US Extremists

LOS ANGELES — Far-right activist Chaya Raichik splits her time between California, where she’s registered to vote, and Florida, where she often travels. But the place where she arguably is having the biggest impact these days is Oklahoma, a state she’s visited only once.

Tech is not your friend. We are. Sign up for The Tech Friend newsletter.

Raichik, who operates the social media account Libs of TikTok, has amassed an audience of millions on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, largely by targeting LGBTQ+ people. Last month, Raichik was appointed to the Oklahoma Library Media Advisory Committee by Republican schools superintendent Ryan Walters, a former history teacher who has been called “the state’s top culture warrior” for his opposition to teachers unions and other conservative targets, including LGBTQ+ students’ rights.

Since her appointment, Raichik has sought to pull books depicting gay and transgender people, as well as sex education, from public school libraries, saying she has found “porn” in various districts. But her growing role in the state has drawn greater attention since Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old nonbinary student, collapsed and died the day after a Feb. 7 fight in a girls’ bathroom at Owasso High School in suburban Tulsa. Family members said Benedict had been bullied for months for being openly nonbinary.

Owasso Police Lt. Nick Boatman said Friday that Benedict did not die as a result of physical trauma, according to preliminary information from the medical examiner, and that the department is awaiting the results of toxicology testing to determine the cause of death. Benedict’s parents have questioned that conclusion. Meanwhile, gay rights supporters in Oklahoma and elsewhere have continued to blame the fight for Benedict’s death and to accuse Raichik of bearing some responsibility for the fight.

Watch the interview with Chaya Raichik

On Thursday, Oklahoma City Councilor Sean Cummings (D) lambasted Raichik for stoking anti-LGBTQ+ hatred in the state, saying she has “blood on her hands.” And Matt Bernstein, a 25-year-old LGBTQ+ content creator in New York who has been targeted by Raichik, said: “I’m just hearing constantly how Chaya Raichik specifically has caused a rift in the experience of being a queer high-schooler in America.”

As Libs of TikTok, Raichik has been blamed for sparking bomb threats, property damage, shooting threats, written and verbal harassment and other forms of violence against individuals, hospitals and schools across the country — including in Oklahoma, according to GLAAD, a nonprofit LGBTQ+ advocacy group. In her profile picture on X, she is holding a newspaper that reads: “when Libs of TikTok posts, threats increasingly follow.”

In a podcast interview this week about the violence that follows her posts, Raichik smiled and said she’s proud of being called a stochastic terrorist — someone who inspires supporters to commit violence by demonizing a person or group.

“Honestly, like, that makes me feel really important,” Raichik said.

On Thursday, in an hour-long interview with a Washington Post reporter at a coffee shop in Los Angeles, Raichik said that “bomb threats are bad” and that she believes “people who call in bomb threats should be arrested.” But she said: “I just don’t know — what does it have to do with me?”

Raichik called Benedict’s death “very tragic” and “horrible” but said she believes nonbinary people should not be allowed to receive certain gender-affirming care.

continues....

mickeyrat · February 26

https://twitter.com/jefftimmer/status/1761869839725924653?s=19

Halifax2TheMax · February 26

mickeyrat said:

https://twitter.com/jefftimmer/status/1761869839725924653?s=19

They're not lying when they tell you what they're going to do. POOTWH openly exhorting how evangelicals will have the most power ever under a POOTWH administration should have everyone alarmed. Nazis and evangelicals, what could possibly go wrong? Good luck 'Murica.