Violence and context
Last week, Austrian police cracked down on a network they believe lured gay men into a violent trap. It is a story about extremism. It is also part of a larger story.
Last Friday, Austrian police announced that they had taken action against a group suspected of carrying out a series of attacks on gay men. The victims were lured into a trap, and then assaulted, robbed and humiliated.
It is a method which has previously been used by far-right extremists in Russia and Belarus, driven by anti-LGBTQ hatred. The most well-known example is possibly the group referred to in English as Occupy Pedophilia (Russian: Оккупай-педофиляй), which for years carried out violent attacks, mainly targeting gay men.
In 2014, they were featured in the HBO documentary Hunted: The War Against Gays in Russia.
The Austrian newspaper Der Standard reports that the Austrian group saw themselves as "pedo hunters."
This is a phenomenon that has emerged in a number of countries in recent years; a form of vigilante justice where alleged pedophiles are beatn and film by self-proclaimed "hunters," often young men, before videos of the assualts are spread on social media. The men believed to have been victimised by the Austrian "pedo hunters" were not pedophiles, however. They were gay men.
And the "hunters"? According to Der Standard, they had ties to far-right extremist groups. The newspaper specifically mentions Tanzbrigade Wien and its offshoot Division Wien — the former a group of far-right techno fans, the latter a youth group describing themselves as part of the so-called identitarian movement.
A total of at least 23 house searches took place. During the police raids, which took place in multiple locations across Austria, weapons and Nazi memorabilia were also found.
A number of suspected perpetrators were arrested, aged between 14 and 26—twelve men and three women. Eleven of them held Austrian citizenship, while the others were citizens of Croatia, Romania, Slovakia, and Germany.
Michael Lohnegger, head of the criminal police in the Austrian state of Styria, described the operation as a blow against hate crimes motivated by the victims' sexual orientation. The investigation began following a series of robberies last spring and summer, which, according to Lohnegger, turned out not to be ordinary robberies but rather hate crimes, involving premeditated assaults and in one case, what police believe was an attempted murder.
A trial is already underway in Graz against three other individuals accused of carrying out similar crimes.
The Austrian case is far from unique. As researchers Jared R. Dmello, Mia Bloom, and Sophia Moskalenko point out in a recent article, different types of extremists unite in their hatred against LGBTQ individuals and communities.
They warn that anti-LGBTQ+ narratives are used by extremist groups with varying ideologies — "from jihadists to far-right extremists, QAnon supporters, and incels". In the Western world, this occurs against a backdrop. In a number of countries, far right politicians and more traditional conservative voices have been seeking to limit LGBTQ+ rights, often making "toxic and discriminatory comments".
In short: extremist groups have a message to sell, and hatred towards LGBTS+ people and communities is sadly a marketable commodity.
"The Austrian far right has found a new enemy," wrote Liam Hoare in an article in New Statesman in the summer of 2022. While the novelty of far right gay bashing certainly can be debated, he points to an interesting example, and to a development worth noting.
That summer, far-right activists — specifically activists connected to the Identitarian scene — built a wall in front of the entrance of a Viennese library. The wall was painted in Austria’s red-and-white colors and featured the slogan and hashtag #NoPrideMonth.
Their motivation? Drag performer Candy Licious was scheduled to read fairy tales to children at the library — an event intended to promote both tolerance and literature. The far right activists also distributed flyers stating: "We will never accept that children in this country are indoctrinated with sexual propaganda."
These Identitarians were not alone. City council member Leo Kohlbauer from the nationalist party FPÖ — now Austria’s largest party — issued a press release protesting the same event, adding that "children are being indoctrinated with this publicly funded globohomo ideology."
This is a good example of how extremist ideas spread beyond fringe circles and into the broader radical right. The term globohomo, a concept combining two perceived enemies: "globalists" (or "globalist homogenization"), and LGBTQ+ people first emerged in alt-right circles, in an atmosphere where extreme right-wing ideology blended with internet culture. Since then, it has appeared in numerous places: in a video backed by the German far-right group Ein Prozent, in podcasts by Swedish neo-Nazis, in pro-Putin propaganda, in the rhetoric of misogynistic influencer Andrew Tate, in the deeply antisemitic manifesto of Slovak terrorist Juraj Krajčík, and among politicians in Austria´s FPÖ and in Germany´s AfD, the party recently embraced by close Trump ally Elon Musk.
These days, gays and trans people are canaries in the coal mine. Hatred against surface repeatedly and frequently in extremist movements. In itself, this is unsurprising, as extremism often thrives on contempt for “otherness”.
However, as researcher J. M. Berger points out in his book Extremism, extremism also has context. It arises, he explains, from social ecosystems, in a way that resembles weather patterns. No two hurricanes are exactly alike, Berger notes, but we can still recognize them as they form, track their development, and even make predictions about how they will evolve.
"But we cannot understand hurricanes without understanding tropical storms," he writes, "and we cannot understand storms without understanding winds and oceans."
The accused perpetrators in Austria represent a hurricane. But if we are to talk about the winds and the sea, we have more to discuss.
Notes on the Antiliberal is written by Norwegian journalist Øyvind Strømmen. It will include articles on the radical right, extremism, conspiracy theories and other challenges to liberal democracy.