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Why is the Far-Right Increasing the Intensity of Their Anti-Trans Beliefs?
Because they’re bored by finally winning against abortion rights
On a recent episode of TruthOut’s “Movement Memos” — “Attacks on Trans Rights and Abortion Rights Are ‘Bound Together’” (June 3, 2022)—Kelly Hayes talks with fellow Truthout contributor Shane Burley, author of Fascism Today and Why We Fight.
They talk about what Hayes describes as “the far right and how attacks on abortion rights and trans people fit into a larger fascist agenda.” Burley says the Republican Party is currently able to pursue its longstanding agenda “without any restrictions…in some of the most far-reaching ways possible.”
One Thing ‘Attack’ Can Mean
Yesterday, I wrote about one type of attack. The Proud Boys showing up at LGBTQ events, for example.
When The Far-Right Finally Wins Their Anti-Abortion Laws, How Will They Raise Money?
Burley says that the right “had a long game, generational strategy to fight back against abortion rights” and now, essentially, they’ve won. Roe v. Wade is likely to fall. It’s a matter of time. So the right is seeking something else to do. The abortion issue, Burley says, “helped them raise money. It helped them build up a lot of momentum. Without that being the pressing crisis that they build on, they have to build up a new infrastructure.” This explains the right’s “pivot” to “the anti-trans assaults that we’re seeing, and just absolute war declared on trans folks.”
Criminalizing abortion, as the right has been doing and continues to do, “creates a fear around really basic medical care. And it also just creates a fear around pregnancy, this idea that miscarriages themselves could be labeled abortions.” People can and will go to jail.
Relatedly: “The attack on trans people is foundational to their politics.” In their mental model, whoever…
