A ray of light.
Chaya Raichik, aka Libs of TikTok, has been harassing queer/trans people for years.
"NBC News identified 33 instances, starting in November 2020, when people or institutions singled out by Libs of TikTok later reported bomb threats or other violent intimidation. The threats, which on average came several days after tweets from Libs of TikTok, targeted schools, libraries, hospitals, small businesses and elected officials in 16 states, Washington, D.C., and the Canadian province of Ontario. Twenty-one of the 33 threats were bomb threats, which most commonly targeted schools and were made via email."
— David Ingram, After Libs of TikTok posted, at least 21 bomb threats followed, NBC News, February 7, 2024
Raichik knew the article was coming out because Ingram had asked her for comment. She didn't speak to him, and instead, on Feb 5, she posted to X, saying that Ingram was "try[ing] to paint me as an extremist to discredit me. This 'b*mb threat' narrative is really getting old 🥱".
Within minutes of the article's publication, Raichik reacted on X, saying it was "libel" against her and suggesting she'd hold the journalist accountable for "any death threats or hateful messages" she might receive:
February 2024: Teenager dies at school
On February 7, 2024 — the same day the NBC story was published — a 16-year-old was physically beaten at school in Owasso, Oklahoma. The next day, the teen was dead.
This was a person who was assigned female at birth and may have identified as nonbinary, entered the girls' bathroom, and was beaten by three older cisgender girls.
16-year-old Owasso student laid to rest after unexpected death. Justin Ayer, Braden Bates. KJRH. February 8, 2024.
16-year-old Owasso student who died unexpectedly was laid to rest FOX23.com News Staff Feb 15, 2024
Nex Benedict, News, Deadnaming the Dead and Bathroom Panics: Take a breath before you even think of clicking. CRip Dyke. Substack. Feb 19, 2024.
The NYT reporting "quotes the same police officer, Nick Boatman, who Judd Legum got on record admitting the medical examiner never said the death was unrelated to the beating, speculating about the tox report, and saying they released partial information to try and divert national attention," Evan Urquhart says on Bluesky.
The same police officer then complained to Marisa Kabas that, while what he told Judd Legum was true, the department had a different "official position" that it prefers appear in print.
At a public forum on February 23 about Benedict's death, Oklahoma state Sen. Tom Woods said: "We are a religious state and we are going to fight it to keep that filth out of the state of Oklahoma because we are a Christian state."
On February 28, Media Matters reported that Walters in 2022 had "attended a fundraiser thrown by a right-wing podcaster," Ron Causby, who had been refused a position at Owasso Public Schools "in part because of public statements he made encouraging his daughters to 'kick the shit' out of transgender peers trying to use the restroom."
This happened in a school district that Chaya Raichik had drawn attention to.
"In 2022, Chaya Raichik targeted an Owasso teacher for speaking out in support of LGBTQ+ students who lacked acceptance from their parents. Raichik’s post was shared thousands of times on social media and resulted in the teacher getting condemned and harassed until they resigned. The posts Raichik made about the teacher were later deleted, but have been archived. It’s unclear what prompted the deletion of the posts by Raichik."
— "Libs of TikTok targeted a district, then a non-binary student was killed on campus." VPSReports. Community (This content is not subject to review by Daily Kos staff prior to publication.) DailyKos. February 19, 2024
Talking about this since 2023
Soon after the Club Q shooting in Colorado Springs, Chaya Raichik picks on the Pride flag in an Aurora, Colorado school. She knows what she's doing, she does it systematically, and in context, this is incitement to violence:
A week later:
I'll take this opportunity to share my June 2020 article (unpaywalled), "How Trump self-scored 36 points on LGBTQ rights — And why it’s a failing grade." The Trump administration has done nothing whatsoever in favor of LGBTQ rights. Don’t repeat its lie to the contrary. It causes pain and stress.
Talking about this since 2022
August 16, 2022:
On August 17, 2022, Vice published an article in the morning...
Far-Right Extremists Are Threatening to ‘Execute’ Doctors at a Children’s Hospital: The viral Twitter account LibsofTikTok promoted a lie about gender-affirming care at the hospital—and now doctors are getting death threats. David Gilbert, Vice, August 17, 2022
...and by evening, Facebook suspended Libs of TikTok's account.
Elad Nehorai said it is "a particular shanda...that the account is run by a self-described Orthodox Jew" ("Libs of TikTok is fueling a pogrom against trans youth," The Forward, August 29, 2022):
"We generally think of pogroms as riots that led to mass killings of Jews — and as something from the history books. But when you examine the historical underpinnings of pogroms like the series that swept through Russia in 1881 and 1882, the one that killed more than 400 Jews in Odesa in 1905, and the 1929 Hebron massacre, you can see a pre-social media version of Libs of TikTok’s playbook.
Pogroms are not singular events. Mass violence requires years of priming an audience to believe that a vulnerable minority is in fact an enormous danger to the majority. Early stage pogroms tend to target property. As time passes, those attacks become normalized, and then escalate into genocidal killings."
Taylor Lorenz interviewed Raichik.
On Lorenz's article in The Washington Post, Parker Molloy says "it's a good article" and she "see[s] value in it"; she adds that "it’s certainly better than some of the Post’s past coverage of trans issues," on which Molloy has also written. Media Matters has published a few video clips from this interview, including one three-minute clip in which Lorenz repeatedly asks Raichik why she believes that it's "defamation" when someone makes a false statement about her and they should have to remove those posts, but it's not defamation when she makes a false statement that a transgender woman is a child murderer and she should not have to remove those posts.
The full interview is on YouTube. Molloy quotes Vice editor Tim Marchman's comments on this practice: a "fascist propagandist" may claim that you took them "out of context and that you failed to publish all the clever things they said. For this reason, it’s not an unknown tactic to run a full transcript or video of the interview as a defense against these tactics." And "if you’re reporting new info about them," you essentially have to interview them.
Katelyn Burns says: "I see more value in talking with Nex’s friends and other trans kids about how internet influencers are affecting school environments and bullying." That's her POV, as "I used to be a (closeted) trans kid myself. I see myself in kids like Nex, while Lorenz simply cannot." Though Lorenz may be sympathetic to trans kids, "at the end of the day she reports on the influencer economy," so she centers the influencers, not the trans kids.
Subscriber gift link: In states with laws targeting LGBTQ issues, school hate crimes quadrupled Laura Meckler, Hannah Natanson and John D. Harden, Washington Post, March 12, 2024
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