Excerpt from Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American, Dec. 17th, 2023
Autocrats like Orbán and Putin—and budding autocrats like Trump—are building a global movement by fighting back against the expansion of rights to women, minorities, and LGBTQ+ people.
Russian leaders have been cracking down on LGBTQ+ rights for a decade with the help of the Russian Orthodox Church, claiming that they are protecting “traditional values.” This vision of heteronormativity rewrites the real history of human sexuality, but it is powerful in this moment. Orbán insists that immigrants ruin the purity of a country, and has undermined women’s rights.
Riccardi-Swartz explains that this rhetoric appeals to those in far-right movements around the world. Those people defined as anti-family—LGBTQ+ people and women who challenged patriarchy—seemed to be undermining society. Now, as dictators like Putin and Orbán promise to take away LGBTQ+ rights, hurt immigrants, and return power to white men, they seem to many to be protecting traditional society.
Who wants any part of that?