The trends identified in January are as follows:

• To spread a xenophobic narrative, the Sezoni TV channel used the topic of French farmers’ protests. In the opinion of this media outlet, Georgian farmers are in a much worse situation, as imported products have completely taken over the local market. Statements presenting ethnic minorities as a demographic threat and demanding their expulsion from Georgia persisted. As in previous months, the idea was promoted that if Russia is an occupier, then all other neighbors are occupiers too. 

• The Turkophobic narrative was linked to a statement made by a consultant to the Education Minister, Gia Murghulia, who put forward an initiative to teach hagiographies at school “in an adequate volume and according to an appropriate methodology.” This idea was presented as part of the appeasement policy towards Turkey and a directive from Turkey. The authors of this idea claimed that Turkey tried to impose the autonomy of Adjara on us, while Russia ensured the return of this region to Georgia. The anti-Azerbaijani message accused the neighboring country of blocking the flow of tourists and thus causing economic damage to Georgia.

• The discriminative narrative on religious grounds intensified after an icon depicting Stalin in the Holy Trinity Cathedral was splattered with paint. Alt-Info saw lynching as a means of curbing such acts and linked it to the Islamic religion. Most of the anti-Catholic and anti-Baptist messages were made in a homophobic context, and criticized them for supporting LGBTQIA+ people. A statement was made claiming that the Catholic Church recognizes human-animal marriage.

• Alt-Info-Conservative Movement equated the splashing of paint on the Stalin icon with LGBT activism and made extremist statements demanding that both be punished. The homophobic narrative considered the inclusion of LGBTQIA+ representatives on party lists for parliamentary elections unacceptable. POSTV claimed that homosexuals themselves violate human rights because transgender people force lesbians to be their sexual partners.

• The events that unfolded around the Stalin icon reinforced anti-Western messages in various directions. On the one hand, the view was promoted that the West was fighting against the Christian Orthodox Church and funding local spies for this purpose; on the other hand, the splattering of paint on the icon was manipulatively compared to the burning of the EU flag, and the West was accused of applying double standards with regard to freedom of expression. After France appointed an openly gay politician as prime minister, the allegation prevailed that the West was imposing homosexuality on Georgia.

• Sexist hate speech was directed against women activists, mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili, and singer Irma Sokhadze. 

Some of the xenophobic statements were linked to the protests of French farmers, which, in addition to shrinking incomes and bureaucratic policies, were also related to increased imports of agricultural products. According to the Sezoni TV presenter, the situation in Georgia is much worse because imported products have completely displaced Georgian products from the local market. There were still statements presenting ethnic minorities as a demographic threat, as well as the opinion that if Russia is an occupier, then all other neighbors are occupiers as well.

Nikoloz Mzhavanadze, Sezoni TV presenter: “If the situation [of French farmers] is such that they have to revolt, can you imagine the plight we are in? Turkish potatoes, Armenian carrots, and Iranian onions have flooded our market, and Georgian products can no longer get to the market. Our producers have completely withdrawn from these processes…”

Nikoloz Mzhavanadze, Sezoni TV presenter: “You cannot find a Georgian tea anywhere; there is only Azeri and Turkish tea; we do not want or what?! If you go to the market, you will find only Armenian carrots, Armenian apricots, Iranian cucumbers, and Turkish tomatoes.”

Zura Makharadze, Alt-Info presenter: “Those who say that the resettlement of five million Indians is not a problem… that it is a positive phenomenon, and that those who want Georgians to multiply are fascists… these people who say all this have no sense of nationality.”

Jaba Zhvania, Alt-Info presenter: “When in Georgia, you walk along Plekhanov Street and you feel like in an Arab country… you see Turks and others dancing there to their national melodies; it annoys us, man! Let me say it straight: these people must be chased out of here! Why? Some may say that they have not come here illegally. The law that allows them to come is unlawful.”

Nikoloz Mzhavanadze, Sezoni TV presenter: “Shota Arveladse once said that Russian clubs made him offers but he would not go to the occupier country, and now he is a coach of a Turkish club. If he does not want to go to Russia, why is he going to Turkey? Didn’t Turkey annex our territories? If Russia is an occupier, then Turkey annexed our historical region of Tao-Klarjeti… Following his logic, we should not let Iranians, Arabs, Turks, or Armenians come here because they all seized our territories! All our neighbors seized pieces of our territory, following that logic.”

The Sezoni TV channel linked a discussion that had started concerning the teaching of hagiographies at school, to the appeasement policy towards Turkey. The neighboring country was accused of meddling in Georgia’s domestic affairs and giving instructions to it. A previous narrative that Russia had regained Adjara for Georgia while Turkey imposed the autonomy of this region on Georgia under the Treaty of Kars persisted.

Nikoloz Mzhavanadze, Sezoni TV presenter: “The man [Gia Murghulia] said that the teaching of hagiographies should be limited in Georgia. This must have caused anger throughout the country… By saying this, this man splattered all saints with paint… He is Nata Peradze in trousers…. Why is all this happening? Because it plays into Turkey’s hands. This must be a directive from Turkey… It prohibited [celebrating] Didgoroba; prohibited putting crosses along the highway because it annoys trailer drivers, and it must also be a directive [from Turkey] not to indoctrinate young people, because then they will not watch these Turkish TV series broadcast on Georgian TV channels!”

Dito Chubinidze, Sezoni TV co-presenter: “Georgian Bolsheviks and Mensheviks joined forces and resisted, and Ataturk did not dare to confront the Bolshevik Russia with his soldiers, and thus Batumi was saved, because we know full well where, how, and in what way it was determined by the Moscow agreement of March 16, 1921,… where and how was the Treaty of Kars signed on October 13 of the same year, when that autonomy of Adjara was actually imposed on us, and this is a sort of Turkish disease, otherwise why should there be an autonomy of Georgians in Georgia? Why should Georgian autonomy exist in Georgia? This is Turkey’s political ambitions and a political levy, nothing else…”

An anti-Azerbaijani message was revealed in one case, when the neighboring country was accused of blocking the flow of tourists to Georgia.

Irakli Rogava, Georgian Development Laboratory: “Azerbaijan has blocked its tourist flow towards Georgia. Azerbaijan was the leader by the number of tourists with more than half a million visits, and since 2021, it has been blocked, thereby causing us about a billion in losses a year, probably more than a billion.”

Zura Makharadze, Alt-Info presenter: “Those who applauded Nata Peradze on the Internet are cattle… There are only two ways of solving this problem. For example, do you know why such a thing can never be done to Muslims? They have a way of solving this problem… They would post a video of Nata Peradze’s head being chopped off, and what’s more, the majority of their population would approve it, that is, would applaud this action…”

Giorgi Razmadze, Archpriest: “The Catholic Church missions perform marriages between crocodiles or other animals and humans and include it into the so-called sacrament of marriage, and it is not a problem for them; for example, if there is a car crash and the car is no longer usable, they perform the rite of the car - the steel - as they do with a deceased person. They have become so alienated from God that I would even find it difficult to have any serious conversation with them on this topic.”

Nikoloz Mzhavanadze, Sezoni TV presenter: “The Pope has given clergy the right to bless same-sex couples. This means that a Catholic priest can walk up to two men and tell them to engage in sex with each other!”

Jaba Zhvania, Alt-Info presenter: “They, this Songhulashvili, whom you called Gandalf Songhulashvili, and this woman priest, have their ‘churches.’ Every now and then they put up the LGBT flag there, and they allowed transgender to receive communion; these things happen there. We do not go there, we do not raid it, and we do not spray paint on it. Frankly, it deserves to be shut down, and they deserve to be jailed, and I will not go on with what they really deserve, but we do not do it. We are not even interested in what’s going on there because, to me, they do not exist.”

The Conservative Movement continued to justify violence against homosexuals, equated LGBT activism with splattering paint on the Stalin icon, and made extremist statements demanding that both be punished. The homophobic narrative considered the inclusion of homosexuals on party lists for parliamentary elections unacceptable and advocated for the adoption of a law as a means of combatting LGBT propaganda. POSTV claimed that there was confrontation in the LGBT community because transgender people force lesbians to be their sexual partners.

Dito Chubinidze, Sezoni TV presenter: “The fate of elections will largely depend on whether representatives of the so-called liberast wing and gay spy ring will be on the lists of this or that political party. That’s why I am warning the Georgian Dream right now: do not include the so-called Kesaria or any person affiliated with her; otherwise, you are doomed, you wretched people… The Georgian people will not forgive you for this.”

Giorgi Akhvlediani, POSTV presenter: “A serious conflict has broken out between lesbians and transgenders. No, it’s not a conflict, but rather a real gender war is being waged. As it turned out, transgenders, in this case men who have turned into women, demanded that lesbians have sex with them… However, lesbians can tell the difference between a woman and a man, and they flatly refused the men-turned-women. They told them that they were not women, that most of them had male genitalia, and that it was because of those genitalia that they did not like having sex with men. The transgender people got very angry, saying, how dare you call them men when the entire West recognizes them as women!? In short, it came to the point that lesbians decided to organize a protest in defense of their rights.”

Guranda Bilikhodze, journalist for POSTV: “Transgenders and lesbians were kicked out of the Gay Pride only because lesbians do not want to have sex with transgenders. Not only were they kicked out, but they were also bullied. Representatives of the LGBTQ community have been accused of sexism and homophobic superstitions. Some lesbians have already sounded the alarm because they are actually being forced to accept transgenders as their sexual partners.”

Lali Moroshkina, Strong Woman – Strong State: “Adopt a law banning LGBT+ propaganda; otherwise, we will not even be able to take our children to the New Year tree, as the city is filled with boys with shellac-covered nails and showing “laced” breasts.”

Zura Makharadze, Alt-Info presenter: “We wanted to pass the law and submitted it to the parliament with the signatures of tens of thousands of people, but the parliament does not consider the law. We initiated the law to spare people from disrupting those LGBT prides every summer and to regulate this by law, because it would have been a relief both for them and for us. It would have been a relief for the police as well. Except for the leadership of this pride or whatever it is, who would not get any money or grants for their organization, everyone else would have been happy, but they did not initiate this law….”

The West was portrayed as a force fighting traditional identity and religion; it was also accused of issuing and funding the assignment to splatter the icon depicting Stalin with paint. The appointment of openly gay Gabriel Attal as the Prime Minister of France intensified the narrative that the West is run by LGBTQIA+ people, reassigns people’s gender without their informed consent, and imposes homosexuality and perversion on Georgia. Far-right and conservative actors justified the occupation of the West and Georgia and offered Russia as a counterweight to the West.

Giorgi Razmadze, Archpriest: “I am absolutely sure that the government was very well aware of what Peradze did and gave her the green light to do it because it was the assignment of our strategic partners on the other side of the ocean, and if the government had failed to fulfill this assignment, they would have had to pay the price.”

Nikoloz Mzhavanadze, Sezoni TV presenter: “Who is Nata Peradze after all? Nata Peradze did not do it, folks. The United States of America did it; they spitted in our soul; the Americans did it.”

Tristan Tsitelashvili, military expert: “This is a targeted attack on our Church, and this targeted attack comes from the US and the collective West.”

Davit Isakadze, Archpriest: “This person [Nata Peradze] must be exemplarily punished so that no other similar extremist and persecutor of the church dares to commit such an act. If a person is arrested for tearing or burning an EU flag, then desecration of an icon is a graver crime, isn’t it? These EU double standards must end in Georgia. That’s why I am saying that the government’s tough reaction to this case is necessary.”

Giorgi Kardava, Conservative Movement: “In the West, it is a practice that insulting believers in Christian institutions falls under freedom of expression, while insulting the EU flag, LGBT people, and their sectarian entities, which can be committed as freedom of expression, is criminalized… The government has offered us a classic Western, European double standard when insulting Christians is not punishable, it is legal – do what you want – but insulting an EU symbol is punishable by six years. That is Western justice; that’s the way it is done in the West, and the government is already introducing this.”

Soso Shatberashvili, Leftist Alliance: “Europe has embarked on the path of perversion, folks! The President of France has appointed a pederast as Prime Minister; what could be worse or more appalling than that? A man can hide that he is gay, but this one openly declares that he is a man of different orientation, and he appointed his male sexual partner as Minister of Education… Not to mention who was the German foreign minister; he was gay and paid visits together with his male spouse! It’s a shame and disgrace!”

Dito Chubinidze, Sezoni TV presenter: “Parents, take care of your children. Who today will return from that Europe, where Georgians like Niko Nikoladze, Konstantine Gamsakhurdia, Grigol Kobakhidze, and all our elite obtained education in the 19th and early 20th centuries? People with what kind of reasoning and outlook will come back from there? I have heard that in student dormitories, homosexuals live on the first floor, transsexuals on the second floor, and some other sexual personalities on the third floor. Thousands of kinds of immorality …”

Giorgi Akhvlediani, POSTV presenter: “According to the liberal laws of Switzerland, minors can change their sex even without parental consent. It is enough for a thirteen- or fourteen-year-old child to get bored with his or her sex and decide to change it to the opposite sex. They can freely go to a specialized clinic, where they will be met by a transgender doctor who will so disfigure the youngsters that even their parents will not recognize them. But most importantly, no one will warn these careless youngsters that there is virtually no turning back after a sex change. A girl who changes into a boy goes through horrifying procedures.

Ana Nadirashvili, journalist for POSTV: “Chris Beck [the character of the report] says he was used. They knew what they were doing, although I did not know. He said thousands of transgender clinics have been built in America, where you can start testosterone therapy the very next day after approaching it and have a sex change. Daisy, too, was misled. She found the answer to her depression and loneliness on the Internet…. Listening to these stories, you get the feeling that they are stuck somewhere in the middle. They are neither women nor men.”

Giorgi Kardava, Conservative Movement: “How in the West the Christian society has turned into this satanic, inhumane state it is in now and for which they are dying, and some Negroes and Asians dominate and do whatever they want with them; they will soon be extinct and not even on the Red List of endangered species, and the Eiffel Tower will be left to some Kenyan, and God bless that Kenyan in this endeavor while these [Westerners] are animals and liberasts, God bless that Kenyan, who is occupying France, in this endeavor. It belongs to them. This pattern applies to us as well. How should we regain Abkhazia? Who should regain Abkhazia? We deserve nothing; some pederasts break into churches and desecrate icons. We do not deserve anything. If this agenda is established and there is no adequate, exemplary response to it, we will eventually disappear… God will not allow, and the laws of nature will not allow such a society to exist.”

Davit Mkheidze, journalist for Georgia and World: “The contemporary world is divided into liberast-pederast and conservative parts. The unrivaled leaders of the former are US-British Anglo-Saxons, whose cornerstone of ideology (if I may say so) is support of the LGBT community and any filth. The ideology of the conservative part of society, on the other hand, is the propaganda of traditional and national values… The leader of the world’s conservatives is Orthodox Christianity, that is, Russia and its president Vladimir Putin.”

Civil activist Nata Peradze became a target of sexist hate speech. Conservative and extreme-right actors demanded that she be punished by violent methods and isolated from society for splattering paint on the icon depicting Stalin. Sexist hate speech was also directed against mezzo-soprano Anita Rachvelishvili, who danced with the Sukhishvili Ensemble in the Tbilisi Concert Hall, as well as singer Irma Sokhadze, whose statement about the need for sex education in school was equated with the propaganda for the initiation of sexual activity.

Tristan Tsitelashvili, Major-General: “If we turn a blind eye to Nata Peradze, we will get many people like Nata Peradze, many people like Baia Pataraia, many people like Lomjaria, and so we must not allow them to act; we must drive them into their brothels where they hatched and then came out; they must be isolated forever, they must not be allowed into society, because these people are carriers of a terrible virus… Those clinics for sexually transmitted diseases must be necessarily reestablished to isolate these people once and for all. If they refuse to be treated voluntarily, let’s tie them with a rope, because otherwise it is impossible…”

Dito Chubinidze. Sezoni TV co-presenter: “These people need to be examined, sexually transmitted disease clinics for women need to be reestablished, and Nata Peradze and the so-called ladies of her type, street whores, must be transferred to specialized institutions and isolated from the rest of society.”

Aleksandre Palavandishvili, Alt-Info presenter: “In reality, behind feminism and all of this are those masculine men who want to have more workers, to have more subjugated families, to better manage them. It is like saying that legalizing prostitution is about taking care of women, and legalizing drugs is about taking care of drug addicts, though in reality, it is about taking care of drug dealers and pimps. The same goes for feminism; feminism exists so that big corporations have more workers, because the wider the choice, the cheaper the labor force.”

Gela Zedelashvili, journalist for Asaval-Dasavali: “This impudent woman, sometimes referred to as Nata Peradze, is playing with fire… Just get her out of sight, throw her in jail, at least for a short period of time, again for her safety; otherwise, someone will crush her like a frog, and then an uproar will start.”

Iakob Iakobishvili, Metropolitan Bishop: “Let us not imitate others; let’s not take bad examples from others. No one needs to be Joan of Arc in Georgia. If there is a need to sacrifice ourselves, we, as men, will do that. Let what women are valued for – beauty, reasonableness, proper upbringing of children, taking care of the family, observing traditions – remain so.”

Gela Zedelashvili, journalist: “Frankly speaking, it also requires talent when such a heavyweight [Anita Rachvelishvili] can engage her hips, thighs, and boobs in a lively dance, not to mention her pelvis, shoulder blades, neck, and ears!”

Nikoloz Mzhavanadze, Sezoni TV presenter: “This Anita Rachvelishvili is an ardent supporter of the United National Movement; Mrs. Anita, instead of performing this striptease, you had better get ahead in your support for the United National Movement; besides, when a woman undresses and displays everything like you did, she should have a proper figure too…. If there were a pole there, it would be a real striptease.”