The harrowing, homegrown American threat connecting Jan. 6 and Pride Month

[LetMyPeopleVote]

The rise in attacks on minorities and increase racism by MAGAnutcases is linked to the increase attacks on LGBTQI events and gay pride events. The rise of White Nationalism is also responsible for the rise in homophobic attacts

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https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/msnbc-opinion/attacks-pride-events-embody-spirit-jan-6-n1296442?cid=sm_npd_ms_tw_ma

While the committee has not yet made this point — and may never make it — it’s important to connect the white nationalist undertones that bolstered former President Donald Trump’s election and the insurrection to recent events that threaten marginalized communities and suggest more violence to come.

Thirty-one members of the white nationalist group Patriot Front were arrested June 11 near a Pride event in Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, on suspicion of, authorities say, conspiring to riot. Those arrested reportedly came from multiple states — some from as far away as Virginia — and were, according to police, carrying shields, riot gear and a smoke bomb. The Southern Poverty Law Center says it's noticing a coordinated right-wing effort to carry out such attacks during Pride Month, an annual celebration of the 1969 Stonewall uprising that helped birth the LGBTQ+ rights movement. Patriot Front, which the SPLC describes as a hate group, emerged after the Unite the Right rally in 2017, but it isn’t the only such group to emerge in that time.

The week before the Patriot Front members were arrested, leaders of the Proud Boys, a white nationalist organization, were indicted on seditious conspiracy charges for what a federal grand jury says was the group’s role in the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection. This indictment follows that of the Oath Keepers, another white nationalist organization that’s also facing seditious conspiracy charges......

In recent months, state legislatures have been doing everything from banning books by and about queer people to outlawing gender-affirming treatment to forbidding trans children from competing in sports leagues. It’s an all-out legislative assault on the community our country purports to celebrate this month, as lawmakers refer to children and their elders as “groomers” and treat them as threats.

While these incidents may seem isolated, they can be threaded by a single needle: As the United States approaches its destiny of being a majority-minority country, those still clinging to the nation’s “founding” — i.e., its elimination of Indigenous Americans to create a white, conservative ethnostate that uses the labor of enslaved Black people to build its wealth and global power — are willing to go to extreme lengths to preserve their warped view of America. In their dream world, every citizen is straight, every citizen with the ability to vote is white, and every woman is in a partnership with a man who strips her of her agency.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

1. Pride events targeted in surge of anti-LGBTQ threats, violence

The targeting of pride events is part of a pattern

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https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/2022/06/17/lgbtq-pride-violence/

The surge in right-wing hate-mongering against LGBTQ people is spilling into violence, with high-profile attacks this month casting fear over Pride celebrations throughout the country.

Extremism researchers have long warned of an escalating risk as hard-right Republicans and militant groups portray LGBTQ people as “groomers” targeting children, along with other baseless smears. Now, provocateurs are acting on those messages in what President Biden last month called “rising hate and violence” targeting LGBTQ communities......

A study released Thursday signals these are not isolated incidents. Anti-LGBTQ activity including demonstrations and attacks increased more than four times from 2020 to 2021, from 15 incidents to 61, according to the global nonprofit conflict-monitoring group known as ACLED. As of early June, ACLED counted 33 anti-LGBTQ incidents so far this year, indicating an even bleaker 2022.

The resulting fear is a common theme in social media posts by LGBTQ people describing palpable changes in their collective sense of security. Hateful looks. Ugly slurs. Vandalized rainbow flags......

Extremism monitors at the Anti-Defamation League tracked seven in-person extremist activities targeting LGBTQ people over the past weekend, according to an ADL summary of the recent threats. The summary included a June 12 Pride event in Georgia that was canceled because of anonymous threats “targeting the rally’s location, time and date.” In a separate incident the next day, according to the ADL, white supremacists in New Jersey protested a drag event during a Pride celebration, “with one individual displaying a sign reading, ‘Hands off kids.’”

[AntiFascist]

2. Patriot Front is blatantly pro-Fascism, according to this probative article...

The person who gained entrance to the group said Rousseau was one of three Patriot Front members who interviewed him on the telephone when he applied. He was asked to explain his political evolution, to say which political figures he hated and admired most, to state the circumstances in which the use of violence would be OK and to articulate the greatest threat to America. He was told Mussolini’s “The Doctrine of Fascism” would be required reading.
...
Vanguard America splintered after the debacle in Virginia. Some wanted to abandon efforts to disguise their Nazi leanings and simply be brazen in their public look and violent aims. Rousseau took a different tack, and he started Patriot Front as an ostensibly more strategic, savvy, careful alternative. It would embrace more homegrown symbols — the flag, the bald eagle and patriotic language. Such shifts might attract a wider membership.

https://www.propublica.org/article/they-are-racist-some-of-them-have-guns-inside-the-white-supremacist-group-hiding-in-plain-sight

[IngridsLittleAngel]

3. These terrorists want blood and I fear they won't stop until they get people killed

The QOP and reich-wing media have worked so hard in 2022 to make the LGBTQ community the ultimate enemies. So of course the mindless drones with more guns than brains now think it's okay to terrorize and kill us.

This is what happens when these fuckers "other" people they don't like. And in my time I've never seen a group "othered" the way LGBTQ's have been this year. Hundreds of bills. Nonstop hate from "leaders" and the media. "Groomers." It just never fucking stops.

I'm so tired of waking up with dread, worrying I'll check here and see a Pride event shot up or blown up with multiple fatalities... While the QOP laughs, the reich-wing media says "You deserved it" and the "mainstream" media like CNN tries to "both sides" it.

This has gone beyond a joke (not that it was ever a joke). This has gone beyond a "culture war" (not that it was ever a culture war). This is rapidly spinning toward violence and murder - all because a pack of stupid whiny incels can't handle the fact not everyone is cishet.

[LetMyPeopleVote]

4. This and is the best explanation of how the MAGA crowd thinks!

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