It Could Happen Here - Fake Transgender Terrorists

Episode Date: June 12, 2024

Gare and Mia discuss the newest anti-trans conspiracy theory: the false rise in transgender mass shooters.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline Podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into Tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami.

Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Call Zone Media. call zone media welcome to it could happen here the show about things falling apart and often what's falling apart is kind of our general agreed upon sense of what reality is and that's kind of what we're talking about here today we're going to talk about the latest batch of new transgender conspiracy theories and to join me in this exciting journey is Mia Wong. Hello Mia. You know why is it that whenever we're covering transgender conspiracy it's not like conspiracies that trans people made up it's always conspiracies

about trans people's like like can we never get one that like not often i i can't remember the last time i had like a positive pride month episode which i feel kind of bad about but i don't know it's still an interesting topic and i've not seen this discussed as much as it should be and you know last week i really thought i was gonna have you know a difficult work week researching trump pornography i thought that'd be like you know the low part of my month. But it turns out spending three days sifting through mass shooter data is actually much worse, much worse than looking through Trump porn. Can I recommend that you two spend your time listening to a bunch of writers talking about the absolute worst time of their life? Much better.

about the absolute worst time of their life much better. All right, so let's get into it. We're going to talk first about video games. I'm going to quote a tweet from a kind of failure of a far-right influencer, which is exciting because we're mostly going to be talking about successful ones. But there's this guy named Ben Ku, UK flag in bio, so opinion immediately discarded. But he has said a few days ago, quote, Activision's Call of Duty has added transgender bullets to the game in honor of Pride Month, so you can literally play as a transgender mass shooter, unquote.

This tweet was almost ripped word for word by Ian Miles Chung. This tweet was almost ripped word for word by Ian Miles Chung. Basically said the exact same thing, except he said role play, not play. Extremely funny. And I did not realize the bullets themselves identified as trans, but good for she, her, they, them, I guess. So we started to see this claim repeated through the anti-trans far-right grifter media space, right? Libs of TikTok said that, quote, Call of Duty is now enabling kids to roleplay being a literal trans terrorist.

And for some reason, whenever Libs of TikTok writes terrorist, she asterisks out the O's. I don't know why. But this started to pick up steam. There was an article in Glenn Beck's The Blaze, quote, Call of Duty Pride Bundle. It's players simulate murder using trans flag adorned guns and bullets. I'm so excited for these people to find out about Counter-Strike. There are going to be literally so many, so many articles that just have the video clip

of the thing it plays at the end where it says terrorists win. The Quartering wrote, Call of Duty is selling trans pride bullets, what every mass shooter wants. So what's going on here? Because this, you know, if you're not as online as some of us, some other people are, you know, this is maybe confusing. Why are they saying that trans people are all know uh this is maybe confusing why why are why are they saying that trans people are all mass shooters now what's going on and you know if and also if you're if you're thinking it's kind of odd that there would be a call of duty update where you can literally play as a transgender mass shooter and shoot transgender bullets you would

be right because that never happened it's false no way No way. Not this time. We created it. Not this time. No. Not this time. So let's get into what's really going on with this Call of Duty Pride update, and then we'll discuss why so many of these far-right influences are pushing this kind of trans-terrorist story. So on June 1st, Activision did release an update for the terrible new Call of Duty Modern Warfare 3. It contained anime mecha skins and seven free weapon skins themed after various pride flags. Now, some would argue that the mecha suits are essentially also pride themed, but I digress. For this pride weapon camo pack, it will color your gun with the flag of your choosing. One of the said flags is the blue, pink, and white

trans flag. Yet, if you apply the trans skin to any of the regular guns in the game, the bullets will not be transed. So what gives? Without the transgender bullets, how is anyone supposed to literally roleplay a mass shooter like Libs of TikTok and Ian Miles Chung say we can? So it turns out these quote-unquote transgender bullets were in fact not intentionally added to the game in honor of Pride Month and are most likely a bug that affects one single gun when one exclusive attachment is equipped. I'm going to quote from Kotaku, quote, Modern Warfare 3's M4 came with a special soul harvester weapon blueprint, which includes a skin and a specific attachment for

the M4 and quote-unquote tracer rounds, which are colorful ammo options that also leave traces of different visual effects like paint splatters or rose petals. This special blueprint was for people who spent $100 to purchase the vault edition of the game. Based on Kotaku's testing, it appears the quote-unquote trans bullets only appear when applying the transgender flag camo skin on this specific weapon blueprint. It's unclear. This is a bug. At one point during testing, the bullets in the cartridge were only the pink colors in the flag, or is just an extremely idiosyncratic reflection of how Call of Duty's complex shader system interacts across thousands of items and cosmetics. During testing, any other camo skin applied to the M4 Soul Harvester blueprint resulted in bullets in the cartridge changing the color to match that skin, unquote. Now, I do think it's a little bit silly that there's so much uproar about these

trans-colored bullets, but not as much about, like, just a trans-colored gun. Like, why is the bullet the big thing? And we all know that you can't play as a mass shooter in Call of Duty. You play as a war criminal and most transgender war criminals are just drone pilots or work for Raytheon. If you want to play a mass shooter game, you can just play GTA 5 or Hitman where you play as cis men. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I know about the Russian terrorist airport level.

Don't at me. I don't care. Anyway, there was a great article in former Tucker Carlson project, The Daily Caller, with the headline, Pride Month finally comes for one of the last bastions of manhood. And the opening tagline is gamers. They targeted gamers. Oh, no.

So anyway, what's really at play here with this trans mash shooter stuff? This is just another beat in the rhetorical strategy that conservative anti-trans influencers have been building over the past year and a half, using a mix of cherry picked data, bad stats, and often outright lies to convince people that there is an increasing epidemic of transgender mass killing attacks sweeping the nation. When discussing this Call of Duty pride pack, libs of TikTok said, quote, with the uptick in actual trans violence we've been seeing, it's alarming that Call of Duty would introduce this. And a Blaze article read, quote, critics have suggested Activision Blizzard may want to reconsider given the recent mass shootings executed by LGBT radicals.

There have been multiple mass shootings executed, attempted, or at the very least planned by transvestites and LGBTQ radicals in recent years. So this Blaze article begins by listing four alleged instances of these trans mass shooters two of these simply never happened uh as the alleged transgender individuals a trans guy and a 56 year old organ a nazi were arrested after they made concerning posts online and the other two which which did happen these are these shootings, except these were never actually done by trans people. It's a made-up tale. It's a total fabrication. It never happened.

It never happened. This one was invented by a writer. So although this transgender mass shooter narrative might not be real, do you know what is real, Mia? Is it capitalism? It is. And capitalism is fueled, at least currently,

by the products and sponsors that support this podcast. where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories

from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High. It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast,

and we're kicking off our second season digging into how Tex Elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, better offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field,

and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better. Listen to Better Offline on the iHot Radio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He look like a little angel. I mean,

you look so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still

this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Okay, we are back. Now, trying to frame every new mass shooter as some like crazed leftist of some variety is an old tactic popularized by the likes of Andy Ngo, which is, you know, ironic considering the fact that political extremist related killings from the past 10 years are overwhelmingly done by individuals tied to right wing extremism. The ADL puts it at 75%, whereas leftist extremism, which is categorized as including anarchists as well as black nationalist groups, are responsible for just 4%. Most of the rest they categorize as Islamic violent extremists, including the 2016 Pulse nightclub massacre targeted against queer people in Orlando,

although one could argue that that is also right-wing extremism. They are also right-wingers Like it's like, yes, it turns out the ADL might have some troubling, some troubling ways of collecting data, breaking news. Anyway, regardless of the actual facts, lying about the political demographic of mass shooters is an old tactic employed by far right content creators to gain clicks and influence the talking points of more popular media figures and politicians. And now, the past few years, we've seen a new iteration of this tactic, where in the confusion and chaos of the first few minutes and hours after a shooting, anti-trans influencers will do everything they can to frame an alleged or suspected shooter

of being transgender, often using out-of-context social media posts, doctored photographs, photos of other people, or just pictures of like long or dyed hair to affirm that a mass shooter must actually be transgender. Now, even if this claim is like widely debunked later on, most of the people that follow these far-right accounts won't be hearing about that. So all they need to do is use this brief window of chaos to seed the idea into people's minds. And if you do this thing frequently enough after each new mass shooting, then it's pretty easy to create a false perception of this increasing trend. Now, this style of propaganda has been largely spearheaded by Chaya Raitrek using her Libs of TikTok account. Here's another quote from her, quote,

the modern LGBTQ plus movement is radicalizing young activists into becoming violent terrorist extremists. The uptick in trans violence is going to get worse, unquote. But this sort of rhetoric has been spread by many other online figures in this orbit, like disgraced BuzzFeed writer Benny Johnson and chronic poster Ian Miles Chung. Their rhetoric has been spread by sitting politicians, Donald Trump Jr. and Elon Musk. Now, to clarify, people have been lying about the gender identity of mass shooters for like a long time. It's one of the oldest jokes on 4chan. But what's been going on the past two years is something different. And it requires a little bit more in-depth examination

of this propaganda trend. Now, to get into more specific examples here, I like to break down a common meme format used to spread this type of false propaganda. It's usually about five pictures of mass shooters with text next to each picture that reads something like, the Nashville shooter identified as trans, the X shooter identified as trans. So it'll just list all of these people that allegedly are mass shooters and allegedly identified as trans. Now, police did identify the Nashville Covenant school shooter as a trans man. That we have to take their word for it. They've released no other info on that. Typically, this is seen as like

the first legitimate mass shooting done by a transgender individual. And for the past year, we've been waiting for more and more context to come out about this mass shooting and its possible motivations. So I'm not even going to really discuss this one right now. We'll just say, sure, this is a trans person who happened to do a mass

shooting and leave it at that, even though it's not totally clear. I want to add one thing briefly which is that like trying to find out information from the police about a mass shooting is such a crap shoot like they just you know they'll they'll be like a initial flurry of press releases or whatever and then they just will never talk about it again until maybe the trial and sometimes you get something from that well and in often cases for mass shooters who often die there is no trial never so yeah yeah if they're dead like but even keeping this nashville incident as a legitimate mass shooting done by a person who happens to be trans when talking about this meme the thing is is that with these five pictures that are on this meme most typically three out of the

five people that have their pictures here aren't even trans. Not this time. It never happened. It's false. It never happened. It's a fake. It's fiction. Now, most famously, we have the Colorado Springs shooter Anderson Lee Aldrich, who killed five people and injured 25 others at a queer club in 2022. Later on, his lawyer claimed that the shooter was non-binary, which I believe is a disgusting and disingenuous attempt to get out of the more than now 50 hate crime charges that the shooter is facing. And this opinion is shared not only by the DA, but also all other legitimate extremism researchers. Prior to these claims in court, there was no indication whatsoever that the shooter was non-binary

or used they, them pronouns. However, they did own rainbow flag shooting targets, ran a neo-Nazi website that posted gun training videos, and was known by online acquaintances to frequently post racist and homophobic content. Now, I should clarify, when I say shooting targets, I don't mean that it's pride-themed shooting targets. It's that the people that you are shooting are painted like they are gay. So, there you go.

Now, pictured next in the meme is someone with purple-colored hair, labeled as the Denver shooter. This person is not trans, has never claimed to be trans. He just has dyed hair. He killed one person in a school shooting that he planned with a 16-year-old trans guy. That's not even a mass shooting! Correct. We will get into this later because the definition of mass shooting is getting stretched liberally here. Now, the third person pictured, isn't trans changes more frequently in different versions of the meme that you can find online. One version includes someone referenced as the

Philadelphia shooter. This is referencing a shooting spree that resulted in five people being killed. This shooter had previously posted photos of himself cross-dressing in women's clothes, and this was used by figures like Marjorie Taylor Greene to claim that the cis male shooter was actually, quote, another trans shooter. The family of this shooter referred to him as a, quote unquote, biblical extremist. And he often posted bizarre Christian spiritual conspiracy theories and was an outspoken fan of Tucker Carlson. In another version of the meme posted by Chaya Rychek, she identifies the Uvalde school shooter as trans and includes a picture of a trans woman holding the trans pride flag. This was posted in January of this year. Elon Musk replied to the tweet with two exclamation points.

Now, in the hours after the Uvalde school shooting, pictures of two or three different trans women were used to falsely label the shooter as trans, with at least one of these trans women being from New York, the other from Georgia. Both these women received a great deal of harassment after the shooting. Arizona Congressman Paul Gozar tweeted that the shooter was, quote, a transsexual leftist illegal alien, unquote, which is frankly amazing because every word in that sentence is wrong. We made this one up. It's a made up tale. It's a total fabrication. It never happened. It never happened. Now, the other person in this meme that is typically accepted to be trans is the Aberdeen shooter. Now, I'm going to just quote from the Washington Post here, quote, In 2018, in Aberdeen, Maryland, a 26-year-old shot and killed three people at a pharmaceutical distribution center before turning the weapon on themselves. The sheriff said the shooter had been diagnosed as mentally ill in 2016. A close friend

reported the shooter, quote, suffered from bipolar disorder and struggled since early in high school with severe depression, partly connected to their feelings of not being accepted when they first came out as a gay teenage girl and later as transgender, unquote. By most accounts, this is a transgender guy who began transitioning shortly before the shooting. Pronouns and stuff are unclear. They also worked at this distribution center a few weeks prior to them doing the shooting. This incident's typically not categorized as a mass shooting because only three people were killed, excluding the shooter. Now, one of the more recent attempts at this transgender terrorist psyop was in the aftermath of the shooting at Joel Osteen's megachurch in Houston earlier this February. The shooter was

a 36-year-old woman carrying her seven-year-old son, sadly both of whom died along with one other person. Just hours after the shooting, far-right accounts like Libs of TikTok and End Wokeness claimed that she was transgender pointing to documents where she used the name jeffrey now chaya rychek called the shooting quote another act of trans terrorism we need to have a national conversation about the lgbtq movement turning youth into violent extremists unquote didn't she literally say that exact thing with the last one yeah they don't even come with new tweets new tweets. They really just have the same five tweets in rotation. Marjorie Taylor Greene called her, quote,

a trans from El Salvador, unquote. Missouri Representative Josh Hawley, Marco Rubio, and Elon Musk all posted about this, quote, unquote, epidemic of trans violence. These claims were boosted by Donald Trump Jr. and Ted Cruz. Fox News ran a whole story with a headline about the shooter being transgender. And guess what? She's not trans. She is a cis woman who gave birth to a child and has always identified as a woman. It just appears that she was given a masculine name at birth and later changed it to a more feminine name.

The far-right content sphere created so much uproar that the police had to do a whole press conference about how the shooter was not trans. And after the police and lawyers clarified she was not trans, Fox News changed their claim, now saying on air that the shooter, quote, identified as both genders and was, quote, a biological woman who sometimes identified as a man named Jeffrey, unquote, which just isn't true. Jesus Christ. But the thing about this one is that it wasn't just far-right influencers in Fox News who ran with this transgender narrative. MSNBC jumped on very early to say that the shooter was, quote,

a Hispanic transgender woman who, quote unquote, identified as a woman, unquote. It's totally made up. Pure fiction. It's fiction. It's fiction. We made it up. MSNBC more like MSNB shit.

Great, great one, Mia. Great, great, great one. I'm doing great this morning. Do you know what's also doing great, Mia. Great, great, great one. I'm doing great this morning. Do you know what's also doing great, Mia? Is that the products and services that support this podcast? They're pretty consistent. Yeah, they are still around. And here you can listen to their important messages.

Hey guys, I'm Kate Max. You might know me from my popular online series, The Running Interview Show, where I run with celebrities, athletes, entrepreneurs, and more. After those runs, the conversations keep going. That's what my podcast, Post Run High, is all about. It's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even deeper into their stories, their journeys, and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. You know that rush of endorphins you feel after a great workout? Well, that's when the real magic happens. So if you love hearing real, inspiring stories from the people you know, follow, and admire, join me every week for Post Run High.

It's where we take the conversation beyond the run and get into the heart of it all. It's lighthearted, pretty crazy, and very fun. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into how tech's elite has turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech

from an industry veteran with nothing to lose. This season, I'm going to be joined by everyone from Nobel-winning economists to leading journalists in the field, and I'll be digging into why the products you love keep getting worse and naming and shaming those responsible. Don't get me wrong, though. I love technology. I just hate the people in charge and want them to get back to building things that actually do things to help real people. I swear to God things can change if we're loud enough. So join me every week to understand what's happening in the tech industry and what could be done to make things better.

Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever else you get your podcasts. Check out betteroffline.com. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, a five-year-old boy floated alone in the ocean. He had lost his mother trying to reach Florida from Cuba. He looked like a little angel. I mean, he looked so fresh. And his name, Elian Gonzalez, will make headlines everywhere. Elian Gonzalez.

Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian. Elian Gonzalez. At the heart of the story is a young boy and the question of who he belongs with. His father in Cuba. Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him.

Or his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. At the heart of it all is still this painful family separation. Something that as a Cuban, I know all too well. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, as part of the My Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

All right, we are so back. So there's so many more cases like the ones that I've talked about, right? The reason I started working on this episode in the first place was due to far-right accounts claiming that a man named Jared Rivieras, who killed his 70-year-old roommate and went on a mass stabbing spree last month outside of an AMC theater and a McDonald's in Massachusetts, was claimed to be a, quote, mentally ill trans terrorist by Libs of TikTok and a trans activist, quote unquote, who's a man who thinks he's a woman, which is a line Libs of TikTok loves using. a man who thinks he's a woman, which is a line Libs of TikTok loves using.

Now, Jared claimed to be an artist and a model, but was actually like this really weird, like grifter entrepreneur. He kind of reminds me of that weird Canadian cat killer, Luke Magnanata, who like created a whole bunch of fake posts to like pretend to be famous and like create like fake fans. It's very similar to this case.

And later, this guy, Luke in Canada, also killed a gay man. Very similar cases, honestly. Jared here, again, he's like pretending to be like an international entrepreneur. He looks like this weird like hippie surfer dude with long bleached hair. Jared's father is a wealthy Christian therapist who looks very similar. And anti-trans influencers have pointed to the word she on Jared's Instagram profile. But Jared's actual gender identity is really unclear. He's never pictured wearing women's clothing. He would frequently post shirtless buff selfies. Jared has never claimed to be trans or a woman and has never used transgender language

or iconography. Jared did file a name change request last April, but it was to change his last name. He goes by Jared. That same month, April, so two months ago, Jared sexually harassed a model at a Beverly Hills hotel saying that he wanted to have kids with her and proposed to her saying i'm going to be a good husband you're gonna be my wife unquote this person simply we have no no reason to think they're trans they do this they do like weird like art stuff and i don't know they're like california beverly hills poison brained and it, and they seem to have gone through some kind of mental health breakdown, which resulted in them killing their roommate,

two dogs, and stabbing six or seven people in Massachusetts. But another trans terrorist, sure, why not? In January of this year, an Iowa teenager opened fire at a school, killing one person and then himself. Again, the usual suspects were super quick to label him as another trans terrorist.

Elon Musk saying, this is happening a lot. Something is deeply wrong. This kid largely seemed like a regular Gen Z liberal. He listed his pronouns as he, they. He posted things like nominally in support of trans people. He used the hashtag gender fluid a single time in a TikTok video filmed with what appears to be a trans friend of his. He also posted on Reddit two years ago that he didn't want to transition because he didn't, quote, want to look ugly. He never specifically identified as trans.

This is just kind of a tragic case. I don't know what the deal with this kid was. They seemed deeply confused and upset and killed someone and then killed themselves it's it sucks but it's not a mass shooting and it doesn't it doesn't link to anything being a being a a pattern of transgender terrorism yeah that does not stop someone like donald trump jr saying quote the modern lgbtq plus movement is radicalizing our youth into becoming violent extremists per capita. Is there a more violent group of people anywhere in the world than radicalized trans activists?

Given the tiny fraction of the population they make up, it doesn't seem like anyone else comes even close. We have a lot of claims like this, which is why I need to start talking about statistics. My least favorite thing, because this sort of messaging is repeated a lot. We have this post from, I think, Benny Johnson or Donald Trump Jr. I can't tell which one because, unfortunately, it got deleted before I was able to log who did it. So apologies for that. But it's a very similar sort of thing thing saying there's been at least five mass attacks by transgender people since 2018. Considering the group makes up less than 0.5% of the population,

that's a massive overrepresentation. We'll get into that in a sec. So often when these people are talking about this trend of trans mass shooters, they're focusing specifically on the period of time between 2018 and 2024, because largely a lot of conservatives think that trans people were kind of like invented around 2018. That's when they first started to kind of like notice that people were trans, which is something we've talked about before in terms of like the arc of homophobia and transphobia in relation to like gay marriage and like a few other things. This is something we've reported on consistently on this show. So they're very often only looking at data from select years. And as we've discussed here, they largely inflate the number of quote

unquote mass shooters, as well as the number of mass shooters who they call transgender. They will often, you know, very loosely define what a mass shooting is when it suits them, and then very strictly define it when it doesn't. In the Blaze article about that Call of Duty pride pack, they say, quote, trans-identifying suspects' share of public mass shootings nationwide over the 2018 to 2023 period is reportedly well over seven times their share of the population, which links to a very sketchy right-wing crime stats website that doesn't publish any of their data. So sure. So there is a few different ways to categorize what a mass shooting is. There's no universal definition for what makes a mass shooting versus a mass killing. So different groups categorize things kind of differently. The mass killing database is a partnership between the AP, USA Today, and Northwestern

University, and it defines mass killings, quote, as the intentional killing of four or more victims, excluding the deaths of unborn children and the offenders, by any means within a 24-hour period. Their database currently lists 590 such killings since 2006. James Allen Fox, professor of criminology and law at Northwestern University, who manages the database, has said, quote, you can count the number of transgender and non-binary shooters on one hand. They're actually underrepresented, unquote.

And again, it's possible that because of how successful the right has been at the PSYOP, when you're counting these number of transgender transgender non-binary shooters on one hand, that's also super overrepresented because they're most likely containing like the Colorado Springs shooter and a lot of these other people. Now, trans people on average are reported to make up about 1% of the US population, but that number is steadily growing. We got to pump those numbers up.

Those are rookie numbers. Now, it's also just kind of unclear what that number actually is. That's the current one from the U.S. Census Bureau and kind of an average doubt because a lot of stats of like people older than 25 say the numbers are like around 0.5, 0.6% versus people under 25 reportedly it's like 1.5%. So, you know, I'm just going to say around 1%. Now, under most criterias for mass killings, only one incident, the one in Nashville, qualifies for inclusion. Another data source called the Violence Project has recorded data on mass shootings in the U.S. since 1966.

They more narrowly define a mass killing as four or more people killed in a public unconnected to other criminal activity. Their current database has 193 entries. A spokesperson for their organization told Reuters that the 2023 Nashville shooting, quote, is the first case of a trans perpetrator in their database per their methodology. Another more broad data collection project is called the Gun Violence Archive. I'm just going to quote from Reuters here. Quote, the Gun Violence Archive, which began collecting data on gun violence in the U.S. in 2013, recorded more than 4,400 mass shootings in the last decade. Its definition of a mass shooting is four or more people shot, resulting in injury or death, excluding the perpetrator.

or death, excluding the perpetrator. Of those, quote, the number of known suspects in a mass shooting which are trans is under 10 for the last decade, which translated to 0.11% of the 4,400 shootings, unquote, which is about nine times lower than cis people per capita if we use the 1% trans population stat. And even using the more conservative mass killing data set, trans population stat. And even using the more conservative mass killing data set, the rate of this sort of violence by trans people is far lower than what would match our population margin. I'm going to add in a short quote from the Washington Post to kind of add in some context here. Quote, the gun violence archive methodology would allow for inclusion of the Aberdeen and Denver cases. With 0.6% of the population, one would expect at least 16 mass shootings to be conducted by people identifying as trans in the past five years. Instead, there

are just three possible cases cited by most conservatives, unquote. So after looking over all of this data, it would actually appear that transgender people are less likely to commit a mass shooting than cis people, even by some of the more conservative estimates. The other side of this is that not only are trans people less likely to, you know, do this sort of violence, they are way more likely to be on the receiving end than cis people. Per the National Archive of Criminal Justice data, LGBTQ plus people are more than twice as likely to be a victim of gun violence than their cisgender and straight peers. According to the Human Rights Campaign, 29% of transgender youth have been threatened or injured with a weapon

on school property compared to 7% of cisgender youth. So even for school shootings, you are so much more likely to face gun violence at school if you are trans. Transgender, non-binary, and gender-questioned people have reportedly higher rates of being impacted or knowing someone who's been impacted by a mass shooting compared to their cisgender queer peers. This is, you know, a data average, but it's usually around 22% to 19%. And this whole topic gets so much more like dark and grounded when you know that 320 trans people were killed last year, according to data from the annual trans murder monitoring report which is like it's so dark that we even have something called the trans murder monitoring report also we need to

mention this um because i don't think people this is really badly understood people who aren't trans but those numbers are always significant undercounts because yes those projects are people scraping basically news reports or trying to find like the families of victims and there are a lot of people who get killed who the only people who know are their friends and those people fucking either aren't talking to the press or the press just never like covers it or you know the police give their dead name and never talk about it so they just are dead and everyone thinks they're cis yep and just in the united states last year 33 trans people were murdered and again this is a vast undercount like mia said meanwhile you have all these people on the right

who will talk about all of these, all these alleged mass shootings by alleged trans people. And one of their favorite lines when they try to like affirm that a shooter is actually trans is quote, watch how quickly the story will now disappear, unquote, which is just ironic for a few reasons. One, because that's how news works, is that we move on to a new thing. But also, it'll probably disappear as well because they're not actually trans, you know?

In the case of the Uvalde shooter, in the case of the Make a Church shooter from last year, yeah, people move on, but also they're not going to keep harping on your weird conspiracy theory because it's a weird conspiracy theory. It's not true. church shooter from last year. Yeah, people move on, but also they're not going to keep harping on your weird conspiracy theory because it's a weird conspiracy theory. It's not true. Even if this is, even if they were right, which they are not, it also is just like, imagine in like 1920, you're like, we have a problematic rise in left-handed mass shooters.

And we're like, well, yeah, because there's more left-handed people. There's going to be at least some level of correlation statistically. Again, these people act like trans people were only invented in 2018 and are just like slowly like recruiting in numbers, which, hey, you know, at least we are kind of slowly recruiting. And like the actual goal of this rhetoric beyond just, you know, altering the fabric of reality is to just encourage violence against trans people. That is what they're doing. It's to see trans people as a threat so that you feel justified in doing violence against them.

Just a few weeks ago, a very popular gun YouTuber made this joke where they were talking about, you know, getting ready to shoot a T-word. And they stopped and they were like, oh, sorry, I mean a school shooter. Wink, wink. And they stopped and they were like, oh, sorry, I mean a school shooter. Wink, wink. So like, they're trying to use school shooter to be a dog whistle for trans people. This is all just to justify violence.

That's all this is doing. And to some degree, it's working. Just last week, a trans kid was assaulted in the men's bathroom at school and reportedly one of their teeth exploded. This was a trans girl who was using the men's bathroom like all of these freaks want them to, and she still got assaulted. I think it's super important when talking about this sort of unreality propaganda is that like these people like Libs of TikTok, Ian Miles Chong, they're not just like falling further into a delusional conspiracy theory. Same thing with Elon Musk, right? I think it it's, it's easy. I think it's easy to be like,

oh, they just actually like legitimately are like falling into this like conspiratorial delusion. And it's, it's not that. What it is, is they are actually intentionally crafting reality. It's not them like falling victim to this like unfortunate delusion.

They are choosing which version of reality to believe in because it's the one that they want. And that's what they're doing. And they want it to be a reality where more people feel comfortable assaulting and killing trans people. That's the actual goal of this propaganda. We need to be very clear about this, about what's sort of happening here, which is one of the fastest ways to get a group of people to commit a genocide is by convincing them that they are all about to be killed, right? This is one of the things behind the Bosnian genocide. This is one of the things behind Rwanda is if you can convince a lot of people that their neighbors are about to fucking kill them, that's how you get them to do the genocide.

Because the thing that they believe is that, like, oh, this is self-defense. Like, these people are about to kill us. And that is the kind of reality tunnel being mobilized here is is a is a call is it called genocide and the other side of this that i think is so grim is that there used to be a time as society where you know we attempted to explain why there are mass shootings right i this is something that i i remember living through like if you go back to 2016, 2017, 2015, there used to be people other than these just genocidal fascists attempting to explain why these shootings were happening. The actual data on trans-mask shooters and how few of them there are is quietly devastating to a lot of the theories that used to be sort of bandied about right theories that this was about sort of objection the theory that this was about this

you know like sort of de-industrialization and like the consequences that this has had on people that there were you know it's just sort of like downward social mobility that was causing this violence right if any of that were true there would be a fucking million mass shooters because again the trend the trans poverty rate is like it's it's it's around 30 percent right for the rest of the country it is like a quarter as well it's not quarter it's like a third of that much right you you there should be if it was just purely a product of like material conditions there would be a lot more trans men shooters, but there aren't because again, you know, the actual theory that fits this data and fits also the behavior of, of all of these people,

like all of these sort of fascists trying to explain mass shootings as being about trans people. The thing that it fits is this is, is the theory that this is basically the replacement of clan rallies, right? We don't have, we don't have collective lynchings anymore. We have individual ones and all of these fucking people are trying to make sure that there's just more lynchings and that these lynchings anymore we have individual ones and all of these fucking people

are trying to make sure that there's just more lynchings and that these lynchings are you know it's like it's their their sort of like armed follower fanatics go and shoot a bunch more trans people in a nightclub and then you know once that happens they will disavow it by saying oh hey this this this nightclub shooting was uh this is actually done by a fucking trans person they'll keep doing this until they have enough political power to openly come out and claim that all of these people were their fucking revolutionary heroes in their new fucking pantheon of the fascist state.

And there was that trans boy who was assaulted in the bathroom a few months ago and died days later in the hospital. There's this, it keeps happening. And I didn't want this to be like a depressing episode. I wanted this to break down a conspiracy theory I've been seeing more frequently, talk about what's fueling it, actually go over the instances that are included in it to kind of debunk, for lack of a better term, this sort of rhetoric. And just so you can be more aware of it when you see it.

this sort of rhetoric and just so you can be more aware of it when you see it because often you'll see this meme with five pictures you'll see a copypasta version of it so just being aware of what this is what this rhetoric is trying to do

and the unfortunate fact that trans people are far more likely to be a victim of gun violence and mass shootings. Yeah, than cis people. Than cis people and are actually less likely to participate in such violence, statistically speaking. So yeah, that is the episode today. Not meant to be depressing, just meant to be informative. But you know, when it comes to me, those things often overlap. Many such cases.

I hope you have a good Pride Month. Stay safe and stay dangerous. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, coolzonemedia.com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for It Could Happen Here updated monthly at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. you might know me from my popular online series the running interview show where i run with celebrities athletes entrepreneurs and more after those runs the conversations keep going that's what my podcast post run high is all about it's a chance to sit down with my guests and dive even

deeper into their stories their journeys and the thoughts that arise once we've hit the pavement together. Listen to Post Run High on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hi, I'm Ed Zitron, host of the Better Offline podcast, and we're kicking off our second season digging into tech's elite and how they've turned Silicon Valley into a playground for billionaires. From the chaotic world of generative AI to the destruction of Google search, Better Offline is your unvarnished and at times unhinged look at the underbelly of tech brought to you by an industry veteran with nothing to lose. Listen to Better Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from.

Apple Podcasts, wherever else you get your podcasts from. On Thanksgiving Day, 1999, five-year-old Cuban boy Elian Gonzalez was found off the coast of Florida. And the question was, should the boy go back to his father in Cuba? Mr. Gonzalez wanted to go home and he wanted to take his son with him. Or stay with his relatives in Miami. Imagine that your mother died trying to get you to freedom. Listen to Chess Peace, the Elian Gonzalez story, on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.