Interviewer: Nargiza Arjevanidze

In a series of interviews on the current processes and ongoing political crisis in Georgia, we spoke with foreign scholars and experts with in-depth knowledge of the Georgian context and the broader region.

The Social Justice Center presents the fourth interview in this series with Andrea Pető.

Andrea Pető is a historian and a Professor at the Department of Gender Studies at Central European University, Vienna, Austria, a Research Affiliate of the CEU Democracy Institute, Budapest, and a Doctor of Science of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

Her works on gender, politics, Holocaust, and war have been translated into 23 languages.

In 2018, she was awarded the2018 All European Academies (ALLEA) Madame de Staël Prize for Cultural Values and the 2022University of Oslo Human Rights Award. She is Doctor Honoris Causa of Södertörn University, Stockholm, Sweden.

Recent publications include The Women of the Arrow Cross Party. Invisible Hungarian Perpetrators in the Second World War. Palgrave, Macmillan, 2020. And Forgotten Massacre: Budapest 1944. DeGruyter, 2021.

Andrea Pető often writes about political extremism and how it shapes the collective memory of society. Her contributions are particularly valuable in the research of illiberal transnational movements and regimes.

The interview questions addressed the rise of illiberal politics, the viability of antidemocratic regimes, and strategies to counter them. We also asked her to comment on ongoing authoritarian processes in Georgia. By the end of the interview, Professor Andrea Pető shared strategies that can help societies counter new types of illiberal, authoritarian systems.

Q: My first question is about the crisis in Georgia. We have witnessed a very sharp geopolitical turn in Georgia, especially after Russia’s invasion in Ukraine. What do you think are the geopolitical factors underlying this current crisis and what can be consequences of it?

A: So, what we see now, is how the illiberal forces are creating a network in different countries initiating civil wars inside the countries. This is a new cold war, but this cold war is not between the blocs of states, but the cold wars are happening inside the states. There are those who are supporting the illiberal turn and there are those who try to preserve the liberal-democratic infrastructure.

The most important weapon of the illiberals is this internal civil war that is weakening the state and its institutions. It is using up lots of energy from different very smart people, because they cannot do anything else but watch the news on their cell phones, and they think they cannot do anything else; this is already a victory because this is the way new geopolitics is happening: it creates polarized, antagonising forces inside countries. The illiberal forces are connected through this “illiberal international”. “Illiberal international”, the international network of actors who are fighting against liberal and progressive values, has been operational for 15, 20, 30 years so there is nothing new in here. What is new is how successful they are. And they are successful partly because of sleepwalking of liberal actors and because liberal forces were unable to recognize encroachment of these illiberal forces.

The illiberal forces have been able to achieve their success because of the lack of resistance, and because of a very good strategy of attacking certain institutions, certain places, eliminating spaces of resistance. At the same time illiberals are creating their own places and their own institutions. This process we analysed with Weronika Grzebalska on polypores states: illiberals are like mushrooms which take all the energy and ideas from the tree, they are producing nothing new, but they sustain their existence with resources taken form others. If you look at what they are doing, there are new ideas here.

But the illiberal forces are emptying and instrumentalizing existing institutions, values and resources of liberal forces. They are doing this for two reasons: 1) to eliminate liberal and pro-European forces and 2) to create and strengthen alternative because, there are people who are voting for this. The so-called Illiberal offer is actually a very attractive offer for several voters.

What can be done is the following: (1) preserve the places and spaces; (2) reflect on why this kind of encroachment or polyporisation of institutions and places are happening; (3) create and engage in emotionally attractive alternatives; (4) try to get organised at a local level (5) look at the policy transfers of the illiberal and create an alternative at a transnational level. This is not really a rocket science because we know this – there is a lot of academic research on this, but the policy makers are not reading the literature, especially not the works by gender studies scholars but they think they should solve this alone.

Q: My next question is about the recent developments in Georgia. Our government has lately been relying heavily on political homophobia. If earlier it was ultra conservative populist rhetoric which was used by some other actors, now the ruling party has adopted this rhetoric which has become openly homophobic, especially after introducing this new draft laws (the so-called anti-LGBT propaganda law, or the ‘foreign agent’ law); How can these processes be explained?

A: This process is of course happening everywhere because gender has become a symbolic glue. This is not homophobia. This is what the illiberals present as homophobia. This is a proxy or substitute for homophobia. It is difficult to explain especially to LGBTQI community because this fight is happening for their skin, it is about their lives and about their everyday reality. On the one hand this anti gender movement is not about them and on the other, it is very much about them. Because this kind of political homophobia is basically creating a proxy, creating this concept of the enemy which has never existed so it is not an enemy. In a sense it is kind of showcasing of a gender as symbolic glue – gluing together different political motivations and actors with hate against certain groups of people. We have already seen this in different contexts, and we know what the consequences are. Exit can be a strategy of hiding or returning to the times of communism. Then the under-the-radar public spaces offered a space of resistance. We see the extreme anti-gender politics in Iran, they execute LGBTQI people and in Russia they put them in prison. In a sense, this is playing out a classical disciplining power according to Foucault, but it is very unfortunate that it is “gender” became at the centre of this. My fear is that it is a transferable hate. The anti-LGBTQI discourse has developed into a fully-fledged institutionalized hate regulated by legal frameworks in Russia. Any other community can become a target of the same type of hate. For instance, if you were following what was happening in Russia after the attack on a mall, now migrant workers are becoming the target. So, emotions and rhetoric has already been prepared so it is easy to transfer hate to other groups. This is a very dangerous road on which governments are walking.

Q: You mentioned Russia and my next question is about Russia. Considering the transnational nature of anti-gender movements, would you draw parallels between the cases of Hungary and Russia?

A: It is very simple. It is very much the same rhetoric, same policies, same discourse - from destroying of Hungarian Academy of Sciences, which was copying the Russian bill that destroying the autonomy of the Russian Academy of Sciences, to what happened to the higher education. So, in a sense, this “illiberal international” is creating a knowhow – best practices. And these best practices are transferred to different agents and if I were you, I would follow who went to Budapest to the Mathias Corvinus Collegium meetings because that’s where this kind of policy transfer is happening. I am sure there were several Georgian activists who were there, and they are in Brussels lobbying for a new and different European Union. In Budapest where in the framework of the illiberal offer they are organising conferences, trainings, closed and open workshops; that is when they are discussing this policy transfer. Illiberal forces are again copying the polypore strategy from the progressive forces because in the 1990s, liberal forces and progressive forces had lots of transfers and discussions organized by the Open Society Foundation. So, what illiberals did, they actually copied this strategy of the Open Society Foundation from the end of the 1980s and the 1990s, collecting the smartest and best ones at different conferences, sending them to different countries, making sure that they have got enough money for a good lifestyle and support to organize at different political offers. This is something which we really need to reflect on at a certain point - how this kind of transnational alliances are changing and influencing the national context.

Q: If we think about the interest, what are the geopolitical and global interests of these transnational movements?

A: Their aim is to create an alternative to the present liberal democratic world system and to offer viable, livable, and desirable alternative. And if you look at Hungary, Serbia, Bulgaria and all these countries you see that they have got very strong electoral bases, because they created themselves their own electoral bases. The question is what makes the illiberal offer so attractive? Partly, because they are addressing the real issues, the issues which are there as a result of the neoliberalisation. However, the way they are addressing them and how they are offering solutions, are mostly connected to exclusion and hate and by developing these parallel institutions. They do not consider universal human rights as the starting point, they do not consider every citizen as an important part of the constituency. They select a small group as their basis, that is why this illiberal state is also called the mafia state, and the rest is just not important - they are just labelled as troublemakers who are protesting on the streets and complaining about the lack of funding in the health system or education, etc. So, in a sense, this polarization is an important tool to achieve political aims, and the illiberal are only serving their own base. Since democracy and elections are about numbers, as long as they have enough votes because of the numbers and because of different electoral manipulations they do not really care about the other voters.

Q: And my last question is about counter strategies that queer and feminist movements can use.

When the state is captured, and the illiberal discourse becomes hegemonic, best practices from the past can come in handy. The work of David J. McQuoid-Mason in apartheid South Africa inspires me. He invented the concept of “street law” instead of using the term: human rights. He built up an educational network that contributed to the fall of the Apartheid regime and also became the foundation of new South Africa.

Here are some suggestions:

• Strengthening your guild: join a professional organization, pay the fee, and support your professional network. The professional network is not your family; you do not need to love and agree with all members but should share the basic principles of professional ethics. That firm value is already a blow to “illiberal pragmatism.”
• Think carefully about when and how to engage in public discussion, as these debates are not about solving issues. Still, the debate as a genre is used to disseminate and normalize very problematic ideas. Engage in debates about gender studies but NOT in a framework of “for and against,” but rather about issues to be solved with the research coming from gender studies.
• Avoid technical language and terms in English. Illiberals win because they use populist methods: addressing a wider, nonprofessional audience in a popular, understandable language. Try to do the same to speak about very complex issues in understandable language.
• The illiberal takeover is a legal counterrevolution that uses legal methods to create an alternative legal framework. The best allies are the lawyers, who know that professional credibility is at stake, not only the concrete issue.
• Line up with a few influencers to support you and support you on social media.
• Use existing organizations and their resources for your purpose.
• Accept that some of your colleagues are not your allies. They have other agendas, are short-sighted, and are just tired now. Do not offend them, but keep the door always open by keeping them in the loop.
• Be ready to be listed as a traitor to the nation. Use social media for your purpose and tweet #theOtherHungary, showing an example and an alternative.
• Be present on social media and make sure you stay safe. If you receive the first threat, you should immediately go to the police and demand that they should do their jobs. If not, post about it.
• Pick a fight you can win on your terms, and do not waste energy on reacting because that is how polypore states, having seemingly inexhaustible resources, operate.
• Silence and nonaction can be as powerful as going to the streets as these close communication opportunities, and the polypore has nothing to react to.

Q: Thank you very much for a very interesting interview. Your work and effort are always inspiring and highly valued by us. On a final note, do you have any advice for us?

A: Sure. I am a loser myself – I lost everything: gender studies was deleted from the accredited study list, CEU had to move from Hungary to Austria, I had to resign from the Hungarian Accreditation Committee because of academic corruption and I am also defeated, but there is always an opportunity in being a loser. Because when you lose everything, you have the freedom to act.