In Estonia, I’m raising my child as a single parent alongside my mother. When I discover my mother supports the far-right, I follow her to an election rally where politicians rage about defending ‘traditional family values’ and push to constitutionally ban same-sex marriage following a similar trend across Eastern Europe, all insisting the ‘traditional family’ is under threat.
Digging deeper, I find a hidden coalition of hundreds of organizations determined to ‘restore the Natural Order’. Since 2010, U.S. Christian-right groups, powerful European legal think tanks, and Russian-linked interests have funnelled vast sums into European politics – funding campaigns, supporting far-right parties, and targeting the EU and UN to roll back rights and weaken democratic institutions. Guided by experts, anti-gender networks’ own events and frontline witnesses, I confront a chilling possibility: this isn’t just a culture war – it’s a political project to reshape Europe from within.

The anti-rights backlash isn’t a side fight anymore - it’s a society-shaping force on the scale of the climate crisis. What’s being sold as ‘values’ is, in practice, a coordinated push for white-supremacist, authoritarian politics. It thrives on manufacturing an us vs. them reality, backed by fast, serious money designed to normalize extremism and bend public opinion. We have been in this place in history before, and it did not end well - scapegoats first, then laws, captured institutions, silenced voices, and democracy reduced to a shell. The window to stop them closes the moment they can rewrite the rules - and once they do, we may not recognize what we’re left to live with.