We are at a pivotal moment in history, where sexual and reproductive rights are under growing threats. Access to safe abortions—a fundamental right—is becoming increasingly restricted across countries, along with the rise of far-right political ideologies that are inherently anti-women. In the US, a 2022 Supreme Court ruling overturned Roe v. Wade (1973), which had established the nationwide right to safe and legal abortion, a major victory for the far right in a decades-long war of organised misogyny. This dangerous precedent led to multiple states imposing bans on the procedure. According to the Centre for Reproductive Rights111 million women of reproductive age live in 21 countries where abortion is completely banned.
At the heart of these coordinated attacks lie far-right conspiracies, white supremacist ideologies, and a fascist drive to restore a so-called natural order—one that seeks to reassert white male dominance. This imagined order dictates that women, Black and the Global Majority people are inherently inferior to white men, while LGBTIQ people should not exist. These conspiracies aim to confine women to reproductive labour and place their bodies under patriarchal control.
The rise of fascism: A symptom of capitalism in crisis
When capitalism faces an existential threat, the ruling class resorts to authoritarian measures to maintain control. Neoliberal capitalism served as the governing ideology for about fifty years until 2008. It claimed that markets would self-regulate and we, in turn, let it regulate us. This system prioritised the individual over the community and restrained collective action. Neoliberalism promised prosperity, freedom, and efficiency—and we fell for it.
But this illusion broke down in 2008 when we witnessed the worst financial crisis of our time. Neoliberalism had failed, leaving a deep psychological void. With no progressive alternative to fill this void, people fell back on the old certainties—nature, nation, and war.
In the 1960s, the invention of the contraceptive pill and the move towards safe, legal abortion practices in the Global North signalled the beginning of women’s liberation from centuries of biological oppression. No longer tied to reproductive labour, women gained new freedoms. But capitalism, always quick to adapt, assigned them new roles—as consumers and workers—binding them instead to productive labour.
Dropping birth rates coupled with an ageing population in the Global North created a demographic crisis, with fewer workers and consumers to sustain the economy. Capitalism had no clear solution for this crisis—but fascism did. It pushed women back into reproductive labour, restricted abortion, and pushed policies that rewarded fecundity, especially in women. This backlash created the groundwork for the ongoing war on women’s reproductive rights.
As long as the promises of freedom and prosperity that neoliberalism offered held up, the importation of global labour and the inclusion of the newly liberated women in the workforce were acceptable to white men. Nevertheless, there still existed racist and sexist elements within society, but as long as people had jobs and the system worked in favour of white men, these changes were tolerated. That changed in 2008 when this system collapsed.
Men saw their prosperity dwindle and their security crumble. They realised that the inclusion of women and migrants in the workforce, and other gains in equality, had come at the cost of their white male privileges. Rather than blaming capitalism for the collapse, as they should have, many directed their anger towards women’s rights, workplace equality, and immigration.
The far right offered simple answers in a time of chaos, albeit the wrong ones. They told angry white men that their job losses and identity crises were caused by migration and women’s empowerment. They blamed feminism for the declining birth rates in the Global North and claimed it was all part of a conspiracy to replace the white race with migrants from the Global South. Fascism convinced them that to reclaim their lost power, they needed to wage a genocidal race war and create ethno-states, where women were relegated to their reproductive roles, playing their part in realising this vision. Neo-fascism of the 21st century, thus, took root.
The three tenets of fascist ideology and reproductive rights
Fascism, in its modern manifestations, revolves around three key theoretical tenets. These principles function cohesively and position the attack on abortion rights as the first step of a broader fascist agenda.
Tenet 1: Progress—including abortion rights, gender equality, and sexual and reproductive freedoms—is subverting an imagined natural order that needs to be restored.
Fascism emerged as a political ideology in 1920s Italy under Benito Mussolini’s dictatorship. Ever since fascism has fundamentally been an anti-humanist ideology. Its followers vehemently assert that human beings are bound by nature and have little to no power to change or improve society.
This so-called natural order is governed by white, heterosexual male supremacy and capitalism. Historian Ruth Ben-Ghiat explains how authoritarian male leaders—from Mussolini and Franco to Trump, Putin, and Bolsonaro—assert their power by attempting to sell “A fantasy of returning to an age when male authority was secure, and women, people of colour, and workers knew their place.”
According to Mark Neocleous, a professor at Brunel University, fascism is rooted in “the sanctification of nature and thus that which it takes to be natural: war and the nation.” He argues that fascism envisions the nation not as “an imagined community” but as a natural entity, a belief reflected in the Nazi doctrine of “blood and soil.” This slogan, used by fascist movements even today, “suggests an intimate connection between the blood of the people (nation) and the soil of the land (nature).”
Hitler claimed that nature followed “stern and rigid laws” and blamed society’s problems—in this case those of 1920s and 1930s Germany—on the pollution of nature by post-Enlightenment progress. When it comes to obeying nature’s stern and rigid laws, women’s duty and social utility lie in reproductive labour designed to strengthen and purify the nation-state.
In this natural order, women are expected to fulfil their so-called natural role and obey nature’s strict laws by dedicating themselves to reproductive labour. Because the strength of the nation depends on its people following these laws, fascism ties women’s “biological destiny” directly to that of the nation. In this framework, the ideal nation is an expression of racial purity as well. Therefore, a woman who defies these laws is viewed as corrupting nature and betraying her race and nation.
Take, for example, this post from the misogynistic Red Pill Reddit forum:
Back in the day, women would likely hit puberty, have sex, and within a couple of years they were having kids. That is the natural order of things. Now it’s just a fucking free for all with consequences that we will have to deal with.
In this natural order, women are expected to fulfil their so-called natural role and obey nature’s strict laws by dedicating themselves to reproductive labour. Because the strength of the nation depends on its people following these laws, fascism ties women’s “biological destiny” directly to that of the nation. In this framework, the ideal nation is an expression of racial purity as well. Therefore, a woman who defies these laws is viewed as corrupting nature and betraying her race and nation.
Naturally, feminism and women’s sexual freedoms that designate childbearing as a choice rather than an obligation, are seen by the far right as unnatural or abnormal. Even worse, they are considered an existential threat to the nation itself, as they challenge racial supremacy.
This is why the far right ties abortion to the “white genocide” conspiracy theory. This theory argues that abortion—along with migration from the Global South—is supposedly eroding racial purity and destabilising white-majority nations. To ‘preserve,’ the nation and restore what they see as the natural order, women’s rights (along with migrants’ rights) must be cancelled. Women must be forced back into reproductive labour to sustain the race and uphold white supremacy. This is also why the far right portrays women’s rights as against nature. Their vision of society mirrors their perception of the animal kingdom: rigid hierarchies based on sex and race, where women and minority groups remain subordinate while white men maintain dominance.
Tenet 2: To achieve this natural order, progress needs to be reversed so that society returns to a pre-Enlightenment phase where nature rather than reason dictated human behaviour, a ‘fascist mythic past.’
The far-right reinforces its idea of a natural order by invoking the fascist myth of an idealised past—one governed by patriarchal dominance. This myth rejects modernity, falsely portraying an era of white male supremacy as a lost golden age that must be restored.
Hitler’s Nazis romanticised medieval Europe and feudalism as their version of a mythic past—a time when society was structured around man’s connection to the land, and when workers and the landless had no rights. Mussolini’s chosen mythic past was the Ancient Roman empire, which he called ‘our guiding star; it is our symbol or if you prefer, our myth.’
A defining feature of Western fascist myths is that they are always rooted in a pre-1789 world—a time before humanism and the revolutionary movements that challenged the idea of inequality as natural or inevitable, instead advocating for a more just society. Fascism seeks to undo the advancements in human rights since 1789, trapping history in a past where hierarchy and oppression are seen as natural. No wonder Nazi Germany’s Chief Propagandist Joseph Goebbels described the party’s rise to power as the moment ‘1789 becomes expunged from the records of history.’
This fascist mythic past is always gendered, involving traditional, patriarchal gender roles.
Mussolini promoted a nationalist agenda through childbirth, encouraging women to bear children to strengthen the nation. He famously stated, “War is to man what maternity is to a woman.” Similarly, in Nazi Germany, strict gender roles were enforced: boys were steered toward the Hitler Youth, while girls joined the Bund Deutscher Mädel or League of German Maidens. Through gendered uniforms and activities, these groups reinforced the belief that girls belonged to Kinder, Küche, Kirche (children, kitchen, church), while boys were destined for warfare.
The term mythic is crucial here—there has never been an era of absolute patriarchal dominance. Throughout history, women have demonstrated economic independence, practiced abortion and contraception, and resisted male supremacy. However, factual accuracy takes a backseat when constructing a fascist mythic past—a time when men were unquestionably dominant, women were subservient, Black people were kept in their place, and LGBTIQ individuals were forced into invisibility. By manufacturing this imagined history, the far right frames liberation movements—such as feminism, Black Lives Matter, and LGBTIQ rights—as unnatural, dangerous forces working to dismantle the so-called natural order, which they argue must be reinstated through violence and conflict.
Tenet 3: Humans are inherently violent, so we must inhabit a state of endless war within which the gender roles are clear—a man should fight and a woman should reproduce.
Fascism thrives on a perpetual state of war, as its followers believe this ‘shapes man’s spiritual character and is the defining characteristic of nature.’ This conviction compels fascism to wage an unending battle against modernity, progress, and human rights. At its core, fascist ideology equates the nation with race, making racial warfare essential to achieving its vision of individual ethno-states, the end goal of all fascist movements. Akhand Bharat, for instance. The only way to achieve this is through violence.
Any “white” woman who claims autonomy over her own body is viewed as betraying her race and nation—a sentiment echoed in nationalist regimes like Iran
Nowhere is this more obvious than in the way Podcast Bros dramatically lament, “Men used to go to war!“
We witnessed the far right’s obsession with war unfold in real time on January 6, 2021, during the insurrection at the U.S. Capitol. For many of the participants—predominantly white men—it marked “Day X,” the beginning of the so-called war. Most participants arrived in combat gear, armed with weapons. Ultimately, these groups thrive on conflict, seeing it as the means to both undo progress and reestablish the natural order—an endless state of war.
The absence of women at the insurrection reveals something significant about their distinct role within the far right. The far right cannot achieve its race war without women’s reproductive labour. Any “white” woman who claims autonomy over her own body is viewed as betraying her race and nation—a sentiment echoed in nationalist regimes like Iran. To prevent such “betrayal,” women must be kept under patriarchal control.
Fascists view freedom as both an ideological enemy and a direct threat to their agenda. They see it as unnatural while reinforcing the idea that war, along with the subjugation of women is inherent and unchangeable. This is why the far right is so fixated on restricting women’s reproductive and sexual rights—its ultimate goal is to deny all people the possibility of liberated, self-determined lives.
In practice, access to abortion empowers women to break free from the biological destiny that fascism dictates for them. According to the far right, this disrupts the so-called natural order and threatens the very survival of the nation and race. Women’s liberation and reproductive rights directly challenge the foundation of patriarchal authority and female subjugation that fascism relies upon. This is why the far right seeks to undo progress, dragging society back to its mythic past—where women were confined to their “natural” role and reduced to a resource for fuelling its perpetual race war.
About the author(s)
Adithya (he/him/his) is a political consultant specializing in research and communications, currently on a ‘strategic sabbatical’ to pursue his passion for writing. Beyond engaging in political debates, he is drawn to reading and film, especially works that challenge the status quo. He has a particular affinity for works on feminism, geopolitics, and history.
