Right Wing Assaults on LGBTQ+ Events on the Rise
Thirty one members of the white supremacist group Patriot Front were arrested this past weekend in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, as they prepared to attack a Gay Pride event.
An alert hotel employee tipped off police after seeing dozens of men piling into a U-Haul truck wearing balaclavas and bearing riot gear. The men came from 11 separate states, armed with smoke bombs and shields.
The truck was intercepted by local police as it neared a park where families, children and supporters were gathered to celebrate the LGBTQ community.
Members of the group, who typically obscure their identities with face coverings, were arrested and had their masks pulled off before being loaded into police vehicles. A seven-page planning document police found inside the U-Haul van, included moving into downtown Coeur d’Alene after they were done inside the park and wreaking havoc there as well.
Later the members’ names and mugshots were also released in public documents.
What could have been a tragedy ala Charlottesville was averted. Unfortunately, the threat of violence continued as Neo-Nazi networks are urging people to take actions against the officers who arrested them and other city officials.
It’s important to understand that what happened in Idaho was not just a one-off event. LGBTQ communities throughout the country are experiencing rising harassment, vandalism, and violence.
These acts are related to the legislative and political campaigns popular with right wing candidates and officials. Trash talking gets votes on the fringes these days, especially when it’s aimed at “others.”
According to Bloomberg, the number of bills targeting the LGBTQ+ community is at an all-time high. Across the country, Republicans proposed 325 anti-LGBTQ+ bills in the first three months of 2022, 130 of which target transgender people specifically.
From Prism:
The Human Rights Campaign reported that 2021 was the deadliest year on record for trans and gender-nonconforming people, with 57 fatalities tracked. So far in 2022, 11 trans and gender-nonconforming people have been fatally shot or killed by other violent means.
“We’ve seen that hate crimes continue to rise for the Black community, the LGBTQ+ community, and especially Black trans women,” York said. “As it’s happening across this country, dozens of Black trans women are murdered with no accountability … These crimes against our community happen with no accountability, no justice. It sends the message that ‘You can pick on the queers and the trans folks and nonbinary folks, they’re disposable. I can do this crime and get away with it, even in New York.’”
Via the Associated Press:
Jon Lewis, a George Washington University researcher who specializes in homegrown violent extremism, said outrage directed at LGBTQ people had been growing for months online, often in chat rooms frequented by members of groups like the Patriot Front.
In the same way that it mobilized against Black Lives Matter in the nation’s capital in December, the Patriot Front harnesses what’s in the news cycle — in this case, drag queen story hours, disputes about transgender people in schools, and LGBTQ visibility more broadly.
A “massive right-wing media ecosystem” has been promoting the notion that “there are people who are trying to take your kids to drag shows, there are trans people trying to ‘groom’ your children,” Lewis said.
In a larger context, the white supremacist movement and some of the militant right, a host of social issues (abortion, gay rights, interracial contact, immigration, secularism) are all a problem for the same reason.
Via the Union-Tribune:
U.S. extremists are mimicking the social media strategy used by the Islamic State group, which turned to subtle language and images across Telegram, Facebook and YouTube a decade ago to evade the industry-wide crackdown of the terrorist group’s online presence, said Mia Bloom, a communications professor at Georgia State University.
“They’re trying to recruit,” said Bloom, who has researched social media use for both Islamic State terrorists and far-right extremists. “We’re starting to see some of the same patterns with ISIS and the far-right. The coded speech, the ways to evade AI. The groups were appealing to a younger and younger crowd.”
For example, on Instagram, one of the most popular apps for teens and young adults, white supremacists amplify each other’s content daily and point their followers to new accounts.
In recent weeks, a cluster of those accounts has turned its sights on Pride Month, with some calling for gay marriage to be “re-criminalized” and others using the #Pride or rainbow flag emoji to post homophobic memes.
They see these issues as part of an interconnected conspiracy to lower the white birth rate, attacking their race and nation. They see this as an apocalyptic threat.
THIS is what connects attacks on the black community, on immigrants, on Jews, and attacks on Pride.
Welcome to the twenty-first century, where any idiot with an internet connection can commit violent acts in the name of a greater cause which can deflect criticism because the individual(s) makes decisions on when and how to strike.
On the local level, all it takes is a little hate mongering aka religiosity from a leader with one of San Diego’s new evangelical churches.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com
Lead photo : David Neiwert