Global Far Right Spews Anti-LGBTQ+ Hatred Attacking Olympics Opening Ceremony

The opening ceremony of the Parisian Olympic games set off an explosion of anti-LGBTQ+ hatred from the European and American far right in reaction to a performance where several drag artists appeared to recreate Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Last Supper.” 

There was an outpouring of vitriol despite the fact that the event’s official Twitter account described the scene in question as a reference to the Greek god Dionysus, and the fact that artistic director for the opening ceremony, Thomas Jolly, said, “My wish isn’t to be subversive, nor to mock or to shock. Most of all, I wanted to send a message of love, a message of inclusion and not at all to divide.” Far-right responses ranged from claiming that Christians were being “victimized” and “persecuted” by the drag event, to general anti-LGBTQ+ hate, to claims that the Olympics are a vessel for Satanism. 

The far right generally viewed the event as an “insult to Christian people,” and its performers have faced horrible harassment. One performer, Barbara Butch, released a statement through her lawyer saying that she, “has been the target of an extremely violent campaign of cyber-harassment and defamation … She has been threatened with death, torture, and rape, and has also been the target of numerous anti-Semitic, homophobic, sexist, and grossophobic insults.”

In France, far-right MEP Marion-Maréchal Le Pen, formerly affiliated with Eric Zemmour’s far-right party Reconquête! (Reconquest) released a statement on Twitter saying: “To all the Christians of the world who are watching the Paris 2024 ceremony and felt insulted by this drag queen parody of the Last Supper, know that it is not France that is speaking but a left-wing minority ready for any provocation.” Alain Escada, the leader of the far-right extremist group Civitas, a Chrisian nationalist group that was dissolved by the French state for advocating war against the state and inciting hatred against LGBTQ+ people, Muslims, and Jews, referred to the Olympic games as “Satanic.” Alice Cordier, leader of the far-right anti-immigrant “feminist” group Némésis, stated on Twitter that “these idiot woke artists locked in their microcosm couldn’t help themselves.”

Reacting to the claim that the scene was intended to portray the Feast of the Gods by Jan Harmensz van Biljert, Identitarian activist from Reconquête Damien Rieu said that they “take us for idiots” and that “only these people know how to lie.”

This is not the first time that the Olympic opening ceremonies has become a point of contention for the French far right. Earlier in the year, the far right had a racist visceral reaction to the announcement that French singer Aya Nakamura would perform at the ceremonies. Citing “her outfit, her vulgarity, the fact that she doesn’t sing French,” Marine Le Pen declared that including her in the opening ceremony would be a provocation by Macron. Nakamura is a French music superstar of Malian descent who often uses French working class slang in her pop songs as well as vocabulary from other languages.

In the U.S., Donald Trump referred to the ceremony as a “shame,” while the Faith and Freedom Coalition referred to the event as “abhorrent.” Commenting on the amount of LGBTQ+ representation at the event, conspiracist podcast host Tim Poole, referred to it as “Satanic,” pointing out the inclusion of a “pale horse” that was used in the ceremony, which Poole perceived as a referring to the Biblical apocalypse. Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson called the event as nothing less than a “war on our faith and traditional values,” while Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene referred to it as “satanic, trans, and occult.”

Elon Musk weighed in on a part of the performance that showed a decapitated Marie Antoinette, who was executed during the French Revolution, stating that “this was extremely disrespectful to Christians.” Dennis Prager’s account PragerU asked on Twitter “when did the Olympics become the Hunger Games for drag queens,” while Charlie Kirk’s Turning Point USA asked “Why are they trying to normalize this filth?”

The anti-LGBTQ+ group Gays Against Groomers announced that they were “absolutely disgusted to see these drag queens and half-naked gender cultists dance around little kids at the Olympics for the entire world to watch.” Misogynist social media influencer Andrew Tate called the ceremony “gay satanic garbage” “orchestrated by a gay jew” and mentioned that France had “gone full gay-pedo.” He claimed that he would be boycotting the Olympics, and the next day, protested outside of the French embassy in Romania with several supporters. The Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh referred to the event as a “demonic mockery” while QAnon leader Michael Flynn called it a “societal illness” and those who support it “abusers of children.”