Learning To Love Being an ‘Extremist’

Have you just read a new report from the EU’s NGO complex, which claims to reveal a growing influence of “anti-gender” and “anti-feminist” groups aiming to “dismantle decades of hard-won sexual and reproductive rights across Europe”?  Are you, as a result, wallowing in self-hatred to learn that you’ve become a jackboot-donning extremist? If so, fear not! Here are five easy steps to stay sane when EU technocrats are telling you the sky is falling and it’s all your fault.

Step 1: Check if you’ve been labelled “extremist” for holding a normal opinion.

A tell-tale sign you’ve fallen afoul of EU bureaucrats is if you’ve let your brain do the thinking. So, if you’ve failed to read their latest policy brief and instead come to the completely rational conclusion that gender is not a rosy feeling that means you can watch women change or beat them in a boxing ring, then you might be an “extremist.”

That’s the conclusion you’re supposed to draw from The Next Wave: How Religious Extremism Is Reclaiming Power, a 158-page panic attack published by the European Parliamentary Forum for Sexual and Reproductive Rights (EPF). The report warns of a global network of dark forces working to undermine democracy and gender equality. It references organisations, political parties, NGOs, and even loosely affiliated campaigns as evidence of a sprawling, well-funded conspiracy.

Don’t like gender self-ID laws? You’re apparently “anti-gender.” What does that mean? Well, dear reader, it apparently means you’re anti-woman, not anti gender-woo. Think children shouldn’t be taught their gender can be found on a magical unicorn and chosen at will (after a lifelong medical trajectory)? You guessed it: you hate women.

What do they mean by “gender” anyway? They won’t say. Not once in the whole report. It’s too sacred to define. And that’s the point. These are smokescreen terms, deployed not to clarify but to shut down debate. If they had to say what they really believe, say, about puberty blockers for kids, or totally overhauling the policy and governance systems so that sex is subordinated to a magical gender essence, they know exactly where people would stand. Everyone would know that the dark conspiring forces of which they’re pretending to be so fearful are really just people like you and me who worry that all is not right in Brussels. So instead, they wave their wand. You’re “anti-gender.”

Their next trick? Frame everything they want as a “right” and tarnish anyone who disagrees as “anti-rights.” So question any of the nonsense paraded as progress over the past decade, think that there might even be a moment’s pause or sovereign democratic debate, and you’re “anti-rights.” It’s genius, really. No one wants to be anti-rights. It’s like being against motherhood and apple pie. Except, they’d really prefer you not say “mother,” and apple pie causes obesity, you loaf.

This is why they bracket out gender identity and centre on abortion and contraception. These are red herrings and useful cover for an unpopular agenda. They know exactly what they’re doing. This is Dentons/IGLYO 101. Back in 2019, the EU-funded group IGLYO (who, by the way, received millions in EU funds) produced a guide for transgender activists explicitly advising them to conceal their goals by hiding behind popular causes like same-sex marriage, and to avoid media scrutiny by working through backchannels. In other words, EPF is still taking tips from their old cronies’ playbook.

It won’t work now. People see right through it. And the vagueness of what anti-gender and anti-rights means throughout this report shows just how much they’re scrambling. 

If anti-gender means wanting to protect kids from irreversible medical intervention, then sure, most normal people are “anti-gender.” But those behind reports like this tend to be the ones who stand with trans activists when they take women to court for not changing in front of them, who screamed bigot at anyone who had the temerity to suggest rapists should not be housed in women’s prisons. If they had read MCC reports instead of screenshotting their covers, they’d know that gender used to mean women’s rights. But thanks to their quiet activities, it now means whatever they want it to, and anyone who dissents is declared a threat to democracy.

They smear efforts to protect parental rights as attacks on ‘children’s rights.’ But they never tell you what those parents are objecting to: irreversible medicalisation, coercive school policies, the criminalisation of dissent. They think you, adults, are the problem because you’re simply too old and too bigoted to be persuaded. That’s what lurks behind the agreeable banner of “children’s rights.” 

You, like most people, care about children, and you care about families. The EU shows contempt for them. It treats them as sites of violence, treats funding aimed to make their lives easier as regressive, and champions an ideology that sees parental authority as an obstacle to progress. You’re not the extremist here. They are. 

Step 2: Ask yourself if the tone is “sober analysis” or “doomsday audiobook.”

The Next Wave opens with a Margaret Atwood quote, because subtlety is dead. The mood is less think tank than Audible Original: “What if the far right were storming democracy with rosary beads?” It might be dramatic and breathless, but it’s not at all persuasive. 

The report warns that shady groups are emerging with a dangerous focus on “religious freedom,” “freedom of speech,” “parental rights”, and even…opposing euthanasia! Oh no! The far-right is trying to protect free speech and stop state-sponsored killing! Truly, fascism is upon us.

Given what’s apparently at stake, one expects precise definitions, some policy nuance. Instead, you get guilt-by-association charts and denunciations based on vibes. The tone is as gasping as it is self-congratulatory. It casts the fight against all the horrors of democratic pushback as the last bulwark between liberal democracy and the Dark Ages. Except they seem to think that democracy is defined as ensuring there is no debate over important matters like abortion, or indeed euthanasia, and apparently (according to a presentation associated with the report), “keeping people safe.” For organisations that seem to think Hitler is knocking at the door in the form of church ladies and concerned parents, that sounds pretty fashy.

Step 3: Remember you’re not a sinister agent for wanting debate.

For all that “democracy”—or some semblance thereof—appears nearly 80 times across the report, they seem to have little care for what lies at the heart of it: open democratic and pluralist debate. Democracy for them is when people who all agree get EU grants and head out for oat milk lattes (a tax write-off, obviously; it’s a business meeting). In the report’s unveiling, speakers lamented that their “framing exercises” were no match for the messages coming from the Right. That’s your first clue they’ve lost the plot. A rational person thinks to argue against something with which they disagree. They seek to “reframe” it. That’s not democracy, that’s propaganda.

The truth is, unlike you, they see no need for debate. They want value change from above. Hence, one of the great ironies of the report: it warns that these terrible far-right (you’re supposed to read “fascist”) groups are aiming at “alternative norm creation.” And yet those “alternative norms” reflect the thinking of most people. And it’s a rich warning coming from an organisation in bed with, and grateful beneficiary of, funds explicitly aimed at changing the values of the European public.  

They try to paint pushback as the reserve of extremists and weird religious types. But their real fear isn’t fundamentalists. It’s ordinary people: parents, feminists, detransitioners. People who’ve started saying, “Hang on a second.” That’s the pushback they’re worried about. And they should be. Their ideology was never tested in a real democracy. It came in through funding calls and backroom “reframing” workshops. And now that people know what it’s really about, they are fighting back. In fact, in the report conference, speakers told on themselves when they remarked that more people are leaving their movement and joining the other side than the reverse. Newsflash: That means you’ve overreached and alienated your base.

Step 4: Be alert for lavish aesthetics masking conceptual poverty.

Don’t feel bad if you fell for it at first. Don’t feel bad if the glossy paper and BMJ font had you thinking, “Am I…am I the fascist?” No, more care went into the paper it’s printed on and from the design team than into creating substantial content. When the argument is flimsy, wrap it in luxury.

Step 5: Trust that everything you’re accused of, they’re doing zirselves.

It’s one of the oldest tricks in the book: accuse your opponent of the very thing you are guilty of. In yet another irony, The Next Wave turns this into a veritable religious observance.

The report accuses conservative groups of being bankrolled by shady billionaires and dark-money networks, all while its own author, Neil Datta, runs an NGO swimming in funds from the Gates Foundation, Open Society, UNFPA, and other global megadonors. These aren’t plucky grassroots outfits. These are the very transnational actors they pretend to oppose.

What’s more, apparently, traditional media has been captured by “far-right oligarchs.” Sure. That explains why every legacy outlet from Brussels to Berlin has been parroting gender orthodoxy for the past decade like Tourrette’s tics. What they really mean is that if there is any semblance of disagreement with their carefully curated “framing exercises,” it must be a hostile takeover. 

But their real fear isn’t the mainstream media, it’s the parts they find it harder to control. The report frets about “unaccountable algorithms” (a hint that their real frustration is, “how do you cancel an algo?”) radicalising the youth. But hang on, the EU itself is funding projects to build those very algorithms, not to push ideas, but to censor them. It has funded fun little initiatives like the kNOwHATE project, to develop real-time algorithmic tools to detect and suppress what they view as “hate speech,” including “sarcasm and jokes.” Yes, really. They’re building bots to kill the punchline.

Their view of speech is wholly causal. They never think that perhaps there might be some disaffection out there that the great and the good are not listening to. But say the wrong thing online and someone, somewhere, might start thinking unapproved thoughts. So the answer is algorithmic pre-crime detection. When people have the nerve to point it out in free and open fora of public debate, suddenly they’re the ones with the sinister agenda.

Psychologists call this “projection.” They’re not pointing out the dangers; they’re confessing. In a way, we should be grateful. Read the report not as a warning, but as a psychological tell.

If calling for common sense and democratic debate is extreme, then be proud to be extreme. And if they call you “anti-gender,” just smile and ask them to define it. At least you know what a woman is.