Morning Briefing: North Carolina and Texas Top List of States With Most Anti-Drag Protests
This year, there have been 124 incidents in 47 states of 'anti-LGBTQ protests and threats targeting specific drag events,' according to a new report.
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Morning Briefing: North Carolina and Texas have been the site of “the most anti-drag protests, threats and attacks in the nation,” according to a new report by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD).
The report found that there have been “124 incidents in 2022 of anti-LGBTQ protests and threats targeting specific drag events,” and there has been “increasingly violent rhetoric and incidents as the year progressed, including the firebombing of a Tulsa donut shop.”
The deadly extremist violence that occurred at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colorado did not surprise the experts that monitor and research far right extremism, and the mass shooting targeting the LGBTIQ community follows a familiar pattern of “the far right uniting against a marginalized community until, inevitably, that community gets attacked – usually by a man with guns.”
Despite the deadly extremist violence, “some right-wing media figures and influencers have doubled down on the use of inflammatory rhetoric against the LGBTQ community.”
The increasing threat of extremist violence has caused some LGBTIQ organizations and businesses to invest in security, however, “several LGBT activists and club owners said no amount of security personnel or technology would protect them from the anti-LGBT rhetoric they blame for stoking such violence.”
Dustin McCann is “facing hate crime charges after he used a racist slur in a South Tampa bar and then fired multiple shots into the air while shouting ‘white power’ as he drove away.”
Grand Blanc “who ranted about a baseless QAnon conspiracy theory was charged with making threats against a congressman and FBI Director Christopher Wray.”
This Week in Extremism: Far Right Extremist Rhetoric & Deadly Violence ― Join the discussion Friday, December 2nd at 12:00pm EST (11:00am CST / 9:00am PST).
Must Reads
Greg Sargent interviews Kathleen Belew: “What happened during the Trump years is that he and his administration opened some space for people to use mainstream politics for extremist purposes. A former president sitting for a dinner meeting with a white power activist is the kind of thing that activists can use to claim that they have become a real political force. We have to read that alongside things like Jan. 6 and the Pelosi attack [on Paul Pelosi, husband of the House speaker]. White power activists can use both of these events to say that the political mainstream can be infiltrated and radicalized. They think that a white public can be awakened to the dangers of racial extinction.” [The Washington Post]
Kathryn Joyce writes that “the fact of the Trump revolution arrived before the theory. Something had clearly changed in the political order, but Trump's impulsiveness and lack of coherent ideology or policy agenda created a vacuum that needed to be filled, retroactively, by intellectuals on the right. A variety of themes emerged from those efforts. One was an ‘America First’-inspired rehabilitation of nationalism, long tarnished by its association with authoritarian movements in pre-World War II Europe. Another was heard in Steve Bannon's call to dismantle the ‘administrative state’ of unelected bureaucrats who might stand in Trump's way. A third was the conviction that classical liberalism — in the historical Adam Smith sense of that word, which prioritizes individual rights, pluralism and free trade and which guided both parties for generations — had been a catastrophe, replacing traditional norms with a destructive free-for-all.” [Salon]
David Gilbert reports that “Musk has already reinstated the most important QAnon account on Twitter when he allowed former President Donald Trump to return. The former president has not resumed tweeting, preferring instead to continue sharing QAnon memes on his own Truth Social platform. However, Trump has almost 90 million followers on Twitter and less than 5 million on Truth Social, and the appeal of a larger platform could prove too tempting for the former president. Allowing tens of thousands of QAnon accounts to return to Twitter could have a massive impact on the conspiracy movement’s ability to spread, and followers are very excited about the return.” [Vice]
What to expect from Radical Reports: Morning Briefing provides a daily round-up of reporting on the Radical Right; Extremist Links offers a weekly round-up of extremists activities including the white supremacist and militia movements; Narratives of the Right delivers weekly analysis of the current narratives in far right online spaces and promoted by right-wing media; and Research Desk provides monthly highlights research and analysis from academia on the Radical Right.