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Anti-Trans Bills Encourage Far-Right Violence
That may be the intent. It sure looks like the outcome.
In yesterday’s episode of The Reidout, “Liz Cheney shows America the Jan. 6 committee means business in new video” (June 14, 2022). MSNBC host Joy Reid interviews NBC news reporter Ben Collins. The segment begins at 25:14–31:33 on Apple Podcasts.
The Far-Right’s Freshly Anti-Trans Narrative
Ben Collins says of the right-wing in the United States:
“They don’t really have a cohesive narrative for January 6. They have a cohesive narrative for what they believe the LGBTQ community is doing to their children.”
That narrative has been encouraged by mainstream politics and their successes. Joy Reid points out that, so far in 2022, Republican state legislatures have proposed
“roughly 240 bills targeting LGBTQ Americans — half targeting transgender people specifically. But make no mistake: Their goal is to radicalize the same kinds of people Trump and Trumpism have radicalized on matters of race, immigration, abortion, and demographic change, and to do so by any means necessary.”
They think the center might buy in to the anti-transgender rhetoric, and they think they can unite the center-right with far-right militias like the Proud Boys. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is helping the far-right achieve that political goal with his recent initiatives to ban mention of race, gender, and sexuality in public schools as well as denying transition-related healthcare for minors.
Of course, as Collins puts it, the problem with exciting the Proud Boys is:
“They really want to get violent. They want to start fights. They may not want to murder people, but the point of the Proud Boys is — you start physical altercations in the streets.”
“I hope that people understand this,” Collins said. “Their primary enemy right now is the LGBTQ community. Both because of Pride Month and also because they need an enemy to counterprogram the January 6 stuff.”
Which is to say that, at the very least, violent groups intend their June assaults as a distraction from the televised public hearings about January 6, as…
