Instrumentalizing gender: from interwar fascism to the Alt Right in Greece

ABSTRACT This article examines the far-right discourses on gender in Greece focusing on two historical moments, namely the period between 1936 and 1941 when Greece was governed by the authoritarian regime of general Ioannis Metaxas, and the period between 2010 and 2022 which was defined by the Greek-government debt crisis, the Covid-19 pandemic and the 2021-2022 global energy crisis. It aims to demonstrate the instrumental logic lurking behind the gender rhetoric employed by the Far Right and bring to the fore both points of convergence and divergence. With regards to the Metaxas regime the article discusses the contradictions marking the official propaganda on women which seems to oscillate between deeply rooted conservative ideas on women’s role on the one hand, and the promotion of new ideals of femininity on the other hand. Fast-forward to today, the article examines the ways gender issues are manipulated by the emerging Alt Right in Greece. Via the theoretical lens of femonationalism and homonationalism, the article brings to the fore the contradictions between the breakthroughs with regards to feminist and LGBTQI demands on the one hand, and the systematic attempts to reintroduce an ultra-conservative agenda with regards to gender issues in Greece on the other hand.