Proclamations of leadership in gender equality have recently become a perhaps unlikely rallying call from far-right activists. Gender equality and women's rights have been adopted as a signifier of white western culture that must be protected against a threat from an external other. Concurrently, the same right-wing networks have launched attacks on gender studies programmes and feminist movements. Such uses of gender in far-right political movements have been given increasing attention (Köttig, Bitzan and Petö 2017). This paper uses a case study of the Austrian right-wing activist group Identitäre Bewegung Österreich (IBÖ) to examine intersecting uses of gender and memory among far-right political activists. Attention is drawn to the re-emergence of a form of scientific racism (i.e. Kline 2001), which itself underpins frequent portrayals of non-white migrants as sexual predators. This championing of gender equality is juxtaposed with the IBÖ's own focus upon a return to 'traditional family values' within Austria, including but not limited to a focus upon their framing of women in terms of procreation. Here, the intersection of the use of gender with a right-wing form of memory activism emerges, with the role of women constructed in terms of a mythical nostalgia for an Austrian 'Heimat'. This sense of nostalgia is mobilised not only in the service of the memory of a mythical past, but also in the construction of an imagined future.
