As a historian, I am perpetually compelled to examine the seismic shifts in societal narratives, especially when they coalesce around concepts deemed controversial, often concealing a struggle for power and control. My previous discourse explored the contested history of American Jewish critiques of Zionism, demonstrating how perceived consensus can mask deeper, long-standing dissent. Today, I turn my lens to another profoundly contentious terrain: how “gender” has become a central phantasm for emerging authoritarian regimes and fascist formations globally, enabling the demonization of equality struggles, the fueling of aggressive nationalism, and the subjugation of millions.
At the heart of this contemporary struggle is the deliberate construction of “gender” as an existential threat. This is not merely a linguistic or academic debate; it is a calculated political maneuver to consolidate power by leveraging and displacing deep-seated societal anxieties. For authoritarian movements, “gender” is no longer a mundane term to be checked on a form but a “phantasm with destructive powers,” a terrifying monolith that collects and escalates a “multitudes of modern panics”.
The Phantasm of Gender: A Nexus for Displaced Fears
The fear surrounding “gender” is presented in stark, apocalyptic terms. It is likened to a “threat to national security,” a danger to “civilization and to ‘man’ itself”. Proponents of the anti-gender movement, including figures like Pope Francis, have compared “gender theory” to “nuclear arms,” “genetic manipulation,” and even “Nazism” or “Hitler Youth,” explicitly stating it “does not recognize the order of creation”. This rhetorical strategy imbues “gender” with “enormous destructive power,” portraying it as a “diabolical” force of “annihilation pitted against God’s creative powers”.
This seemingly incoherent amalgamation of fears — from pedophilia and “grooming” to left-wing indoctrination and totalitarianism — is precisely what gives the “gender” phantasm its potency. It works by condensing a wide range of anxieties, no matter how contradictory, into a single, identifiable enemy. This “condensation” and “displacement” prevent a clear understanding of the actual sources of societal turmoil, such as “climate disaster, forced migration, lives imperiled and lost in war,” “neoliberal economies that are depriving people of basic social services,” or “systemic racism”. Instead of confronting these complex realities, people are incited to identify “gender” as the “true cause of their feelings of anxiety and trepidation about the world”.
Operating in Tandem: “Critical Race Theory” and Xenophobic Panics
The “gender” phantasm rarely operates in isolation. It is consistently linked with other fabricated threats, most notably “critical race theory” (CRT) and xenophobic anxieties about migration. These seemingly disparate concerns are woven into a single narrative of internal and external threats to the “purity” and “traditional” values of the nation.
The “anti–critical race theory” campaign, for instance, has displayed “remarkable energy and success in targeting classroom discussions of race and sex,” often labeling such instruction as “left-wing indoctrination”. Like “gender,” CRT is treated as an “abbreviation” and “phantasmatically invested with a destructive power”. It is presented as “dangerous, foreign, and disgusting,” and its opponents exploit this fear to “dissuade citizens from joining potentially subversive social or political movements”. The aim is to eliminate “any scholarly research revealing flaws in national myths, any form of education that clearly reveals national guilt, any suggestion that diversity and plurality might be beneficial to society”. This anti-intellectual stance rejects critical thinking and open debate, instead imposing a “dogma” that serves authoritarian ends.
Simultaneously, the “gender” phantasm intertwines with xenophobic panics about migration. Fears of “undeserving minorities infiltrat[ing] the country and then multiply[ing] until they become numerically dominant” are central to fascist ideology, emphasizing “strict gender roles” to maintain the “numerical advantage of the dominant group”. Political leaders, like Hungary’s Viktor Orbán and Italy’s Giorgia Meloni, explicitly connect the “danger of migrants” with “gender ideology,” portraying both as threats to the “natural” and ethnically “pure” family and nation. Meloni, for example, directly linked “ideología del gender” with “unwanted and abusive migrant[s]” and even “Jewish finance,” highlighting how these figures are bundled together into a conspiratorial logic that stokes fear and demonizes those perceived as “others”. This rhetoric creates a “dangerous ‘them'” against whom the nation must be defined and unified.
Demonizing Equality and Fueling Aggressive Nationalism
The ultimate goal of this phantasmatic construction is to demonize struggles for equality and fuel aggressive nationalism. The defense of “strict gender roles” and “traditional heterosexual relationships” by contemporary fascist movements is “inherently anti-democratic,” in direct “tension with the democratic values of equality and freedom”. The politics of “sexual anxiety” serves as a powerful means to “attack and undermine the ideals of liberal democracy without being seen as explicitly so doing”. By presenting freedom of gender identity, sexual preference, or reproductive choice as a threat, these movements “impugn the liberal ideal of freedom” and “undermine equality”.
This process invariably leads to the “rights-stripping” of targeted groups. Anti-gender movements actively work to “eradicate reproductive justice, the rights of women, the rights of trans and non-binary people, gay and lesbian freedoms, and all efforts to achieve gender and sexual equality and justice”. Laws denying gender-affirming care for minors, restricting abortion, or forcing schools to “out” LGBTQ+ students are concrete examples of this agenda. These actions are justified by portraying women seeking abortions as “murderers” or teachers discussing gender as “groomers”. This “moral alibi” allows for “moral sadism” to flourish, enabling the “destruction” of rights and lives in the name of “saving the children”.
Aggressive nationalism is fostered through the invocation of a “pure mythic past tragically destroyed,” where an “extreme version of the patriarchal family reigns supreme” and the nation was glorious. This imagined history, regardless of its factual basis, provides a “proof to support the imposition of hierarchy in the present”. Critiquing “gender” becomes a way to “preserve the spiritual identity and unity of the Russian nation” or to protect “Europe’s white legacy” from “race-mixing”. This “nationalism in the service of domination” repudiates liberal democratic ideals, aiming to maintain or gain a position at the top of a “hierarchy of power and status”.
Vulnerability to Subjugation
The consequences of this “phantasmatic scene” are devastating. By casting these groups—women, LGBTQIA+ people, racial and ethnic minorities—as “deviant” or “criminal,” authoritarian regimes and fascist formations justify “inhumane treatment, from repression of freedom, mass imprisonment, and expulsion to, in extreme cases, mass extermination”. The consistent targeting of trans and queer youth for regulation, the criminalization of gender variation, and the denial of gender-affirming care lead to “devastating consequences, such as mass violence and suicide”. As the sources reveal, transgender people disproportionately experience poverty, discrimination, homelessness, harassment, and violence.
The “expansion and prioritization of the state’s interest” in issues like reproductive freedom and sex assignment is a direct manifestation of “emerging authoritarianism”. The state “enlarged its power and domain of interest, restricting bodily autonomy and basic freedoms”. This process “rationalize[s] the destruction of lives and livelihoods”. By fostering a sense of “aggrieved victimhood among the majority population,” and directing it at a scapegoated group, fascist politics justifies the “punish[ment] that group”. It creates a society where citizens are divided into “lawful by nature” (the chosen nation) and “inherently lawless” (the other), making those who deviate from traditional norms “in their very existence violations of law and order”. This leaves millions vulnerable to systematic subjugation, as their basic rights and even their very existence are annulled.
In understanding how “gender” has been transfigured into a terrifying phantasm, we discern a powerful tactic of contemporary authoritarianism. This strategy, working in concert with attacks on critical race theory and xenophobic narratives, reveals a concerted effort to dismantle democracy by exploiting fear, suppressing freedom, and re-establishing hierarchies rooted in a mythic past. Recognizing this intricate web of manufactured anxieties and their real-world consequences is an urgent prerequisite for challenging these forces and safeguarding the collective pursuit of equality and freedom.