A growing network of foreign organisations are pouring hundreds of millions of euros into “culture war” groups campaigning to roll back LGBTQ+ rights across Europe, European lawmakers have warned.
In a resolution published earlier this month, the European Parliament raised the alarm about foreign interference in all democratic processes in Europe,pointing out that most of the foreign funding originates from Russia and the US.
This foreign interference, coupled with disinformation and numerous attacks perpetrated by malicious foreign actors, is predicted to increase in the lead-up to the European Parliament elections in 2024, becoming more sophisticated in nature.
MEPs flagged that at least 50 organisations now fund anti-gender activities — opposing what they call gender ideology.
“Europe is seeing a growing number of anti-gender movements, specifically targeting sexual and reproductive health, women’s rights and LGBTIQ+ people,” the EU parliamentary report read.
“Such movements proliferate disinformation in order to reverse progress in women’s rights and gender equality. These movements have been reported to receive millions of euros in foreign funding, either public or private, including from Russia and the US.”
Funding and modus operandi
The strategies employed by these foreign actors have evolved over time, due to increasing funding and intensifying disinformation campaigns, human rights observers have warned.
Members of the US far-right and the Russian Orthodox Church, two major players of the anti-gender movement, have joined forces to ramp up funding to Europe-based ultra-traditionalist actors with a specific focus on targeting LGBTQ+ rights, according to sources who agreed to speak to Euronews on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal.
Over the past decade, key Christian right organisations, usually funded by private individuals linked to far-right and libertarian causes in the US, and Russian oligarchs have established a network of agencies set up in human rights institutions across Europe to carry out anti-gender diplomacy and infiltrate positions of power in member states.
Other tactics include abusive lawsuits intended to suppress, intimidate and silence critics (SLAPPS), money and reputational laundering, physical harassment, sending paid fight squads to LGBTQ+ marches or drag stores, hacking journalists’ devices with the Pegasus software and using troll farms spreading disinformation against LGBTQ+ activists.
And the movement is gaining momentum with more organisations from other countries, including Turkey, Saudi Arabia and Vatican City, closing ranks in their anti-LGBTQ+ lobbying and funding.
Their usual targets include minorities in unstable countries where they can exploit polarisation to radicalise the political debate and fuel violence, sources said.
Undermining the case for EU membership
Georgia’s gay pride festival on 8 July is the latest LGBTQ+ event to have fallen victim to foreign interference.
A mob of up to 2,000 anti-LGBTQ+ protestersfrom the Russian-affiliated group Alt Info, stormed Tbilisi’s festival in an attack described by Pride’s director Mariam Kvaratskhelia as “pre-planned”.
“I definitely think this [disruption] was a pre-planned, coordinated action between the government and the radical groups … We think this operation was planned in order to sabotage the EU candidacy of Georgia,” she told Reuters.
Members of Alt-Info, an ultra-conservative TV broadcaster with close ties to the Georgian Orthodox Church, had already disrupted Tbilisi Pride in 2021. Since its foundation as a conservative media platform in 2019, the group has tried to expand its political influence by creating an alternative party to both the governing Georgian Dream and opposition United National Movement. Among its stated goals is pursuing closer relations with Russia.
The former Soviet republic’s path to EU candidacy has been slowed by deeply polarised politics and the excessive influence of vested interests in economic, political and public life, alongside its territorial dispute with Russia in the Abkhazia and South Ossetia regions.
And the cancellation of its Pride festival could deal yet another blow to its EU aspiration.
Roberta Metsola, the President of the European Parliament, condemned the “violent disruptions”, saying “anti-LGBTIQ rhetoric, disinformation and violence have no place in these debates”. The counter-protests represented a violation to the EU’s freedom of expression and right to peaceful assembly, the EU Ambassador for Gender & Diversity tweeted.
Divide and conquer
The same tension has broken out across Western Balkan countries where leaders have struggled to walk a fine identity and political line between anti-LGBTQ+ religious nationalist movements and pro-LGBTQ+ Europeanising public opinion.
While these countries generally have high levels of political and public support for joining the EU, their progress towards membership has stagnated over the past decade.
Religious nationalism has posed a significant challenge, as leaders from the Serbian Orthodox church, the Catholic church, and Islamic authorities have rallied behind their targeting of LGBTQ+ rights and formed coalitions with conservative political parties.
In recent years, anti-LGBTQ+ actions have turned more violent, with physical assaults by ultranationalist protesters on attendees of the Bosnia and Herzegovina Pride in March of this year, the Belgrade Pride in 2022 and the Zagreb Pride in 2021.
The controversy surrounding a veto that would have recognised same-sex unions in Serbia in 2021 is just another example of the growing conservative backlash against LGBTQ+ rights taking hold in Western Balkan countries.
‘The tip of the iceberg’
Yet, this trend is not unique to Western Balkan countries.
In 2021, the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (EPF) unearthed more than $707.2 million (€600 million) worth of anti-gender funding from the United States, the Russian Federation, and Europe, specifically targeting LGBTQ+ rights across Europe between 2009 and 2018.
The wide-ranging report, which examined 117 anti-gender funding actors active in Europe, insisted the findings were only the “tip of the iceberg” as half of them — 63 — had no existing financial data.
“Of course there are enormous data gaps that cannot be filled at the moment, so $700 million is really the tip of the iceberg of how big this anti-gender movement is,” said EPF’s secretary Neil Datta.
According to Evelyne Paradis, executive director of ILGA-Europe, the anti-gender movement’s efforts to further polarise public discourse is dragging pro-democracy governments into fuelling prejudice and hatred towards LGBTQ+ people.
“The practice of scapegoating LGBTQ+ people is starting to be instrumentalised by both the pro-democracy and the anti-democracy sides. If you make it a marker of how good you are, then you’re creating this divide,” she told Euronews.
“This [growing polarisation] is not helping what should be a healthier, calmer conversation. What’s happening at the moment is the complete opposite.”
Instead, Paradis said pro-democracy governments need to move forward with their progressive agenda and steer clear of the perverse effects of foreign-funded polarisation.
“We’re all in reaction mode and it’s very hard to resist and be in a pro-active mode. Governments need to pass through the anti-gender movement’s negative agenda and keep on pushing our positive agenda. That’s where the strategy of the opposition is working – it’s really pushing everybody in the reactive mode.”
Well said / written. It lays bare the hypocrisy of those desperately trying to create some kind of equality and outrage between the very real attempt to overturn a valid election along with other crimes done by trump with a rarely ever charged crime of failure to fully pay taxes which was paid after and a firearms form that is never prosecuted. All to protect Mr. trump while trying to smear President Biden using his son. Hugs
Compare the actions of the pride attendees and the Nazi thugs. The pride people were having fun, smiling, laughing, dancing, singing. The Nazis were screaming threats while brandishing weapons, scaring the kids and others attending the event. Which one was presenting what was good for children to see, angry face covered armed shouting men or dancing happy singing pride people? Also these thugs claimed that masks kept them from breathing when it was necessary due to a public health threat now wear them to hide their identity so they don’t get fired for what they are doing. Notice in one of the tweets, one of the men loaded a round in the chamber to threaten reporters on a public street. These are the thugs that DeathSantis hires as staff and refuses to denounce. These are the people that trump claimed were very good people on both sides. Hugs.
An armed Neo-Nazi group protested a Pride in the Park event in Watertown, Wisconsin, on Saturday afternoon that featured a drag story time and drag shows.
Video journalist Oliya Scootercaster took to Twitter on Saturday to document the protest and wrote, “BLOOD TRIBE group marching in Watertown Wisconsin protesting Pride in the park.” In her videos, one Neo-Nazi group member can be seen carrying a weapon.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), Blood Tribe is described as “a neo-Nazi group with semi-autonomous chapters in the United States and Canada. Blood Tribe promotes hardline white supremacist views and openly directs its vitriol at Jews, ‘non-whites’ and the LGBTQ+ community.”
We’re out here with @GAG_Wisconsin at the Watertown, WI “Pride in the Park” event. Lots of protesters showed up! The all ages drag show is about to start. We will not waver. We will let them know loud and clear that NONE OF THIS is for children!#GaysAgainstGroomerspic.twitter.com/pADfBMmMr7
— Gays Against Groomers (@againstgrmrs) July 29, 2023
Gays Against Groomers organized a protest of a "Pride in the Park" event in Watertown, Wisconsin. Armed neo nazis with AR-15's showed up. pic.twitter.com/Zte7HOpEca
VIDEO THREAD: Today, avowed Neo-Nazi group "Blood Tribe" rallied with rifles and swastika flags outside an LGBT "Pride in the Park" event in Watertown, Wisconsin.
"Us or the pedophiles!" they chanted at the crowd, which included children. "There will be blood, blood blood!"… pic.twitter.com/DBtntCGerG
2. One participant in the pride event confronted the Nazis, explaining that "It just makes me so happy that I get to wake up every day and just love who I want without fear of judgement or fucking Nazis apparently."
3. "Us or the pedophiles!" the Blood Tribe chanted as they marched around the Pride in the Park event.
A woman confronted them, and a rifle-wielding Nazi told her "I would say, young lady, that you would look a lot lovelier if you were wearing a proper dress." pic.twitter.com/jzJ8NJ9T42
Myself and 2 other press @ScooterCasterNY and @KristanTHarris followed the Neo-Nazi Blood Tribe group as they marched to their exit point somewhere else in Watertown.
"You better go away, I'm telling you man," one said.
6. As Blood Tribe tried to leave, they paused, apparently irritated at press behind them. One approached with an AK rifle that he chambered a round in moments earlier and asked if we were "trying to dox us."
"If you keep following me man -" he said before smacking his rifle.
Fortunately, Harrisburg’s Pride had no visible Nazis on Saturday. Just the usual Truly Religious…not there to heckle or incite, of course, just concerned about our souls. They’re just so fucking thoughty, bless their hearts.
P.S. Sometimes I listen to those right wing talkers on the radio (talk about a soul killing experience). The outrageous and inflammatory venom directed at Transfolks (and those who support them) is going to egg on someone to do violence and they know it.
They know it, they make money off it. And they will make money off of the result of their stochastic terrorism as will their MSM peers. They will make even more money as they squeal about how unfairly they are being portrayed and they cycle continues. Stay safe, my dear.
A New Jersey theater manager called the police on a mom who took her non-verbal autistic son to the bathroom, accusing him of being trans, saying “this is not a transgender bathroom.” Her son isn’t trans, rather, he needs her assistance to use the bathroom. This is one of many stories that demonstrate how anti-LGBTQ hate is so widespread it’s harming non-LGBTQ people too.
The candidate hires Nazi thugs. The Governor hires Nazi fascist thugs. Nazis and gang thug militia groups that try to force by violence their demand that others live as the right Nazi fascists tell them they must. So what does that mean. It means the governor and his supporters are Christian nationalist fascists. And think what that means as they work to gain control over the US government. Hugs
Senior aides to Ron DeSantis oversaw the campaign’s high-risk strategy of laundering incendiary videos produced by their staff through allied anonymous Twitter accounts, a set of internal campaign communications obtained by Semafor reveals. The videos include two that have created recurring distractions for his campaign in recent weeks: an anti-Trump video that featured a fascist symbol, and another that attacked Donald Trump for past comments supportive of LGBT rights.
The meme-filled videos emerged from a Signal channel called “War Room Creative Ideas,” screenshots of which were shared with Semafor and whose authenticity was confirmed by a second source familiar with the campaign. The chat in Signal, an encrypted messaging app, offers the first clear look into the “war room” that has defined the Florida governor’s candidacy, and is presided over by his high-profile and confrontational director of rapid response, Christina Pushaw.
The creator of the Nazi clip, Nate Hochman was fired. Hochman last year appeared in a Twitter Spaces event with Nazi Nick Fuentes, during which he gushed over Fuentes.
New with @ShelbyTalcott: Inside War Room Creative Ideas, the now-dead internal DeSantis chat group where meme videos got workshopped by campaign and pitched to "anons" who could tweet them. https://t.co/mYbvgTJR9o
— No Lie with Brian Tyler Cohen (@NoLieWithBTC) August 1, 2023
So turns out that the DeSantis campaign dishonestly scapegoated Nate Hochman to take the blame over those viral videos and fired him over it – Despite the fact that the videos were actually approved by senior DeSantis staff. What absolute scumbags. pic.twitter.com/3HKSPh412U
Actor and filmmaker Tyler Perry is hoping to find answers in the killing of Josiah “Jonty” Robinson, offering $100,000 to anyone with information that leads to a conviction.
Perry announced the reward Wednesday on Instagram after 24-year-old Robinson, an openly gay singer in Grenada, was found dead on a local beach last month. Perry, a writer, director and producer known for wholesome comedies featuring mostly Black casts, said his friend Yvette Noel-Schure was in tears when she told him about the killing.
“My soul ached as she shared that he was a young, gifted singer who was murdered because he was gay,” he wrote. “Yvette and I are offering a $100,000 dollar reward to anyone who brings forth information that leads to the conviction of the murderer.”
Tyler Perry likened Josiah “Jonty” Robinson’s death to that of Matthew Shepard in 1998.
Robinson’s body was reportedly discovered in the same area of Grenadian town Morne Rouge where he had performed songs the day prior.
Speaking to The New Today, a source close to the Royal Grenada Police Force said an autopsy concluded that Robinson was strangled and thrown into the ocean. The local outlet later reported that police had questioned several people without making a breakthrough in the case.
Elsewhere in his Instagram post, Perry reflected on how Robinson’s death echoed similar tragedies from recent years.
“My mind immediately went to … [Matthew] Shepard, and all the other victims of racist, homophobic, antisemitic, xenophobic, senseless violence,” he said, referring to a gay student at the University of Wyoming whose 1998 killing sparked calls for stronger protections against hate crimes.
“While Pride month is celebrated annually in metropolises such as New York … his approach to activism in the Caribbean as a member of the LBGTQ community – his voracious desire to live in his simple, beautiful truth – often became a cyclic matter of life or death,” she wrote.
Anyone with information is urged to contact the Royal Grenada Criminal Investigation Division at +1 (473) 440-3921.
The murders keep happening just for being gay. Tears… Here is a photo of 24 yr old Josiah https://www.huffpost.com/en…
NATIONAL HARBOR, MD – MARCH 6, 2014: Senator Mitch McConnell (R-KY) speaks at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).Photo: Shutterstock
“Under the Hitler regime…the most important thing that I learned…was that bigotry and hatred are not the most urgent problems. The most urgent, the most disgraceful, the most shameful, and the most tragic problem is silence.”-Joachim Prinz, Rabbi of Berlin, exiled in 1937 to the United States, from his speech August 28, 1963 in Washington, DC
“Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities.” –Voltaire
RELATED STORIES
Who will fight for those left behind? Why these LGBTQ+ activists won’t leave Florida
“If Escobar couldn’t kill me, neither will Ron Desantis.”
Shortly following their high school graduation in Southern California, two 18-year-old young men, best friends since childhood, drove to a casino just across the Nevada state line where they intended to play video games before returning home the next day.
After engaging in the games for a while, one of the friends, Jeremy Strohmeyer, walked toward the restrooms. Seeing that he entered the women’s room, the other young man, David Cash, walked in to see what Jeremy was doing. He noticed that Jeremy was playfully throwing wadded paper towels at a young black girl, who seemed at first to have enjoyed the attention.
But then the scene turned violent. Strohmeyer grabbed 7-year-old Sherrice Iverson, placed his hand over her mouth, and spirited her into a toilet stall as Cash watched by the sinks. He entered an adjacent stall and mounted the toilet edge allowing him to peer down as he saw Jeremy continuing to muffle the girl’s screams and warning Sherrice to keep quiet or he would kill her.
Not wanting to get involved, Cash returned to playing video games. He did not attempt to stop his friend from attacking the young girl. He did not seek help or call law enforcement officials. He calmly played games and waited the 20 minutes it took for Jeremy to return. David asked Jeremy what had happened.
“I killed her,” Jeremy asserted with a certain serenity in his tone on that summer evening in 1997. Soon thereafter, the two friends coolly entered nearby casinos where they enjoyed mechanical rides and continued to play video games until it was time for them to return home.
With the assistance of the video security system implanted at the casino, Strohmeyer was eventually caught, tried, and convicted to life imprisonment for rape and murder. Cash, on the other hand, was never indicted because inaction was not a crime in Nevada at the time.
In reaction to the case and the lack of charges against Cash, Richard Perkins, Speaker of the Nevada Assembly, sponsored the Sherrice Iverson bill requiring Nevadans to notify law enforcement if they witness violent acts committed against a child. The law took effect in 1999, and a similar measure passed in California one year later.
Asked on a 1999 CBS 60 Minutes segment, The Bad Samaritan, whether if given a chance, he would do things differently, Cash said, “I don’t feel there is much I could have done differently.” Asked a similar question during an interview on a Los Angeles radio station, Cash gave a similar reply and added: “How much am I supposed to sit down and cry about this?” he asked. “The simple fact remains that I did not know this little girl. I do not know starving children in Panama. I do not know people dying of disease in Egypt.”
The Long Beach Press-Telegram quoted Cash as saying that he wanted to sell his story to the media. One movie company offered him $21,000. He added. “I’m no idiot,” he declared. “I’ll (expletive) get my money out of this.”
In not taking action to intervene on behalf of Sherrice Iverson, David Cash colluded in her death. “Enabler” is the term given to those who fail to act to help abusers. “Passive bystander” or “bad Samaritan” is the name for people who are conscious of bad actions developing around them but fail to intervene.
Though I have studied the Holocaust and other genocides, until I discovered this case, I always had the gnawing and seemingly unanswerable question pulling at me, “How could these incidents have taken place throughout the ages”?
David Cash taught me that mass murders happen on the macro level when people on the individual and collective levels let them happen, when witnesses– so-called “bystanders” – do little or nothing to intervene. When people either allow their fear or reluctance to “get involved” and supersede their empathy.
David Cash refused to see, hear, and stand up to do the right thing in the face of evil around him.
For the past eight years, the not see Republican Party has continually refused to see, hear, and stand up to the would-be authoritarian dictator, Donald J. Trump. By burying their heads in the political sand, they have permitted Trump to grab, assault, and ravage our governmental institutions physically and figuratively.
I now fully understand the process in the rise and takeover of the Nazi Party in Germany in the 1920s and 1930s.
Staying silent
Empathy, that special and majestic human quality, has always been a vital life force of our humanity. As we understand in psychology, unless there is developmental delay, infants demonstrate the rudimentary beginnings of empathy whenever they recognize that another is upset and then show signs of being upset themselves. Very early in their lives, infants develop the capacity to crawl in the diapers of others even though their own diapers don’t need changing.
Though empathy is a part of the human condition, through the process of socialization, others often teach us to inhibit our empathetic natures with messages like “Don’t cry,” “You’re too sensitive,” “Mind your own business,” “It’s not your concern.” We learn the stereotypes of the individuals and groups our society has “minoritized” and “othered.” We learn who to scapegoat for the problems within our neighborhoods, states, nations, and world.
Through it all, that precious life-affirming flame of empathy can wither and flicker. For some, it dies entirely. And as the blaze recedes, the bullies, the demagogues, and the tyrants take over by filling the void where our humanity once prevailed. And then we have lost something very precious.
David Cash represents the termination of empathy on the individual micro level, resulting not only in the possibly preventable rape and murder of a young girl, but the death of his own soul. And when the demise of empathy comes to people who are around powerful leaders and their willing subjects, the consequences, on the macro level, become exponentially deeper, more toxic, and more tragic.
Jeremy Strohmeyer and Donald Trump were cast from the same mold with their narcissistic, sociopathic personalities. Cash comes from the same mold as many current members of the Republican Party in that they lack sufficient empathy, which overrides their actions.
For example, Trump knew early of the deadly potential of the Coronavirus, but he decided to lie to the public while failing to mobilize any discernible national policies and actions due to concerns for stock markets over the health and safety of the people. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
Trump has referred to our military personnel as “suckers” and “losers” for joining the military, for being captured, for dying, and for receiving meager financial compensation. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
Earlier, he carelessly blamed the mayor of London for being incompetent after a terrorist attack on his city. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
He accused the mayor of San Juan, Puerto Rico of playing politics and being ungrateful, and the Puerto Rican people of being lazy and expecting everything to be done for them on their “bankrupt” island after a “500-year” storm virtually shut them down and people clung desperately to life. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
He referred to white nationalist neo-Nazi terrorists in Charlottesville, Virginia, who showed up for a so-called “Unite the Right” rally, as well as the counter-demonstrators, as “Good people, on both sides.” Regarding his reference to the white nationalists, many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
He mocked a disabled reporter, took away the rights of trans students to use bathrooms most closely aligning with their gender identities, demonized Latinx people, Muslims, and women, ridiculed Gold Star parents who sacrificed so much while Donald Trump sat on his gold-plated toilet and attempted to take away affordable health insurance from an estimated 20 million low-income people. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
And he behaved as if the series of package bombs sent through the mail to leading Democratic politicians and activists was nothing more than an inconvenience during the closing days of the midterm election season. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
Trump separated young children from their refugee parents and placed them in cages as if they were feral animals. Many Republican leaders failed to speak up.
And he risked the very lives of members of Congress and his own Vice President on January 6, 2021, after he lost over 60 court cases in his attempts to circumvent the results of a fair election. While some Republican leaders harshly criticized Trump at the time, they ultimately reversed themselves and got on their knees to kiss his ring.
Empathy can save the world
Quite frankly, I find few differences between the attitudes and actions of Jeremy Strohmeyer on the micro level and Donald J. Trump on the macro level.
I find few differences between the attitudes and inactions of David Cash and the majority of the current Republican Party in their refusal to stand up and act in the best interests of a young girl, in Cash’s case, and in service to the fragile democratic experiment we know as the United States of America in the case of the Republican Party.
Though the Cashes and Republicans are more numerous than we can even imagine, empathy has always been an antidote to the poison of inaction, prejudice, discrimination, stereotyping, and scapegoating, and to bullies and demagogues who take power and control.
Empathy is the life force of our humanness, and ultimately it is the key to our recovery during the current crisis in our country.
I often wonder how Trump’s Republican bad Samaritan enablers can sleep at night and get back up in the morning still willing to degrade and prostrate themselves by attacking our democratic institutions and seriously dismantling our country’s standing in the world.
A recent poll taken by The Hillfound that 80% of registered Republicans believe that if elected as the next President of the United States in 2024, Trump should be able to serve even if he is convicted of multiple felony charges, including in the case of willingly and unconstitutionally holding onto classified documents. Even in the case of the documents, many Republican leaders either failed to speak up or they are speaking up in his defense.
Each time anyone enables an abusive action or actor, they keep perpetrators and themselves further from the truth and from help, and they diminish themselves and their integrity more than just a bit.
I have been stuck time and time again on the post-factual campaign, transition, presidency, and now post-presidency of Donald J. Trump. I get stuck on the lies, the verifiable lies, big and small that he spreads and on his direct attacks on our democratic institutions, like the entire judicial system, the House of Representatives, the Senate, the State Department, state legislatures and secretaries of state who would not overturn President Joe Biden’s victory.
Even more troubling, however, are Trump’s enablers who spin the facts by turning themselves into virtual pretzels in defense of Trump’s attempts – to paraphrase Voltaire – to make us believe his absurdities he uses to give himself permission to commit possible atrocities.
His sustained and vicious attacks on what he refers to as the “dishonest and corrupt” media imperil our very freedom of the press as guaranteed by the First Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. Fortunately, many of the outlets within the Fourth Estate, while making some mistakes, fact-check themselves and our politicians, including Trump, and by so doing, exposes his lies for what they are.
