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Among the hand-drawn signs warning of the “evil” of abortion at last week’s Sydney rally were some more professional placards.

“The greatest liberty is the right to life,” the blue-and-white posters read, under a small logo for CitizenGo.

CitizenGo will not be a familiar name to many in Australia but in Europe it looms large in the anti-abortion, anti-LGBTQ+ rights world. An offshoot of the ultra-conservative Spanish group HazteOír (Make Yourself Heard), it was founded in Spain in 2013 and claims to have 20 million members across 50 countries.

Its sources of funding have been disputed.

A European parliamentary inquiry into foreign interference in the European Union’s democratic processes described CitizenGo in 2021 as “an organisation founded by US and Russian ultra-conservatives that has sought to coordinate the activities of far-right parties in Europe” but CitizenGo has denied receiving money from “Russian oligarchs”.

A UN research institute for social development report published in 2024 called CitizenGo an “ultra-conservative Catholic organisation” and a global leader of anti-gender ideology.

Outside Europe it has also been particularly active in Africa. In Kenya, Marie Stopes was temporarily banned from providing abortions in 2018 after complaints from CitizenGo, among others.

Its methods typically include initiating mass online petitions for its cause, which it describes as “stopping radical lobbies from imposing their agenda on society”.

Petitions have made headlines for trying to get a Cadbury’s Creme Egg ad pulled off air, and for succeeding in getting a DC Comics series on Jesus cancelled.

In Australia, CitizenGo – which is on the foreign influence register – says it advocates “on issues of family, faith and liberty from a biblical perspective”.

Its campaigners include the former Nationals MP and failed One Nation Senate candidate George Christensen, and Christopher Yates, a former adviser to the independent Fowler MP, Dai Le. The former Australian Taxpayers’ Alliance executive director Brian Marlow (who is now running a rightwing political movement called Revive Australia) joined in 2024 but it is unclear if he is still involved.

To date, the impact of CitizenGo in Australia has been modest.

One petition in support of the anti-abortion activist Joanna Howe, which claims “the political elite are trying to destroy her”, has been signed by almost 14,000 people. About 7,400 people have signed Christensen’s petition to ban sex-selective abortion, and about 22,300 have signed a petition calling for the dissolution of federal parliament for a range of reasons including “mass migration” and inflation.

But researchers say CitizenGo is another potentially influential part of the burgeoning ecosystem of anti-rights groups energised by the rise of One Nation in the polls and populist movements worldwide.

Lucy Hamilton, a doctoral researcher at the University of Technology Sydney and far-right expert, uses the word “co-belligerence” to describe CitizenGo’s role in that ecosystem.

The word is used to describe people who fight alongside each other for a common cause, without necessarily having a formal alliance.

“There’s a variety of … Christian groups representing different faith traditions [that are] co-operating … to drive their shared projects,” she says.

Hamilton says such groups embrace multiple issues – such as abortion, immigration and climate change – to broaden out.

“Basically they’re all extending their messaging to include as many factions as possible so that a group that might not be focused on abortion feels itself included. These become part of an ideological package that threatens the safety of many Australians,” she says.

Kurt Sengul, a research fellow at Macquarie University and far-right expert, echoes that idea, and says coalitions have emerged in the far-right space that “never would have seen eye to eye on anything before”.

CitizenGo is in the mix but has “definitely flown under the radar” in Australia.

“They haven’t got a lot of traction,” he says.

“You get the sense they feel like the opportunity structure is there now, the possibilities have broadened, that could be why they’re making some moves now.”

The recent prominence of abortion as an issue – there are three bills before state parliaments trying to reduce access – has given CitizenGo an opportunity to insert itself into the campaign.

Yates was at last week’s rally, organised by Howe, who works with state and federal politicians to introduce laws to restrict abortion access.

Yates said in a Facebook post he could have printed out three times as many of those blue-and-white posters and that “ideally” abortion should be entirely banned.

Dr Adam Simpson, a senior lecturer in international studies at Adelaide University’s school of society and culture, says cost-of-living pressures since Covid have driven people to unite on a range of grievances.

“That’s been the vector for the move to these rightwing populists that bring with them a whole range of other complaints,” he says.

“I strongly suspect that there’s quite a few of those [One Nation] supporters who are broadly pro-choice but – because they’re susceptible to the far-right, populist view – they become more susceptible to views they might not have thought about before or might no have strong views on, like abortion.”

Guardian Australia has contacted CitizenGo, Christensen, Yates, Le and Howe for comment.