’Gays As a Weapon of the Antichrist’. Religious Nationalism, Homosexuality and the Antichrist on the Russian Internet

This chapter discusses present-day discursive formations of the Antichrist on RuNet, the Russian segment of the Internet. Using the methodology of Critical Discourse Analysis, it focuses on how the notion of the Antichrist is employed in a secular context by Russian religious nationalists. The analysis presented in the chapter shows that the use of the figure of the Antichrist serves a number of rhetorical purposes. Evoking a long history of associations connected to the term, “the Antichrist” dehumanizes LGBT persons and those who support them, placing them outside of normative constructions of Russian national identity. However, the figure of the Antichrist turns out to be less absolute than might be expected. When evoked to denounce LGBT emancipation as a form of “evil disguised as good” it may fail to fulfill its purpose as boundary marker between traditional Russian values and those challenging those values.