This paper studies the diffusion and combination of anti-genderist discourse with anti-immigrant images and denigrating caricatures of minorities created and circulated in visual and digital media and in political campaigns by right wing political activists and their allies in media, religion, and politics. Following right-wing mobilizations, immigration has become one of the most controversial political issues in Western Europe. In Germany, Switzerland and Italy, right-wing populist political parties have used provocative visual posters depicting immigrants or refugees as sexually ‘criminal foreigners’ or a ‘threat to the nation’, in some countries and contexts conflating the image of the refugee with that of the Islamist terrorist or that of the criminal sexist. Right wing activists’ attack against minorities have also targeted liberal intellectuals and queer and gender scholars who tried to intervene in favor of refugees and religious minorities. My critical analysis of media debates in 2015-18 traces the emergence and spreading of a populist antagonist discursive coalition between right wing activists, conservative religious and political actors and journalists and publishers. The findings show the calculated ambivalence (Wodak) by which right wing populists and their allies combine both homo nationalist and anti-immigrant images as well as anti-genderist discourse. In contributing to the rich and growing body of work on anti-genderism this paper is distinct by its combination of visual and discursive analysis in several countries and in transnational digital networks. I compare public media discourse with election campaign posters and visual cartoons spreading an exclusionary, stereotypical image of immigrants, refugees, and Muslims as well as of feminists and liberal intellectuals. By combining visual and discursive theories and digital media analysis we can understand the rapid and aggressive diffusion of anti-genderist politics and transnational coalitions between right wing activists, and their neoconservative allies in media, politics, and institutions.
