The European extreme right puts feminism in the target of Twitter

FEMINISMO TWITTER

Barcelona (Spain), Feb 20 (EFE).- The anti-feminist and anti-LGTBI discourse has been targeted on social networks by the extreme European right, a cascade of hatred that gives popularity to these parties and from which they do not criminal consequences are usually derived, concludes a European study coordinated by the Autonomous University of Barcelona (UAB).

In an interview with EFE, the researcher and professor of Law at the UAB Noelia Igareda explains that in the last two years her team has analyzed anti-gender hate speech and messages on Twitter and Facebook by members of far-right parties in Spain. , Italy, Hungary, Germany and Sweden, as well as “related” journalists or youtubers.

One of the first politicians to denounce the hate in networks that she suffered because of her gender was the Scottish Prime Minister Nicola Sturgeon, who has been receiving discrediting messages and threats of rape for years and has demanded that “the abuse of women in networks be recognized ”.

“The anti-feminist discourse is a common axis of all, messages against women who are engaged in politics or call themselves feminists and messages questioning the very existence of gender violence,” says Igareda.

Remember that for years organizations like Amnesty International have been denouncing the “generalized and almost naturalized” hatred and insult against women in a much higher proportion than towards Twitter or Facebook accounts under a male name.

The UAB has studied the messages of politicians and sympathizers from parties such as the “Salvini Premier League” and “Fratelli d’Italia”, those of Alternative for Germany (Afd) and the Hungarian Fidesz of the Government of Víktor Orbán, as well as, in the Spanish case, to several Vox deputies, in addition to related accounts.

Above all, messages with anti-gender hate speech have been found that have been classified, due to their content, as sexist or anti-feminist messages, or anti-LGTBIQ or homophobic messages, and have also been classified, in this case, by their intensity, in hate speech in the strict sense or only potential.

In most cases, it turns out that the public representatives of these parties or similar people with a large number of followers limit themselves to writing messages from the latter group, more ambiguous messages, with irony, mockery or even “memes”.

“In this way they put female or feminist or LGBTI politics in the trigger of their followers, who are the ones who do write hate crimes more strictly,” explains the researcher from the UAB group Antígona.

ANTI-FEMINIST AND ANTI-LGTBI HATE, COMMON AREAS

Asked why anti-feminist hatred is the common axis of the conversation on networks of the European extreme right, the researcher reflects that “the discourse of gender in the broad sense is going to question a certain natural order of the classical family, heterosexual, as a social and labor organization”.

“Feminism and the LGTBI and gender discourse is an enemy of the values ​​that they advocate, of the homeland, the family, the race, the nation, that ideal society that they defend, and that is why they ridicule it, delegitimize it,” he points out.

Igareda highlights the “intense use” of social networks by these parties, knowing that these messages “are extremely attractive to many young people, who get information on YouTube and Tik Tok instead of the traditional press, and to those who arrive with groundbreaking speeches plain language”.

The study is part of the European project GENHA “Hate speech, gender, social networks and political parties” and the University of Bologna (Italy), the Central European University (CEU) of Hungary, the University of Vienna (Austria) and the University of Göteborg (Sweden).

Lara Malvesi

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