Before May 27, 2015, you’d be hard pressed to find the word “homocivilization” in Russian on the internet or people who had even heard the term before. Then Kremlin-controlled television aired a special episode about homosexuality in the West featuring a “child rights” activist went viral. “We’ve seen radical homosexuality, these are homoradicals,” she asserted. “The world beyond Russia’s borders has built a homocivilization.”

Homocivilization, homo-terror, homo-maidan entered a growing list of Russian slurs and anti-gay hate speech that takes full advantage of the language’s modular structure. The new language sprouted alongside the increasingly hostile, and Kremlin-sanctioned, campaign against gays in Russia. These terms are familiar now to anyone who regularly watches Russian television.

Generally, hate-speech is universal and can be uninteresting in its banality. But in Russia, this new lexicon reveals the underlying trends fueling mania around homophobia.

Gay·ro·pa, proper noun