In a New York Times column this week titled, “Republicans Say, ‘Let Them Eat Hate,’” Paul Krugman reminds us that the Republican Party has devolved so much in the wake of Donald Trump that it has little to offer the American public beyond appeals to base hatred. No policy proposals, no legislative agenda, nothing remotely in service of the public good: just hatred, and even worse than that, hatred with no basis in reality. As Krugman puts it, “They aren’t fighting a real culture war, a conflict between rival views of what our society should look like; they’re riling up the base against phantasms, threats that don’t even exist.”
As most of us are aware, the cultivation of this seemingly endless fountain of Republican hatred has found a happy home in right-wing media outlets, and particularly on social media. It was evident throughout Trump’s presidency and has followed the same path, unchanged, since his defeat. Lately, most of the hatemongering has been focused on the LGBTQ community, particularly the “T”—transgender people— because they are considered the most vulnerable and easiest to marginalize, and thus ripe for attack and demonization. Before that, it was immigrants. and long before that, it was Black people. In all circumstances, though, the prevailing idea is to distract the GOP voting base by conjuring up an “enemy.”
A good piece of reporting by The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz, published Tuesday, shows how all this occurs in practice. It’s notable because Lorenz did something unusual: She managed to turn over a rock that the GOP would have preferred to remain in place. She outed the hatred at a point of origin—one of the primary sources, she reports, of all the hate now being spewed in state capitals, by right-wing political pundits, and members of the U.S. Congress—against their latest favorite target, the LGBTQ community.
In the few hours since its publication on Tuesday, Lorenz’s exposure of the person behind the Twitter account “Libs of TikTok,” — a woman by the name of Chaya Raichik—has already generated considerable outrage among the right.
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Some background from Lorenz’s article explains why.
Libs of TikTok reposts a steady stream of TikTok videos and social media posts, primarily from LGBTQ+ people, often including incendiary framing designed to generate outrage. Videos shared from the account quickly find their way to the most influential names in right-wing media. The account has emerged as a powerful force on the Internet, shaping right-wing media, impacting anti-LGBTQ+ legislation and influencing millions by posting viral videos aimed at inciting outrage among the right.
The anonymous account’s impact is deep and far-reaching. Its content is amplified by high-profile media figures, politicians and right-wing influencers. Its tweets reach millions, with influence spreading far beyond its more than 648,000 Twitter followers. Libs of TikTok has become an agenda-setter in right-wing online discourse, and the content it surfaces shows a direct correlation with the recent push in legislation and rhetoric directly targeting the LGBTQ+ community.
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The account has been promoted by podcast host Joe Rogan, it’s been featured in the New York Post, the Federalist, the Post Millennial and a slew of other right-wing news sites. Meghan McCain has retweeted it. The online influencer Glenn Greenwald has amplified it to his 1.8 million Twitter followers while calling himself the account’s “Godfather.” Last Thursday, the woman behind the account appeared anonymously on Tucker Carlson’s show to complain about being temporarily suspended for violating Twitter’s community guidelines. Fox News often creates news packages around the content that Libs of TikTok has surfaced.
Essentially, what Raichik—described in Lorenz’ article as a “real estate salesperson” from Brooklyn—does is troll TikTok for videos posted by LGBTQ people that she considers potentially inflammatory. As Lorenz reports, Raichik then posts vitriolic commentary which often urges that people contact schools, demands that teachers be fired, and generally demonizes the LGBTQ community and those allied with them. According to the ACLU’s Gillian Branstetter, interviewed for Lorenz’s article, Raichik’s postings are then lapped up by the right: “It’s relying on the endless stream of content from TikTok and the Internet to cast any individual trans person as a new villain in their story.” Raichik has also appeared—anonymously, of course—on right-wing podcasts; she also “ramped up” her content to coincide with the passage of anti-LGBTQ legislation, with her content featured directly on Fox News and other right-wing media.
According to Lorenz’s reporting, Raichik is herself (unsurprisingly) apparently quite right-wing, posting QAnon theories, parroting right-wing framing about COVID-19, and stoking doubts about the 2020 election (she purportedly attended the Jan. 6 insurrection). But not many right-wingers have managed to anonymously cultivate and direct the entire Republican agenda, essentially from the shadows, and that’s what makes Raichik’s Twitter account—and her identity—particularly newsworthy.
As reported by Giulia Carbonaro for Newsweek:
Over the weekend, software developer Travis Brown revealed that the Twitter account used for Libs of Tik Tok had used the screen name @/chayaraichik until late February 2021, and that the same name is the one on the Libs of Tik Tok's domain registration.
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"Finding these "Shaya Ray" and "Chaya Raichik" identities for Libs is OSINT 101-level stuff. The shallowest indexing of the Internet Archive's Twitter Stream Grab turns them up. Antifascist researchers shouldn't be the only ones doing this work," Brown wrote.
He called it a "failure of US journalism" that "an anonymous hate account can shape a far-right national movement, influence legislation in several states, etc., and (as far as I can tell) nobody has tried to find out who is behind it," before it became public knowledge that Lorenz was working on a story about the identity of the Libs of Tik Tok's creator.
As Carbonaro points out, a “hate account” is exactly what Raichik’s influential account is. “Libs of Tik Tok has targeted liberals, civil rights protesters and schoolteachers, accusing them of the alleged ‘grooming’ and ‘indoctrination’ of children on LGBTQ rights.” It is a content stream designed to generate anger, outrage and (likely) retribution against other LGBTQ people, or those standing up in support of them.
Prior to publishing her story, The Post’s Lorenz emailed Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ press secretary, Christina Pushaw, advising she intended to publish the name behind the account. She contacted Pushaw specifically because Pushaw had previously “credited the account with ‘opening her eyes’ and informing her views on the state’s restrictive legislation that bans discussion of sexuality or gender identity in kindergarten through third grade, referred to by critics as the ‘Don’t Say Gay’ bill.” Media Matters has documented Pushaw interacting with the “Libs of TikTok” account at least 138 times.
Pushaw’s response to Lorenz’s request for comment was to post a clown emoji. Later, after the article was published, she modified her flippant response and accused Lorenz of “harassment.”
Conservative columnists and media have protested Lorenz’s “exposure” of the account holder. Greenwald’s response, as reported by Carbonaro, was particularly indignant, implying that Lorenz’s work wasn’t journalism.
"Taylor Lorenz is about to 'expose' the private citizen behind some anonymous account on Twitter, and when people criticize her for it, she and her friends will claim Taylor is the Real Victim™ and anyone criticizing this type of 'journalism' will be guilty of causing her trauma," wrote journalist Glenn Greenwald.
"This has nothing to do with journalism: just politics," the journalist added.
I would disagree. The person who founded a website (or Twitter account) that has so materially influenced Republican policy (and prompted media personalities like Greenwald himself to cite it) wholly to the detriment of innocent people, is very much legitimate journalism. Teachers and parents are now being labeled pedophiles, and trans people are being harassed, vilified, and abused because of the actions and rhetoric being generated by this kind of vitriol, which is echoed by Republican politicians and media.
So yes, that is news.
Last week, The Post’s Janay Kingsberry reported the story of parents whose children were accosted and harassed on on an Amtrak train as they traveled between Los Angeles and San Francisco. What should have been a pleasant ride up the California coast turned into a nightmare for that family when they were rudely accosted by a man spewing the latest Republican talking points targeting same sex couples.
“All of a sudden, there was a man standing right next to me talking to my son,” Pierce said. “The very first thing he said is, ‘Marriage is between a man and a woman.’ ”
Pierce was stunned, he said, as the unidentified man proceeded to shout homophobic attacks, accusing the couple of stealing their children and calling them “pedophiles” and “rapists.” As his kids began to cry, Pierce said he grabbed them and moved them to another car while his husband, Neal Broverman, shouted the harasser away.
According to The Post article, the couple’s six-year-old son and five-year-old daughter are still traumatized and can’t sleep. The latter child won’t even go to the bathroom by herself. As one of the childrens’ parents observed of their attacker:
“It was just clear that he had picked up these ideas from somewhere else, and now these things were bleeding over,” Pierce said. “Not just from the news and from social media, but into our real life and into my child’s bubble.”
Of course there’s no way to actually establish exactly who or what motivated this incident, or probably any of those comprising the epidemic of anti-trans and anti-LGBTQ violence we’ve seen over the last two years. But that’s really the point. This is the type of harmful hatemongering that just doesn’t stay confined to a screen.