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. 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.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 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.”.Pride events like the one in New York City at which Parkland High School shooting survivor Emma Gonzales marched in 2018 are drawing increasingly threatening rhetoric from the far right.Ī 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: