Eastern others: Homonationalism in the Flemish press

Abstract

Jasbir Puar introduced the notion of ‘homonationalism’ to describe the increasing acceptance of sexual minorities in Western nations, leading to their incorporation in the national in-group which is increasingly opposed to homophobic ‘others’. While Muslims constitute the main out-group, other groups and nations are also targeted, in particular Russia and related countries in Central and Eastern Europe. Such discourses create a binary opposition between two homogenized parties, the uniformly LGBTQ-friendly in-group versus the uniformly homophobic ‘other’. While the literature on homonationalism mostly discusses politics in the U.S. and a number of other nation-states, this article explores homonationalism in a smaller sub-national region in Western Europe, Flanders, focusing on the press as a tool for spreading homonationalist discourse. Exploring three months of Flemish newspapers, this article identifies some instances of explicit homonationalism but more implicit homonationalism which does not explicitly mention the in-group but does paint a one-sided picture of Russia and related countries as homophobic.