1 Introduction

Migration and far-right social movement studies have explored exclusionary politics in different national contexts. These works have explained many of the factors contributing to the hostility against minorities on the grounds of religion, race, gender, and sexual identity. Employing the concept of intersectional bordering (Cassidy et al., 2018), the present analysis dissects how religious, conservative, and far-right organizations employ the concept of the family to promote exclusionary politics. To achieve this, the chapter focuses on the International Organization for the Family (IOF), one of the most prominent representatives of this emerging phenomenon (Kalm & Meeuwisse, 2020). The IOF has garnered media attention in Europe over the years through their annual main conference. Its predecessor organization, The World Congress of Families (WCF), promotes a family model consisting of a father, mother, and child as a reference point for traditional values to unite Christian, far-right and conservative grassroots movements and elites. However, despite growing awareness about the organization’s goals and international expansions over the years, little is known about the IOF’s strategic developments in the transnational political arena. This transnational perspective is the focus of this chapter, which extends the previous research on social movements opposing gender and sexual diversity, that has often focused on the institutional context (see for European Union (EU) eg. (Mos, 2022a, b) or United Nations (UN) (Buss & Herman, 2003; Bob, 2012; Haynes, 2014). In this analysis, I highlight the mobilization that takes place outside the confined structures of the supranational political system.

The IOF’s predecessor organization, the WCF, was established in 1995 (Uzlaner & Stoeckl, 2018) and was initially studied in connection to the Christian Right in the United States (Haynes, 2008; Flowers, 2019). Christian Right scholars recognised its transnational dimension in the promotion of family politics (Buss & Herman, 2003; Butler, 2006), and these lines were further developed with the conceptualization of the “global right wing” (Bob, 2012). Still, the work of the IOF preserves this emphasis on the links with the US Christian Right, with only recently more attention given to the role of Russian intellectuals and businessmen in the IOF (Stroop, 2016; Stoeckl, 2020), and transnational activism among Russian and American elites (Trimble, 2014; Moss, 2017; Bluhm & Brand, 2018; Shekhovtsov, 2018). While there has been an increasing number of studies addressing the IOF, explicitly pointing to the importance of the WCF (Stoeckl, 2018; Kalm & Meeuwisse, 2020), there has been less attention given to the processes that facilitate activism transnationally from an organizational perspective. However, the study of transnational collective activism of the IOF reaches beyond regional contexts and political institutions. The organization’s international conferences provide a platform to discuss strategies and tactics promoting far-right family politics. Focusing on the transnational dimension of exclusionary politics explains how the IOF is engaging in collective activism in different protest and electoral settings, and the interaction between these arenas. Addressing this gap, the chapter contributes to the ongoing research on transnational far-right movements, the Christian Right, and global conservative networks in terms of their action repertoires. In this context repertoires are defined as a strategy to create new forms of exclusion, creating division between a constructed core group- “the family”- and outsiders.

2 Conceptualizing the Transnationalization of Far-Right Politics Through Contentious Politics and Intersectional Bordering

In this chapter, I approach the IOF’s transnationalization of far-right politics based on two main theoretical developments, synthesizing contentious politics (Tilly & Tarrow, 2015) and intersectional bordering (Cassidy et al., 2018). To engage with the discursive and mobilization strategies of the IOF, I look at conservative, religious, and far-right organizations to highlight the conditions for collaboration beyond ideological differences. Building on a common ground for collective action, I introduce a model for coalition building among actors involved in the IOF and conceptualize how transnational mobilization promotes contentious politics.

2.1 Defining the ‘Far-Right’

Conceptualizations of the far-right, conservatism, and religious activism refer to a variety of intellectual traditions and are therefore not only hard to define, but are—to a degree—context-dependent. However, the nationalism of the far-right as a thin ideology (Mudde, 2017) allows different political actors to overcome ideological differences to create broader networks along the political spectrum. This development has not only led to the emergence of new right-wing networks but has also fueled the radicalization and mainstreaming of far-right ideas (Pirro, 2023). Therefore, I employ the term “far-right” to mean the collaboration among far-right, conservative, and religious groups; I understand it as an inclusive category for different forms of transnational right-wing mobilization. The idea of the traditional family functions in this context as a springboard for the collaboration among religious and far-right organizations introducing the dimensions of gender and sexuality.

2.2 Constructing a Common Enemy: Mobilizing Against Gender

Research on anti-gender movements addresses how far-right family politics promote exclusionary politics through discursive and mobilization strategies. The concept of gender as a symbolic glue was the first prominent example, describing the mushrooming of anti-EU, anti-liberal, anti-communist, and homo- and transphobic sentiments leading to voting gains for right-wing parties (Kováts & Põim, 2015). In similar fashion Mayer and Sauer introduced gender as an empty signifier to explain Austrian far-right parties’ discursive strategies (Mayer & Sauer, 2017). Highlighting the opportunity of network building to oppose family diversity policies and gender equality, the authors stress how gender studies research, policies related to sexuality, and sex education became a new mobilization strategy. Early studies of anti-gender movements have focused on the micro-level to study how organizations on the local level engage in collective action to oppose gender and sexual diversity. Recognizing patterns of interaction and communalities, the studies highlight how conservative, far-right, and religious organizations engage in anti-gender campaigns (Kuhar & Paternotte, 2017).

Studies on anti-gender campaigns in various regional contexts illustrate similarities among the actors’ discursive strategies. Gender thereby becomes tied to the idea of an imagined liberal elite that allows the organizations to position themselves as counter-movements, illustrating how thin-ideology (Mudde, 2017) creates a precursor for collective action among right-wing organizations. Building on this form of opposition as a group identity or common ground, the minimal consensus becomes a foundation for collaboration. This process has been also described in several conceptualizations of anti-gender research with a broader scope (Hennig, 2018; Verloo, 2018), shifting the attention towards a more macro-oriented analysis and creating dividing lines about the relevance of factors that mobilize anti-gender movements. This most fundamentally concerns the relationship between cultural and economic hegemony. Proceeding from the literature of anti-gender movements, religious fundamentalism, and far-right research in Europe, the concept of political genderphobia (Hennig, 2018) stresses ideological and strategic features among organizations opposing gender diversity. However, this broader conceptualization faced criticism for neglecting economic inequalities and the artificiality of movement-countermovement dynamics of the debate (Roggeband, 2018). In the context of this debate, proponents of this approach argue for a stronger analytical focus on economic justice to understand the collaboration in opposition to gender and sexual diversity (Kováts, 2019: 77).

2.3 Transnational Coalition Building

To go beyond the analytical focus on discursive strategies of anti-gender movements, I introduce the concept of transnational coalition building. Focusing on the actors participating in collective action highlights how the IOF employs strategies and tactics that consider both the cultural factors of discursive strategies and the economic dimension of mobilization strategies as a foundation to conceptualize transnational coalition building. Contributing to the ongoing debate regarding social movements that oppose gender and sexual diversity, the study of IOF action repertoires emphasizes international collaboration among different political groups and organizations.

Coalition building is usually defined as transnational activism (Bob, 2018), highlighting the mutual effort of mobilization among different organizations with distinct goals, actors, and frames. However, to reflect on the concept of far-right family politics, this interpretation of activism is of limited use, as theories on transnational social movement focus on liberal actors (McCammon & Van Dyke, 2010; Kriesi et al., 2016). One explanation for this is that, in the past, far-right social movements were conceptualized as reactive and therefore interpretations focused on the ways organizations respond to threats instead of investigating the agency in using resource mobilization structures (RMS) and political opportunity structures (POS) (McCammon & Van Dyke, 2010, p. XIV). A more practical issue at hand concerns the empirical challenges of access and ethics (Blee & Latif, 2021) that have been limiting theory-building among transnational far-right coalitions.

2.4 Expanding the Spectrum of Action Repertoires: Strategies and Tactics of the Far-Right

Transnational far-right coalitions like the IOF engage in contentious politics employing a variety of strategies to promote ideas about family politics (Koch, 2024). The repertoire of the organizations can be broadly differentiated between two modes of change: the rapid innovation in repertoires and the successive change involving both action and reaction in the context of new protagonists and antagonists in conflicts (Tilly & Tarrow, 2015: 19). Incrementally changing structural factors are defined by meaning-making and everyday social organizations, commutative creation of signaling systems by contentions itself, and operations of the system as such.

Although Tilly and Tarrow (2015) compare different social movements such as the slave abolition movement in the UK, Maidan protests in Ukraine, and the women’s movement in the USA as case studies, the research is limited to liberal activism and does not include conservative and far-right organizations. To address this gap, the study of the IOF’s repertoires takes a closer look at the way the theory can be applied to the study of far-right coalitions. Repertoires are defined as a strategy to create new forms of exclusion, creating division between a constructed core group- “the family”- and outsiders. The family is the centre of this core group, and forms of deviation related to a person’s gender identity, sexuality, racialization, or religious belief can become markers of exclusion. This process of bordering is facilitated through a person’s gender identity, sexuality, racialization, or religious belief. Belonging to the outsider group means transgressing norms of heterosexuality, gender, whiteness, and/or religion, which poses a threat to the core group. The coherence to this value system is negotiated through strategies of intersectional bordering that simplify belonging (Cassidy et al., 2018), as organizations popularize ideas about the family as a repertoire through campaigns, policies, demonstrations, and conferences.

In this context, the IOF becomes an actor that promotes exclusion through contentious politics. Engaging with the concept of process tracing (Ritter, 2014), the strategies and tactics of the IOF are constructed as dynamics that develop over time, changing their forms and meaning. Action repertoires describe how the IOF employs strategic action and makes tactical decisions based on common forms of collective actions such as the creation of special-purpose associations and coalitions, public meetings, solemn processions, vigils, rallies, demonstrations, petition drives, and statements to and in public media.

3 Methodological Approach

This chapter lays out how the IOF uses action repertoires to promote the transnationalization of far-right family politics, with a focus on coalition building and changes in coalition building over time. As the organization employs various strategies and tactics to oppose gender and sexual diversity, the analysis is limited to three key features of coalition building, considering (1) how conferences contribute to identity formation, (2) how resources are shared through demonstrations, and (3) how the IOF is transferring knowledge through public media. Engaging with the organizational structures and the different means to expand the network, coalition building focuses on the strategic employment of repertoires to develop discursive and mobilization strategies. The evaluation of factors that promote coalition building is dependent on the level of cooperation or conflict among the organizations involved (Bandy & Smith, 2005). Considering the IOF’s action repertoires over time, process tracing allows the study of change among the organizations involved in the expansion of the network (Ritter, 2014). For this reason, the analysis focuses on action repertoires between 2014–2020, highlighting the role of major conferences in Russia, Moldova, and Hungary as well as the anti-same-sex marriage movement Demo für Alle in Germany. The research draws on a variety of examples, aiming to demonstrate how different transnational coalition building efforts contribute to the promotion of exclusionary politics in local and global contexts. Coalition building thereby becomes a mechanism for transnationalizing far-right family politics.

For the data collection process, the study of IOF action repertoires relies on a variety of sources, including speeches, policies, interviews, websites, and protests from 2014–2020 and is complemented by reports from NGOs, think tanks, foreign policy centers (Blue, 2013; HCR, 2015; Chitanava & Sartania, 2018; Southern Poverty Law Center, 2015, 2018; Stoeckl, 2018), and journalists (Dornblüth, 2019; Kane, 2009; Levintova, 2014; War is Boring, 2014; Gessen, 2017; Parke, 2015; Shekhovtsov, 2014). I use qualitative analysis to consider the discursive and mobilization strategies relevant to coalition building processes.

Reflecting on the theoretical implications concerning the factors of coalition building to promote far-right family politics, the next section dissects how the IOF’s coalition builds new forms of exclusion. The research draws on various speeches from the World Congress of Families IX - XIII, discussing the relationship of transnational and local repertoires in opposition to LGBT+ family politics in Hungary, Moldova, and Russia and the demonstration Demo für Alle in Germany. Evaluating how organizational structures contribute to and limit mobilization and discursive strategies over time, the chapter situates the study of local repertoires within a broader perspective of social movement outcomes.

4 Analysis—Discursive and Mobilization Strategies of the IOF

Studying the coalition building process of the IOF, the analysis of discursive and mobilization strategies engages with various action repertoires to promote far-right family politics transnationally. For feasibility, the investigation focuses on three central factors that promote the success and failure of coalition building: identity formation to create shared values, sharing of various resources among partner organizations, and knowledge transfer to wider audiences. The section is thus structured into three main parts representing different IOF strategies. The first part considers how the World Congress of Families and other regional conferences of the IOF contribute to identity formation among organizations. In the following part, I focus on the role of demonstrations and petition drives as a strategy to share resources. Lastly, I analyze how the IOF is transferring knowledge through public media.

The IOF has a wide spectrum of strategic actions to advance far-right family politics. While this analysis does not assert the claim of completeness, the discussion of special-purpose associations and coalitions, public meetings, regional and international congresses, demonstrations, petition drives, and associational statements to and in public media provides a first overview of the organization’s action repertoires. The timeline of events structures the main dynamics in the four focus areas in Hungary, Russia, Moldova, and Germany (see Fig. 5.1). This includes the annual international main Conference, the World Congress of Families, regional IOF meetings, book and movie releases, and website and social media page launches.

Fig. 5.1
A timeline chart includes the book release of the Natural Family in 2009, demographic summit Moscow in 2011, demographic summit Ulyanovsk in 2012, W C F planning committee meeting Moscow in 2013, W C F 11 Budapest in 2017, and launch of Ifam News in 2020.

Action repertoires of the IOF 2009–2020

Full size image

4.1 Development of Common Mobilization Strategies

The following section dissects the IOF’s World Congress of Families as a platform for opposition towards gender and sexual diversity in Europe. Connecting with a wide variety of political actors ranging from conservative Christian groups to far-right activists, the IOF developed a shared set of values and created a strong group identity. Starting as an interfaith coalition in the first place (Stroop, 2016), religious ideas have been central to constructing unity among the participating organizations. As part of the IOF’s mobilization strategy, the organization started to collaborate with organizations based in the United States and featured mostly speakers and organizations from that country during the World Congress of Families (Trimble, 2014). Since 2014, there have been only four organizations from Russia and one from Germany participating at the IOF main event; no Hungarian or Moldavan organizations were present. This data suggests that organizations from Russia, Germany, Hungary, and Moldova were not involved in the early phase, but started participating at the conferences more recently (since 2011). The same goes for speakers at the conferences. The World Congress of Families featured eight speakers from Russia, three from Germany, one from Hungary, and none from Moldova until 2014 (Trimble, 2014). While the main conferences are organized by the IOF, the member organizations host regional events (WCF, 2017). From the foundation of the organization in 1997 to 2014, twenty-four regional conferences have taken place (Trimble, 2014). A prominent country in this list is Russia. From 2011 until 2013, four events took place that directly linked the IOF with politicians, activists, scholars and NGOs: the Demographic Summit in Moscow in June 2011, the Demographic Summit in Ulyanovsk in September 2012, the Regional Meeting in February 2013 in Moscow, and the Planning Committee Meeting in October 2013 in Moscow (HCR, 2015).

However, since the mid-2010s the IOF started to shift its mobilization strategy toward political radicalization, by collaborating with authoritarian and nationalist leaders such as Viktor Orbán, Matteo Salvini, and Vladimir Putin through events like the annual World Congress of Families (WCF). Together they have formed a mutual discursive strategy that incorporates ideas from various geographical settings into an adaptable concept of the natural family to promote far-right family politics. Therefore, the analysis highlights conferences of the IOF as a repertoire to build common strategies demonstrating how the organizations collaborated.

The IOF features a vast group of organizations involved, including parties, activists, think tanks, foundations, and lawyer associations. To promote far-right family politics, the organization shares ideas about policy proposals and activities that mobilize social movements and civil society groups, leading to the formation of new coalitions. During the early 2010s, the WCF established strong relationships with Russian political and economic elites that led to the hosting of the World Congress of Families VIII. Although it was supposed to take place in Moscow in 2014, the IOF faced several unforeseeable diplomatic issues because of the annexation of the Crimea region in Ukraine. Given the danger of sanctions from the US government, a number of US organizations did not want to be associated with the organizers. In response, the organizers set up a new event that circumvented the sanctions. The title of the conference was renamed to “International Festival For Life”, the sponsors changed and the participants represented different organizations than previously announced (Dornblüth, 2019).

For the new event, the organizers featured several high-ranking political figures that need some further attention to understand the relationship of the IOF with Russian actors. Central to this collaboration is the Russian representative of the organization, Alexey Komov. As an intermediary, Komov has been associated with the Russian billionaire Konstantin Malofeev and Vladimir Yakunin and the politician Elena Mizulina (Levintova, 2014). In this way, the conference served as a space for the exchange of ideas, and to develop a broader network of like-minded organizations to promote far-right family politics. The repression towards the US-based organizations challenged neither the values nor the goals that the IOF set out. As the IOF‘s strategical long-term goal is to influence governmental decision making and movements building, such as the introduction of the Russian gay propaganda law in 2013 (Kondakov, 2022), changes among collaborating groups do not necessarily limit the success of the organization.

Considering the coalition building that the IOF has been involved in, the organization is not concerned with introducing new laws, but rather gives impulses for governmental officials and other policymakers. To increase its influence, the IOF started to gradually expand its network of collaborators targeting governmental officials in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) through the World Congress Families XI which took place in 2017 in Hungary. President and party leader of the Fidesz party Victor Orbán held the opening speech at the event and has been very outspoken about his support for the IOF (Sanders, 2018). After the congress took place, the Hungarian government revoked the gender studies program at Central European University (CEU) (Pető, 2021). The event shows that there are few disagreements about the discursive strategies and that the main focus of the IOF is on the building of a mutual mobilization strategy. Similarly to the gay propaganda law, the strategy behind the ban on the gender studies program is to limit the influence of their opponents.

In a similar vein, the World Congress of Families XII in Moldova expressed interest in the same strategy by expanding the network to Central and Eastern Europe. Moldovan President at the time, Igor Dodon had already made several efforts to introduce new laws to restrict the distribution of information concerning sexual and gender diversity in the country (Civil Rights Defender, 2017). These bills shared a number of commonalities with the Russian gay propaganda law. His opening speech at the conference illustrates the IOF‘s effort to develop a common mobilization strategy. Other Moldavan speakers from the conference included the leader of the Moldavan Orthodox Church Metropolitan Vladimir, the scholar Lavric Aurelian, and the Chairman of the Commission on Interethnic Relations of the Council of Civil Society Elena Beleacova. Before the international conferences, Dodon had already organized a family festival in collaboration with the Socialist Party of Moldova in opposition to the pride march (Vlas, 2017). Over time, the mobilization efforts expanded the network of party representatives, churches, and civil society groups, building on the innovation in mobilization strategies involving both grassroots activists and political elites.

Although less publicly visible, regional conferences are also an important strategy for the IOF to recruit new member organizations, and this has become an increasingly common practice of theirs since 2010, when they began targeting key locations such as Australia, Kenya, and Serbia and reflecting on its central issues including euthanasia, sex education, and family values (Velasco, 2022). As social movements gather to decide strategies and goals, establish new networks, and align priorities (Alimi, 2015), the regional conferences of the IOF fulfill various functions, including media exposure, activist training, and networking opportunities for member organizations (WCF, 2017).

4.2 Distributing Organizational Resources

Having developed a common group identity over time and building trust among organizations, the IOF started to distribute organizational resources among their collaborators through demonstrations. Reaching out to relevant movement brokers, the coalition of Demo für Alle presents a prime example to demonstrate a point of intersection for transnational movement mobilization, since it was able to bring together demonstrators with different confessional backgrounds who are part of the Christian fundamentalist spectrum, Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) members, and the ex-parliamentary German far right (Teidelbaum, 2015; Schmincke, 2015). Additionally, this new coalition was a way to counter anti-Russian sentiments in the movement (Moss, 2017).

Demo für Alle, the German offshoot of the anti-same-sex marriage organization Manif pour tous has been relying on the networks of the IOF to promote far-right family politics as a collaborator. In response to reforms of sex education, Demo für Alle developed a large followership in particular in Hamburg, Saxony, Hesse, and Baden-Wurttemberg (Fedders, 2016). At the front of support, the German far-right party AfD and far-right publisher Jürgen Elsässer aligned themselves with the protests. The presence of the IOF became apparent when Elsässer organized the Zukunft für die Familie (future for the family) conference in Leipzig in 2013. One of the speakers was the well-known IOF associate and politician Elena Mizulina, who became famous around the world as one of the initiators of the Russian gay propaganda law. Elsässer, a public figure and editor of the far-right magazine “Compact” that has been closely associated with both the AfD and the anti-muslim ex-parliamentary far-right movements such as Patriotische Europäer gegen die Islamisierung des Abendlandes (PEGIDA), is linking different political groups of the German spectrum on the political right.

The collaboration between the IOF and Demo für Alle is strongly linked to the campaign organization CitizenGo, providing both media expertise and financial resources to promote far-right family values. CitizenGo, which presents itself on its website as an NGO in defense of life, family, and liberty (CitizenGo, 2021), also features president of the IOF Brian Brown and Russian IOF representative Alexey Komov. The organization is not only listed as an ally on the website of Demo für Alle (Demo für Alle, 2021), but also organized a petition against the revision of sex education in schools in Bavaria and financed several of their campaigns (Hecht & Nabert, 2019). Initiator of Demo für Alle Hedwig von Boervoerde has been closely related to the AfD. Before she started the organization, she had been part of the campaign network Zivile Koalition (civil coalition), a conservative association taking up responsibility for the division Initiative Familienschutz (initiative family protection) located in the office space of German AfD parliamentary member Beatrix von Storch. As the examples of collaboration between Demo für Alle and IOF demonstrate, both organizations have been playing a crucial role in the coalition building process to promote far-right family politics in Germany, because they brought in experienced organizers from other counties and connected activists, conservative Christians, and political elites. This also led to the transnationalization of the movement as members of the network became involved with other international organizations, and contributed to the innovation of action repertoires, exchanging ideas with leaders from around the world.

The sharing of resources as a strategy to promote far-right family politics was not limited to political elites, but also includes grassroots mobilization. The IOF ‘s support for demonstrations became a common action in their repertoire. As organizers of the “March for the family” or in collaboration with Demo für Alle in Germany, the IOF successfully mobilized a few thousand people on the streets in support of far-right family politics (Kalm & Meeuwisse, 2020). The introduction of large-scale demonstrations has been a novelty for the IOF, but also for the conservative, far-right, and Christian organizations and parties they collaborated with in Russia, Hungary, Moldova, and Germany. Pioneered by the French La Manif pour tous movement against same-sex marriage in France which was able to bring together conservative, far-right, and Christian groups in the first place (Stambolis-Ruhstorfer & Tricou, 2017), the addition of demonstrations to the action repertoires of the IOF have been a recent innovation.

The increasing use of demonstrations as an IOF action repertoire in support of far-right family politics can also be observed in Moldova. As these demonstrations illustrate, the former Moldavan president Igor Dodon and the IOF were able to rely on a solid conservative social movement base to mobilize for protests. Aside from conferences like the World Congress of Families in Chisinau in 2018, several other demonstrations have taken place. A prominent example was the “March for Life”, which took place in many areas across Moldova in 2018 and 2019 according to the event’s organizers (Association for Life Moldova, 2021). Another annual demonstration is the Moldavan Orthodox Church‘s march for the traditional family (Orthodox Christian, 2019). Relying on the organizational resources from both the government and the church, organizers were able to mobilize for events like the Moldavan family festival in response to the pride march in Moldova (Barry, 2019) as they united participants relying on merging images of the nuclear family and Christian faith.

Demonstrations provide important discursive and mobilization strategies for the IOF. The coalition building progress and expansion toward CEE also helped the mobilization strategies, including the sharing of resources to further promote far-right family politics. Organizations like CitizenGo present an important point of intersection as they provide important organizational and financial resources for both local elites and grassroots organizations.

4.3 Knowledge Transfer

The third major feature of the transnationalization process that the IOF engages in is the transfer of knowledge to wider audiences. Petition drives and statements to and in public media allow the organization to introduce far-right politics to potential allies and supporters. Since the 2010s the IOF and its member organizations CititzenGo use petition drives as a repertoire to mobilize civil society and popularize far-right family politics in social media. Ignacio Arsuaga, the founder of the organization, has worked closely with the IOF and participated regularly at the World Congress of Families since 2009 (Trimble, 2014). The main focus of CitizenGo is the coordination and preparation of online campaigns and their distribution via their networks. Even though CitizenGo has only existed since 2013, the link between the organization and the IOF has been established since way earlier. Ignacio Arsuaga founded not only CitizenGo, but also the Spanish right-wing organization Hazte Oir (Political Research Associates, 2018). Although CitizenGo is still the main outlet for online petition drives of the IOF, the organization’s news website IFamNews also covers a petition section (IFamNewsDE, 2021). Until now, there exist no similar Russian, Hungarian, or Moldovan language online petition websites by the IOF. However, the IOF member organization CitizenGo offered several online petitions in Russian (CitizenGoRu., 2021) and German (CitizenGoGer, 2021) which also covered far-right family politics. CitizenGo claims that since the beginning of the Ukrainian war in 2022, it is not collaborating with Russian organizations anymore (CitizenGo, 2022). Therefore, the section on petition drives is focused on the German website of CitizenGo, as it is the only one that has been consistently sustained.

Petition drives present a discursive strategy for the IOF to popularize far-right family politics among German language-speaking audiences. The topics of the petition on the IOF website feature mostly international and European issues and transnational media companies such as Netflix and HBO (iFamNewsDE, 2021). The petitions on the website are titled: “Thank Hungary and Poland; “Stop Viewpoint Discrimination by Stripe Against Conservatives”; “Say NO to Netflix”; “Demand HBO Max Cancel “Unpregnant” and Review Leadership Choices”; “Reappoint Ján Figel in his important role as supporter of religious freedom”; “Demand apology for the censorship of the life-Savers of the movie unplanned”; “Support Franklin Grahams UK-Tour against anti-Christian discrimination.” The number of signatures on the German language petition website are relatively low in comparison to the English website. Nonetheless, the IOF repertoire creates a space to reach out to new German speaking audiences. Thereby CititzenGo is able to mobilize new allies and supporters as a discursive strategy on alternative media platforms. While the effort to mobilize people in Germany for far-right family politics through online petitions has been less successful, the petitions can provide some indication of how the IOF is trying to introduce new supporters and opponents of their agenda to German-speaking audiences. This includes, in particular, the positive impact of conservative, Christian, and far-right politicians from Poland, Hungary, and Slovakia to advance the goals of the IOF, but also demonstrates the organization’s efforts to present actors and directors from Netflix and HBO as a threat to far-right family politics.

As a tool to develop a discursive strategy, the IOF mobilizes new audiences online through petitions on social network platforms. In 2020, the organization introduced an online petition feature on its website (IFAM, 2021) in English, German, French, and Spanish. Even though many of the petitions have the same content, each language has its own writers who translate and adjust the content to the specific region. For the German language section, most of the articles have been written and edited by Jan Bentz, a German journalist, writing for media outlets including Inside the Vatican, Catholic Herald, Catholic News Agency and Jüdische Rundschau (IFAM, 2020). Since the IOF decided to build its own online petition website, this strategy presents an innovation in the organization’s action repertoire.

The IOF further expanded its audience through social media. The organization publishes and live streams speeches from the World Congress of Families, interviews, blog posts, and articles; distributes newsletters; and runs its own news website and various social media accounts on platforms like Twitter, Facebook, and VKontakte. These statements to and in public media serve several functions such as invoking moral rage, pride, honor, courage, and other emotions; and are linked to past memories and histories that serve as a pool to draw from in order to further consolidate collective identity, justify specific actions, and define adversaries (Gould, 2009; Jasper, 2001; Viterna, 2013; Johnston, 2015 as cited in Alimi, 2015). Through the use of different social media platforms, the IOF is able to expand its audiences as its statements are often perceived as contentious, which leads to higher visibility on online platforms as they prioritize this form of content.

A central strategy for the IOF to expand their online presence is alternative news coverage, through the organization’s own news website International Family News. The website introduces a new YouTube playlist, features articles from other newspapers, and also has its own petition section. Furthermore, the website provides information on several topics including reproductive rights, gender and sexual diversity, and leaders of the Catholic church, Russian Orthodox Church, and a variety of conservative and far-right leaders that are associated with the IOF. Launched in 2020, the news network IfamNews went online in five languages and was soon extended with a Russian version (Brown, 2020). The release note was published on another news website called Russian Insider run by American expats who live in Russia. The chief editor of the website is Charles Bausman, who has received money for the website by the Russian billionaire Konstantin Malofeev through a request by Russian representative of the IOF Alexey Komov (Shekhovtsov, 2015).

The IOF’s strategy to transfer knowledge involves two main strategies via online platforms, and then, it promotes far-right family politics through alternative reporting. In the wider context of right-wing social movements and far-right parties, outreach via alternative media outlets is a common phenomenon (Heft et al., 2020). In this regard, the IOF follows a wider development to reach new audiences as a mobilization strategy. In terms of the IOF’s repertoires, the organization engages through statements to and in public media in advocacy networking, but also creates information campaigns. Previous analysis of IOF statements to and in public media have highlighted the new way of framing gender and sexual diversity as gender ideology to scare people (Moss, 2017), or to revisit the concept by appealing to different audiences (Parke, 2015).

5 Conclusion

The IOF employs a wide variety of discursive and mobilization strategies to transnationalise far-right family politics. Analyzing the action repertoires of the IOF in Russia, Hungary, Moldova, and Germany, the organization expanded its range of strategies to form a coherent set of values that shifted from religious beliefs to a project of political radicalization. Involving government officials and movement brokers of grassroots organizations, the IOF contributed to the development of common ideas on transnational family politics, the sharing of resources, and the distribution of knowledge through social media. The concept of the family thereby becomes an adaptable repertoire allowing for the creation of new intersectional borders that mark an outsider group through contentious politics. Demonstrations like Demo für Alle exclude people that do not conform with the heteronormative ideas of gender and sexuality. In Moldova, the family festival organizers highlight elements of nationalism and Christianity to demarcate an outsider group. As these examples demonstrate, discursive and strategic mobilization for far-right family politics is adapted to local contexts.

Evaluating the repertoires of the IOF‘s strategy, the organization focused on incremental structural change through the expansion of its network in Central and Eastern Europe, the collaboration with new organizations, and the development of a transnational group identity that contributed to an increase of trust among actors. Exchanging both financial and organizational resources through demonstrations and the sharing of media expertise, the coalition has solidified itself over the years. In an effort to reach new audiences, the IOF has further expanded and innovated its repertoires, investing in online campaigns, petition websites, and alternative news coverage. By offering audiences a broader and most notably transnational perspective on far-right family politics, the organization has been popularizing exclusionary politics internationally.

A diversification strategy drawing from different supporters increased the IOF’s ability to refine their knowledge and experience, which led to more successful mobilization and discursive strategies. Collaboration of the IOF in Russia, Hungary, Moldova, and Germany involved a wide spectrum of actors encompassing Catholic Christian organizations such as Demo für Alle, far-right party leaders like Victor Orbán, but also Russian billionaires and members of the Moldovan Orthodox Church. To engage in contentious politics, the organization reached out to the groups that promote exclusionary politics in a way that relates to conflicts in the regional context. This collective action draws on the knowledge and expertise of different actors, but the visibility and success of right-wing parties and radical right movements made them a more likely partner and led to the radicalization of family politics. The homogeneity of Christian faith groups differs in the four regions, and the success of the IOF campaigns was dependent on the organization’s ability to involve religious elites. Collaboration with conservatives, far-right, and economic elites also guarantees the IOF‘s survival.