The fight against ‘gender’ and ‘LGBT ideology’: new developments in Poland

Abstract

Recent developments show that Poland’s anti-gender campaigns, initiated around 2012 by the Polish Catholic Church and ultraconservative organisations, will continue into the next parliamentary term. While the right-wing populist Law and Justice party has made attacks on ‘gender ideology’ a key element of the critique of individualism and neoliberal globalisation, anti-gender rhetoric is also today being adopted by neo-fascists, who combine a desire to maintain a gender hierarchy and hatred towards ‘sexual degenerates’ with anti-European Union sentiments and Islamophobia.