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Far Right Issues Flood Of Violent Rhetoric On LGBTQ Community

Far Right Issues Flood Of Violent Rhetoric On LGBTQ Community

A week’s worth of gun violence seems to have whetted the radical right’s eliminationist appetite—and much of it appears, once again, to be directed at the LGBTQ community:

  • In El Paso, Texas, after far-right trolls spread the bogus claim that a transgender person was the shooter in Tuesday’s massacre in Uvalde, thugs verbally and physically assaulted a transgender girl, calling her a “mental health freak.”
  • Further north in Arlington, a local pastor this week denounced the city’s support for its annual Pride events, claiming the Bible calls “homosexuals” criminals who should be put to death.
  • In Arizona, far-right troll Ethan Schmidt-Crockett posted videos in which he threatened to attack Pride displays at Target stores (as he’s done previously), and then filmed himself harassing workers at a JoAnn Fabrics store for their Pride display.

The mood at far-right chat rooms has grown more openly violent as well, particularly as white nationalists have embraced the Buffalo shooter and his eliminationist “replacement theory” motives—and the threatening rhetoric around Pride events such as the one planned in northern Idaho in June has sharpened. As this recent study warned, the previous year’s relative calm in terms of far-right violence is manifestly over.

Although the viciously bogus claim that the Uvalde shooter was transgender was quickly debunked, and several of its more prominent spreaders—such as Arizona Congressman Paul Gosar—deleted their tweets making the claim, it continued to spread anyway on social media, enjoying a robust zombie half-life as the trolls spreading it made plain that they didn’t care if it was a lie: They just wanted to scapegoat transgender people.

Moreover, its most prominent spreader—race troll Candace Owens—not only refused to delete the earlier tweets, but doubled down to her 3 million-plus Twitter followers:

FYI: The media still has not debunked the photo of the Texas shooter wearing female clothes (to which I was referring.)Instead they are trying to conflate it with the obvious internet hoax photos featuring a guy in a skirt in front of a trans flag.

No such photos exist, of course. The person she’s describing wearing female clothes in the widely circulated photos identified herself and denounced the hoax.

This didn’t stop the inevitable result of this kind of eliminationist rhetoric, either, whose entire purpose is to create permission for brutal violence directed at the rhetoric’s targets. In El Paso, it clearly inspired the men outside the city library, who first verbally and then physically assaulted a 17-year-old transgender girl named Tracey as she exited at the end of a night doing homework.

“Oh look, it has a dick,” said one of them. He then grabbed her arm and forced her to look at him as he said: “Yeah, you know they’re perverting kids instead of killing them.”

“I’m only 17!” she answered.

Another man sneered: “Yeah, you know it was one of your sisters who killed those kids. You’re a mental health freak!”

Tracey was able to escape on her bicycle. El Paso Police refused to take an assault report. She also is no longer able to talk to her counselor at a community clinic, after it shut its doors to trans teens when Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton made a legal finding that supporting transition is child abuse.

Meanwhile, in Arlington earlier this week, the pastor of a nearby Baptist church—one that has been designated a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC)—denounced the city’s upcoming Pride events at a city council meeting, calling it an “abomination”:

I don’t understand why we celebrate what used to be a crime not long ago. In fact, Texas Penal Code, in Section 21.06, homosexual conduct, a person commits an offense if he engages in deviant sexual intercourse with another individual of the same sex. In fact, that is still on the books today, even though Lawrence vs. Texas overruled that in 2003. But God has already ruled that murder, adultery, witchcraft, bestiality, and homosexuality are crimes worthy of capital punishment.

The pastor, Jonathan Shelley, is from Stedfast Baptist Church in nearby Hurst. The SPLC designated Stedfast Baptist an anti-LGBTQ hate group in 2021, based largely on Shelley’s incendiary rhetoric. The church recently was evicted from its building in Hurst because Shelley’s violent rhetoric violated his lease, and the owner refused to tolerate it.

In his sermons, Shelley has frequently called for death to members of the LGBTQ community, but he claims he’s not calling for vigilante killings—he only wants it done officially, at the hands of the state. In one sermon, he celebrated the death of a 75-year-old gay man in Wilton Manors, Florida, after a vehicle accidentally ran him over during a Pride event: “And, you know, it’s great when trucks accidentally go through those, you know, parades,” he said. “I think only one person died. So hopefully we can hope for more in the future.”

“You say, ‘Well, that’s mean.’ Yeah, but the Bible says that they’re worthy of death!” he continued. “They say, ‘Are you sad when fags die?’ No. I think it’s great! I hope they all die! I would love it if every fag would die right now.”

“And you say, ‘Well, I don’t think that’s what you really mean.’ That’s exactly what I mean. I really mean it!”

The same kind of vicious hatred also clearly animates Schmidt-Crockett in his Arizona jihad against commercial Pride displays. A longtime antimasking/anti-LGBTQ activist and troll who has a large following on Telegram, where he posts his deliberately provocative videos, Schmidt-Crockett this week has launched into making threats against stores that carry Pride celebration materials and displays—particularly Target, where he previously filmed himself taking down a Pride display, calling it “disgusting … it’s devil worship.”

He’s also posted videos and texts saying he’s “going hunting for LGBT pedophiles” and “non binaries,” saying ominously: “We’re hunting for you.” He also recently turned up as part of a white-nationalist “Groyper” contingent acting as violent counter-protesters at a Phoenix abortion rights protest.

This week, Schmidt-Crockett became primarily focused on stores with Pride displays. He first posted a video of himself threatening to harass Target stores in Arizona, claiming they were erecting “satanic pride shrines to children” in their stores, and claiming he and “my buddy Kyle” would be “exposing all the employees that support it.”

“We’re going to make massive scenes in every single Target store across Phoenix, Arizona, and we’re not going to let corporate poison the children,” Schmidt vowed in the video, posted on Twitter by Patriot Takes.

Schmidt told Target officials to “just perma-ban” him, because he intended to step up his confrontations to an entirely new level for Pride Month in June.

“So Target, just giving you a heads up, that we’ll be coming after you hard. Hard,” Schmidt promised. “You know, I’ve already exposed you guys pretty good, but this is going to be next-level stuff.”

He added: "If you support the LGBT agenda, you're not safe."

Phoenix police posted a vague tweet about the situation that seemed to create even more confusion: “We are aware of a video on social media that names a retail store. We are looking into this. Statements in the video may be concerning to members of our community. The store and it's security team are also aware of the video.”

On Thursday, Schmidt-Crockett posted a video of himself (again nabbed by Patriot Takes) entering a JoAnn Fabrics store and harassing its staff over the Pride materials on sale there. Muttering to his audience that the materials somehow promoted pedophilia, he began haranguing the clerk who answered his summons: “Does JoAnn Fabrics support pedophilia?” He describes his disgust after the clerk goes to summon security: “Pedophilia, I’m sick of it everywhere. Every single corporate store has been taken over by the agenda.”

As he departs, he points his finger at the clerk: “Pedophiles!” he says. “You guys support the LGBT agenda! You guys support pedophilia! JoAnn Fabrics supports pedophilia!”

The shift to a focus targeting the LGBTQ community with eliminationist rhetoric and then violence is the result of several long-term trends on the radical right, particularly as its street-level strategies have shifted after the January 6 insurrection. A recent study by the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project (ACLED) warns of a looming likelihood that far-right organizing will revolve around LGBTQ events and political rallies in the near future:

As an election year with midterms as well as a number of key gubernatorial races, 2022 is likely to see a rise in organizing focused on the upcoming votes. There have already been examples of protests involving ‘Freedom Convoys’ expressing support for Trump and including voter registration opportunities at events, signaling the start of this evolution.

In addition to election-related mobilization, there may also be a resurgence of other recent drivers as well. With Republican officials launching a new anti-LGBT+ legislative push around the country, mobilization against LGBT+ rights may increase, even though coordinated organizing on this issue has not been a major feature of the political violence and protest landscape in which far-right militias and MSMs have engaged in recent years. Broader activity on the right is currently coalescing around the reinvigorated anti-LGBT+ legislative campaign, in addition to organizing against institutions and companies seen as ‘too supportive’ of LGBT+ rights.

Reprinted with permission from Daily Kos.

Are Independent Booksellers Replacing Big-Box Retailers?

Are Independent Booksellers Replacing Big-Box Retailers?

By Deborah M. Todd, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette (TNS)

PITTSBURGH — At the time Dan Iddings opened the doors of Classic Lines Bookstore in Pittsburgh’s Squirrel Hill neighborhood last year, his greatest fear was that the technologies that ate up some of his largest competitors would swallow his business whole.

“I had this fear that I would be the Amazon showroom — that people would look at our selection of products, then go buy them on Amazon,” he said.

Six months in, Iddings said he has seen his share of comparison shoppers, but they’re far outnumbered by customers seeking literary refuge following the 2009 loss of the neighborhood Barnes & Noble bookstore.

“People understand that there’s only one way to keep a bookstore in the neighborhood — that’s to buy the books,” he said.

The digitization of literature and Amazon-ification of book sales that rattled the publishing industry in the mid-2000s has settled into a moment of stability for independent bookstores primed and ready to fill voids left by the 2011 bankruptcy of Borders books and the closings of several Barnes & Noble locations in the area.

Borders — the second largest bookseller in the nation at the time of its demise — pointed to Web-based retail and a shift toward digital downloads as primary causes for its bankruptcy and subsequent liquidation of more than 400 stores. The Michigan company, which outsourced its online sales to Amazon.com in 2001 before suspending that deal in favor of its own website in 2008, also cited a failure to respond quickly to market changes. In October 2011, Barnes & Noble, the nation’s largest bookseller, took over Borders’ brand name and website in a $13.9 million deal.

In Pittsburgh — where the loss of Borders stores came painfully close to Barnes & Noble closures — independent bookstores that had survived years in the shadows of the giants became bastions of familiarity for bookworms seeking new haunts to call their own.

They also became windows of opportunity for bibliophiles with lifelong dreams of opening their own stores.

Iddings noted that three community bookstores had closed around the time that Barnes & Noble entered Squirrel Hill, but he pointed out that his store and used bookseller Amazing Books have popped up in the neighborhood in the last two years.

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Squirrel Hill isn’t alone.

The suburb of Sewickley’s Penguin Bookshop, which has been a community institution since 1929, was sold to community resident Susan Hans O’Conner last year, and Mystery Lover’s Bookshop in the suburb of Oakmont was recently purchased by hometown native Natalie Sacco and her husband, Trevor Thomas.

Sacco, who grew up blocks away from the store, said she heard it was up for sale around Christmas and immediately devised a plan to transplant her family from Cleveland to get into the business of books.

After connecting with owner Laurie Stephens, a deal for an undisclosed figure (“Much less than what it’s worth!” interjected Stephens with a chuckle) was struck.

Sacco said not much at the Mystery Lover’s Bookshop will change physically.

The checkerboard linoleum floors and the red table and chair set will stay. The emphasis on mystery, live readings by authors and the section carved out for Pittsburgh authors have been grandfathered in.

The biggest changes will come in the form of new graphic novels and titles by small independent publishers, a revamped website, an extended social media presence and possibly a section selling vinyl albums.

And the couple is hoping to double down on offerings such as community events, book clubs and other opportunities to team up with other local small business owners.

Pablo Fierro and Amanda Johnson, members of the group that owns the Big Idea Cooperative Bookstore and Cafe in the Pittsburgh neighborhood of Bloomfield, said capitalizing off of independent bookstores’ reputations as community meeting spaces has been one of their store’s greatest advantages.

Billed as a space for “multicultural, women-positive, queer-positive, class-conscious, anti-militaristic” literature among other things, Johnson said the space regularly hosts events for groups tied to alternative political movements or fringe causes.

It’s that sense of community — the idea that an individual can find his or her people among aisles of mysteries and biographies — that would have been the greatest loss if predictions of the printed book’s demise had unfolded the way some predicted, said Thomas.

“You don’t really understand until it’s gone,” he said. “Just like independent record stores, you’re not just buying records. You’re there to exchange ideas with other people, have conversations. It’s those ideas that spark an interest in certain other things and if you don’t have a place to exchange those ideas who knows what you’ve lost.”

If a digital takeover of books and the independent bookstore is coming, Iddings said it’s far from imminent.

“I don’t have to worry about that because I won’t be here that long. And I plan to be here a long time,” he said with a hearty laugh.

Photo: Robin Rombach via Pittsburgh Post-Gazette/TNS

Fannie Mae Accused Of Neglecting Foreclosures In Minority Neighborhoods

Fannie Mae Accused Of Neglecting Foreclosures In Minority Neighborhoods

By Carrie Wells, The Baltimore Sun (TNS)

BALTIMORE — A collection of fair housing advocacy groups on Wednesday accused Fannie Mae of a pattern of maintaining and marketing its foreclosed houses in white areas — including in the Baltimore region — better than in minority areas.

The National Fair Housing Alliance and 19 local fair housing organizations filed a complaint alleging violations of the federal Fair Housing Act with the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development after a five-year investigation in which investigators visited and documented the conditions of the foreclosed properties Fannie Mae owns in 34 metro areas.

The investigators presented photos at a news conference Wednesday of boarded windows, broken gutters, dead animals, litter and other signs of neglect that they said were far more common at Fannie Mae-owned homes in black and Latino neighborhoods.

“As the largest owner of (foreclosed) properties in the country, everything they do is magnified,” said Anne Houghtaling, director of the HOPE Fair Housing Center in Chicago, during a news conference in Washington. “You can spot them from a block away. They are the neighborhood eyesore….Because of this there is an uneven recovery in our neighborhoods.”

Fannie Mae, a government-sponsored company charged with encouraging home ownership, disputed the allegations.

“We strongly disagree with these allegations and firmly believe they have no merit,” Fannie Mae spokesman Andrew Wilson said in an email. “We are confident that our standards ensure that properties in all neighborhoods are treated equally, and we perform rigorous quality control to make sure that is the case. We remain dedicated to neighborhood stabilization efforts across the nation, including with respect to our maintenance of foreclosed properties.”

“The bottom line is that (foreclosures) in communities of color are significantly less maintained than in white communities across the country,” said Gail Williams, executive director of Metro Fair Housing Services in Atlanta.

Photo: futureatlas.com via Flickr

Pottersville Goes Online

Pottersville Goes Online

What is it that makes the holiday movie classic It’s a Wonderful Life feel so ancient? It’s the relationships, but which ones?

Not George Bailey’s warm and loving family. We have close families today. It’s not the far-off relationships, as with long-lost school friends. We have more of them than ever, thanks to Facebook and other digital communities.

The relationships they had in Bedford Falls that are often missing today are those between the very intimate and the quite distant. Townspeople like Gower the druggist, Ernie the cabdriver, Bert the cop — George knew them all by name, and he knew their stories.

George’s family, owners of a building and loan, was fairly prosperous. But the Baileys remained tightly woven with people of varying incomes, education and ethnicity. Each of them was an individual, not just a useful provider of a good or service.

This is society’s middle ring, so strong in the Main Street America of 70 years ago but much weakened since by several forces. One is the clustering of like-minded people from similar backgrounds in the same neighborhood. Another is the migration of social life and shopping from in-person to the Internet.

Marc Dunkelman writes of the fading town-based model of society in his book, The Vanishing Neighbor: The Transformation of American Community. The middle ring, he says, was “where communities of people with different skills and interests, disparate concerns and values, collaborated with their neighbors in the pursuit of the common good.”

It’s a Wonderful Life wallows in sentimentality, but it does not sprinkle sugar on the stresses of middle-ring relationships. A key theme is George’s ability to deal humanely with the town’s flawed human beings. For example, he treats the local floozy, Violet, with unfailing kindness, even lending her money so she doesn’t have to sell her furs.

There’s a harsh scene in which a drunken Gower slaps young George around. George responds with tearful sympathy for the grief he knows the druggist is suffering.

Today the parents might sue the druggist for assaulting their child. And Gower’s reputation would have been shredded beyond repair on social media.

The Facebook generation would probably unfriend these needy or difficult people in two minutes. But in the social matrix of Bedford Falls, these connections are for life.

Sacrifice for others is another theme. George gives up his dreams of adventure to protect his neighbors from the evil banker Mr. Potter. Gratitude for his good deeds, however, does not flow freely.

When there’s a run on the bank, angry depositors ignore George’s assurances they’d eventually get their money back. He has to remind a man named Joe that when he was behind on house payments, the bank let his family keep its home.

Some want to take Mr. Potter’s offer of pennies on the dollar. George implores them: “We’ve got to stick together. … We’ve got to have faith in each other.”

In a nightmare sequence, George sees what Bedford Falls would have become without him. It’s Pottersville now, a hellish place where malice is the default, the vulnerable are humiliated and seedy bars, strip clubs and pool halls expel their neon nastiness onto the streets. (The jazz is good, though.)

As our relationships move online, this dark vision is looking awfully familiar. There’s “flaming,” the spread of false personal attacks. And “doxxing,” the malicious disclosure of private information. Hacking into private accounts has become commonplace. Stolen personal photos are posted on anonymous websites. And adults are using false identities to traumatize children.

This is what happens when middle-ring relationships are replaced by an outer ring crowded with strangers. Is it all Pottersville from here on? Let’s hope not.

Follow Froma Harrop on Twitter @FromaHarrop. She can be reached at fharrop@gmail.com. To find out more about Froma Harrop and read features by other Creators writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Web page at www.creators.com.

Screenshot via Wikimedia Commons