Anti-gender Movements, RSE, and Democracy in Europe

Abstract

Far right politics is spreading “across democratic societies” (Lianos, 2019: 445). This comes true in Europe (Berthet, 2022; Dahl & Kennedy-Macfoy, 2020; Korolczuk, 2014; Köttig et al. 2017; Kováts & Põim, 2015; Kuhar & Paternotte, 2017; O’Sullivan & Krulišová, 2020; Venegas, 2022a; Verloo & Paternotte, 2018), where anti-gender mobilizations represent a major threat to democracy (Sosa, 2021; Venegas, 2021b). The “Global Right Wing” (Paternotte & Kuhar, 2018) is stoking an international moral crusade against sexuality and gender. Nevertheless, “when we panic about sex, it is very rarely only just about sexuality” (Karger, 2022: 2). Two arguments might be found among scholars to explain this recent success of far right, ultra conservative actors. For some authors, it is economic and social crisis (Cipek & Lacković, 2019) that would show the weaknesses of neoliberal economics and democracy (Korolczuk & Graff, 2018). For others, it is the advance of liberal democracy and human rights – both of them question traditional values (Jarkovská, 2020) and the status quo, promoting the secularization anti-gender campaigns denounce (Gusmeroli & Trappolin, 2021). Although each of these two arguments alone is not sufficient to account for the phenomenon, the imbrication of the two can afford a more plausible explanation of the phenomenon, as is done here.