Quote:Activists point to the fact that anti-gender narratives gradually became central political tools used to mobilise conservative fears around war and national identity.

‘The government was not talking about healthcare or poverty’, one activist said. ‘Instead, they talked about protecting society from “gender propaganda” and queer people’.

Several activists argued that feminist and queer groups became especially vulnerable because they could be portrayed simultaneously as politically disloyal, socially ‘foreign’, and a threat to traditional ideas of family and national identity.