Progressivist gender-based activism as a means of social antagonism in Hungary through two case studies

Abstract

The endorsing of ‘progressive’ issues is embedded in the imaginary of the East-West slope. It is especially issues defined more in terms of recognition than redistribution and framed in terms of individual tolerance that have become emphatic signifiers of ‘progress’, ‘Western’/‘European’ values, and thus the civilizational and moral hierarchy of the East-West slope. Aligning oneself with these issues (such as LGBT rights, liberal anti-racism, liberal feminism) on the periphery of Europe is a means of distinguishing oneself against the rest of the ‘backward’ country or region. As a strategy of raising one’s social status it is a tool of social antagonism. We look at two case studies from Hungary to analyse how progressivist narratives are enmeshed in self-colonization. We conduct discourse analysis to examine how self-appointed advocates activate the West-East hierarchy as they claim to morally elevate society, and how this progressivist narrative feeds a populist mobilization that increasingly uses ‘gender’ as a symbol for corrupting foreign forces. We argue that representing social issues such as women’s disadvantages as a matter of tolerance rather than as a deep-seated, structural, material issue serves as a mutual legitimating mechanism for the progressivist actors who accomplish it and the region’s position in the global world order.