from authoritarian political movements in the democratic world. The authors, from Project Over Zero, a research and training group that focuses on political violence, have thoughtfully and systematically investigated the use of anti-gay narratives and political campaigns by governments in Russia, Hungary, Poland, Brazil, Ghana and Indonesia, as well as by politicians and pundits in the US. By assembling the evidence from such a wide range of places, they show that there is nothing “organic” or “traditional” about these campaigns. They have a variety of goals: to mobilize a base, to win elections, to polarize, to distract, and even to normalize political violence.
They are often used in a planned, targeted manner. In 2020, just before a new COVID lockdown, the Hungarian government introduced a constitutional amendment that allegedly would defend “Christian values” by preventing gay couples from adopting children. As the report explains, “this controversy diverted attention from both the lockdown and a simultaneously proposed new rule making it harder for parties to run joint lists in elections without fully uniting.” While everyone was fulminating against the constitutional change, in other words, they altered the electoral law to help them win.
I wrote about a similar case in Poland in 2020, when Polish President Andrzej Duda put what he called “LGBT ideology” at the center of his re-election campaign. As I wrote at the time, there was no exact historical precedent for the scapegoating of gay people, which had not been a central political issue in Poland in the past. Instead, I wrote “the fear of the “rainbow plague” has been created from scratch, ginned up by cynical propagandists who know perfectly well how nasty it is.” But the then-ruling party needed an unifying theme and a single scapegoats. “Migrants” was no longer working for them, so the president’s team selected gays instead. Duda won, but the political party who created that campaign did lose a parliamentary election last October.
The Project Over Zero report, which is composed as a series of slides, helps to connect the dots between seemingly disparate campaigns in different places. It’s a smaller piece of the larger authoritarian narrative, and therefore worth trying to understand, so that you will recognize LGBT scapegoating when you see it.
Thank you Anne. You connect the dots well. Just in time for Pride Month.
I appreciate the way you consistently identify the bigger picture of issues. We can get mired in myopathy in our domestic politics in the U.S. You keep our eyes on the global intentionalities of autocracy and the "web" being woven. Thank you.