‘Murderers of the unborn’ and ‘sexual degenerates’: analysis of the ‘anti-gender’ discourse of the Catholic Church and the nationalist right in Poland

ABSTRACT

The article analyses the language used by the Polish nationalist right in relation to LGBT communities and the right to abortion. The authors show links between the language of Church hierarchs and right-wing columnists as the ideological backbone of the governing right-wing populist right. According to the authors, the attack on gender is the same method of political mobilisation and power management as the campaign against refugees and the anti-immigrant hysteria. On the one hand, the anti-gender discourse may strengthen the narrative against the ‘liberal EU’ and, on the other hand, it is used to show substitute ‘scapegoats’ in Poland. Moral panic makes it possible to release class tensions in the manner that is safe for the system through the artificially induced cultural and ideological conflict. However, the dispersed anti-gender discourse has a real impact on social attitudes – on the one hand, it polarises social sympathies and, on the other hand, it strengthens conservative attitudes. The analysis is based on right-wing press articles, Church hierarchs’ statements, videos on YouTube and a parliamentary debate about the right to abortion.

KEYWORDS:

• LGBT
• gender
• abortion
• religious fundamentalism
• sexual minorities
• Catholic Church
• homophobia
• nationalist right
• language of politics

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes on contributors

Piotr Żuk is a Professor in the Department of the Sociology of the Public Sphere in the Institute of Sociology at the University of Wrocław. He studies aspects of state politics and policy, racialisation and the politics of ethnicity and human rights. His publications on progressive social movements include studies of activism in support of the rights of housing tenants and migrant workers, as well as studies of the peace movement and environmental activism. His research on the rise of the populist right in Eastern Europe has included analysis of the ideological role of school curricula and of the interaction of class and labour migration in the resurgence of racism.

Paweł Żuk – PhD, President of The Centre for Civil Rights and Democracy Research, author and co-author of numerous books: Kultura a polityka. Socjologiczne refleksje o powstawaniu orientacji politycznych w Polsce [Culture and Politics. Sociological Reflections on the Formation of Political Orientations in Poland, Warszawa 2015], O kulturze strachu i przemyśle bezpieczeństwa [On the Culture of Fear and Security Industry, Warszawa 2015].