There’s a concerted conservative effort afoot to stoke terrorism against trans people in this country and, like “Pizzagate” and Trump’s election hoaxes and multiple Fox News crusades against an enemy-of-the-moment (see: Glenn Beck, Tides Foundation), it’s working as intended. We can harumph or deflect or try to sort the various Republican provocateurs into buckets roughly corresponding to murderous intent versus hackish opportunism, but once again we have an entirely hoax-fueled panic that, once again, just happens to target another group previously persecuted by The Actual Nazis, one that will be added to the big bookshelf of hoaxes used to foment stochastic terrorism against immigrants, educators, non-Christians, scientific experts, international treaties, and targeted “globalist” Jews.
Fox spent more time attacking trans people and drag queens than it did covering the second January 6 hearing https://t.co/0UYh15tL0k
— Media Matters (@mmfa) June 15, 2022
You’ll also notice that these newest hoaxes are the result of a change of targets in Republican “groomer” panics. That might have come about due to the relative staleness of recent attacks against schools, teachers, and public libraries for allegedly “grooming” children by providing books written by Black authors, history lessons that reference America’s long history of racism, or being insufficiently hostile toward LGBT teens in their care, attacks that smothered news cycles and led to large-scale censorship campaigns led by Republican elected officials but have not led to many ballot-box victories.
The shift from claiming schoolteachers are predators to claiming drag queens are predators might also be a temporary one—an adjustment made in response to the murder of two teachers and 19 children in Uvalde, Texas. The national conservative campaign to label teachers “groomers” turns more incoherent still when paired with new demands that those teachers be made to carry weapons.
Whatever the reason, Proud Boys members and other violent fascist groups are now targeting Pride events and drag performances as they did school board members a few months ago. The ground thugs of fascism are flexible in who they target, and are more interested in targeting anenemy than the specifics of who that enemy should be. It was once “antifa.” Now it’s colorfully costumed performers reading picture books to children. When Pride Month is over, it could very well shift again.
this @teenvogue interview w the queen whose pride storytime was interrupted by proud boys is absolutely fucking terrifying https://t.co/WWnf0i3cTT pic.twitter.com/UP809IUCeO
— molly taft (@mollytaft) June 14, 2022
Again, though, this is a very intentional shift of Republican rhetoric, and there’s simply no question that it’s promoting violence against the chosen targets. You don’t create hoaxes about the supposed dangers of marginalized groups for any other reason. And it’s omnipresent.
The speed at which 1980s-1990s style homophobia is racing back into the mainstream is pretty scary, actually. pic.twitter.com/AKqALAXbul
— Fibonacci Stephen (@brent_waggoner) June 14, 2022
This is one of the scariest videos I’ve seen.
— Erin Reed (@ErinInTheMorn) June 14, 2022
I don’t know what more to say.
Candidate Mark Burns (a Trump ally), running for SC-04, calls for the execution of lgbtq/trans people.
He uses “grooming” to justify.
He lays out exactly how it should be “legally” done.
Genocide. pic.twitter.com/uqJVPMYTMj