Paradoxical Right-Wing Sexual Politics in Europe

How did far-right, hateful and anti-democratic ideologies become so successful in many societies in Europe? This volume analyses the paradoxical roles sexual politics have played in this process and reveals that the incoherence and untruthfulness in right-wing populist, ultraconservative and far-right rhetorics of fear are not necessarily signs of weakness. Instead, the authors show how the far right can profit from its own incoherence by generating fear and creating discourses of crisis for which they are ready to offer simple solutions. In studies on Poland, Hungary, Spain, Italy, Austria, Ireland, Northern Ireland, Portugal, France, Sweden and Russia, the ways far-right ideologies travel and take root are analysed from a multi-disciplinary perspective, including feminist and LGBTQI reactions. Understanding how hateful and antidemocratic ideologies enter the very centre of European societies is a necessary premise for developing successful counterstrategies.

Cornelia Möser is a Researcher at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), France, working on feminist, queer and gender studies in France, Germany and the USA. She publishes on feminist theory and translation as well as on queer/feminist criticism of the state as well as genealogies of materialist feminisms.Jennifer Ramme is a Researcher and Lecturer at the European University Viadrina, Collegium Polonicum, and member of the Viadrina Institute for European Studies, Germany. She has widely published on right wing sexual and gender politics, familism and familist nationalism, LGBTQ* and feminist movements and protest in Poland.Judit Takács is a Research Professor at the Centre for Social Sciences, Hungarian Academy of Sciences Centre of Excellence, Hungary. Currently she is a Fellow at the Kulturwissenschaftliches Institut (KWI) in Essen, Germany.