The Translocal Far Right in Europe: Exploring the Mobilization Against ‘Gender’

forthcoming

The Translocal Far Right in Europe: Exploring the Mobilization Against 'Gender' (REXGEN) explores pressing issues in the study of the extreme right, gender equality, and sexual diversity in contemporary Europe. Emphasizing the role of protest and the different scales of far-right mobilization, the project’s core questions are (1) how the far right conceptualizes gender and sexuality in the context of anti-gender politics, (2) how the interplay between the local and (trans)national levels of far-right politics shape anti-gender mobilization, and (3) how far-right actors and ideas are mainstreamed in the context of local anti-gender protest. REXGEN relies on a comparative analytical framework, studying far-right mobilization against sexual diversity in the center-east (Poland), center-west (Germany), west (France), and south (Portugal) of Europe. It employs a mixed-methods research design drawing from both established and new approaches to qualitative data collection and analysis in the study of the far right, including protest event analysis, (digital) ethnography, and frame analysis. REXGEN pursues three innovation objectives: First, it builds new, interdisciplinary theory by asking different questions and using novel concepts such as 'translocalism' to study the far right. Second, it develops an innovative research design and methodology by applying a comparative approach and using some of the most recent approaches to data collection and analysis, namely video-enhanced protest event analysis. Third, it generates original data by focusing on a recent form of far-right mobilization: protest against the public display of queerness such as in pride parades and 'drag queen story hour'. While extreme-right actors fight a self-declared ‘culture war’ against what they denounce as ‘gender ideology’, the project’s unprecedented empirical findings will be of immeasurable value for the social sciences, European democratic institutions, and civil society.