Speaker 1: Also media, Welcome to it could happen here. The show
Speaker 1: about things falling apart, and often what's falling apart is
Speaker 1: kind of our general agreed upon sense of what reality is,
Speaker 1: and that's kind of what we're talking about here.
Speaker 2: Today.
Speaker 1: We're going to talk about the latest batch of new
Speaker 1: transgender conspiracy theories. And to join me in this exciting
Speaker 1: journey is Mia Wong. Hello. Mia.
Speaker 3: You know, why is it or whatever? We're covering transgender conspiracies.
Speaker 3: It's not like conspiracies that trans people made up. It's
Speaker 3: always conspiracies about trans people. It's like, like, can we
Speaker 3: never get one that?
Speaker 1: Like often I can't remember the last time I had
Speaker 1: like a positive Pride Month episode, which I feel kind
Speaker 1: of bad about, but I don't know. It's still an
Speaker 1: interesting topic and I've not seen this discussed as much
Speaker 1: as that should be. And you know, last week I
Speaker 1: really thought I was going to have, you know, a
Speaker 1: difficult work week researching Trump pornography. I thought that'd be like,
Speaker 1: you know, the low part of my month. But it
Speaker 1: turns out spending three days sifting through mass shooter data
Speaker 1: is actually much worse, much worse than looking through Trump board.
Speaker 1: So jaris can, I can, I can?
Speaker 3: I can? I recommend that you two spend your time
Speaker 3: listening to a bunch of rioters talking about the absolute
Speaker 3: worst time of your life. Much better, all right, so
Speaker 3: let's get into it. We're gonna talk first about video games.
Speaker 3: I'm gonna quote a tweet from a kind of failure
Speaker 3: of a far right influencer, which is exciting because we're
Speaker 3: mostly gonna be talking about successful ones. But is this
Speaker 3: guy named ben Ko uk flag in bio, so opinion
Speaker 3: immediately discarded. But he has said a few days ago,
Speaker 3: quote Activision's Call of Duty has added transgender bullets to
Speaker 3: the game in honor of Pride Month, so you can
Speaker 3: literally play as a transgender mass shooter unquote. This tweet
Speaker 3: was almost ripped word for word by Ian Miles. Chung
Speaker 3: basically said the exact same thing, except you said role play,
Speaker 3: not play. Extremely funny, and I did not realize the
Speaker 3: bullets themselves identified as trance. But good for she her
Speaker 3: they them, I guess. So we started to see this
Speaker 3: claim repeated through the anti trans far right grifter media
Speaker 3: space Right limbs of TikTok said that quote Call of
Speaker 3: Duty is now enabling kids to role play being a
Speaker 3: literal trans terrorist. And for some reason, whenever libs of
Speaker 3: TikTok writes terrorists, she asterix out the o's. I don't
Speaker 3: know why, but this, this, this started to pick up steam.
Speaker 3: There was an article in Glenn Beck's The Blaze quote
Speaker 3: call of Duty Pride bundle let's players simulate murder using
Speaker 3: trans flag adorned guns and bullets. I'm so excited for
Speaker 3: these people to think to find out about counter strike there.
Speaker 3: There are gonna be literally so many, so many articles
Speaker 3: just have the video cliff of the thing in place
Speaker 3: at the an words says terrorists win.
Speaker 1: The Quartering wrote, call of Duty is selling trans pride
Speaker 1: bullets whatevery mass shooter wants. So what's going on here?
Speaker 1: Cause this, you know, if you're not as online as
Speaker 1: some of us some other people are, you know this
Speaker 1: is maybe confusing. Why are they saying that trans people
Speaker 1: are all mass shooters? Now? What's going on? And you know,
Speaker 1: and also if you're thinking it's kind of odd that
Speaker 1: there would be a Call of Duty update where you
Speaker 1: can literally play as a transgender mass shooter and shoot
Speaker 1: transgender bullets, you would be right because that never happened.
Speaker 2: It's false. No, way, not this time, we created it.
Speaker 2: Not this time, No, not this time.
Speaker 1: So let's get into what's really going on with this
Speaker 1: Call of Duty Pride update, and then we'll discuss why
Speaker 1: so many of these far right influences are pushing this
Speaker 1: kind of trans terrorist story. So on June first, Activision
Speaker 1: did release an update for the terrible new Call of
Speaker 1: Duty in Warfare three. It contained anime mecha skins and
Speaker 1: seven free weapon skins themed after various Pride flags. Now,
Speaker 1: some would argue that the mechasuits are essentially also Pride themed,
Speaker 1: but I digress. For this Pride Weapon Camo pack, it
Speaker 1: will color your gun with the flag of your choosing.
Speaker 1: One of the said flags is the blue, pink and
Speaker 1: white trans flag. Yet if you apply the trans skin
Speaker 1: to any of the regular guns in the game, the
Speaker 1: bullets will not be trans'd. So what gives without the
Speaker 1: transgender bullets, how is anyone supposed to literally roleplay a
Speaker 1: mass shooter like libs of tech Talk and Ian Miles
Speaker 1: Chung say we can. So it turns out these quote
Speaker 1: unquote transgender bullets were in fact not intentionally added to
Speaker 1: the game in honor of Pride Month, and are most
Speaker 1: likely a bug that affects one single gun when one
Speaker 1: exclusive attachment is equipped. I'm going to quote from Kotaku
Speaker 1: quote Modern Warfare three's M four came with a special
Speaker 1: Soul Harvester weapon blueprint, which includes a skin and a
Speaker 1: specific attachment for the M four and quote unquote tracer
Speaker 1: which are colorful AMMO options that also leave traces of
Speaker 1: different visual effects like paint splatters or rose petals. This
Speaker 1: special blueprint was for people who spend one hundred dollars
Speaker 1: to purchase the Vault edition of the game. Based on
Speaker 1: Kataku's testing, it appears the quote unquote trans bullets only
Speaker 1: appear when applying the transgender flag Camo skin on this
Speaker 1: specific weapon blueprint. It's unclear this is a bug. At
Speaker 1: one point during testing, the bullets in the cartridge were
Speaker 1: only the pink colors in the flag, or is just
Speaker 1: an extremely adosyncratic reflection of how Call of Duty's complex
Speaker 1: shader system interacts across thousands of items and cosmetics. During testing,
Speaker 1: any other Camo skin applied to the M four Soul
Speaker 1: Harvester blueprint resulted in bullets in the cartridge changing the
Speaker 1: color to match that skin.
Speaker 3: Unquote.
Speaker 1: Now I do think it's a little bit silly that
Speaker 1: there's so much uproar about these trans colored bullets but
Speaker 1: not as much about like just a trans colored gun,
Speaker 1: Like why is the bullet the big thing? And we
Speaker 1: all know that you can't play as a mass shooter
Speaker 1: in Call of Duty. You play as a war criminal,
Speaker 1: and most transgender war criminals are just drone pilots or
Speaker 1: work for Raytheon. If you want to play a mass
Speaker 1: shooter game, you can just play GTA five or hit Man,
Speaker 1: where you play as cis men. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I know,
Speaker 1: but the Russian terrorist airport level don't at me. I
Speaker 1: don't care anyway. There was a great article in former
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson project, The Daily Caller with the headline Pride
Speaker 1: Month finally comes for one of the last bastions of manhood,
Speaker 1: and the opening tagline is gamers. They targeted gamers. Oh no,
Speaker 1: So anyway, what's really at play here with this transmash
Speaker 1: shooter stuff. This is just another beat in the rhetorical
Speaker 1: strategy that conservative anti trans influencers have been building over
Speaker 1: the past year and a half, using a mix of
Speaker 1: cherry picked data, bad stats, and often outright lies to
Speaker 1: convince people that they're an increasing epidemic of transgender mass
Speaker 1: killing attacks sweeping the nation. When discussing this call of duty,
Speaker 1: Pride Pack Libs of TikTok said, quote, with the uptick
Speaker 1: in actual trans violence we've been seeing, it's alarming that
Speaker 1: call of Duty would introduce this and a Blaze article
Speaker 1: read quote. Critics have suggested activision Blizzard may want to
Speaker 1: reconsider given the recent mass shootings executed by lgbt radicals.
Speaker 1: There have been multiple mass shootings executed, attempted, or at
Speaker 1: the very least planned by transvestites and LGBTQ radicals in
Speaker 1: recent years. So this Blaze article begins by listing four
Speaker 1: alleged instances of these trans mass shooters. Two of these
Speaker 1: simply never happened, as the alleged transgender individuals, a trans
Speaker 1: guy and a fifty six year old organ and nazi,
Speaker 1: were arrested after they made concerning posts online. And the
Speaker 1: other two which which did happen. These are these were shootings,
Speaker 1: except these were never actually done by trans people.
Speaker 2: It's a made up tap, it's a total fabrication. It
Speaker 2: never happened. It never happened. This one was invented by
Speaker 2: a writer.
Speaker 1: So although this transgender mass shooter narrative might not be real.
Speaker 1: Do you know what is real? Mia?
Speaker 3: Is it capitalism?
Speaker 1: It is, and capitalism is fueled, at least currently by
Speaker 1: the products and sponsors that support this podcast. Okay, we
Speaker 1: are back now. Trying to frame every new mass shooter
Speaker 1: as some like crazed leftist of some variety is an
Speaker 1: old tactic popularized by the likes of Andy Know, Which
Speaker 1: is you know ironic? Considering the fact that political extremist
Speaker 1: related killings for the past ten years are overwhelmingly done
Speaker 1: by individuals tied to right wing extremism, the ADL puts
Speaker 1: it out seventy five percent, whereas leftist extremism, which is
Speaker 1: categorized as including anarchists as well as black nationalist groups,
Speaker 1: are responsible for just four percent. Most of the rest
Speaker 1: they categorize as Islamic violent extremists, including the twenty sixteen
Speaker 1: Pulse nightclub massacre targeted against here people in Orlando, although
Speaker 1: one could argue that that is also right wing extremism,
Speaker 1: like they are also right wingers? Like It's like Yes,
Speaker 1: It turns out the ADL might have some troubling ways
Speaker 1: of collecting data breaking news anyway. Regardless of the actual facts.
Speaker 1: Lying about the political demographic of mass shooters is an
Speaker 1: old tactic employed by far right content creators to gain
Speaker 1: clicks and influence the talking points of more popular media
Speaker 1: figures and politicians. And now the past few years we've
Speaker 1: seen a new iteration of this tactic, where in the
Speaker 1: confusion and chaos of the first few minutes and hours
Speaker 1: after a shooting, anti trans influencers will do everything they
Speaker 1: can to frame an alleged or suspected shooter of being transgender,
Speaker 1: often using out of context social media posts, photographs, photos
Speaker 1: of other people, or just pictures of like long or
Speaker 1: dyed hair to affirm that a mass shooter must actually
Speaker 1: be transgender. Now, even if this claim is like widely
Speaker 1: debunked later on, most of the people that follow these
Speaker 1: far right accounts won't be hearing about that. So all
Speaker 1: they need to do is use this brief window of
Speaker 1: chaos to seed the idea into people's minds. And if
Speaker 1: you do this thing frequently enough after each new mass shooting,
Speaker 1: then it's pretty easy to create a false perception of
Speaker 1: this increasing trend. Now, this style of propaganda has been
Speaker 1: largely spearheaded by Chaiai Trek, using her libs of TikTok account.
Speaker 1: Here's another quote from her quote. The modern LGBTQ plus
Speaker 1: movement is radicalizing young activists into becoming violent terrorist extremists.
Speaker 1: The uptick in trans violence is going to get worse unquote.
Speaker 1: But this sort of rhetoric has been spread by many
Speaker 1: other online figures in this orbit, like disgraced buzzfeedwriter Benny
Speaker 1: Johnson and chronic poster ian Miles Chung. Their rhetoric has
Speaker 1: been spread by sitting politicians Donald Trump Junior and Elon Musk. Now,
Speaker 1: to clarify, people have been lying about the gender identity
Speaker 1: of mass shooters for like a long time. It's one
Speaker 1: of the oldest jokes on four Chan. But what's been
Speaker 1: going on the past two years is something different, and
Speaker 1: it requires a little bit more in depth examination of
Speaker 1: this propaganda trend. Now to get into more specific examples, here,
Speaker 1: I like to break down a common meme format used
Speaker 1: to spread this type of false propaganda. It's usually about
Speaker 1: five pictures of mass shooters with text next to each
Speaker 1: picture that reads something like the Nashville shooter identified as trans,
Speaker 1: the X shooter identified as trans. So it will just
Speaker 1: list all of these people that allegedly are mass shooters
Speaker 1: and allegedly identified as trans. Now police did't identify the
Speaker 1: Nashville Covenant School shooter as a trans man, that we
Speaker 1: have to take their word for it. They've released no
Speaker 1: other info on that. Typically this is seen as like
Speaker 1: the first legitimate mass shooting done by a transgender individual,
Speaker 1: and for the past year we've been waiting for more
Speaker 1: and more context to come out about this mass shooting
Speaker 1: and it's possible motivations. So I'm not even going to
Speaker 1: really discuss this one right now. We'll just to say, sure,
Speaker 1: this is a trans person who happened to do a
Speaker 1: mass shooting and leave it at that, even though it's
Speaker 1: you know, not totally clear.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I do. I want to add one
Speaker 3: thing briefly, which is that like trying to find out
Speaker 3: information from the police about a mass shooting is such
Speaker 3: a crapshoot, like they just you know, they'll they'll be
Speaker 3: like an initial flurry of press releases or whatever, and
Speaker 3: then they just will never talk about it again until
Speaker 3: maybe the trial. And sometimes you get some from.
Speaker 1: That well, and in often cases for mass shooters who
Speaker 1: often die, there is no never.
Speaker 3: Get so yeah, yeah, and if they're dead like, but.
Speaker 1: Even keeping this Nashville incident as a legitimate mass shooting
Speaker 1: done by a person who happens to be trans when
Speaker 1: talking about this meme, the thing is is that with
Speaker 1: these five pictures that are on this meme, most typically
Speaker 1: three out of the five people that have their pictures
Speaker 1: here aren't even treads.
Speaker 2: Not this time. It never happened. It is false, It
Speaker 2: never happened. It's a fake. It's fiction.
Speaker 1: Now, most famously, we have the Colorado Springs shooter Anderson
Speaker 1: Lee Aldrich, who killed five people and injured twenty five
Speaker 1: others at a queer club in twenty twenty two. Later on,
Speaker 1: his lawyer claimed that the shooter was non binary, which
Speaker 1: I believe is a disgusting and disingenuous attempt to get
Speaker 1: out of the more than now fifty hate crime charges
Speaker 1: that the shooter is facing. And this opinion is shared
Speaker 1: not only by the DA but also all other legitimate
Speaker 1: extremists and researchers. Prior to these claims in court, there
Speaker 1: was no indication whatsoever that the shooter was non binary
Speaker 1: or used they then pronouns. However, they did own rainbow
Speaker 1: flag shooting targets. Ran a neo Nazi website that posted
Speaker 1: gun training videos and was known by online acquaintances to
Speaker 1: frequently post racist and homophobic content. Now I should clarify
Speaker 1: when I say shooting targets, I don't mean that it's
Speaker 1: pride theme shooting targets. It's that the people that you
Speaker 1: are shooting are painted like they are gay. So there
Speaker 1: you go now. Pictured next in the meme is someone
Speaker 1: with purple colored hair, labeled as the Denver shooter. This
Speaker 1: person is not trans, has never claimed to be trans.
Speaker 1: He just has dyed hair. He killed one person in
Speaker 1: a school shooting that he planned with a sixteen year
Speaker 1: old trans guy.
Speaker 3: In shooting correct? Correct?
Speaker 1: Will we will get in We will get into this
Speaker 1: later because the definition of mass shooting is getting stretched
Speaker 1: liberally here now. The third person pictured, who is in trans,
Speaker 1: changes more frequently in different versions of the meme that
Speaker 1: you can find online. One version includes someone referenced as
Speaker 1: the Philadelphia shooter. This is referencing a shooting spree that
Speaker 1: resulted in five people being killed. This shooter had previously
Speaker 1: posted photos of himself cross dressing in women's clothes, and
Speaker 1: this was used by figures like Marjorie Taylor Green to
Speaker 1: aim that the cis mail shooter was actually quote another
Speaker 1: trans shooter. Family of this shooter referred to him as
Speaker 1: a quote unquote biblical extremist, and he often posted bizarre
Speaker 1: Christian spiritual conspiracy theories and was an outspoken fan of
Speaker 1: Tucker Carlson. In another version of the meme posted by
Speaker 1: Chaia Reichik, she identifies the Uvalde school shooter as transo
Speaker 1: and includes a picture of a transwoman holding the trans
Speaker 1: Pride flag. This was posted in January of this year.
Speaker 1: Elon Musk replied to the tweet with two exclamation points. Now.
Speaker 1: In the hours after the Euvaldie School shooting, pictures of
Speaker 1: two or three different transwomen were used to falsely label
Speaker 1: the shooter as trans, with at least one of these
Speaker 1: transwomen being from New York, the other from Georgia. Both
Speaker 1: these women received a great deal of harassment after the shooting.
Speaker 1: Arizona Congressman Paul Gozar tweeted that the shooter was quote
Speaker 1: a transsexual, leftist illegal alien unquote, which is frankly amazing
Speaker 1: because every word in that sentence is wrong.
Speaker 2: It's a made up tip, it's a total fabrication. It
Speaker 2: never happened. It never happened.
Speaker 1: Now, the other person in this meme that is typically
Speaker 1: accepted to be trans is the Aberdeen shooter. Now, I'm
Speaker 1: going to just quote from the Washington Post here. Quote.
Speaker 1: In twenty eighteen, in Aberdeen, Maryland, a twenty six year
Speaker 1: old shot and killed three people at a pharmaceuticals distribution
Speaker 1: center before turning the weapon on themselves. The sheriff said
Speaker 1: the shooter had been diagnosed as mentally ill. In twenty sixteen,
Speaker 1: a close friend reported the shooter quote suffered from bipolar
Speaker 1: disorder and struggled since early in high school with severe depression,
Speaker 1: partly connected to their feelings of not being accepted when
Speaker 1: they first came out as a gay teenage girl and
Speaker 1: later as transgender. Unquote. By most accounts, this is a
Speaker 1: transgender guy who began transitioning shortly before the shooting. Pronouns
Speaker 1: and stuff are unclear. They also worked at this distribution
Speaker 1: center a few weeks prior to them doing the shooting.
Speaker 1: This incident's typically not categorized as a mass shooting because
Speaker 1: only three people were killed excluding the shooter. Now, one
Speaker 1: of the more recent attempts at this transgender terrorist psyop
Speaker 1: was in the aftermath of the shooting at Joel Ostein's
Speaker 1: megachurch in Houston earlier this February. The shooter was a
Speaker 1: thirty six year old woman carrying her seven year old son, sadly,
Speaker 1: both of whom died along with one other person. Just
Speaker 1: hours after the shooting, far right accounts like lips of
Speaker 1: TikTok and end Wokeness claimed that she was transgender, pointing
Speaker 1: to documents where she used the name Jeffrey now Chia
Speaker 1: Reichek called the shooting quote another act of trans terrorism.
Speaker 1: We need to have a national conversation about the LGBTQ
Speaker 1: movement turning youth into violent extremists unquote.
Speaker 3: Didn't she literally say that exact thing with the last one. Yeah,
Speaker 3: they don't even covie with new tweets, like they really
Speaker 3: just have the same five tweets in rotation. Marjorie Taylor
Speaker 3: Green called her quote a trans from El Savador unquote.
Speaker 3: Missouri Representative Josh Holly, Marco Rubio, and Elon Musk all
Speaker 3: post about this quote unquote epidemic of trans violence. These
Speaker 3: claims were boosted by Donald Trump, June and Ted Cruz.
Speaker 3: Fox News ran a whole story with a headline about
Speaker 3: the shooter being transgender, and guess what, she's not trans.
Speaker 3: She is a CIS woman who gave birth to a
Speaker 3: child and has always identified as a woman. It just
Speaker 3: appears that she was given a masculine name at birth
Speaker 3: and later changed it to a more feminine name. The
Speaker 3: far right content sphere created so much uproar that the
Speaker 3: police had to do a whole press conference about how
Speaker 3: the shooter was not trans, and after the Peace lawyers
Speaker 3: clarified she was not trans, Fox News changed their claim,
Speaker 3: now saying on air that the shooter quote identified as
Speaker 3: both genders and was quote a biological woman who sometimes
Speaker 3: identified as a man named Jeffrey unquote, which just isn't true.
Speaker 3: Jesus Christ.
Speaker 1: But the thing about this one is that it wasn't
Speaker 1: just far right influencers in Fox News who ran with
Speaker 1: this transgender narrative. MSNBC jumped on very early to say
Speaker 1: that the shooter was quote a Hispanic transgender woman who
Speaker 1: quote unquote identified as a woman unquote.
Speaker 2: It is totally made up, pure fiction. It's fiction. It's fiction.
Speaker 2: We made it up.
Speaker 1: M s NBC.
Speaker 3: More like MSNB shit, great, great, great, I'm doing great
Speaker 3: this morning.
Speaker 1: Do you know what's also doing great mia.
Speaker 3: Is it the products and services support this podcast.
Speaker 1: They're pretty consistent. Yeah they are. They are still around
Speaker 1: and here you can listen to their important messages. All right,
Speaker 1: we are so back. So there's there's so many more
Speaker 1: cases like the ones that I've talked about. Right. The
Speaker 1: reason I started working on this episode in the first
Speaker 1: place was due to far right accounts claiming that a
Speaker 1: man named Jared Rivierrez, who killed his seventy year old
Speaker 1: roommate and went on a mass stabbing spree last month
Speaker 1: outside of an AMC theater and a McDonald's in Massachusetts,
Speaker 1: was claimed to be a quote mentally ill trans terrorist
Speaker 1: by limbs of TikTok and a transactivist quote unquote who's
Speaker 1: a man who thinks he's a woman, which is a
Speaker 1: line Libs of TikTok loves using. Now, Jared claims to
Speaker 1: be an artist and a model, but was actually like
Speaker 1: this really weird like grifter entrepreneur. He kind of reminds
Speaker 1: me of that weird Canadian cat killer Luke Megnan YadA
Speaker 1: who like created a whole bunch of fake posts to
Speaker 1: like pretend to be famous and like created like fake
Speaker 1: fans It's very similar to this case and later this
Speaker 1: guy Luke in Canada also killed a gay man, very
Speaker 1: similar cases. Honestly, Jared here again, he's like pretending to
Speaker 1: be like an international entrepreneur. He looks like this weird
Speaker 1: like hippie surfer dude with long bleached hair. Jared's father
Speaker 1: is a wealthy Christian therapist who looks very similar and
Speaker 1: anti trans influencers have pointed to the word she on
Speaker 1: Jared's Instagram profile, but Jared's actual gender identity is really unclear.
Speaker 1: He's never pictured wearing women's clothing. He would frequently post
Speaker 1: shirtless buff selfies. Jared has never claimed to be trans
Speaker 1: or a woman, and has never used transgender language or iconography.
Speaker 1: Jared did file a name change request last April, but
Speaker 1: it was to change his last name. He goes by
Speaker 1: Jared that same month, April, So two months ago, Jared
Speaker 1: sexually harassed a model at a Beverly Hills hotel, saying
Speaker 1: that he wanted to have kids with her and proposed
Speaker 1: to her, saying I'm going to be a good husband.
Speaker 1: You're gonna be my wife unquote. This person simply, we
Speaker 1: have no reason to think they're trans. They do this.
Speaker 1: They do like weird like art stuff, and I don't know.
Speaker 1: They're like California Beverly Hills poison brained, and it seems
Speaker 1: to they see to have gone through some kind of
Speaker 1: mental health breakdown which resulted in them killing their roommate,
Speaker 1: two dogs, and stabbing like six or seven people in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1: But another trans terrorist, sure, why not? In January of
Speaker 1: this year, in Iowa, teenager open fire at a school,
Speaker 1: killing one person and then himself again. The usual suspects
Speaker 1: were super quick to label him as another trans terrorist,
Speaker 1: Elon Musk saying, this is happening a lot. Something is
Speaker 1: deeply wrong. This kid largely seemed like a regular gen
Speaker 1: Z liberal. He listed his pronouns as he they. He
Speaker 1: posted things like nominally in support of trans people. He
Speaker 1: used the hashtag gender fluid a single time in a
Speaker 1: TikTok video filmed with what appears to be a trans
Speaker 1: friend of his. He also posted on Reddit two years
Speaker 1: ago that he didn't want to transition because he didn't
Speaker 1: quote wants to look ugly. He never specifically identified as trans.
Speaker 1: This is just kind of a tragic case. I don't
Speaker 1: know what the deal with this kid was. They seemed
Speaker 1: deeply confused and upset and killed someone and then killed themselves.
Speaker 1: It sucks, but it's not a mass shooting, and it
Speaker 1: doesn't it doesn't link to anything being a pattern of
Speaker 1: transgender terrorism. That does not stop someone like Donald Trump
Speaker 1: Junior saying, quote, the modern LGBTQ plus movement is radicalizing
Speaker 1: our youth and becoming violent extremists per capita, Is there
Speaker 1: a more violent group of people anywhere in the world
Speaker 1: than radicalized transactivists Given the tiny fraction of the population
Speaker 1: they make up, it doesn't seem like anyone else comes
Speaker 1: even close. We have a lot of claims like this,
Speaker 1: which is why I need to start talking about statistics
Speaker 1: my least favorite thing, because this sort of messaging is
Speaker 1: repeated a lot. We have this post from I think
Speaker 1: Benny Johnson or Donald Trump Junior. I can't twelve which
Speaker 1: one because unfortunately it got deleted before I was able
Speaker 1: to log who did it, so apologies for that. But
Speaker 1: it's a very similar sort of thing, saying there's been
Speaker 1: at least five massive tax by transgner people since twenty eighteen.
Speaker 1: Considering the group makes up less than point five percent
Speaker 1: of the population, that's massive overrepresentation. We'll get into that
Speaker 1: in a sec. So, boy, often when these people are
Speaker 1: talking about this, this trend of trans mass shooters, they're
Speaker 1: focusing specifically on the period of time between twenty eighteen
Speaker 1: and twenty twenty four because largely a lot of conservatives
Speaker 1: think that trans people were kind of like invented around
Speaker 1: twenty eighteen, because that's when they first started to kind
Speaker 1: of like notice that people were trans, which is something
Speaker 1: we've talked about before in terms of like the arc
Speaker 1: of homophobia and transphobia in relation to like gay marriage
Speaker 1: and like a few other things. This is something we've
Speaker 1: reported on consistently on the show. So they're very often
Speaker 1: only looking at data from select years, and as we've
Speaker 1: discussed here, they largely inflate the number of quote unquote
Speaker 1: mass shooters as well as the number of mass shooters
Speaker 1: who they call transgender. They will often, you know, very
Speaker 1: loosely define what a mass shooting is when it's soon them,
Speaker 1: and then very strictly define it when it doesn't. In
Speaker 1: the Blaze article about that Call of Duty Pride pack,
Speaker 1: they say, quote trans identifying suspects a share of public
Speaker 1: mass shootings nationwide over the twenty eighteen or twenty twenty
Speaker 1: three period is reportedly well over seven times their share
Speaker 1: of the population, which links to a very sketchy right
Speaker 1: wing crime stats website that doesn't publish any of their data.
Speaker 1: So sure, so, there is a few different ways to
Speaker 1: categorize what a mass shooting is. There's no universal definition
Speaker 1: for what makes a mass shooting versus a mass killing,
Speaker 1: so different groups categorize things kind of differently. The Mass
Speaker 1: Killing Database is a partnership between the ap USA Today
Speaker 1: and Northwestern University, and it defines mass killings quote as
Speaker 1: the intentional killing of four or more victims, excluding the
Speaker 1: deaths of unborn children and the offenders by any means,
Speaker 1: within a twenty four hour period. Their database currently lists
Speaker 1: five hundred and ninety such killings since two thousand and six.
Speaker 1: James Allen Fox, professor of criminology and law at Northwestern
Speaker 1: University who manages the database, has said, quote, you can
Speaker 1: count the number of transgender and non binary shooters on
Speaker 1: one hand, they're actually underrepresented unquote, and again it's possible
Speaker 1: that because of how successful the right has been at
Speaker 1: this syop. When you're counting these number of transgender, non
Speaker 1: binary shooters on one hand, that's also super overrepresented because
Speaker 1: they're most likely containing like the Colorado spring shooter and
Speaker 1: a lot of these other people. Now, trans people on
Speaker 1: average are reported to make up about one percent of
Speaker 1: the US population, but that number is steadily growing. We
Speaker 1: got to pump those numbers up. Those are rookie numbers. Now.
Speaker 1: It's also just kind of unclear what that number actually is.
Speaker 1: That's the current one from the US Census Bureau, and
Speaker 1: kind of an average, doubt because a lot of stats
Speaker 1: of like people older than twenty five say the numbers
Speaker 1: at like around zero point five point six percent versus
Speaker 1: people under twenty five reportedly it's like one point five percent.
Speaker 1: So you know, I'm just gonna say around one percent.
Speaker 2: Now.
Speaker 1: Under most criterias for mass killings, only one incident, the
Speaker 1: one in Nashville, qualifies for inclusion. Another data source called
Speaker 1: the Violence Project has recorded data on mass shootings in
Speaker 1: the US since nineteen sixty six. They more narrowly define
Speaker 1: a mass killing as four more people killed in a
Speaker 1: public unconnected to other criminal activity. Their current database has
Speaker 1: one hundred and ninety three entries. A spokesperson for their
Speaker 1: organization told Reuters that the twenty twenty three Nashville shooting
Speaker 1: quote is the first case of a trans perpetrator in
Speaker 1: their database, per their methodology. Another more broad data collection
Speaker 1: project is called the Gun Violence Archive. I'm just going
Speaker 1: to quote from Reuter's here quote. The Gun Violence Archive,
Speaker 1: which began collecting data on gun violence in the US
Speaker 1: in twenty thirteen, recorded more than four thousand and four
Speaker 1: hundred mass shootings in the last decade. Its definition of
Speaker 1: a mass shooting is four or more people shot resulting
Speaker 1: in injury or death, excluding the perpetrator of those quote.
Speaker 1: The number of known suspects mass shooting which are trans
Speaker 1: is under ten for the last decade, which translated to
Speaker 1: zero point one one percent of the four four hundred
Speaker 1: shootings unquote, which is about nine times lower than SIS
Speaker 1: people per capita if we use the one percent trans
Speaker 1: population stat and even using the more conservative mass killing
Speaker 1: data set, the rate of this sort of violence by
Speaker 1: trans people is far lower than what would match our
Speaker 1: population margin. I'm going to add in a short quote
Speaker 1: from the Washington Post to kind of add in some
Speaker 1: context here quote. The Gun Violence Archive methodology would allow
Speaker 1: for inclusion of the Aberdeen and Denver cases with zero
Speaker 1: point six percent of the population. One would expect at
Speaker 1: least sixteen mass shootings to be conducted by people identifying
Speaker 1: as trans in the past five years. Instead, there are
Speaker 1: just three possible cases cited by most conservatives unquote. So
Speaker 1: after looking over all of this data, it would actually
Speaker 1: appear that transgender people are less likely to commit a
Speaker 1: mass shooting than CIS people, even by some of the
Speaker 1: more conservative estimate. It's the other side of this is
Speaker 1: that not only are trans people less likely to you know,
Speaker 1: do this sort of violence, they are way more likely
Speaker 1: to be on the receiving end than sispeople. For the
Speaker 1: National Archive of Criminal Justice Data, LGBTQ plus people are
Speaker 1: more than twice as likely to be a victim of
Speaker 1: gun violence than their cisgender and straight peers. According to
Speaker 1: the Human Rights Campaign, twenty nine percent of transgender youth
Speaker 1: have been threatened or injured with a weapon on school property,
Speaker 1: compared to seven percent of cisgender youth. So even for
Speaker 1: school shootings, you are so much, so much more likely
Speaker 1: to face gun violence at school if you are trans, transgender,
Speaker 1: non binary, gender questioning people have reportedly higher rates of
Speaker 1: being impacted or knowing someone who's been impacted by a
Speaker 1: mass shooting compared to their cisgender queer peers. This is
Speaker 1: you know, a data average, but it's usually around twenty
Speaker 1: two percent to nineteen percent. And this whole topic gets
Speaker 1: so much more like dark and grounded when you know
Speaker 1: that three hundred and twenty trans people were killed last
Speaker 1: year according to data from the annual Trans Murder Monitoring Report,
Speaker 1: which is like, it's so dark that we even have
Speaker 1: something called the Trans Murder Monitoring Report.
Speaker 3: Also, we need to mention this because I don't think
Speaker 3: people this is really badly understood people who aren't trans.
Speaker 3: But those numbers are always significant undercounts, because yes, those
Speaker 3: projects are people scraping. Basically, news reports are trying to
Speaker 3: find like the families of victims, and there are a
Speaker 3: lot of people who get killed who the only people
Speaker 3: who know are their friends and those people fucking either
Speaker 3: aren't talking to the press, or the precious never like
Speaker 3: covers it, or you know, the police give their dead
Speaker 3: name and never talk about it, so they just are
Speaker 3: dead and everyone thinks they're si.
Speaker 2: Yep.
Speaker 1: And just in the United States last year, thirty three
Speaker 1: trans people were murdered, and again this is a vast
Speaker 1: undercount like MIA said, Meanwhile, you have all these people
Speaker 1: on the right who will talk about all of these
Speaker 1: all these alleged mass shootings by alleged trans people, and
Speaker 1: one of their favorite lines when they try to like
Speaker 1: affirm that a shooter is actually trans is quote watch
Speaker 1: how quickly this story will now disappear unquote, which is
Speaker 1: just ironic for a few reasons. One, because that's how
Speaker 1: news works, is that we move on to a new thing.
Speaker 1: But also it'll probably disappear as well because they're not
Speaker 1: actually trans, you know, when you're in the case of
Speaker 1: the Uvaldi shooter, in the case of the megachurch shooter
Speaker 1: from last year. Yeah, people move on. But also they're
Speaker 1: not gonna keep harping on your weird conspiracy theory because
Speaker 1: it's a weird conspiracy theory. It's not true even if
Speaker 1: this is even if they were right, which they are not.
Speaker 1: It also is just like, imagine in like nineteen twenty
Speaker 1: or like, we have a problematic rise in left handed
Speaker 1: mass shooters, so we're like, well, yeah, because there's more
Speaker 1: left handed people, there's gonna be at least some level
Speaker 1: of correlation statistically. Again, these people act like trans people
Speaker 1: were only invented in twenty eighteen and are just like
Speaker 1: slowly like recruiting in numbers, which, hey, you know, at
Speaker 1: least we are kind of slowly recruiting. And like the
Speaker 1: actual goal of this rhetoric, beyond just you know, altering
Speaker 1: the fabric of reality, is to just encourage violence against
Speaker 1: trans people. That is what they're doing. It's it's to
Speaker 1: see trans people as a threat so that you feel
Speaker 1: justified in doing violence against them. Just a few weeks ago,
Speaker 1: a very popular gun YouTuber made this joke where they
Speaker 1: were talking about, you know, getting ready to shoot a
Speaker 1: te word and they stopped and they were like, oh, sorry,
Speaker 1: I mean a school shooter. Wink wink. So like they're
Speaker 1: trying to use school shooter to be a dog whistle
Speaker 1: for trans people. This is all just to justify violence.
Speaker 1: That's all this is doing, and to some degree it's working.
Speaker 1: Just last week, a trans kid was assaulted in the
Speaker 1: men's bathroom at school and reportedly one of their teeth exploded.
Speaker 1: This was a trans girl who was using the men's
Speaker 1: bathroom like all of these freaks want them to, and
Speaker 1: she still got assaulted. I think it's super important when
Speaker 1: talking about this sort of unreality propaganda is that like
Speaker 1: these people like Limbs of TikTok and Miles Schong, they're
Speaker 1: not just like falling further into a delusional conspiracy theory.
Speaker 1: Same thing with Elon Musk, Right, it's easy. I think
Speaker 1: it's easy to be like, oh, they just actually like
Speaker 1: legitimately are like falling into this like conspiratorial delusion. And
Speaker 1: it's not that. What it is is they are actually
Speaker 1: intentionally crafting reality. It's not them like falling victim to
Speaker 1: this like unfortunate delusion. They are choosing which a version
Speaker 1: of reality to believe in because it's the one that
Speaker 1: they want, and that's what they're doing, and they want
Speaker 1: it to be a reality where more people feel comfortable
Speaker 1: assaulting and killing trans People's that's the actual goal of
Speaker 1: this propaganda.
Speaker 3: We need to be very clear about this about what's
Speaker 3: sort of happening here. Which is one of one of
Speaker 3: the fastest ways to get a group of people to
Speaker 3: commit a genocide is by convincing them that they are
Speaker 3: all about to be killed.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 3: This is one of the things behind this or behind
Speaker 3: the Bosnian genocide. This is one of the things behind Rwanda.
Speaker 3: Is if you can convince a lot of people that
Speaker 3: their neighbors are about to fucking kill them. That's how
Speaker 3: you get them to do the genocide, because the thing
Speaker 3: that they believe is that like, oh, like this is
Speaker 3: self defense, Like these people are about to kill us,
Speaker 3: and that is the kind of reality tunnel being mobilized.
Speaker 3: Here is a is it called genocide? And the other
Speaker 3: side of this that I think is so grim is
Speaker 3: that there used to be a time as a society
Speaker 3: where you know, we attempted to explain why there are
Speaker 3: mass shootings. Right, this is something that I remember living through,
Speaker 3: Like if you go back to like twenty sixteen, two thousand, seventeen,
Speaker 3: twenty fifteen, like we used to there used to be
Speaker 3: people other than these just like genocidal fascists, attempting to
Speaker 3: explain why why these shootings were happening. The actual data
Speaker 3: on trans mass shooters and how few of them there
Speaker 3: are is quietly devastating to a lot of the theories
Speaker 3: that used to be sort of bandied about, Right. The
Speaker 3: theories of this was about sort of objection, the theory
Speaker 3: that this was about this, you know, like sort of
Speaker 3: de industrialization and like the consequences that this has had
Speaker 3: on people, and that there were you know, it was
Speaker 3: this sort of like downward social mobility that was causing
Speaker 3: this violence. Right, If any of that were true, there
Speaker 3: would be a fucking million mass shooters, because again, the
Speaker 3: transproverty rate is like it's a right's around thirty percent, right,
Speaker 3: for the rest of the country it is like a
Speaker 3: quarter as well, it's that quarter. It's like a third
Speaker 3: of that much, right there should be if it was
Speaker 3: just purely a product of like material conditions, there would
Speaker 3: be a lot more transmitant shooters. But there aren't because again,
Speaker 3: you know, the actual theory that fits this data and
Speaker 3: fits also the behavior of all of these people, like
Speaker 3: all of these sort of FasTIS trying to explain mass
Speaker 3: shootings as being about trans people. The thing that it
Speaker 3: fits is this is the theory that this is basically
Speaker 3: the replacement of plan rallies. Right, we don't have we
Speaker 3: don't have collective lynchings anymore. We have individual ones. And
Speaker 3: all of these fucking people are trying to make sure
Speaker 3: that there's just more lynchings, and that these lynchings are
Speaker 3: you know, is like it's there there sort of like
Speaker 3: armed follower fanatics go and shoot a bunch more trans
Speaker 3: people in a nightclub, and then you know, once that happens,
Speaker 3: they will disavow it by saying, oh, hey, this this
Speaker 3: nightclub shooting was this is actually done by a fucking transperson.
Speaker 3: They'll keep doing this until they have enough political power
Speaker 3: to openly come out and claim that all of these
Speaker 3: people were their fucking revolutionary heroes in their new fucking
Speaker 3: pantheon of the fascist state.
Speaker 1: And there was that trans boy who was assaulted in
Speaker 1: the bathroom a few months ago and died days later
Speaker 1: in the hospital. There's this this It keeps happening. And
Speaker 1: I didn't want this to be like a depressing episode.
Speaker 1: I wanted this to break down a conspiracy theory I've
Speaker 1: been seeing more frequently talk about, you know what's fueling it,
Speaker 1: actually go over the instances that are included in it
Speaker 1: to kind of you know, debunk for lack of a
Speaker 1: better term, uh, this sort of rhetoric, and just so
Speaker 1: you can be more aware of it when you see it,
Speaker 1: because often you'll see this this you know, this meme
Speaker 1: with five five pictures, you'll see a copy pasta version
Speaker 1: of it. So just just being aware of what this is,
Speaker 1: what the what this rhetoric is trying to do, and
Speaker 1: the you know, unfortunate fact that trans people are far
Speaker 1: are far far more likely to be a victim of
Speaker 1: gun violence and mash and mass shootings, yeah than people
Speaker 1: than they ever then than sis people, and are actually
Speaker 1: less likely to to to participate in such violence statistically speaking.
Speaker 1: So yeah, that is that is the episode today. Not
Speaker 1: meant to be depressing, just meant to be informative. But
Speaker 1: you know, when it comes to me, those things often overlap.
Speaker 1: But these such cases, I hope you have I hope
Speaker 1: you have a good pride. Mounth Stay safe and stay dangerous.
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