Reposted from My Substack : Dark Skies on the Horizon
The Daily Wire has been calling for the arrest and murder of its political opponents -- especially the LGBTQ community, which it accuses of "grooming" children for sexual exploitation. That bloodlust isn't random -- it's an example of "stochastic terrorism," a process of dehumanizing marginalized groups in order to encourage violence against them. And we've already seen this kind of rhetoric result in violence before.
Time and time again, hosts from the Dailywire including Ben Shapiro, Candace Owens and Dave Rubin have called for killing of LGBTQ persons. They claim that they are “pedophiles” and “groomers”, they argue that they are “defiling” children and exploiting them sexually. Twisting their minds with deviant ideas, confusing them into believing they can transform themselves from a boy to a girl and vice-versa.
They have argued this is “pure evil” and that these persons, particularly teachers and librarians who are LGBTQ-friendly, should be put to death.
Two billionaire Texas brothers whose fortunes derive from oil and gas fracking have pumped millions of dollars into rightwing media outfits that have promoted climate-crisis denialism and sent more big checks to back an array of evangelical projects and conservative Texas politicians.
The fracking billionaires Farris and Dan Wilks have each doled out millions of dollars through separate foundations over the last decade to a number of high-profile conservative and religious groups including the Heritage Foundation, Family Research Council and Focus on the Family.
“Thanks to their incredible wealth and largesse, the country as well as the [Republican] party are now feeling the effects of their aggressive brand of religiously-charged political activism,” said Darren Dochuk, a history professor at the University of Notre Dame and author of Anointed with Oil.
[…]
The Wilks brothers, for instance, have poured millions of dollars into PragerU and the Daily Wire, two rightwing media outlets that have promoted wide-ranging conservative agendas, including climate crisis denialism to school-age kids and adults via short videos, articles and other materials.
The two brothers have given at least $8m to PragerU, which is unaccredited, according to Texas financial records. In July, Florida approved the use of what PragerU has called its “edutainment” videos and other materials for use in its classrooms, and PragerU has said it is trying to get other states, including Texas, to do likewise.
In 2015, Farris Wilks gave $4.7m to help launch the Daily Wire and remains an owner of the media company, whose founding editor and co-owner Ben Shapiro has forged ties with Dennis Prager, the PragerU founder and talkshow host. Shapiro and Prager are slated to attend a PragerU “founders’ retreat” in September for donors who give at least $100,000 a year.
With their religious fervor, the Wilks are funding this many-pronged attack on LGBTQ persons - but rather than making the argument entirely on Christian grounds, they have ginned up these “groomer” fears as an excuse to justify the legal killing of these people.
And Dailywire is not alone in this as both LibsofTikTok and “Moms for Liberty” have engaged in similar tactics.
Nearly 1,700 priests and other clergy members that the Roman Catholic Church considers credibly accused of child sexual abuse are living under the radar with little to no oversight from religious authorities or law enforcement, decades after the first wave of the church abuse scandal roiled U.S. dioceses, an Associated Press investigation has found.
These priests, deacons, monks and lay people now teach middle-school math. They counsel survivors of sexual assault. They work as nurses and volunteer at nonprofits aimed at helping at-risk kids. They live next to playgrounds and daycare centers. They foster and care for children.
And in their time since leaving the church, dozens have committed crimes, including sexual assault and possessing child pornography, the AP’s analysis found.
A recent push by Roman Catholic dioceses across the U.S. to publish the names of those it considers to be credibly accused has opened a window into the daunting problem of how to monitor and track priests who often were never criminally charged and, in many cases, were removed from or left the church to live as private citizens.
And it’s not just the Catholic Church.
Protestant Christianity refers to nearly every denomination of Christianity not affiliated with the Roman Catholic Church, such as the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC) and United Methodists. From a sheer numerical standpoint, American Protestant Christian congregations substantially outweigh the number of physical Catholic churches and even individual members within the United States. Specifically, the Roman Catholic Church has 17,000 parishes and 51 million members (Masci & Smith, 2018) compared to the estimated 314,000 Protestant Christian congregations and 60 million members (Grammich et al., 2012; Pew Research Center, 2007). Moreover, Protestant Christian congregations are not generally organized by a global or national structure. The Roman Catholic Church's hierarchical structure allowed for the cover-up and subsequent discovery of widespread sexual abuse. Consequently, instances of sexual abuse within Protestant Christianity might appear isolated when they could be part of a larger overall pattern of offender and offending behaviors.
Some estimates exist on the total instances of sexual abuse within Protestant Christian churches. One estimate comes from three of the largest faith-based insurance companiesundefined that insure nearly 160,000 churches. These three faith-based insurance companies reported 7,095 insurance claims of sexual abuse by clerical members, church employees, congregation members, or others involved within these settings from 1987 to 2007 (The Associated Press, 2007). These reports indicate an average of 260 claims of sexual abuse per year. In addition, Denney, Kerley, and Gross (2018) published one of the first empirical studies on sexual abuse in the U.S. within Protestant Christian settings that examined news articles reporting on arrests involving sexual abuse, finding 326 total cases reported from 1999 to 2014. Most recently, the Houston Chronicle published a series titled "Abuse of Faith," uncovering sexual abuse and cover-up within the largest Protestant Christian organization in the U.S. (i.e., the SBC). They identified 380 sexual abusers and 700 alleged victims over 20 years (Downen, Olsen, & Tedesco, 2019). Moreover, Downen et al. (2019) found that 35 Southern Baptist ministers were hired at churches, despite being accused of sexual misconduct or abuse, demonstrating a pattern of institutional issues in responding to alleged sexual abuse.
Shockingly, the Dailywire is not calling for these person to be “executed.”
More dangerous than the idea the legal judicial measures should be taken against LGBTQ persons, is the idea that the police and the courts are not doing enough and individuals may need to take matters into their own hands.
Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric from Dailywire, Moms for Liberty and Libs Of TikTok have caused violence to be on the rise in recent years. Including Neo-Nazis at drag events, the mass shooting a Club Q and bomb and death threats against Hospitals.
Attacks Based on Gender Identity Up 32.9% from Prior Year, Those Based on Sexual Orientation Up 13.8%; Race & Ethnicity-Based Hate Crimes Remain Largest Category
WASHINGTON — The Human Rights Campaign (HRC) — the nation’s largest lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ+) civil rights organization — sounded the alarm today as the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released its annual crime report for 2022 showing that anti-LGBTQ+ hate crimes were up sharply from the prior year, with a 13.8% increase in reports based on sexual orientation and a shocking 32.9% jump in reported hate crimes based on gender identity
In response to the FBI’s 2022 report, Human Rights Campaign President Kelley Robinson released the following statement:”The rise in hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ community is both shocking and heartbreaking, yet sadly, not unexpected. The constant stream of hostile rhetoric from fringe anti-equality figures, alongside the relentless passage of discriminatory bills, particularly those targeting transgender individuals, in state legislatures, created an environment where it was sadly foreseeable that individuals with violent tendencies might respond to this rhetoric. The FBI's data serves as another alarming indicator of the state of emergency our community finds itself in.
“We also know that this data is incomplete, that too many cities and states are reporting incomplete data, or even no data at all, on hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ community. If we’re going to bring a stop to that violence, we need a full accounting of just how many hate crimes are taking place – and that requires every jurisdiction stepping up.”
The FBI’s report noted that there were 1,947 recorded incidents relating to an alleged victim’s sexual orientation in 2022, up from 1,711 the year before, and 469 relating to an alleged victim’s gender identity, vs. 353 the year before. The gender identity category included 338 instances that were specifically anti-transgender and 131 that targeted someone who was gender noncomforming.
Race/ethnicity motivated hate crimes remained the largest category with 56% of all hate crimes. Hate crimes based on religion moved into second, just ahead of sexual orientation.
This has gone so far that not only are LGBTQ persons targeted, so are their allies and even allied corporations such as Bud Light and Target.
The murders of several LGBTQ+ people and allies in recent weeks are raising alarm across the U.S. O’Shae Sibley was stabbed to death in Brooklyn after police said he confronted a group who made homophobic slurs and Laura Ann Carleton was killed in California for apparently refusing to remove a Pride flag from her store. Geoff Bennett discussed more with GLAAD President and CEO Sarah Kate Ellis.
And it’s not just been direct violence - it has also been issues of harassment and intimidation which can have the direct result of inducing suicide.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning (LGBTQ) students are more than four times as likely to attempt suicide compared to their straight and cisgender peers (Johns et al., 2019; Johns et al., 2020). Negative treatment by others, such as bullying, is a strong and consistent risk factor for youth suicide (Koyanagi et al., 2019), and LGBTQ youth experience bullying at significantly greater rates than their straight and cisgender peers (Reisner et al., 2015; Webb et al., 2021). A recent study revealed that between 2011–2019, an average of 20% of U.S. high school students reported in-person bullying and 15% reported electronic bullying, with no significant changes in prevalence rates over time (Li et al., 2020). Affirming schools may be protective of suicide risk not only by providing direct identity support to LGBTQ youth but also by creating an environment where LGBTQ youth are less likely to experience bullying.
More and more “Don’t Say Gay” bills are spreading across the country, not just in Florida and in Texas. More and more anti-LGBTQ book bans are being implemented. More and more teachers and libraries are being threatened with jail for spreading “pornography.” More incidents of intimidation and harassment, more incidents of suicides as a result of that harassment have occurred.
None of this is an accident. None of this is incidental. This is a deliberate and coordinated strategy of oppression and demonization against and already marginalized community.
This is Stochastic Terrorism.
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