For authoritarians, stifling the arts is of a piece with demonising minorities

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/sep/22/for-authoritarians-stifling-arts-is-of-a-piece-with-demonising-minorities

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Early this month, Brazil’s leading literary event, the Bienal do Livro Rio, found itself at the centre of the country’s culture wars when a comic book was ordered to be confiscated by the authorities. The book in question was Avengers: The Children’s Crusade, which in one scene showed two fully-clothed men kissing. The gay kiss so upset Rio’s mayor, Marcelo Crivella, who once called homosexuality “a terrible evil”, that he ordered the book to be removed by police in order “to protect children”.

Crivella, a former bishop, belongs to the Universal Church of the Kingdom of God, which is known for its statements that homosexuals and bisexuals are possessed by a female devil. Crivella has also argued that Hindus hold “unclean spirits” and Catholics are “demonic”. The evangelical organisation has hundreds of branches and is one of the major forces behind the electoral success of the country’s far-right president, Jair Bolsonaro. The church’s founder, the billionaire Edir Macedo, by far Brazil’s richest pastor, according to Forbes magazine, claims that “prostitutes, homosexuals and bisexuals are always possessed by pombagiras”, Afro-Brazilian spirits associated with witchcraft.

As a novelist from Turkey, to me this kind of incendiary rhetoric is eerily familiar. In the name of protecting minors, art and literature are censored, controlled and denigrated by the rising populist right. In Turkey in May, an outbreak of hysteria targeted fiction writers who deal with difficult subjects, such as child abuse and sexual harassment.

Art and literature are – and will be increasingly – at the centre of the new culture wars. What might seem like sporadic, disconnected incidents here and there are in truth manifestations of a similar mindset, a growing wave of bigotry.

In the past 10 years, Turkey has seen an alarming increase in gender-based violence and in the number of child brides. In 2017, the AKP government under President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan approved the contentious “mufti law”, which allows local imams to perform and register marriages. For months, women’s and children’s rights organisations had warned the government that the practice would aggravate unrecorded marriages, including forced marriages of underage girls.

The Istanbul convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence has been steadily attacked by pro-government circles. The Islamist newspaper Yeni Akit claimed the convention was “doing the groundwork for the justification of homosexual heresy and the disintegration of the family under the disguise of preventing violence against women..With no improvements for the victims, in August alone, 49 women have been killed in Turkey. Recently, a man who murdered his 19-year-old pregnant wife had his sentence reduced in the courtroom for “good behaviour”.

Instead of opening shelters for abused women and children and changing patriarchal laws and protecting the victims, the authorities have been investigating fiction writers.

The suppression of the rights and stories of sexual minorities is an inseparable component of the government’s policy of “promoting traditional family values”. In November 2017, a ban was introduced on all public events focusing on LGBT rights. In Ankara, a film festival was banned by the governor’s office, which claimed that it went against the “community’s public sensitivity”.

The escalation of populist right rhetoric often goes hand in hand with a rise in misogyny and homophobia. Works of art and literature are singled out and censored in the name of protecting family values or public sensitivities. Books, graphic novels, art exhibitions, musicals, TV series and cartoons are targeted.

In Alabama, “a gay rat wedding” became the source of an unexpected controversy when an animated TV show, Arthur, had to be taken off air because it included a same-sex marriage scene. Elsewhere in the US, a children’s book, And Tango Makes Three, has been banned in schools and libraries. The book is based on a true story of two gay penguins in Central Park Zoo in New York.

When it comes to LGBT and women’s rights, extremists on seemingly different sides of the political spectrum can use strikingly similar codes and language. The rhetoric of evangelical rightwing pastors in the US echoes the language of Islamist preachers in the Middle East, who are basically spreading the same messages with different words. Turkey’s head of Ministry of Religious Affairs, Ali Erbas, claims the Pride march “goes against creation”. He calls same-sex relations “heresy. It is the duty of all of us to educate, raise awareness, and protect our children and young people against deviant understandings.” This year, once again, Pride parades in Istanbul and other cities have been stopped by police using rubber bullets and tear gas. Activists were arrested.

In Russia, a theatre production, Blues and Pinks, was banned with similar fervour. Human Rights Watch issued a detailed report showing that the “gay propaganda law” , which came into effect in 2013, had a profoundly damaging effect on Russia’s LGBT youth, exacerbating social stigma, harassment and violence against vulnerable minorities. Mental health professionals were also in danger, the report underlined. They “should not have to look over their shoulders when providing counselling and other services to LGBT youth: they should be free to provide counselling based on evidence and international best practices, not societal fears backed by repressive legislation”.

Poland is experiencing a similar campaign of censorship and a narrowing of the public space. When Warsaw’s mayor said gay rights could be taught in the city’s schools, Jarosław Kaczyński, of the Law and Justice party, declared it an “attack on our children”.

In Hungary, the theatre show Billy Elliot was accused of spreading “gay propaganda”. Faced with abuse and threats, the show had to be closed early. A rightwing newspaper, Figyelő, published a list of academics working in gender or LGBT studies. Another newspaper, Magyar Idők, wrote: “The propagation of homosexuality cannot be a national goal when the population is getting older and smaller and our country is threatened by invasion.” Here, as often, anti-LGBT and anti-immigration narratives went together.

In Hungary, Viktor Orbán’s government has officially banned gender and women’s studies. A spokesman said the government considered it unacceptable to “talk about socially constructed genders, rather than biological sexes”. The same approach was voiced at the World Congress of Families, funded by US evangelicals and organised in Verona, and supported by Italy’s former interior minister Matteo Salvini.

In country after country, we have seen enough examples to understand that a divisive and aggressive rhetoric against LGBT and women’s rights is intrinsic to the rise of populist nationalism and populist authoritarianism.

Top-down censorship and the control of art and literature are inseparable components of the hatred and discrimination against sexual minorities, as well as against immigrants and intellectuals. Artists and writers cannot afford not to know what is happening to colleagues in other parts of the world. We cannot afford to be silent.

• Elif Shafak is a novelist and political scientist. Her novel 10 Minutes 38 Seconds in This Strange World has been shortlisted for the Booker prize