In countries across Europe, Pride events celebrating LGBTQ visibility face threats of violence. This, warns Sabine Volk, reveals the transnationalisation of far-right activism and the mainstreaming of queer-hostile discourse. Democratic states, she says, are failing to protect marginalised communities
In August 2024, participants at a Pride event in the eastern German town of Bautzen faced massive threats and a major backlash against their public celebration of equality, inclusion, and visibility. Several hundred far-right counter-protesters marched under the motto 'Against gender ideology and identity confusion'. They displayed anti-constitutional symbols and burned the rainbow flag. In response, police presence at the event was dramatically increased. Organisers were even forced to cancel parts of the celebrations because of security concerns.
Far-right threats and Pride counter-marches have strongly increased in Germany over the past couple of years. Across Europe, too, Pride marches are becoming securitised events. Organisers operate under threat of queer-hostile intimidation, harassment, and even physical violence. Far-right activists, neo-Nazis, and other like-minded groups have marched against gender equality and diversity in Finland, Portugal, and Spain. In some contexts, notably but not only in Hungary's authoritarian Viktor Orbán-led regime, state authorities officially banned Pride events.
These physical and symbolic attacks on Pride events are not isolated incidents. Rather, they reveal broader transformations in European and global politics: the transnationalisation of the far right, the mainstreaming of anti-feminist and especially trans-hostile discourse, and the shrinking democratic space available to marginalised groups such as LGBTQ people.
A key turning point of far-right mobilisation patterns may have come in July 2019. That's when Białystok, a city in eastern Poland, held its first Pride march. The event was met by violent far-right counter-protesters, including football hooligans and nationalist groups. Around 1,000 participants were attacked with bottles, stones and fireworks. A strong police presence tried to separate Pride and counter-Pride events.
At the time, Białystok seemed an exceptional case, tied to Poland’s national anti-LGBTQ campaign and the authoritarian PiS government’s notorious ‘LGBT-free zones’. In other local and national contexts, the far right was then focusing on racist and anti-immigrant protest activities. But in hindsight, the event anticipated a broader European pattern.
Far-right actors increasingly frame LGBTQ visibility as a threat to Christian heritage, European culture, and children's safety
Across the continent, far-right actors have increasingly framed LGBTQ visibility as a threat to alleged national values. They claim it threatens Christian heritage, European culture, and the physical and mental safety of children and, occasionally, (cis-gender) women. Pride events have become symbolic battlegrounds in a wider cultural and political conflict.
Central to this development is the rise of what scholars call ‘anti-gender campaigns’ or, more generally, anti-feminism. The term 'anti-gender' refers here to the patriarchal politics opposing the feminist movement and its core claims, the expansion of LGBTQ rights, and sex education. In particular, the anti-gender movement opposes transgender rights under the broader label of resisting so-called ‘woke gender ideology’.
Clearly, the language of the anti-gender movement has become effective at building transnational alliances across Europe. Indeed, while European far-right parties and movements often differ in their national histories and policy priorities, opposition to an alleged gender ideology provides them with common propagandistic frames and conspiratorial disinformation narratives that travel easily across national borders and linguistic boundaries.
These movements borrow heavily from one another: Narratives circulate through social media networks, activist organisations, and transnational conferences. Across different countries, protest tactics, slogans and talking points increasingly resemble each other. What emerges is not simply a collection of national backlashes, but shared European far-right protest repertoires.
In addition to the transnationalisation aspect, anti-gender politics plays another important role. It helps mainstream, normalise, and legitimise anti-democratic and illiberal ideas through broad protest alliances and discourse coalitions.
In fact, far-right counter-mobilisations against queer visibility typically bring together diverse protest coalitions that can include conservative religious organisations, right-wing populist parties, online influencers, ‘parental rights’ groups, football hooligans, and neo-fascist activists. These actors may disagree on other political issues, but anti-gender politics creates temporary political unity around a shared constructed threat.
Anti-gender discourse once largely confined to extremist margins is now entering mainstream public debate through ‘softer’ language
This has important consequences for democratic politics. Discourses once largely confined to extremist margins increasingly enter mainstream public debate through seemingly ‘softer’ language. Activists focus on the protection of children, defence of cis-gender women’s spaces like public bathrooms, and opposition to a weakly defined ‘woke ideology’. In this way, anti-gender politics functions as a ‘bridge’ between institutional conservatism and more extreme forms of far-right mobilisation.
The result is not only the increasing normalisation of queer-hostile and anti-trans rhetoric, but the indirect legitimisation of actors who previously remained politically marginal.
Contemporary Pride events themselves reveal the massive democratic implications of this process. Across Europe, Pride organisers must increasingly rely on an intricate mix of police protection, private security, planned or spontaneous route changes and risk assessments simply to hold safe Pride events. In some cases, fears of violence force organisers to scale back or cancel events altogether.
Pride organisers rely on police protection, private security, planned or spontaneous route changes and risk assessments simply to hold Pride events safely
This growing securitisation matters: Pride marches are fundamentally about public visibility, empowerment, solidarity, and the democratic participation of marginalised groups. When extraordinary security measures condition participation in public life and claims to the public space, this weakens democratic equality. Concerns over security are often worse in rural areas with smaller queer communities and stronger far-right presence.
The issue at stake is therefore not only LGBTQ rights. It is who can safely appear in public, whose political participation the democratic state protects, and which groups it pushes (back) into invisibility through intimidation. The growing far-right targeting of Pride events across Europe should concern far more than LGBTQ communities alone. It constitutes a threat to all pro-democratic and feminist forces, including political parties, state institutions, and civil society.
Pride season 2026 is a crucial opportunity for European democracies to step up and show that they can offer robust, effective protection for public celebrations of queer life and feminist achievements.
