Stolzmonat

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The Stolzmonat (literal German translation of "pride month", but don't let this fool you) is a far-right astroturfed trolling campaign. While not getting much attention in the so-called "real world", they manage to be nearly unavoidable in the Germanophone Twitter bubble.

Origins

"Our rainbow has only two colours: PATRIOTSMONTH, not Pridemonth!" No, they are not colorblind and this is not a cute butch/femme couple on a lesbian flag.

In 2021, the youth organisation of the right-wing populist Austrian FPÖ party tried to create a campaign under the "#Patriotenmonat" hashtag, using queerphobic and nationalistic phrases and imagery. They earned rather little attention and a charge of incitement to hatred for a sharepic likening the pride flag to garbage. A year later, in March 2022, the Twitter account "Stolzmonat" was created and immediately appealed to "oppose the (rainbow) madness and return to German values and virtues". It links to the now defunct, professionally-designed website stolzmonat.cc, which contains the basic premises of the yet-to-come campaign, a profile picture generator using a weird multiple-striped version of the German flag and a handful of primary-school-level facts about Germany. In late May 2023 the Twitter account of the Wuppertal AfD parliamentary group set off the bomb by posting a nationalistic quote of a song by the rapper Fler, who afterwards distanced himself from them, and using the prepared hashtag. In June 2023, a multitude of far-right Twitterers, organised by the antisemitic and racist influencer "Shlomo Finkelstein" (Die Vulgäre Analyse), set parts of their profile picture or banner to the Stolzmonat flag and started spreading the hashtag and the link to the website.

Participiants

Mostly the usual suspects, anonymous, often male far-right, right-extreme, and fascistic Twitter accounts and influencers. But it also gets some support among higher-profile persons and groups, including:

• some AFD MPs, including Landolf Ladig Bernd Björn Höcke, who is considered the most influential politician in the AfD and one of the more extreme in an already far-right party
• various local AfD groups
• their crazier youth group, the Junge Alternative (which also tries to profit off the Stolzmonat by selling merch), and the JA's chairman MP Hannes Gnauck
• some members of the Identitarian Movement
• the Austrian ex-vice president Heinz-Christian Strache (FPÖ)
• "alternative media" and self-declared "ideology-free" blogger Boris Reitschuster did not participate, but showed sympathy on his blog.

Methods

The central element of the campaign is the memetic warfare against queer activists, LGBTQ persons and supporters. Their profiles and comments are flooded with hateful memes and verbal attacks. To appeal to less extreme users, the Stolzmonat campaign tries to appear organically grown and not centrally organised. It tries to mark nationalists as the "silent majority" and actually oppressed, in contrast to the LGBTQ community, whom they portray as an influential lobby group. To support this view and to gain even more contributors, calls to push the #Stolzmonat hashtag and to use the Stolzmonat-associated flag were spread. Some participants also tried to nominate "Stolzmonat" for the quite popular vote for the German youth word of the year, but ultimately failed. Due to the laissez-faire approach towards moderation under Twitter chief Elon Musk, far-right influencers do not have to fear serious consequences.

Maus attacks

In a completely absurd turn of events, participants of the Stolzmonat clashed with the universally loved children show Die Sendung mit der Maus (The show with the mouse) after a sharepic showing the cartoon protagonists on a pride flag was posted by its Twitter account. Under the "#Stolzmaus" and "#Abschiebelefant" hashtags, the eponymous mouse and its sidekick, a blue cartoon elephant, were misportrayed as supporters of the AFD and expulsion of refugees. The show already attracted a transphobic shitstorm in 2022 after an article complaining about "indoctrination of our children" was posted in the conservative newspaper Die Welt.

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