A Little Glossary of Coded Intolerance

While following this year’s presidential campaign and many rather tiresome pre-election debates, my attention was caught by a very well-mannered gentleman who assured us very zealously that he respects, by golly, the rights and equality of same-sex persons, and only opposes “LGBT ideology.” What the hell this is supposed to be, he did not explain in detail, but as far as one could understand, what irritates him is the doctrine according to which the abstract and theoretical equality of same-sex persons, which the likable gentleman accepts in principle in full, should also be confirmed in law and implemented in practice. Bad joke aside, “LGBT ideology” is a frequently used, but not the only, phrase with which individuals, especially in politics, try to disguise and at the same time justify and enforce their prejudices. To make reading between the lines easier, I have prepared a little glossary of coded intolerance.

LGBT ideology

When the Russian Duma adopted a law banning “homosexual propaganda” on June 11, 2013, only one Russian parliamentarian abstained, Ilya Ponomarev. Incidentally, when a year later he was the only member of the Duma to vote against the annexation of Crimea, he left for Ukraine, where he joined the Ukrainian territorial defense right at the start of the Russian aggression. The law banning homosexual propaganda was a workaround by which Putin’s regime tried to get around a formal prohibition of discrimination against LGBT persons, which would have contradicted the Russian Federation’s membership of the Council of Europe. It was also a milestone in Russia’s membership of the organization. Whereas until then Russian politicians had responded to all criticism of disrespect for human rights and democratic principles in a soothing manner, along the lines of “no problem, it’s a misunderstanding, we’ll fix everything, you don’t have enough information,” on the rights of same-sex persons they showed openly and without disguise for the first time that they did not share European democratic values. Since recriminalizing homosexuality would have too obviously violated the legal standards to which Russia had committed, the law “merely” banned any discourse that would present homosexuality to children as a normal human circumstance and a human right. From that moment, same-sex persons were treated as second-class citizens, as perverts threatening the purity of the Russian nation. The Russian approach of stigmatization and discrimination soon found imitators in other European countries. In the name of fighting “homosexual propaganda” and “LGBT ideology,” a law on the Russian model was adopted in Hungary, and quite a few towns in Poland declared themselves “gay-free” zones, in which there are no homosexuals, or they are so frightened that they don’t dare go out among people. According to the opponents of “LGBT ideology,” LGBT individuals are in principle equal citizens with all rights, but because of their unnatural perversion it is necessary to protect children from them and prevent LGBT persons from exercising their abstract equality in practice. To justify and disguise discrimination based on sexual orientation and identity, personal characteristics are presented as a deliberate choice of an unacceptable, perverse and socially harmful ideological orientation. The moment politics labels same-sex orientation an ideology harmful to children, this personal characteristic is classified as a deviant threat, and same-sex persons become, in the eyes of the public, predators endangering the safety of children and the moral purity of society.

Gender ideology

The Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence was opened for signature on April 7, 2011, in Istanbul, at the end of the Turkish chairmanship of the Committee of Ministers of the Council of Europe. The first to proudly sign it was the then Turkish foreign minister. A decade later, Turkey left the convention by decree of President Erdoğan. The reason? The convention, and above all “gender ideology,” supposedly threatened traditional family values. Turkey was not alone in rejecting the Istanbul Convention. Quite a few countries have not signed it, and in many countries that have acceded to it, conservative and especially far-right forces are doing their utmost to convince the public that the Istanbul Convention is paving the way to the end of human civilization and humanity in general. What is it really about? Since violence against women is largely structural in nature, the problem cannot be solved without confronting the wider questions of gender inequality. This inequality is, of course, not a consequence of biological differences between the sexes but above all of social constructs, prejudices, traditions and stereotypes that put women in a subordinate position. Article 3 of the Istanbul Convention therefore provides that, in the convention, “gender” means the socially constructed roles, behaviors, activities and attributes that a given society considers appropriate for women or for men. And the first paragraph of Article 12 obliges the parties to take “the necessary measures to promote changes in the social and cultural patterns of behavior of women and men with a view to eradicating prejudices, customs, traditions and all other practices which are based on the idea of the inferiority of women or on stereotyped roles for women and men.” And this is what has most enraged the supporters of “traditional values,” among which many of them evidently also count the inferiority of women.

Critical race theory

In July this year, the Anti-Woke law, or the law against critical race theory, came into force in the US state of Florida. Unlike “LGBT ideology,” which is an entirely invented construct and conspiracy theory, critical race theory (like gender theory, but not “gender ideology”) is an established sociological discipline that studies how structural racism in the United States has influenced American legislation and still influences the lives of non-white citizens today. The credit for the law protecting young people from the danger of critical race theory goes to Florida’s far-right Republican governor Ron DeSantis, who is paving the way for his presidential ambitions with his crusade against “political correctness.” On signing the law, he declared that critical race theory causes discrimination and humiliates white pupils, who feel inferior and ashamed because of teaching about structural racism. He did not talk about whether systemic racism against non-white citizens exists in the US; he only stressed that mentioning such indecencies embarrasses and disadvantages members of the white majority. Slovenia’s son-in-law Donald Trump, whom DeSantis is breathing down the neck of, could of course not stay quiet and called teaching about racism and respect for diversity in society a “toxic danger.”

Soros, Soros hirelings

George Soros, the American businessman and philanthropist, is often used as a universal means of disqualifying anyone whom populism identifies as an obstacle to taking power. In far-right discourse, Soros hints at the existence of conspiratorial international networks that run the world from behind the scenes at the expense and to the detriment of honest citizens. It is (poorly) coded promotion of the conspiracies, stereotypes, caricatures, patterns and discourses of traditional European antisemitism. Invoking Soros is also a very popular means of disqualifying and stigmatizing civil society. The matter is not innocent. Antisemitism is very much present in Europe—as many as a quarter of Europeans believe that Jews have too much influence in the business and financial world. If it helps, this prejudice is also often expressed through caricatures of puppet masters controlling social and political events from behind the scenes.

Cultural Marxism

What this is all about was described better than I could by the former prime minister in an interview with the Hungarian weekly Mandiner in December 2020. Allow me to quote him. “The Communist Manifesto of the 19th century states that to create a new world, that is, communism, the nation, the family, private property, private education and religion must be dismantled. Paradoxically, despite enormous sacrifices and suffering, communism did not achieve this goal through violence and dictatorship. That is why the same goals are being pursued in a different way. Through the mass media, universities, the culture industry, multinational institutions, mass migration, imposed multiculturalism and the activities of some political parties. Something is happening that is quite cleverly hidden, but anyone who knows history and political concepts can see the direction in which it is all developing. That is why it must be resisted. And we are doing that. By protecting and supporting the family, valuing our own nation and other nations, protecting the right to private property and private initiative, and safeguarding freedom of religion. By knowing what we are and wanting to be that.” Anders Breivik also devoted a great deal of attention in his manifesto to the importance of the fight against cultural Marxism.

That will do for now. The list above is, of course, not complete. Intolerance in our society is on the rise, and amid the lack of response, and also in the name of the doctrine of “respecting absolutely all different opinions” advocated by the departing standard-bearer from the presidential palace, it is becoming ever more everyday and normal. But so that no one gets their knickers in a twist, as the charming English idiom has it, I allow that some people use prejudice and hatred wrapped in platitudes and conspiracy theories out of ignorance, so this glossary is meant for them too. May it help them in the future to avoid the risk of expressing—all right, perhaps unintentionally—ideas through their discourse that they should be damned ashamed of.