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Photo: Shota Kinchi
Queers, traitors, liberalism and Western warmongers - these four horsemen of an oligarch-created apocalypse now form the core of Georgian official ideology. Each has a purpose: queer panic to incite moral outrage, 'traitors' to justify repression, and anti-Western rhetoric to undermine democratic aspirations and open Moscow's door. Meanwhile, Europe remains mired in symbolism: tough words, soft deeds.
How an oligarch consolidated power
On 11 October, United Neutral Georgia - a government-driven anti-Western group - demanded a referendum on EU membership, framing Europe as a place "where children are allowed to change gender without parental consent" and "where criticism of LGBTQ+ propaganda is punishable". This is not a marginal voice, but the government speaking through this group.
Bidzina Ivanishvili, former prime minister and billionaire, has ruled Georgia informally for 13 years. He used United Neutral Georgia to test authoritarian ideas later adopted by Georgian Dream: banning opposition, investigating civil society organisations and restricting media access to courts. It is only a matter of time before he also undermines the constitutional obligation to pursue EU and NATO membership.
Queer panic as political weapon
Officially, Georgian Dream says it loves Europe, but not the Europe that exists in this reality. Ivanishvili's loyalists join voices arguing for an "alternative Europe" built on sovereignty and moral purity.
In May 2025, Prime Minister Irakli Kobakhidze spoke at CPAC in Budapest where he ranted against what he called "liberal fascism", "gender and LGBTQ propaganda" and the influence of the "Deep State". His words were music to the ears of Hungary 's prime minister Viktor Orbán and other European conservatives. By mobilising fear around gender and sexuality, the government is turning cultural struggles into political capital.
Georgia joins Europe's far-right alliance
Georgia's ideological turn is not isolated. It reflects a broader illiberal alliance from Budapest to Moscow. Kobakhidze's CPAC appearance came as Ivanishvili defied protests at home and accusations of collaboration with Russia. Instead of reforms, he opted for repression: reintroducing 'foreign agent' laws, cutting off foreign funding, jailing critics and criminalising queer rights.
Shortly before Russia's renewed invasion of Ukraine, the Georgian far-right scene, initially divided in its thinking on foreign policy, was taken over by Alt Info, a pro-Russian group built on transphobia. Their messages, copied from Russian and Hungarian campaigns, were used by the ruling party to fuel anti-Western hysteria.
Brussels speaks tough words but acts too softly
From 2022, and especially before the 2024 elections, Georgians struggling with high prices and poor infrastructure faced a moral panic imported from the arsenal of Western ultra-conservatives. Media were furious about an Elton John-themed Happy Meal booklet and about "men's milk" supposedly being put on an equal footing with women's in Europe. Days before the vote, Ivanishvili repeated these claims to voters who cared more about jobs than gender hysteria.
Many dismissed this as election theatre. But the rhetoric remained and laid the groundwork for Georgia's slide into authoritarian rule. Europe looked away, even when the EU gave Georgia candidate status after months of police brutality and attacks on queer activists. That gesture convinced Ivanishvili that hatred and repression had no political implications for him.
It is not up to the EU to save Georgian democracy. That responsibility lies with Georgians themselves, and the reckoning must begin at home. For years, too many people looked away as the government eliminated environmental organisations, queer activists, opposition figures and journalists one by one, without recognising that they were all targets of the same growing system.
On top of that, the loudest 'anti-oligarchic' liberal voices still have no plan to bring big business, Russian or otherwise, under democratic control. Yet Europe has the means to preserve Georgia as a functioning democracy, along with Armenia in the region. That requires confronting and correcting mistakes that are now in danger of being repeated.
In late 2023, after months of police brutality, sustained attacks on queer activists and increasingly harsh repression of independent media and courts, the European Council granted Georgia candidate status. That move was widely seen as a reward for the temporary repeal of the anti-civil society law. What followed, however, was even worse: the gesture convinced Ivanishvili's entourage that declaring an entire group of citizens morally depraved, and intimidating, mistreating or imprisoning critics, was of no consequence.
Stepping up the path to political pressure
While the EU revises its visa-free rules to make it easier to suspend free travel for countries slipping into authoritarianism or abusing EU relations, its leaders still seem determined to stress that they will not hit ordinary Georgians with broad measures. They say they would rather hit elites by curtailing visa privileges for elites. Eighteen months after the introduction of an offshore law that converts repatriated wealth into domestic power, such EU reticence amounts to complicity. Every extra month that Europe talks about tackling Georgia's repressive elites with mere visa paperwork lets more money flow away to the machinery of political repression.
European governments must act now: freeze assets, sanction intermediaries and cut the financial lifelines that sustain the regime. Hiding behind the need for unanimity to impose union-wide sanctions is no longer credible. Willing states can still move faster together and synchronise their actions to hit the same networks of letterbox firms, trustees and facilitators that shield oligarch power. The point is not to plug every leak in Europe, but to end the illusion among Ivanishvili's political, security and business allies that cries of "sovereignty" and "family values" will keep their money safe and their doors to the West open.
This article is the second article of the International Foundation Groenlinks' three-part series on the political situation in Georgia. In the first article activist Tamar Jakeli discusses the protest and urgency of the elections on 4 October. In this second article, Shota Kinchi writes how both the far-right and Georgia's ruling party are using gender and Europe's inaction as weapons.
Shota Kincha isa Tbilisi-based freelance researcher specialising in authoritarianism, nationalism, media, gender and queer politics. He previously worked as a journalist, including as a Václav Havel Journalism Fellow at Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague and as an editor at the regional platform OC Media, where he reported on politics and civil society in Georgia and the wider Caucasus. Before his journalism career, Shota was active in citizen journalism and queer rights activism and taught part-time at two universities in Tbilisi.
Sources:
United Neutral Georgia's statement, Facebook, 11 October 2025.
Georgian government announces plan to outlaw political opposition. Eurasianet. October, 2025.
Prosecutors Summon NGO Heads to Testify in 'Sabotage' Probe. Civil.ge. September 2025.
The Georgian Dream restricts media coverage from court premises. Media Freedom Rapid Response. June, 2025.
Constitution of Georgia, chapter 7.
Irakli Kobakhidze beszéde a CPACHungary 2025-n. Alapjogokért Központ. Youtube.
Nino Gozalishvili, "Proving the 'European Way': The West in Georgian Far-Right Discourse," Caucasus Analytical Digest, No. 129 (2022)
"Propagating filth": Kaladze joins GD's homophobic campaign against McDonalds. Formula, 19 June 2023.
"Men's milk, women's pads, the trial of the opposition" - a pre-election interview with Bidzina Ivanishvili. Jamnews. 22 October 2024.
Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, 'EU Edges Closer To New Visa Suspension Rules Amid Concerns Over Georgia', 6 October, 2025.
Georgian Dream eliminates taxes on offshore assets brought to Georgia. OC Media. April, 2024.
