Domesticating the nation online: banal nationalism on LGBTQ websites in Poland and Turkey

In this article I examine the intersections of queer sexualities and the nation online. In particular, I employ Billig’s concept of banal nationalism to investigate when and how the nation is flagged on the most popular LGBTQ websites in Poland and Turkey. The analysis focuses on both the mediation of nationhood through (re)producing the world as a world of nation and the mediation of particular nations through the coupling of queer symbolism with national symbolism. I conclude by proposing the concept of ‘domesticating the nation online’, which is a form of queering the nation via digital technology, though not to challenge hegemonic national discourses in a public debate but to make the nation more homely for queers themselves. Finally, I juxtapose the concept of banal nationalism with the US neo-imperial cultural logic to argue that domesticating the nation online plays an especially important role for queers beyond the USA.