Description
On July 5, 2021, spontaneous mobilization took place in the capital of Georgia, Tbilisi,
protesting the planned event of Tbilisi Pride Parade. By the end of the day, the demonstration
evolved into violent clashes in different parts of the city in what was later labeled as “the battle
between journalists and the violent protest activists”. In line with the mainstream framing, the
illiberal groups that showed up in the street represented the “far right” and “fascist” ideology
and gathered with the specific motivation to engage in violent actions. As a follow up of the
street violence, which in itself represented relatively novel type of action repertoire for
Georgian protest scene, the counter-demonstration was planned on the Tbilisi’s central
Rustaveli Avenue for the next day by the right-wing political parties and ideologically affiliate
non-governmental organizations to condemn violent actions of “right-wing” groups.
By applying the critical discourse analytical tools, this paper seeks to establish some of the key
features of mainstream narrative about “far-right” groups and its political and ideological
components as well as its selective nature. Against the mainstream narrative of seeing July 5
movement in terms “far-right” politics, and without trying to tackle the spontaneous popular
reaction as a protest action incorporating any well-thought, progressive or emancipatory
potential, the work will conceptualize the protest movement as a reaction of decades long
institutionally established right-wing politics, which through various institutional and
ideological mechanisms has divided Georgian society with hierarchical markers of
“progressives” and “backward groups” and produced decades long institutional, structural and
symbolic violence that has eventually evolved into physical violence in the streets of Tbilisi on
July 5
