The populist far right and the intersection of anti-immigration and antifeminist agendas: the Portuguese case

Abstract

This article argues that far right antifeminist and gendered narratives are not separate from their ethnonationalist/racist purposes; in fact, they are at their core and cannot be analyzed independently. It reflects on the intersections of antifeminist and anti-immigration agendas in the Portuguese far right by critically analyzing PNR/Ergue-te’s and Chega’s discursive positions on immigration, feminism, and gender equality, and initiates a theoretical dialogue between feminist postcolonial peace and security studies and populist far-right studies. This shows how these political actors convey ethnonationalist, racist and anti-multiculturalist messages by co-opting women’s rights agendas (femonationalism), whilst resisting and opposing feminism. Femonationalism, ostensibly disruptive of their own conservative ideology, is thus re-oriented to attack feminism – accused of failing the goal of serving all women and of being co-opted by ‘gender ideology’. It concludes that the mobilization of gendered and racialized tropes serves the construction of Europe and Portugal as being at risk from ‘external’ forces, re-inscribing securitarian discourses in the political sphere.