Pride as Propaganda: How Pinkwashing Justifies Violence
Pinkwashing is not a commitment to queer liberation, but a selective deployment of it.
There is a familiar question that comes up whenever queer people of colour speak up on global injustices: Why defend people who would never support your identity?
The question is meant to end the conversation. Instead, it should start one. Because what’s being exposed here is not a contradiction in queer solidarity, but how effective a certain narrative can become.
That narrative has a name: Pinkwashing.
Pinkwashing is when LGBTQIA+ rights are used to frame a state or institution as progressive, even when it carries out policies that harm other marginalised groups. As the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) Movement claims, pinkwashing is not simply a matter of hypocrisy; it is a deliberate rebranding that allows power to present itself as benevolent while remaining fundamentally violent.
You can see this clearly in how Western media and governments talk about Palestine.
Israel is often described as a “rare safe haven” for LGBTQIA+ people in the Middle East. The contrast is intentional. It signals modernity, tolerance, and alignment with Western values. Underneath that, there’s another message: despite Israel’s actions, they are the supposed side of progressiveness.
But, that framing only works if you don’t look too closely. It depends on erasing certain realities. It asks us to separate queer Palestinians from Palestine as a whole, as if their lives exist outside occupation, displacement, and war. As if queerness can be talked about on its own, disconnected from the conditions that shape who gets to live and who dies. It cannot.
The promise of safety for some does not negate the reality of violence for others. And when that promise is used to justify or obscure an existence of violence, it stops being about protection altogether.
A similar logic shapes Western narratives about Iran. Political leaders frequently position themselves as defenders of queer Iranians, contrasting their own supposed progress with the repression of the Islamic Republic. It turns intervention into something that sounds like liberation, and any form of criticism becomes an issue of morality.
But, that story erases many things. This narrative leaves out an inconvenient truth. The same governments that claim to champion queer rights abroad often support policies—sanctions, military interventions, economic destabilisations—that make everyday life more precarious for the very communities they claim to protect.
What emerges is not a commitment to queer liberation, but a selective deployment of it.
Pinkwashing works because it draws on the truth that LGBTQIA+ rights do matter. It feeds off decades of organising, resistance, and loss. But, that is precisely why the LGBTQIA+ community is so easily instrumentalised in Western eyes. When queer rights become a symbol of liberalism rather than a practice of justice, the West can attach it to almost anything. Including violent colonial campaigns.
There is also an underlying assumption: that queerness belongs to the West. That queerness is a marker of white modernity, proof of a Western society’s advancement, proof that white culture has moved forward while the rest remains stuck in the conservative past.
The weaponisation of queerness is a colonial idea that ignores the long history of queer lives across different cultures. It flattens everything into a single timeline of “progress” and it quietly reinforces who gets to be seen as civilised.
It also demands an impossible choice when faced by pinkwashing. Queer people of colour are asked to prioritise one part of themselves over another. To see their identity as separate from their politics. To accept that solidarity has limitations.
But, solidarity has always been nuanced and intersectional.
It’s not about pretending that differences do not exist. It is about recognising that systems of power are rarely contained. The same structures that justify surveillance, occupations, and militarisation abroad often shape the conditions of inequality at home.
And the West is not exempt from those conditions. The LGBTQIA+ communities continue to face violence, discrimination, and political backlash across North America and Europe.
So, what does it mean to use queer rights as proof of moral authority elsewhere, when those rights are still being contested at home? It means queer rights are not really being defended, they’re being used.
This is what makes pinkwashing effective for Western weaponisation. It offers a version of progress that can sit comfortably next to harm, as long as the language sounds right. But, language isn’t always protection and symbols don’t equate to safety. At some point, the contradiction becomes impossible to ignore.
What does it mean to claim liberation if it depends on someone else’s dispossession? And what does it mean to defend queer rights, if those rights can be invoked to excuse the very conditions that make life unlivable for others?
