Part III. In Defense of Drag
TRANS AND DRAG PANIC
The 2020s are notable for a time of a new anti-LGBTQ movement across the country. This is due to a backlash from social conservatives. In seeing an increase of acceptance for queer people in society, they also noted the amount of young people that identified outside of the gender binary, and were open about who they loved. This increase in visibility, was a changing society and a generation of people that could begin to be open about their identities. Staunch evangelicals view this as a societal “evil” and that the reason that teenagers and young people were coming out was to do some dark conspiracy to “indoctrinate” their kids.
This, to Christian fascists, was a sign of indoctrination against their religious views, despite the fact that, much like my family, right-wingers indoctrinated their children into their fixed religious views from a young age. A new trans panic had set in their minds, where they claimed any visibility of trans people in society was harmful to minors. They soon extended this to drag queens, and those who chose to dress outside of heteronormative standards.
With no real policy points, Republican states began to embrace the conspiracy theories of the fringe Q-Anon movement, as well as to legislate based upon fear and hatred of LGBTQ people.
2018 marked the beginning of a wave of laws passed in 13 different states, that targeted trans people and gender-affirming care. It would take until 2022 for the GOP war against trans people to reach a fever pitch. It was also not until 2022 that drag shows became the cultural flashpoint that they did.
This was based upon a trans panic that had erupted across the country. The trans community was also included in the struggle for LGBTQ rights, yet as evangelicals learned that hating gay and lesbian couples was no longer socially acceptable, they turned their ire to trans people.
Christian fascists had used the same “groomer” rhetoric to deny gay and lesbian couples equal rights in the country for decades, claiming that by allowing them to exist without persecution they would “turn” their kids against their fundamentalist views. Since outright bigotry against queer people was out of fashion, they focused on the trans people that they did not understand.
One social media account became the source of the greatest fears spread by fascists. Libs of TikTok, run by a failed realtor named Chaya Raichick, promoted lies and propaganda to target the queer and trans community. Raychick, who has advocated for the murder of trans people in many statements, stoked fears of indoctrination in schools. She would grab videos off of the internet, of any teachers or school faculty that supported LGBTQ rights and spread panic that these teachers, who often did little but have a Black Lives Matter sign or a rainbow flag in their classroom.
These instances of teachers espousing leftist views (no doubt tired of spending tax dollars on police, the State of Israel, and the military, instead of funding the schools that parents dropped their kids off) were used to paint a picture of a movement that intended to indoctrinate kids into “hating America”. They stole footage from classrooms in which teachers taught children to accept cultural diversity and inclusion. Basic human decency, as well as an understanding of American history, was evil in the eyes of evangelical parents.
The account also began to target random hospitals, claiming, without merit, that the doctors in gender-affirming care provided life-altering surgery to children. This is unequivocally false, as physicians and providers work with mental health providers, and require years of therapy, before beginning to provide gender-affirming care. All that they provided in gender-affirming care were hormones and puberty blockers. These dangerous lies, however, resulted in a series of bomb threats that shut down hospitals and health clinics.
These threats and the sheer violence that Raichick ignited and cheered on will be discussed in greater detail. Libs of TikTok, however, was also an actor in the parent’s reactionary movement to the mythical “Critical Race Theory”. They were unable to describe exactly what that meant, and when asked to prove instances of the existence of this “CRT” or even “LGBTQ indoctrination” in schools, they could only point to books with subject matter that they disliked on religious grounds. The parents embraced a moral panic, and worked to place their evangelical views at the helm of governance and school policies.
One of the new fears that Libs of Tiktok used to ignite the parent’s movement against diversity, equity, and inclusion was a moral panic regarding drag queens.
Drag shows and family-friendly pride events became a flashpoint in the 2022 culture war from right-wingers that sought to institute Christofascist policies. Because of the right-wing view that any acceptance of queer people in society was inherently sexual, they claimed that the “gay agenda” sought to “sexualize” children by the emergence of drag story hours. To continue to normalize the acceptance of queer people and youth in society, LGBTQ families attended book readings by drag queens. The reading hours were harmless and only worked to encourage LGBTQ children and families to enjoy reading.
Using doctored clips and footage from various shows, Libs of TikTok and other fascist web sources portrayed any family-friendly drag shows as a sign of some attempt to sexualize children. This came from the crowd that saw nothing wrong in taking their kids to Hooters or mass at the local Catholic church, with a deep history of child sexual abuse. In their view, drag shows brought sexual themes, even when it was nothing more than a story hour hosted by a drag queen.
While they acted like they were accepting of Pride Events, which have only increased in popularity since 2015, they also instigated resentment towards these events. One such example, among others, that I will discuss is the Coeur D’Alene Pride Festival in the summer of 2022.
In terms of anti-trans legislation, 2023 has been an historic year in sweeping attempts to deny healthcare to trans youth. The bills also attempt to remove the existence of trans people in society, from education, to schools, to sports, to incarceration, to which bathroom they could use, to their ability to serve in the military. Over 500 bills were introduced in the 2023 legislatures alone, of which 85 became law.
As we have witnessed through multiple laws passed in Nebraska and Utah, this extended to healthcare for grown adults, to the age of 25. Under the guise of “protecting the children”, the GOP unleashed a war against trans people in every sector in society. In their laws that ban adults from receiving gender-affirming care, they revealed their intent to ban trans people on all levels and from every sector of society.
As mentioned before, the early 2020s have seen an emergence of book burnings once again, notably the event in Tennessee. Tennessee had garnered national attention as a state passing draconian laws targeting trans youth, and their passage of a ban on drag performances in public spaces.
Other states attempted to follow their example. States like Montana tried to ban drag shows. Montana had also pursued a policy to legislate against gender-affirming care for youth, but while the bills passed, they passed by slim margins, often by single digits. Signs of a shifting culture that didn’t seek to give the government more authority over their lives.
The sweeping bills in Tennessee and Montana also were broad, and extended to any “adult cabaret performance”, protected under the First Amendment. It was clear who these laws targeted, namely drag queens and shows that had ignited hatred in the State Houses.
The Montana and Tennessee laws, as well as laws in Florida to Arkansas, have since been struck down by federal judges that note the impossibility of criminalizing free speech and expression. It’s hard to pass a law that forbids people from wearing clothing that a legislator felt was outside of their gender expression. The bills banning gender-affirming care for youth have also been struck down, as inhumane policies that are passed upon religious grounds.
Several have been overturned, but their introduction in over 40 states shows the growing trend of transphobia, and the persistence of Christofascism and the culture war. And the way that they were passed, as well as the means by which state Republican majorities worked to silence any dissent, shows the GOP’s embrace of fascist politics at the state and local level.
Florida made headlines beginning in 2021, with the passage of the “Don’t Say Gay” law. The bill was condemned by Disney, which is a major job-provider in Orlando. DeSantis tried to take on Disney’s economic zone, and lost. Yet as a result of their statement in support of LGBTQ families and their commitment to diversity in their business; Disney has since been the target of protests by Neo-Nazis. To this day, groups continue to stand outside the gates of Disney World, waving Nazi flags with the black swastika.
Neo-Nazi groups in this state, declared their embrace of DeSantis, as he helped them to organize around anti-LGBTQ hatred. This has been said outright, and at one event in Tallahassee, members of these groups blasted a projector onto the side of a federal building, praising DeSantis for targeting queer people.
Nazis and fascist militias celebrated the Anti-LGBTQ movement across the country, as a source of radicalization for their ranks. Since then, as we’ll discuss, as groups like the Proud Boys have grown out of fashion, Nazi groups are expanding and organizing in the wake of the new trans and drag panic.
With the support of extremists, the Republicans are pushing this country to enact Christofascism throughout the land, and nowhere was this more evident than the incidents at State Capitols across the country.
FASCISM AT THE STATE CAPITOLS
Montana was notable in 2023 for having their first trans state representative, a woman named Zooey Zephyr. Zooey was an inspiration to her district, which contained the liberal town of Missoula. Since 2020, she had been vocal against the dangerous bills, which worked to push people like her and her constituents into the shadows.
Taking office in 2023, she condemned the state’s bans on gender-affirming care for youth by stating, “If you are forcing a trans child to go through puberty when they are trans, that is tantamount to torture, and this body should be ashamed.” When this remark triggered an objection from Republican majority leader Sue Vinton, Zephyr replied, “The only thing I will say is if you vote ‘yes’ on this bill and ‘yes’ on these amendments, I hope the next time there’s an invocation when you bow your heads in prayer, you see the blood on your hands.”
This prompted an immediate backlash from House Republicans. The Montana Freedom Caucus issued a statement misgendering Zephyr and calling for her censure. Zephyr stood by her words, and House Minority Leader Kim Abbott defended her, describing the GOP’s statement as “blatantly disrespectful and the farthest thing imaginable from the ‘commitment to civil discourse’ that these letter writers demand”. As a result, Speaker Matt Regier refused to let Zephyr speak on any bills despite there having been no censure against her.
The State House was highlighted in national headlines, as a sign of the fascism that the Republicans normalized at the local and state level. The silencing of Zooey was done without any democratic vote, and outside of the procedures and policies of the legislator. Yet, this would also happen in Tennessee, as the GOP worked to shut down any dissent against their highly unpopular policies.
The response from Montanans, and those living in her district of Missoula, was immediate. On April 24th 2023, they rallied at the State House in support of Zephyr. Activists brought big white banners, which they held on the steps of the government building. They read, in bold letters, “DEMOCRACY DIES HERE!”.
The rally was met with a prompt police presence. That afternoon, Zephyr was once again denied speaking privileges, prompting every single Democratic lawmaker who was present to stand in protest. All but two Republican members of the chamber’s supermajority voted to uphold Regier’s ruling.
This ignited a protest by the people standing outside in support, her constituents, who stormed into the hall. They flooded the House Gallery, which caused the day’s proceedings to be delayed by hours.
Zephyr remained at her desk on the floor, silently holding aloft a microphone. “My light is on, and I’m ready to speak,” she declared. The photo of her standing with her first holding a microphone became a symbol of resistance in the little town of Missoula. They chanted in unison, in the gallery “Let Her Speak!”.
As the protesters continued to fill the halls, a riot line of police officers moved in to dispel the crowd. Seven people were arrested, as the protesters were forced back onto the steps outside. After booking, they were released without needing to post bail, considering the charges were simply for unruly behavior and failure to disperse.
Afterwards, members of the conservative Montana Freedom Caucus, in a written letter that also misgendered Zephyr, accused her of “standing in the middle of the floor encouraging an insurrection”. There was no property damage, no violence, no attempt to overthrow the legislature. Yet, despite voicing their support for the attempted coup d’etat on January 6th, they tried to label their opponents, who disrupted a proceeding, as “insurrectionists”.
On April 26, a hearing was held to vote on a proposal to sanction Zephyr’s actions during the protest on April 24. After a speech by Zephyr and a brief debate limited to three speakers on each side, the House voted 68–32 along party lines to bar Zephyr from the House floor, gallery, and antechamber until the adjournment of the 2023 session the first week of May. She was permitted to vote remotely for the remainder of the session, but her presence was forbidden.
On April 27, Zephyr set up her laptop and paperwork on a bench outside the House Chambers in a hall open to the public. Behind the bench, she placed a sticky note saying “Desk 31” — her designated seat on the house floor. When Regier asked her to leave, House Democrats pointed out that she was in a public area. He responded that he was afraid she was blocking the hallway, but after she pointed out that she was doing no such thing, he relented and allowed her to stay and do her elected duty.
Following her expulsion, Republican leadership canceled all remaining hearings of the committees on which she served. To handle the bills still under review, they used their supermajority to “blast” several bills directly to the floor, and reassigned other bills to different committees.
On May 1, the bench from which she had been working was occupied by a group of women, including Regier’s mother, and the wife of another hateful senator, in order to prevent Zephyr from sitting. This photo, and the jeering faces on the white women stealing the spot to ban her from a public space, was akin to the photos of white students screaming at a young black schoolgirl in Little Rock, as schools began to be integrated.
Afterwards, a group of Zephyr’s supporters, tech workers that were able to work remotely dubbed “The Blue Bench Brigade,” came in and occupied the bench to save Zephyr’s spot. Immediately upon adjournment of the 2023 Legislative Session on May 2, Zephyr walked onto the House floor to meet her colleagues.
My coworkers and I met her in Missoula, Montana, as we raised funds for the American Civil Liberties Union. That year marked Montana’s embrace of fascism. Groups sued in the courts to reinstate her into being able to fulfill her elected duties, and to block the bills that had ignited the chaos in the state legislature.
In the aftermath of the censure of Zooey Zephyr, on bigoted grounds, the bills that she opposed were soon passed and signed by the governor. The first was an outright ban on gender-affirming care for youth. The second was modeled after Tennessee’s law that criminalized drag shows in a public setting.
A similar incident occured in Nashville, the capital of Tennessee. The month before Montana Republicans barred a trans state representative for speaking against their hatred, Tennessee had revealed the new fascist trend in state legislatures. With a Republican supermajority, Tennessee had been the center of some of the most stringent bans on gender-affirming care, and for being the first state to ban drag performances in the wake of the drag panic that had become GOP politics.
In the midst of the culture war and trans panic, a mass shooting had occured in March 2023, at the Covenant School in Nashville. The shooter was the first to be a trans person to commit such an act. They were a former student of the ultra-religious school, and the incident left several children and teachers dead.
Instead of handling the root issue of gun violence, the State of Tennessee used the isolated incident to paint trans people as dangerous to society. They passed laws that targeted gender-affirming care and drag shows, yet refused to vote on what the people of Tennessee had elected them to do, handle real issues that affected everyday residents.
This was met with mass protest, as thousands of teachers and students in Tennessee held rallies at the Capitol, urging action in the wake of the school shooting. They were joined by parents of the victims, who, despite having lost children in the shooting, urged meaningful gun control and background checks on people buying high-capacity rifles; and not for the state to ignite hatred through anti-trans laws. After the protests were ignored, and their introduced bills were thrown to the side with no regard to committee policies, three Democratic lawmakers decided to take matters into their own hands.
On March 30th, a few days after the school shooting, several hundred protesters rallied at the Nashville State House in the early morning hours. The rally was met by three Democratic lawmakers, named Justin Jones, Justin Pearson, and Gloria Johnson. They spoke to their constituents about the bills they were to introduce to begin to address gun violence in their communities.
The activists called out to their representatives, confronting them by asking what they were going to do to prevent another tragedy from taking place. Hundreds of protesters began to line outside the entrance, and they were each passed through security.
They then gathered outside the doors of the House session, and lined the halls. They chanted “No Justice, No Peace”, and heckled state representatives as they walked by, calling them to act.
Their chants could be heard throughout the chamber, and was a major source of frustration for the representatives assembled. Some made their way up the staircase, to the gallery viewing area, where they continued to chant, above the lawmakers.
Jones, Johnson, and Pearson gathered at the well with a megaphone. Because they had been silenced for weeks, they did not wait to be recognized. “No action, no peace!”, they led the crowd outside the doors in chants that reverberated through the closed session.
This caused the State Majority Leader to call for a recess for the time being, as they debated an educational reform bill. Tennessee Highway Patrol tried to control the crowd, as their voices reached a fever pitch. In riot gear, they pushed protesters to make way for the lawmakers that they escorted off of the grounds. Yet, THP reported no arrests made, no vandalism, and no threats. They detained one man who was chaotic, but soon released him to join the mob of people once again.
The day after, the Majority Leader claimed that the incident was “at least equivalent, maybe worse” than the events of January 6th, which left a protester dead, many police officers injured and millions of dollars of property damaged.
A week later, on the 6th of April 2023, the Republican supermajority held a vote to expel these members of the house for breaching the decorum of the State House. They did not follow the standard procedure of fining the lawmakers for leading a protest, or a censure vote. Instead they pushed for them to be fully expelled, despite their being elected by their constituents.
The two black lawmakers, Justin(s) Pearson and Jones, were immediately removed from office. The white representative, Gloria Johnson was allowed to remain, despite her taking part in the exact same action. The vote, along party lines, was clearly an instance of racism, which Johnson called out, for her retaining her seat.
Multiple members of the Tennessee legislature were under investigation for sexual abuse, and only 8 members had been expelled in the state’s history — six lawmakers were removed in 1886 for refusing to ratify the 14th Amendment, that granted freed slaves the right to vote, and the other two in 1980 for bribery, and 2016 for sexual misconduct.
Pearson and Jones labeled the undemocratic move as what it was, a fascist reaction to silence any dissent. They were soon voted back in by the city and county that they represented, to fulfill the rest of their term. However, this vote by the Republican House revealed their willingness to use power against their political enemies. They had begun to institute fascism at the state and local level.
This is the exact situation that eventually led to the mayhem in Montana’s State Legislature, and the right-wing’s direction against democracy. Fascism had come to the State Houses, as they worked to silence any lawmaker who stood against their Christofascist policies.
THREATS ON PRIDE
The Republican Party’s wave of anti-trans and anti-drag legislation marked a decline in democracy. It also revealed the extent to which they were pushing this country to embrace its roots in Christofascism. The moral panic that the GOP embraced on lies and propaganda against their political enemies, did not exist in a vacuum. Some state representatives expressed their hatred outright, in calls for violence.
In Tennessee, ground zero for institutional fascism, where black lawmakers were expelled for challenging their policies; the mass book burning we have discussed resembled scenes from Nazi Germany. This level of hatred, and of banning the visibility of LGBTQ people in society, was the trend that the GOP sought to normalize.
One such example was in Missouri, where a video appeared to show two Republican state senators in Missouri burning a pile of books with a flamethrower. They tried to deny the allegations, as they were not burning books, but empty cardboard boxes.
As one of the senators involved later explained, “In a video that is being widely circulated, I am taking a flamethrower to cardboard boxes representing what I am going to do to the leftist policies and RINO corruption of the Jeff City Swamp [Missouri’s state capital]. But let’s be clear, you bring those woke, pornographic books to Missouri schools to try to brainwash our kids, and I’ll burn those too”.
For years, the right-wing has embraced portraying violence and burning ideologies that they despise. Prior to the 2020 and 2022 elections, scores of Republican politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene, and other fascists that supported Trump’s attempted coup d’etat; released campaign videos in which they wielded rifles, and shot caricatures of Democratic politicians, and policies like “wokeness”. This was a dark sign of the growing desire for vengeance against their ideological enemies, which they portrayed as them standing up to the “deep state” and the “woke agenda”. These videos and the standardization of bullets against their opponents, were a sign of the culture war that had now escalated into calls for outright violence.
One such example was the backlash in 2023, to a marketing campaign by Anheuser-Bush. The beer company had allowed a trans person named Dylan Mulvaney to be sponsored for promoting Bud Light. While the minute long video posted to her story was benign, and similar to other sponsored content that promoted their March Madness giveaway, the response was dark and immediate.
Christian fascists immediately took to the internet to condemn Bid Light, who worked with a trans content creator to promote their brand among younger people, claiming that it had fallen to the “woke” agenda. Their anger came from a place of hate, amidst the movement to ban trans people from being a part of society.
They posted scores of photos and videos on Twitter urging am evangelical boycott -which will be discussed for igniting a fascist and racist backlash under its new ownership- in which they took boxes of Bud Light and put them down range, as they unleashed hails of bullets and blew up the cans they had already purchased. While videos like that of Kid Rock, shooting the cans he had purchased, could be comedic, it also denoted the sheer desire for bloodshed against trans people, that had become commonplace among the right-wing. The cans stood in for the trans people they despised, and represented the leftist values and organizing that they wanted to kill.
All of this footage, and the increasing calls for violence, did not exist in a bubble, and inspired a number of threats against Pride festivities, drag events, and LGBTQ organizations and centers in 2022. Libs of TikTok became one of the greatest purveyors to spew hate, using lies and propaganda.
Chaya Raichick, the woman behind the account, inspired a number of bomb threats, beginning in 2021. Raichik has claimed that being gender non-conforming or being an ally of the LGBT community is a “mental illness”, and deliberately misgenders trans people.
She used the anger of right-wing parents to provoke a moral panic about “anti-white racism” and the completely fabricated “groomer” conspiracy. As a result, she catapulted to fame due to stochastic terrorism, where she posted completely false narratives, to invite others to act upon, who took the events and schools she posted and threatened to murder those listed on social media.
A number of schools were the subject of death threats, in which they had to close down the campus, as a result of Raichick posting false information regarding the faculty. Raichick would doxx individual teachers, who merely expressed support for their LGBTQ students, leading to scores of death threats that caused a number of educators to resign (in a country already struggling to find teachers). She targetted any school that has support systems for LGBTQ students, including universities. This has led to the record-breaking death threats around Pride in 2022.
On September 23 2022, a two-minute video of Dr. Katherine Gast describing gender-affirming surgeries was reposted by Libs of TikTok with the caption: “Gast happily describes some of the gender affirming surgeries she offers to adolescents including vaginoplasties, phalloplasties, and double mastectomies.” The doctor was co-director at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Health Gender Services program.
Although Gast does not perform genital surgery on minors, she does perform mastectomies (also known as “top surgery”) in some cases for older teenagers after numerous evaluations by mental health care professionals and doctors, and with parental consent.
Raichick understood that this was intended to call her followers to violence, and that her allegations were disinformation, yet she defended her call to violence. Senator Ted Cruz tweeted: “She does this to children. Sterilizes & mutilates them. Before they are old enough to consent.”
Gast and her family were doxxed and her clinic has received a number of bomb threats. Raichick instigated a similar incident against a Boston, Chicago, and Pittsburgh hospital, with clinics that study gender. These clinics, that do not provide the surgeries Raichick described without merit, and often didn’t even provide gender-affirming, merely studying issues of gender, have been the target of threats to kill or maim doctors and patients alike, leading to various closures and police investigations into the threats.
It did not end here, as the moral panic that she is most responsible for is the new fear of drag shows, which didn’t really become an issue until the 2020s, as a result of Libs of TikTok. Raichick would pull doctored footage, and clips out of context, to paint a picture of drag shows somehow “sexualizing” children. She would post videos of a drag performer from another event, as if it happened at a family-friendly event, knowing full well that this would lead to violence.
In June 2022, the account had some of their tweets removed after they posted the locations of drag-focused events in the United States. It began with her sharing a Drag Queen Story Hour that was geared toward preschool-aged children, and nothing more than a live book reading by someone dressed in drag.
But as we witnessed, Libs of TikTok and the Republican Party had stoked such a false narrative around LGBTQ visibility, that it led to a right-wing rage against any Pride events, especially events for queer families and youth that only sought acceptance in society. The culture war was becoming increasingly violent, which began in earnest in 2022.
In 2022, the Gay and Lesbian alliance recorded over 100 different violent threats against Pride events across the area. These threats seeped through every state, and even the West Coast was unable to escape the bloodlust that had now become a standard in America.
In the summer of 2022, ignited by a right-wing backlash, Coeur D’Alene, Idaho gained national attention for hosting a Pride Event. The North Idaho Pride Alliance had held their first Pride event in “CDA” the year before. It was met with wide community praise, a joyful event that worked to undo the legacy of Nazism in the “Panhandle” of Idaho.
Northern Idaho, dubbed the “American Redoubt” by Neo-Nazis, was notable for the migration of Nazi and fascist groups to the region. They were led by the Aryan Nation, which sought to create a white ethno-state. As such, the emergence of Pride in Coeur D’Alene was already a source of hatred in the state.
Scheduled for the weekend of June 11th 2022, the event became the center of controversy, after being condemned by Libs of TikTok.
The increasing attention and calls to shut down the event came from various right-wing agitators, including a member of Identity Evropa, a hate group that took part in the deadly “Unite the Right” rally of 2017. The organizer communicated with Libs of TikTok, and alongside far-right politicians, called for fascists to show up en masse at the Pride Festival.
A few weeks before, a fundamentalist Idaho pastor told his congregation in Boise that gay, lesbian and transgender people should be executed by the government. Around the same time, a lawmaker from the northernmost region of the state, State Representative Heather Scott, told an audience that drag queens and other LGBTQ supporters are waging “a war of perversion against our children”.
Another group in North Idaho, a racist motorcycle club, dubbed the Panhandle Patriots, who were tied to assaulting and brutalizing people of color, alongside leftists in the region; also announced that they would be present. The group, in a press conference with Heather Scott, urged watchers to join them in “the fight” against LGBTQ people at the Coeur d’Alene pride celebration. They dubbed their counter-protest “Gun d’Alene” and encouraged people to show up armed.
“Stand up, take it to the head, go to the fight. … We say, ‘Damn the repercussions,’” the motorcycle club members declared in a statement. “They are trying to take your children.” Later, after the threat of federal investigations for a blatant call to violence, they changed their event to a prayer rally, saying they are “a Christian group that stands against violence in all its forms.” Yet they still intended to threaten the event.
With the event gaining more and more traction among Christofascists, Antifascists knew it was their duty to counter their presence and protect families celebrating Pride in the Park. And show up they did, including some armed leftists that stood in the park, to defend in case of a violent attack or shooting by the right-wing.
The Panhandle Patriot rally commenced as planned, with scores of Christofascists walking around Coeur D’Alene, armed to the teeth. As the day’s activities commenced, Antifascists stood at the park, at the ready in case the armed provocateurs wandered into the event to confront children and parents.
A few men, wearing Atomwaffen Division masks, a Neo-Nazi group, arrived with a banner. It read, “GROOMERS ARE NOT WELCOME IN IDAHO”. They stood at the edge of the waterfront, and flashed Nazi Salutes. They seemed to be from the Nazi group, “White Lives Matter”, with that messaging, which is intersectional to fascist organizing.
CDA Police and Sheriffs were placed all around the event, and surprisingly they forced out anyone that attempted to cross into the permitted event. All Cops Are Bastards, but these cops were simply protecting their community from out of town, out of state hate mobs.
Then, what happened next was the headline for the news. A suspicious U-Haul was pulled over, close to the park. Several police cars stopped the vehicle, and proceeded to surround the back door. They knocked on the boxed truck, with rifles drawn.
The door slowly slid open to reveal 31 men in matching uniforms. They were members of the white nationalist group Patriot Front.
Patriot Front had been created in the fallout of the “Unite the Right” rally, as an offshoot of Vanguard America. had a tactic of showing up in cities in the back of moving vehicles, in order to march out of nowhere, then escape without notice. While this usually evaded catching members of the group, their attempt at the end of the previous year to march in Philadelphia was met by residents proceeding to beat the living daylights out of the group.
The police proceeded to pull out every single member of the group at gun-point. Patriot Front members were all fully masked, and carrying riot shields, with batons and smoke bombs. They then began to arrest every person inside the truck, as they unmasked them for the press and reporters to witness.
31 members of Patriot Front were arrested that day and taken to Kootenai County Jail, where they would not be released until the weekend was over, and Pride had passed. All of them were charged with conspiracy to riot, a misdemeanor offense that was hard to charge. The police pointed out that with various weapons, munitions, and every single member carrying a riot shield, these men intended to attack the Pride event.
Since then, several members of the group have refused to show up in court, and have ignored bench warrants for the low-level charges of conspiracy to riot. One man pled guilty and was ordered to pay a 500 dollar fine, and serve a few months of unsupervised probation. Others have since pled guilty to the charge, and received thousand dollar fines and a few days in jail. Their leader filed for a continuance with no update on the case.
However, the arrests and demasking of the white nationalists were a godsend, as every member involved was named and doxxed by law enforcement. As was revealed, these members traveled from all over the country, and their communities were soon made aware of who these men were. In the wake of the mass arrest, antifascists worked to doxx individual members, and raise awareness in their hometowns and to their families.
One of the men who participated in the attempted attack, was a member of my former hometown of Olympia, Washington. Patriot Front had gained the attention of antifascist researchers, the year before in Olympia, for their part in a hate crime.
A mural was placed in the heart of downtown Olympia, across from the gay bar, after a string of attacks against the LGBTQ community. It read “Respect and Love, Olympia”, with a backdrop of a rainbow.
Members of the group gathered in the dead of night, in the fall of 2021, and proceeded to cover the entire mural with a message of hate. The words of the mural were covered with the message “Reclaim America”, with the Patriot Front logo. The group had recorded themselves committing the hate crime, as they made quick work having rehearsed their act of cowardice.
They also had become a menace to the city, as they targeted the Black Lives Matter murals and signs painted in the long hot summer of 2020, as well as the numerous rainbow murals around the core of downtown. Olympia Police, when provided with the evidence that the group had used to brag, claimed that they could do nothing as this was on social media.
We soon were informed that one of the men, who had been doxxed for his part in the hate crimes, was arrested in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho. His name was Jacob Stephen Sundt, and he lived with his parents in a house on the East Side of Olympia. His father was a judge-adjudicator for the State of Washington. We learned quickly that he worked at the local Costco, and began to call the store to inform management of his racist activism outside of work. Within the week he lost his job, and a week later we discovered that he had been kicked out of his home.
Patriot Front, like other white supremacist groups, understood that the new anti-LGBTQ movement was a catalyst for their organizing. They could use the culture war, and the wave of hatred of trans people, as a means to radicalize right-wingers into fully espousing Nazi views. White supremacy would not die easily, and these groups knew that they could use this manufactured anger to push the nation down a path of Christofascism.
IN DEFENSE OF DRAG
Drag queens became one of the largest targets of the far-right beginning in 2021. Right-wingers would find Drag Queen Story Hours in their area, or any drag show that was or they thought to be family-friendly, and target the venues and people involved, with violence or threats to end the events in question.
As someone that tracks far-right groups in the Pacific Northwest, I watched as groups like the Proud Boys and the new “Rose City Nationalists”, a full Nazi group, began to organize in Oregon and Washington, against any drag event they could find.
The first event to that end posted by Libs of TikTok was in San Lorenzo, California. While the tweets were removed for their obvious incitements of violence, it featured a Drag Queen Story Hour at a library in the Bay Area.
The Proud Boys in the area took this as an opportunity to threaten the children’s event. June 12th 2022, they arrived at the library and surrounded the entrance. They screamed homophobic insults, calling the attendees, including children, “faggots”, the drag queen a “tranny” and a host of other slurs.
These grown men proceeded to threaten preschool-aged children to such an extent that the library had to be shut down. The host of the children’s story hour, Bay Area drag queen Panda Dulce, later said that the disruption “totally freaked out all of the kids” and the group “attempted to escalate to violence”.
The event was later investigated as a hate crime, and the police noted that the group of men were members of the Proud Boys and were inspired by Raichick’s targeting of the story hour. After the events of September 4th in Olympia, where the Pacific Northwest leader was shot in the leg like he deserved, and their leaders began to face convictions for their part in the attempted coup d’etat and the riot in Northeast Portland; the Proud Boys had begun to see a decline.
The act of hate in California was fueled by the tweet, now deleted from Libs of TikTok. But in the wake of the event, the Proud Boys and other groups began to use this as a means of organizing opposition to LGBTQ people by protesting further drag events.
The organizing against these events continued through the year and would escalate month by month, and end with a mass shooting at the end of 2022.
Throughout 2022, fascists and Nazis targeted a number of communities in Texas from Arlington to Denton. For the most part, the majority of right-wing backlash existed in the South, where the most stringent laws against trans youth were becoming a reality.
In Texas, an open-carry state, these protests presented a real danger for the queer people simply holding a story hour. In some cases they were drag brunch events that were family friendly. Brunch is a familial activity, and the shows were tailored towards the atmosphere. Queer and queer friendly families brought their children to enjoy a morning out.
Yet, fueled by lies and fabrications, fascists showed up to disrupt the events. The pattern was disturbing, and was led by hatred based upon the propaganda of right-wing pundits.
In communities like Arlington, fascists surrounded venues with rifles and wielding melee weapons. In the midst of this escalation of violence, groups began to form to defend these events. Armed leftists in Texas organized as the threats expanded.
The most notable group was the John Brown Gun Club. The JBGC has existed for years, but 2022 saw the Elm Fork chapter begin to capture the national spotlight.
The Elm Fork chapter had made the headlines a year before. As they were founded, they organized in the city of Houston. Amidst a massive sweep in the city by authorities, the John Brown Gun Club arrived to ensure that the police did not violate the rights of the unhoused.
As leftists organized to defend the lives of drag queens and queer families, the opinion pieces condemned their defense. They raised questions about what it meant for society, however they failed to analyze why. Because of the escalation of violence by members of the far-right and the evident merging of conservative activists with Neo-Nazis and militias.
Each month, the level of violent rhetoric continued, and the leftist militia provided real defense. While Christofascists claimed that their obsession was for the sake of the children, one noted how any drag event was grounds for extremist organizing. They would latch onto any event that could be perceived as “family-friendly”, if simply taking place at an all ages venue, and despite the familial support for these events.
While in some cases armed defense allowed the events to go forward in peace, in other cases the levels of threats caused the venues to close or to cancel the scheduled events.
The JBGC continued to organize to defend where they could, especially in the latter half of 2022.
On December 17th of 2020, in the community of Grand Prairie, Texan fascists called for an end to a Christmas-themed drag show at the Texas Trust Theater. Open-carrying members of the FBI-designated extremist militia, This Is Texas Freedom Force (TITFF), protested a drag show alongside members of Patriot Front. Members of a far-right religious activist group that opposes all forms of birth control, the San Antonio Family Association, were also in attendance.
They were significantly outnumbered and outgunned by another coalition of community members, including armed members of multiple John Brown Gun Clubs and Veterans for Equality.
Grand Prairie SWAT police were deployed to the scene, as the two sides clashed outside the theater.
Brooke Lynn Hytes, a drag queen in the show, remarked about the event on social media, “If you don’t have 150 armed protesters, and a SWAT team on the roof, outside your show are you even doing Drag?”
While she made light of the sheer level of violence surrounding the event, the quote truly captured the tension of the moment. That drag shows, even simple events focused on Christmas, were such a source of extreme rhetoric for Christian fascists that it required the protection of SWAT teams to curb the threats.
“A far-right extremist group announced its intent to use guns to intimidate and essentially terrorize actresses and theater goers who were attending a widely promoted and legal holiday event,” the Austin John Brown Gun Club wrote in a statement.
“They intended this to be a message to both attendees to stay away and to the Texas Legislature to encourage them to pass bigoted laws. It was a real life example of one hateful group threatening harm and decent people supporting and defending their community”.
In Roanoke, Texas, a town of under 10,000 on the outskirts of Austin, an all ages drag brunch at the Anderson Distillery was threatened by members of the far-right. The distillery apparently attempted to contact police, who refused to provide security in the wake of the calls to violence.
In their place, the John Brown Gun Club once again acted as the line to separate the violent actors from innocent families. Scores of Trump conservatives showed up alongside Neo-Nazis in skull-masks. One held a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire.
The JGBC held the line, as nearly a dozen armed leftists arrived in black bloc, with plate carriers and wielding semi-auto rifles. Unlike the conservative crowd, they did not escalate the event. Instead, as they were screamed at and called a series of slurs, and members of the mob attempted to storm past their line; the leftist militia stood simply in their place. They refused to move, and to speak to or allow these violent men and women from entering the property.
The drag show ended up selling out at capacity, as the community of Texas showed real support for the event, in defiance of the fascist mob that sought them harm. The tips for the drag queens and the staff were reportedly abundant, and the energy was one of joy.
As we witnessed in Texas, the trend nationwide moved to accept drag performances. And as we saw through the series of clashes regarding the events, the groups that opposed the inclusion of drag queens, were far outnumbered by the amount of people that supported. While the left far outnumbered the bigotry of Christian fascists, the other side was more willing to resort to violence. However, the left was becoming more organized, and arming themselves to counter the wave of right-wing terror.
This rhetoric from Christofascists had now become normalized among the right-wing. Evangelicals and conservatives embraced “groomer” conspiracies and engaged in terror against drag events and pride events, alongside literal Nazi groups. This level of hate became tantamount at the end of the year, in the series of rallies in Texas, and the continually increasing calls to violence.
In Oklahoma, on Halloween night, a donut-shop was firebombed. A few days before this shop hosted a drag event, in which queens served donut sculptures to patrons. It had already been attacked on the 17th of that month, and their Point of Sale system, alongside several items were stolen in the night.
On Halloween, a fascist approached the shop late at night, as he wore a Make America Great Again hat. He posted a flier that condemned LGBTQ people and claimed they were “grooming” children. He then proceeded to break out the windows. He lit a molotov cocktail and threw it into the empty storefront. Luckily no one was hurt, but it showed the level of violence that the right-wing was willing to engage in.
Yet the sheer hatred reached a fever pitch in November when a mass shooting occured at a gay bar. It echoed the violence that was unleashed at the Pulse Nightclub in Orlando, Florida. Many had hoped that this nation had moved past terrorism against queer and trans people, but they were naive. Especially as the “groomer” rhetoric became a platform of the Republican party.
On the night of November 19th 2023, a drag show began at the Q Club, a popular gay nightclub in Colorado Springs.
For years it was the only gay venue in the highly conservative city on Colorado’s front range. It was a popular venue for drag shows and performances for years. Yet that dark night of November devolved into violence over their support of drag performances.
Anderson Lee Aldrich entered Club Q, armed with an AR-15, multiple magazines, and shrouded in body armor. He began to shoot at patrons randomly, as a show commenced. Many were confused, thinking the loud bangs were a part of the performance. Once the muzzle flashed throughout the crowd, they knew it was a live shooter. Many scrambled behind the bar, into the dressing rooms, seeking safety from the killer.
As the shooting continued, a club patron sprung to action. Richard M. Fierro, an Army veteran, charged across the room, and tackled Aldrich, a large man, to the ground. He knocked the rifle out of his hand, and proceeded to beat the shooter bloody, unleashing sheer force on the killer. Fierro and two other patrons proceeded to beat the man into submission, as a trans woman stomped onto his face over and over with her high heels. Fierro used the handgun the man held, to pistol-whip him until he finally stopped struggling.
A total of 39 patrol officers from all four divisions of the Colorado Springs Police Department, along with 34 firefighters and 11 ambulances, responded to the scene. Yet those who saved lifes included an army veteran and a queer show attendee.
5 people lost their lives that day, as 19 were injured by gunfire. It was horrific, and left the community shaken. When the news spoke with Fierro about what caused him to take matters into his own hands, he responded by telling them that he had fought for the freedom to attend drag, and that he was there with his daughter, to watch the performance.
“These kids want to live that way, want to have a good time, have at it,” he said as he described the night. “I’m happy about it because that is what I fought for, so they can do whatever the hell they want.” He owns a brewery with his family, called Altrevia Brewing.
This mass shooting caused a major stir in the country, from those that could understand homophobia and hate-filled violence continued to be on the rise.
The shooter attempted to lie in the aftermath. At his arraignment hearing, the lawyer claimed that Aldrich used they/them pronouns as identified as non-binary, despite his own family contradicting what was clearly a political ploy to counteract the violent act of hate.
An interview with Aldrich’s father revealed a broken man, addicted to meth, who, while rarely involved in his life, shared a sheer hatred of gay and trans people; he was also a member of the Mormon church. While the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints released their own statement, to denounce the act of violence, their rhetoric and work against the rights of gay couples played an integral part in the atrocities.
Unlike scores of other shootings however, conservatives doubled down, while fascists argued in public discourse that the shooting was justified. Tucker Carlson promoted more “grooming” rhetoric in the aftermath, and hosted a pundit who claimed these shootings would continue to happen “until we end this evil agenda that is attacking children.
Tim Pool, another notorious fascist stated outright, shortly after the shooting “we shouldn’t tolerate pedophiles grooming kids. Club Q had a grooming event”. He, alongside other Christofascists like Candace Owens, Matt Walsh, and Chaya Raichick, boosted the dangerous and unfactual “groomer” claims, while stating boldly that “this is what happens”.
In many ways, the Colorado Q Club shooting is the canary in the coal mine. How fascists chose to respond, to defend the shooter and his act of hate, reveals the ways in which the right-wing is building a culture war that enacts atrocities upon innocent civilians, and the ways in which they will protect the acts of fascism.
November, and the months after the murderous act of hate, marked the sheerest decline in the rights of queer and trans people in this country. The act signified the most dangerous time to be a queer person, since the progress of the last decade.
And this wasn’t just extremist violence and threats on their lives, it also extends to the record-breaking legislation that purposefully targeted LGBTQ families’ right to live safely in American society. This sharp decline was enabled and expanded by the downfall of Roe v. Wade in May of 2022.
HATRED COMES HOME
The Pacific Northwest did not escape the escalation of hate. In fact, we had our own struggle against the right-wing that stemmed from the Uprisings and the Trump Era, and carried on throughout our work to counter these fascist militias.
The Proud Boys and other violent militia types began to putter out with the end of 2021, after their leaders were jailed and their movement gained community criticism.
Yet they surged once again, as groomer rhetoric became commonplace. Notably, these militia members began to organize against drag shows in the region, attempting to join the movement against LGBTQ rights.
The first incident that rose revolved around a drag queen story hour in Eugene, south of Portland. Old Nick’s Pub had hosted the event for months, but in October of 2022, right-wingers organized to threaten the scheduled event.
Prior to the event saw a score of fascist threats on the pub, including threats of murder and violence for hosting the story hour. Antifascists organized and called for numbers to protect the event on the 23rd of October.
Members of the Proud Boys in the area, from Rober Zerfing, the now-destitute “Common Sense Conservatives” and Steve Fritz, who calls himself “Band-Aid”, ignited calls to violence on their platform.
One man named Richard Elce, known as Flaggy McStabby for his violent attacks on Antifascists with an American flag-pole, showed up the week before the story hour. He circled the parking lot in his car, while threatening the staff that he would “end you all”.
These brazen threats rallied numbers in the Pacific Northwest to show up and defend queer families for a story hour.
On October 23rd, 2022, a mass confrontation occured outside of Old Nick’s Pub. Community members outside of the event outnumbered the fascists ten to one. The fascists that arrived included a collection of Proud Boys, conservative fascists, and the first public appearance of a new hate group, the Rose City Nationalists, who are open and proud Neo-Nazis.
Then confrontations began early, as the event was in the morning. Rose City Nationalists proceeded to throw Nazi salutes, as they threatened the people there to oppose them. Violent Proud Boy Barry Johnson, who had been arrested a few months prior for domestic abuse, stood side by side with Nazis. The audacity of a wife-beater to chastise LGBTQ families for not upholding “family values” is laughable if it wasn’t so dangerous and a sign of those who oppose queer rights.
Armed leftists protected the venue space in a line, as they mimicked the tactics of the Elm Fork John Brown Gun Club. The community of Antifascists and LGBTQ supporters proceeded to drive the mob out. They began by throwing rocks, which caused the crowd of anti-queer agitators to flee to their car. Police arrived to separate the crowds, as the residents made the violent actors flee to their cars. In the end it was a successful counter that saw the event go forward without issue.
Fascists attempted to capitalize off of LGBTQ hatred in Port Townsend a month later, as a bigoted woman was banned from the local YMCA, for her constant harassment of LGBTQ gym users, asking to see their genitalia. While fascists rallied outside the club, the community once again outnumbered them. They drove the mob out, and once again the fascists were countered.
In December of 2022, we witnessed another incident around a family-friendly drag event scheduled at The Brewmaster’s Taproom in Renton, outside of Seattle. It was another drag story hour and bingo that had taken place for over a year without issue.
Once again, fascists began to threaten the venue and workers. A conservative and anti-vaxx group called “Wake Up WA State” called for the threats against the story hour, and for people to show up to intimidate the venue for hosting LGBTQ families.
A few days before the scheduled event, on the 7th of December, a car drove into the lot of the taproom, and proceeded to fire his handgun at the empty bar, around noon before they opened.
When staff came in, they checked the cameras to find the driver having shot at their windows. A single bullet hole had cracked the window. Next to the fractured glass, the staff left a white postcard. An arrow pointed to the bullet, as it read “what intolerance looks like…” After the shooting, the conservative group growing their following off of violent rhetoric, proceeded to distance themselves from the act of hate.
“Wake Up WA State”, led by Kasey Jean, proceeded to call off the fascist rally, as they began to delete their social media. They stated that they did not condone the act of violence, yet as is proven the very violence accusing drag queens of “grooming” leads to acts of hate and violence that they wish to normalize.
In many ways, this showed a trend in the Pacific Northwest that will be discussed in further detail. That fascist organizing had fallen rapidly since the dark days of 2020. And while fascists attempted to organize in the area, everywhere they met they were countered by a community that opposed fascism, and stood for the rights of their LGBTQ neighbors.
This wasn’t the end however. As the laws targeting trans and queer youth, and history of LGBTQ rights, began to take effect, we witnessed the rise of hate. Even in communities that are supposedly deemed safe for queer people’s existence, such as the Pacific Northwest.
In our part of the country we successfully countered these fascists that would attempt to ride a national moral panic, fabricated and fueled by the right-wing, to target LGBTQ people at home. As we shall discuss, at one point in 2023, they beat each other for attempting to incite terror at a Pride event in Oregon, which at this point are a cultural fact and public event that they can no longer threaten, for now.
Yet in other parts of the country, we witnessed the rise of full fascist rhetoric, the broad threat of a culture war with rifles and bombs, and the murder of LGBTQ people.
This has been fueled by the dangerous and outright false “groomer” rhetoric that has spread like a cancer throughout American society. Moral panics manufactured by Nazis, who follow the same claims spread in the rise of Nazism in 1920s Germany. In many examples we will discuss, Neo-Nazis used the moral panic to organize and recruit, which has been documented and admitted to by self-avowed members. Remember that the first mass book-burning in Nazi Germany was in the destruction of the institute for gender and sexuality studies, the first of its kind in the world. And terror has been accompanied through the terror of the law, to legalize discrimination and hatred, evident in the horrific amount of bills introduced to target trans and queer families in their states, as well as the art of drag.
The rise of self-avowed Nazis is evident through the advent of the Rose City Nationalists hate group in the Willamette Valley, and the events in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, as well as the public menace that has become Patriot Front. We will discuss examples from Ohio to Florida, of where the fever pitch of the public panic about drag shows incited people to call for mass violence and bloodshed.
Raichick, Tucker, Trump, Patriot Front, Rose City Nationalists, and fascists organizing against drag shows and book readings… They all have blood on their hands, ablaze from burning books.
They all have a part to play in normalizing the language of violence in the name of a moral panic manufactured to disenfranchise LGBTQ people.
