Pridewashed: How Liberation Became a Lobby

In theory, EuroPride is a celebration of diversity, inclusion, and the hard-won victories of LGBTQ+ communities across the continent. In practice, the upcoming 2025 edition in Lisbon exposes a growing crisis in queer politics: the commodification of pride and its instrumentalization by state actors and private capital. When solidarity is replaced by spectacle, and protest becomes public relations, pride loses its teeth—and its meaning.

At the center of the controversy is Variações – Associação de Comércio e Turismo LGBTI de Portugal, the lead organizer of EuroPride 2025. What began as a coalition with longstanding civil society organizations like ILGA Portugal, rede ex aequo, and AMPLOS has devolved into a one-sided operation after those groups publicly distanced themselves from the event. The reason? Governance concerns, political entanglements, and what many activists see as a betrayal of the core values of queer resistance.

Chief among the criticisms is the accusation of pinkwashing. The slogan No Pride in Genocide—now echoed across posters and petitions—denounces the perceived alignment between EuroPride’s organizers and the Israeli state, whose ongoing military occupation of Palestinian territories and recent actions in Gaza have drawn international condemnation. This critique is not rooted in antisemitism but in a demand for ethical consistency: if pride stands for human rights, it must stand against all forms of oppression.

The Pinkwashing Paradox

Defenders of Israel’s involvement in global LGBTQ+ advocacy often invoke a familiar narrative: there are no queer rights in Palestine. The argument points to the persecution of LGBTQ+ individuals by Hamas or other radical Islamist factions in Gaza, suggesting that queer people are safer and freer under Israeli governance. This line of reasoning has been championed by the Zionist right and repeated in diplomatic and media circles across Europe and North America.

But this framing is selective, reductive, and ultimately cynical. It instrumentalizes queer suffering to justify military domination and apartheid policies. It erases Palestinian queer activists who do exist—often operating under immense risk—while silencing the complex reality of queer life in occupied territories. Groups such as alQaws and Aswat have long challenged both internal oppression and external occupation, insisting that liberation cannot come from tanks or drones, but from autonomy, solidarity, and self-determination.

The reality is that neither occupation nor fundamentalism guarantees safety for queer people. To pit one form of repression against another is a false choice, designed to divert attention from structural violence. LGBTQ+ rights must not be used to whitewash state brutality—anywhere. And queer politics must resist being folded into the agendas of military-industrial powers.

Pride for Whom?

Lisbon’s city leadership has also come under scrutiny. Mayor Carlos Moedas and councillor Diogo Moura have maintained close ties to pro-Israel lobbying circles. Moura’s involvement with ALPI (Associação Luso-Portugueses por Israel) and Moedas’ participation in embassy events signal a willingness to fold LGBTQ+ advocacy into broader geopolitical branding exercises.

Adding to the discomfort is the increasing presence of corporate finance. EuroPride, like many major festivals across Europe, is no longer a grassroots movement but a branded affair. Investment firm KKR (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts), known for its expansive holdings in media, energy, and tech surveillance, has been involved in funding or influencing cultural festivals that promote progressive values—while reaping profits from deeply regressive industries.

This convergence—between state diplomacy, corporate power, and branded identity politics—risks transforming pride into a hollow pageant. One where difficult questions are silenced, where solidarity is selective, and where celebration becomes a cover for complicity.

A Pride Worth Defending

More than 40 human rights and LGBTQ+ organizations have rejected the current trajectory of EuroPride 2025, issuing a call to return to the movement’s radical origins. Their message is not one of division, but of clarity: pride must not be a tool for imperial soft power. It must not sell out its values for diplomatic comfort or private equity sponsorship. It must remain a platform for the voiceless, the exiled, and the criminalized.

There is no pride in occupation.
No pride in bombs cloaked in rainbows.
No pride in complicity.

To stand for queer liberation means standing against all forms of domination—whether they come dressed as religion, nationalism, or neoliberal progress. To defend pride is to demand more than tolerance. It is to demand justice, everywhere.