“Gay Is Bad, Gay Is Dumb”: Ridicule as a Discursive Strategy in Polish Conservative Media

Numerous studies have analysed anti-gender and anti-LGBTQI+ discourses in Central and Eastern Europe, highlighting moral panic, nationalism, and the rhetoric of civilisation under threat as dominant discursive patterns (Graff and Korolczuk, 2017; 2018; 2022; Graff, 2014; 2021; Korolczuk, 2014; 2019; 2020; Kuhar and Patternote, 2017). However far less attention has been paid to ridicule as a mechanism of symbolic exclusion. This paper explores how mockery and humour operate as tools of dehumanisation in Polish right-wing media, focusing on the weekly Gazeta Polska. Combining critical discourse analysis with visual semiotics, the study situates these representations within broader frameworks of affect and ideology (Ahmed, 2004; Butler, 1997; Billig, 2001). The aim of this paper is to examine how ridicule functions as an affective and ideological strategy within Polish conservative media, revealing how humour operates alongside fear to sustain anti-LGBTQI+ discourses and reinforce heteronormative national identity. Drawing on a corpus of satirical cartoons published between 2015 and 2023 in Gazeta Polska, the paper examines how queer subjects are represented as foolish, naïve, or intellectually inferior, figures of ridicule that, paradoxically, coexist with their simultaneous portrayal in the same outlet as dangerous threats to civilisation and moral order. In Gazeta Polska, ridicule and fear coexist as complementary affective strategies, one trivialising queer existence through mockery, the other amplifying it as a civilisational threat. By inviting the audience to laugh at rather than with queer figures, conservative satire reinforces belonging to an in-group as synonymous with heteronormativity, “common sense,” and moral superiority. This paper contributes to the literature on anti-gender politics by expanding the analytical focus from fear and moral panic to include ridicule as one of central affective economies of the anti-LGBTQI+ discourse. It demonstrates how humour functions as a vehicle for symbolic violence, normalising exclusion through laughter and irony.