A number of Georgian anti-Western and far-right Facebook pages began to disseminate anti-LGBT content, following the announcement of Georgia’s first-ever large-scale pride event, Tbilisi Pride, set to take place June 18–23, 2019.

LGBT people often face rampant homophobia, violence, and discrimination in traditionally conservative countries such as Georgia. In 2018, LGBT rights activists cancelled a series of planned rallies in Tbilisi following threats from several Georgian anti-LGBT groups.

According to the Tbilisi Pride organizers, the event intends to shed some light on the difficulties the LGBT community faces in Georgia and hopes to provide a positive platform for them. June is celebrated around the world as LGBT Pride Month in commemoration of the 1969 Stonewall riots, when the New York City LGBT community demonstrated against police raids on the Stonewall Inn, a popular gay bar in the city.

On May 17, 2013, the International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia, a small group of LGBT rights demonstrators in Tbilisi were confronted by thousands of counter-protesters led by a group of Georgian Orthodox priests. The counter-protesters carried signs with homophobic messages, including some that compared the activists to “Sodom and Gomorrah,” a reference to a Bible story that is often weaponized against members of the LGBT community. The counter-protesters, many of whom carried improvised weapons, attacked the activists, forcing the police to evacuate the LGBT demonstrators out of concern for their safety.

Facebook Pages Spreading Anti-LGBT Narratives

In the first week of March, shortly after the organizers announced their plans for the event, anti-LGBT narratives started to proliferate on a number of Georgian far-right Facebook pages. In most cases, the posts and narratives shared by these pages were identical to one another. They demonized the West and liberal democracy, as well as presented the LGBT community as a threat to Georgia.

One such page, run by far-right group Georgian March — which Transparency International Georgia has identified as a Neo-Nazi organization — threatened to sabotage Tbilisi Pride 2019, stating in a Facebook video that the only way “the celebration of perversion” would take place would be for the LGBT activists to “march over Georgian March’s dead bodies.”