1 Chapter 5 - Gendering ‘the people’. Heteronormativity and ‘ethno-masochism’ in populist imaginary Stefanie Mayer, Iztok Šori, Birgit Sauer Introduction In the last decade sensitivity for the genderdness of right-wing populist parties, movements and discourses has been growing. Research has focused on men and women in right-wing populist organisations (Amesberger and Halbmayr, 2002; Rommelspacher, 2011; Meret, 2015), and on constructions of masculinity and femininity as well as of gender relations in their discourses (Geden, 2005; Mostov, 1999; Norocel, 2013; Mudde and Kaltwasser, 2015). This body of literature has shown how right-wing “thin-centred ideology” (Mudde, 2007, p. 23) is based on the construction of traditional gender roles, on traditional gender and family relations and on norms defining proper sexual conduct. Also, some of this literature focuses on the ambivalences and contradictions of right-wing gendered mobilisation (Mayer et al., 2014) – especially at the intersection with religion and nationality, i.e. when gender relations within Muslim migrant communities are presented as traditional and patriarchal in order to construct these migrants as 'others' (Rosenberger and Sauer, 2012). However, not much literature exists with an analytical perspective on gender as an interdependent category, i.e. on how gender intersects with sexuality, ethnicity and nationality in right-wing discourse, and even more so considering online expressions of right-wing populism. Moreover, a cross-Europe perspective is lacking. Even though the notion of populism is still a matter of debate among researchers in the field (Canovan, 2004; Mudde, 2004), there seems to be broad consensus that right-wing and in particular radical right populist discourses construct the world in the form of a double antagonism (Krastev, 2007; Mudde, 2010). The positively identified in-group of 'the people’ (however defined or not defined) is positioned in sharp contrast to 'elites' (constructed as incapable, corrupt and malicious)