‘Fight pandemics with protective masks or gender?’ Emerging collective identities and anti-gender movements on Twitter during the COVID-19 crisis in Sweden

Abstract

The focus of this article is the formation of collective identities and mobilization of grassroots anti-gender movement in Sweden in connection to the intensification of activities on Twitter during the initial period of the COVID-19 pandemic in spring 2020. This loosely connected network understands itself as being outside of what is described as a dominant gender order in Sweden, where feminists, gender perspectives and work for LGBTQ-rights supposedly undermine the power of the state and its ability to protect the people during the pandemic. The network is also against Islam. The network does not necessarily have an ambition to come together and organize manifestations. Instead, an imagined collective identity has been formed through an interpellation of the state to implement the “core tasks” and not be governed by feminists. A political will is articulated, which threatens the centrality of equality and social justice for democracies. We found the performativity of digital technology to be of importance for how these network and identities come into being. Crisis periods produce a context of intensification of affects and emotions that, supposedly, have been there for a long time and mobilizes desire for an authoritarian state.