The production of hatred on social media: Sexism, homophobia, and anti-genderism in populist right-wing political communication

The operation of right-wing populist complexes composed by political parties, media outlets and civic actors deserves complex scholarly attention (Dietze & Roth, 2020). Radical right-wing forces nurture intimate relations with online media to bypass the rules and standards of traditional news media and to claim direct connections with citizens. Online communication is portrayed by populist political actors as democratic, open-ended, and beyond the elite’s control, which is also suitable to condemn visible or invisible enemies (KhosraviNik & Unger, 2016; Pajnik & Sauer, 2018). The literature has extensively discussed that the political communication of right-wing radical forces often focuses on dangers that society putatively faces, by referring to a multitude of fears or directly generating such feelings. This is achieved by targeting and excommunicating, among others, the human rights causes and actors, equality thinkers and advocates, including gender and LGBTQI equality advocates (Wodak, 2020). Gender also serves as a metalanguage for negotiating different axes and practices of social and political power, for shaping struggles around cultural and moral hegemony, and seeking response to contemporary economic and governance puzzles (Kuhar & Paternotte, 2017; Sobieraj, 2020, Verloo, 2018). Moreover, the radical right constructs a new universalism, which replaces individual rights with rights of the family and depicts religious conservatives as an embattled minority across continents and polities (Korolczuk & Graff, 2018). The recently completed GENHA (“Hate speech, gender, social networks and political parties”, funded by the European Union, 2020-21) research carried out qualitative analyses of political communication by radical right-wing political actors with anti-gender hate speech content in five European countries (Germany, Hungary, Italy, Spain, Sweden). The primary sources of data were found in Facebook and Twitter posts and comments and arising communication flows. Data collection was achieved through social media listening. The inquiry centered on three distinctive and intersecting domains of anti-gender communication: (1) anti-women’s-rights and sexism, (2) anti-LGBTQI and homophobia, and (3) anti-genderism. The country specific data and analysis depicted the targets, the major themes, and framing choices to articulate softer and stronger forms of hate in the three sub-fields of anti-gender talk. The paper will present the main results of a comparative inquiry generated by the GENHA research to reveal: 1/ the modalities of deconstructing gender equality thinking and equality achievements; 2/ the contribution of anti-gender talks to legitimizing hate and replacing critical dialogue with the production of circular hate; 3/the potentials of using gender to attack other pillars of political democracy; 4/variations of the standing of right wing anti-gender forces in the wider political arenas. By so doing, the paper will assess the relevance of hate production in empowering the radical right and weakening the positions of gender and LGBTQI equality driven forces and actors or inspiring their resistance.