Mainstreaming LGBTQIA+ hate: the far right's anti-gender countermovement in Australia

This paper critically explores the Australian far-right's contemporary anti-LGBTQIA+ mobilizations from 2017 to 2024. Guided by case study research and critical discourse analysis, we map the far-right's anti-LGBTQIA+ politics across three fields of action: discourse, legislation and violence. Our findings reveal distinct ‘anti-gender’ countermovement emerging in the wake of the 2017 legalisation of same-sex marriage and intensifying in the post-pandemic climate. We find that the heterogeneous Australian far-right has brought anti-gender politics to the forefront of their political projects in recent years, uniting against the common enemy of ‘gender ideology’. We suggest that the spectre of extreme right-wing violence for LGBTQIA+ communities is increasingly real in Australia. Concurrently, radical right parties such as Pauline Hanson's One Nation have sought to undermine LGBTQIA+ rights through discursive and legislative means. Taken together, we argue that the Australian manifestation of the transnational anti-gender movement has implications for the mainstreaming of anti-LGBTQIA+ hate in this country.