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Abstract
Research on political homophobia in contemporary African nations tends to focus on the legal, political and social consequences of such homophobia. However, this work remains limited in its treatment of the rise of political homophobia and mobilisation against lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) rights. This article redirects such research by concentrating on the indigenous origins of mobilisation against LGBT rights in Liberia. Focusing on the efforts of the New Citizens Movement (NCM), an antigay movement organisation, we outline how NCM pursued a ‘politics of pre-emption’ to prevent pro-LGBT rights legislation and organisation from taking root in the country. By ‘politics of pre-emption’, we mean mobilisation intended to ensure that another movement’s imagined future does not materialise. The politics of pre-emption captures a little-understood feature of the dynamics of opposing movements: mobilisation to pre-empt the rise of another social movement. We analyse semi-structured interviews we conducted with 45 Liberians, including anti-LGBT activists and supporters and pro-LGBT activists and supporters and dozens of articles from Liberian newspapers to trace NCM’s politics of pre-emption as a strategy used by opposing movements.