What Transphobia Sounded Like in 2010

‘How Evil Works’ (2010) by the editor of WorldNetDaily

In 2010, Threshold Editions, a division of Simon & Schuster, published David Kupelian’s book How Evil Works: Understanding and Overcoming The Destructive Forces That Are Transforming America.

Kupelian was, and still is today, managing editor for WorldNetDaily, which, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, is dedicated to “manipulative fear-mongering and outright fabrications…from the fringes of the far-right and fundamentalist worlds.” While some of his topics in this book might suggest his interests lie in psychology or theology, he clarifies that he’s a journalist. But there’s no reporting in the book, either.

In the book’s discussions of racism, antisemitism, sexism, homophobia, and transphobia, through which the author of course purports not to perpetuate these evils, I’d say, in my estimation, he very much does. The book, in attempting to call out the psychological and spiritual sources of these personal and social ills in others, is just a lot of projection.

I decided to read the book because I have been thinking about how transphobia has developed in recent years and I think it is important to trace the lines through history, recent as well as distant, to better understand where it comes from. I also discuss racism and antisemitism because transphobia, overall, is connected to these other types of prejudice and organized hate.

Racism

Kupelian says the United States

“is probably the least racist nation in the world. Yes, we had slavery, but…we sacrificed more than six hundred thousand American lives in the Civil War…to exorcise it from our nation. Yes, we had segregation — but we long ago repented of this…”

The framing is of course terrible. That people had to fight and die for freedom — their own or others’ — does not make the nation less racist. It indicates that, at least at the time, the country was so racist that the people and institutions had to be fought against. And if the Civil War had exorcised not only slavery but also racism more broadly, then there would not still have been legal segregation a hundred years later. Furthermore, his idea that “we” have individually…