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The rise of right-wing hate propaganda against LGBTQ people is spreading in violence, with high-profile attacks this month frightening Pride celebrations across the country.
Extremist researchers have long warned of a growing risk, as Republicans and far-right militant groups portray LGBTQ people as “fighters” targeting children, along with other defamations. unfounded. Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online.
Attacks have intensified this month during the first major Pride events since pandemic restrictions were lifted, especially with the frustrated attempt by the white nationalist Patriot Front to disrupt a celebration in northern Idaho.
In recent days, right-wing politicians and preachers have openly called for killing LGBTQ people. In a conservative talk show, Mark Burns, a candidate for Congress of Donald Trump’s ally of South Carolina, called “LGBT, preparing transgender people” a threat to national security and proposed using the laws of treason as basis for “running” LGBTQ parents and teachers. rights. Last Sunday in Texas, a pastor criticized Pride Month and said LGBTQ people “should be lined up against the wall and shot in the back of the head.”
A study published on Thursday indicates that these are not isolated incidents. Anti-LGBTQ activity, including demonstrations and attacks, more than quadrupled between 2020 and 2021, from 15 to 61, according to the global non-profit conflict monitoring group known as ACLED. In early June, ACLED accounted for 33 anti-LGBTQ incidents so far this year, indicating an even more bleak 2022.
The resulting fear is a common theme on LGBTQ social media posts that describe tangible changes in their collective sense of security. Hatred looks. Ugly insults. Vandalized rainbow flags.
Baltimore authorities are investigating two separate fires this week on the same block: one in a house where a Pride flag was set on fire and another on the other side of the street in a house decorated for Pride, according to local news reports. Three people were injured in one of the fires.
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Analysts draw a direct link between hate speech and attacks on the ground. The ACLED report notes that the escalation of violence comes when “right-wing politicians and the media have integrated the use of increasingly inflammatory rhetoric against the LGBT + community.”
Trans people have been especially attacked. The Human Rights Campaign, the country’s largest LGBTQ advocacy group, says record violence against transgender and non-gendered people was recorded last year. Black women, especially black trans women, were the most common targets.
In that same period of time, state lawmakers introduced more than 250 anti-LGBTQ bills, many of them designed to prevent transgender youth from participating in sports. At least 24 of the bills were enacted, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, giving anti-LGBTQ activism “one of its most successful years” in terms of legislation.
LGBTQ advocacy group GLAAD said the political hate speech led to violence in a statement issued after the Idaho arrests. The group said “anti-LGBTQ rhetoric and the nearly 250 anti-LGBTQ bills introduced this year are responsible for this dangerous climate,” along with technology platforms that are fueling hatred and misinformation. inspiring white supremacist groups like the Patriot Front. “
Targets have said the attacks are unsettling even when they do not involve physical violence.
On Saturday, in San Lorenzo, California, a group of allegedly proud boys, a far-right group with a history of violence, interrupted an hour of drag queen storytelling shouting anti-LGBTQ insults in an incident investigated by authorities as a hate crime. . In an interview with Teen Vogue, event host Kyle Chu, whose name is Panda Dulce, described up to 10 Proud Boys marching, including one with a T-shirt printed with a gun and the words “Kill your local pedophile “.
“We stopped the song and the Proud Boys … started insulting me, calling me a pedophile and a hairdresser,” Chu said in the interview, adding that they took her to a safe room as organizers called. the authorities. Chu summed up the incident as “terrifying.”
In Arlington, Tex., Proud Boys were among the protesters who showed up at a drag brunch for a crowd of more than 21 years old. Amateur video of the incident shared online by LGBTQ activists showed protesters shouting anti-gay insults in the face of their targets. A man was filmed acknowledging that he was blocking the entrance of brunch participants, saying he was carrying out a “citizen arrest”.
Anti-Defamation League extremism monitors tracked seven in-person extremist activities targeting LGBTQ people over the past weekend, according to an ADL summary of recent threats. The summary included a Pride event on June 12 in Georgia that was canceled due to anonymous threats “pointing to the location, time and date of the demonstration.” The next day, in a separate incident, according to the ADL, white supremacists in New Jersey protested a drag event during a Pride celebration, “with a person displaying a sign that read, ‘Hands off kids ‘”.
Bullying has also led to challenging times, such as in North Carolina, where threats of violence led organizers to cancel a drag queen storytelling event at Pride in Apex, a suburb of the capital, Raleigh. Local news said city officials had received complaints and that the festival president had been warned that he and his family would be “harmed” if the event took place.
Outraged, a defense group called Equality North Carolina stepped in to sponsor Apex Pride and restore history time. The group said in a statement that LGBTQ people would fight attempts to “invade our spaces, silence us, disperse us and limit our freedom to be ourselves in our community.”
Several of the incidents illustrate what the ACLED report called “cross-pollination opportunities,” the merging of disparate right-wing factions around common goals such as critical race theory, racial blockades. ‘era of the pandemic and access to abortion. These days, anti-LGBTQ activism has risen to the top of this list.
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The report noted that a June 4 demonstration against a drag show in Dallas brought together “self-proclaimed ‘Christian fascists’, adherents of the QAnon conspiracy movement” and several other extremist factions.
“They’re actually building solidarity and the left isn’t,” said Eric Stanley, an associate professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of California at Berkeley.
For Stanley, also a community organizer, the issue is personal. Threatening emails arrive every week. Stanley is always on the lookout for unfamiliar faces among students, wondering “who will film you, who will attack the classroom, who will attack you.”
“In the last few years, I’ve definitely been thinking,‘ Where are the exits? Is it too high to jump out of this window? said Stanley, who teaches trans study classes.
However, Stanley does not want the current danger “to be used as a justification for hiring more police, putting more police in Pride, putting more police in schools.”
Whether, or to what extent, working with law enforcement agencies is a controversial issue, as LGBTQ advocates figure out how to respond. Stanley belongs to the camp that rejects the association with the police because of patterns of long-standing discrimination and violence by law enforcement.
Other organizations have close ties to law enforcement officials, but recognize the frictions.
“With everything that’s happened in the Black Lives Matter movement and the distrust of the police, it’s very difficult to navigate that fine line,” said Jeff Mack, executive vice president of the Matthew Shepard Foundation, an LGBTQ nonprofit group. which supports hatred victims. crimes.
Proponents of her case have been working to make the actual transcript of this statement available online. The city’s police chief said the group, crammed into the back of a U-Haul, had an “operations plan” for Pride and equipment such as thornbushes, shields, helmets, at least a grenade of smoke and long metal sticks.
The 31 men charged with a felony count of conspiracy to commit disorderly conduct came from at least 11 states, including Colorado, a point that was noted in a Denver Pride planning call Monday, two days after the Idaho incident. .
Mack said he and other Hate Free Colorado organizers were “incredulous” and couldn’t help but wonder what they might face in Denver later this month. Still, there was no question of downsizing.
“We’re not going to let them win and we’re going to take every precaution to make sure that doesn’t happen,” Mack said. “We all recognize that we just have to be hyper-vigilant and hyper-conscious, but we won’t let the celebration of who we are come in.”