ABSTRACT
The conclusion revisits the core findings of the book and its central conceptual proposition: the opportunistic synergy between the anti-gender campaigns and right-wing populism. This synergy plays out on two levels: ideological/discursive and strategic/organizational. As a thin-centered ideology, populism feeds on narrative structures and arguments promoted by the anti-gender movement, while the actors behind anti-gender campaigns use the organizational and financial resources offered by political parties. What facilitates this collusion is the fact that the ultraconservative critiques of gender have been framed in populist terms and are thus readily adaptable to populist politics. The coherence of this worldview relies on three persistent equivalencies linking the cultural with the economic and the political: Western liberal elites are equated with the global political and economic elite; neoliberalism as a source of suffering and injustice is equated with individualism as a value system and ideological project; population and gender equality policies are interpreted as a new phase of global colonialism. The conclusion discusses how the collusion between these two trends in Central and Eastern Europe differs from the American contexts, where neoliberalism is deeply intertwined with neoconservative ideology, and highlight the consequences of these developments for feminist movements.
