Campaign Action
The propaganda outlet knows exactly what it’s doing in airing segments focused on these story hours. So do the right-wing social media actors who purport to simply reshare publicly available videos when in reality they are singling out targets for harassment by a bigoted and violent base. This base is, frighteningly, listening.
David Neiwert, my colleague here at Daily Kos and one of the foremost experts on right-wing extremism, reported on the arrests of more than 30 fascists who sought to harass Pride participants in Idaho this past weekend. “They weren’t the only visible extremists present, though,” he noted, saying armed men and hate evangelists were also present to intimidate rallygoers. “The arrests at the end were just the culmination of a menacing presence,” he continued.
The Present Age writer Parker Molloy said that the right-wing Libs of Tik Tok had been steadily highlighting LGBTQ events in the state. That account had also zeroed in on a drag queen story hour in San Lorenzo, California. She writes that event was subsequently “disrupted by a group of 8-10 members of the pro-Trump Proud Boys group, who threatened attendees and performers while shouting homophobic and transphobic slurs.”
Fox News might argue that it is simply reporting on LGBTQ events, but this is not a news network. Like the right-wing social media actors, it’s very deliberate in what it chooses to air, and doesn’t choose to air. Just like when it chose not to air the first Jan. 6 coup hearing, and when it chose to mark the start of Pride Month by airing transphobic segments across multiple programs. Media Matters said at the time that Lia Thomas, a college athlete who is transgender, was “repeatedly misgendered” by contributor Katie Pavlich during a Fox and Friends appearance. Thomas was the subject of transphobic attacks on at least three other Fox News programs.
It’s not just loudmouths popular in right-wing media, either. Instead of using his power to address mass shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Florida Sen. Marco Rubio fired off a letter complaining about a drag queen story hour at a U.S. military base in Germany. Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, a bigot who enjoys harassing the survivors of school shootings, tweeted that she was “introducing a bill to make it illegal for children to be exposed to Drag Queen performances.”
Frequent Fox News guests are also openly calling “for the state to take away children from parents of trans kids and parents who take their child to drag queen story hour,” Media Matter said. It is not hard to see where this will ultimately lead to, which is calls for all openly LGBTQ parents to have their children taken away.
RELATED STORIES:
Fox News marks start of LGBTQ Pride Month by attacking trans people across multiple shows
Following Buffalo and Uvalde, Marco Rubio fires off letter ... complaining about drag queens
Comments are closed on this story.