It Could Happen Here - The Covenant School Shooting and the Right Wing Response

Episode Date: March 28, 2023

Robert, Gare, and James discuss the covenant school shooting, what we know about the shooter, and how the shooting has been covered in right wing and centrist media.   https://shatterzone.substack.com/p/the-covenant-school-shooter-and-rightSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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That's iHeart.com slash podcast awards. Hey, everyone. This is It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart, sometimes about putting things back together. This is one of the former episodes because we are recording this in the immediate wake within a couple of hours of America's, the United States of America's most recent mass shooting in Tennessee at a Christian school called Covenant. You know, obviously, there are way too many mass shootings in the United States for us

to cover each one. We are talking about this now in a timely manner, because there's a bunch of very specific disinformation coming out about it. And particularly disinformation that is part of the broader targeting by the right wing of transgender people. So I'm going to, for the first part of this, I'm going to turn things over to Garrison, who has been doing specific research on the shooter and what we can actually verify at this moment about their identity. Upfront, I'll say that the police have identified this person as Audrey Hale, 28, of Nashville. NBC News notes, quote, who said she identifies as transgender. Again, this is not quite right. We'll talk about it. But the right wing is obviously running with the idea that this is a

transgender shooter and part of a series, they will argue, of transgender attacks on Christians. We're going to talk about the right wing sort of analysis of this later. But first, I'm going to, again, push to Garrison, who will talk about what we actually can verify about this person and about the shooting at this point. Yeah. Just as a note here throughout this episode, there will be some, what is probably misgendering because we're going to be quoting from a lot of

other people's statements. And also there'll be a mentions of like a few slurs against trans people just because we are quoting from a whole bunch of stuff. And some of the details regarding the gender of the person in question is relatively unknown at the time. So just as a heads up. Okay, so yeah, I'm just going to go over a few things regarding what we know happened, what the school was, what the school was. Cause I think that kind of, that might play into it, but that will kind of veer on speculation. So we're just going to limit it towards what we actually know.

And then to attempt to avoid speculation on this episode. Yeah. Yes. Um, so someone carrying multiple firearms entered a private Christian school in Nashville this Monday morning and shot and killed three nine-year-old students and three adult staff members in their sixties, including the head of the school, Dr. Catherine Kanz. Police initially claimed the shooter was a teenager, but minutes later changed course and described them as a 28

year old woman from Nashville. It was then reported pretty quickly in NBC News that the shooter was identified as Audrey Hale, 28, of Nashville, and the police chief said she identifies as transgender. NBC has another article out there that says Audrey Hale, 28, who police say was a transgender woman, quote unquote. So we will get into that here in a sec. But the shooter entered the Covenant School via a side door, according to the Metro Nashville Police spokesperson, Don Aaron, and was armed with at least two, quote unquote, assault style rifles and a handgun, unquote. It looks like it's a AR rifle and an AR pistol and then also a handgun.

Nashville Police Chief John Drake has said, quote, at one point she was a student at that school, but we are unsure of what year, unquote, and that Hale shot through the door to gain entry into the school. The shooter made their way through the first and second floors of the school, firing multiple shots before Hale was killed by police on the school's second floor. So it's assumed by the police at this point, and they may have evidence that's not been made public yet, that the shooter did attend the school, but they are unsure for exactly how long and what years specifically. I think it's important to mention a few things about the school just because this is a very unique mass shooting in a lot of ways. Mass shootings at private schools, let alone private Christian schools, is very rare. And this is also

like a preschool through sixth grade school. So the Covenant School is a preschool through sixth grade private Christian school founded in 2001, and it shares the same location as Covenant Presbyterian Church. The website states it has 33 teaching faculty and around 200 enrolled students per year, with tuition at around $16,000 a year. According to the school's website, quote, the Covenant School is a ministry of Covenant Presbyterian Church created to assist Christian parents and the church by providing an exceptional academic experience founded upon and informed by the Word of God. So, I mean, honestly, this is something that's pretty similar to the type of Christian school that I grew up in.

It's the school that's attached to this church. I also had around 200 fellow students. So this seems to be relatively pretty similar and not super uncommon for this type of private Christian school. That's kind of all I'm going to get into that here i mean i've i've looked around the school's website a lot and it it seems pretty pretty basic in terms of these types of presbyterian private christian schools but now we're going to start getting into some of this stuff regarding the identity of the shooter and a lot there's because there's a lot of information going around nbc news is now claiming that the shooter is a transgender woman i don't think that's fully accurate, but we're going to... They're quoting directly from the cop.

Yeah, this is, to be fair, I mean, partly NBC's fault because they should have done as much research as you did, Garrison. Yes. But they are quoting the police. Yeah. Yes.

The gist is that the police identified this as a transgender woman. They have a manifesto. We don't know what's in the manifesto. But yeah, please continue, Gar. Yeah, Gar. And I guess one other thing that's reported is after police said this was a transgender woman, they also talked about how Hale had conducted surveillance and prepared for the attack with detailed maps.

And then also the aforementioned manifesto. But yes, we're going to move on to some of the stuff that we do know using just basic open source research stuff. So there is a LinkedIn page for someone named Audrey Hale in the Nashville area. They list a lot of various illustration jobs they've had for the past few years. And they do have a little pronoun marker next to their name that says he, him. Hale appears to have had a website for their graphic design portfolio called AH Illustrations. So just their initials, AH. They have posts in there being tagged from 2023, from 2022. So it's been at least up for two years. I tried to do like metadata stuff on some of their artwork. I did

not really get much in terms of what year they were posted, but we may be able to learn more about that later. The website has an about page that introduces the person as Audrey Hale, but it also directs you to a now vanished Instagram page called at creative period Aiden. So we're going to go through some of the rights initial stuff a bit later because they were already calling this a transgender shooting before any information came out at all as a part of like the Sam Hyde joke. Yeah, for reference, Sam Hyde is kind of a right wing comedian who had a show on Adult Swim. For the last several years, it has been a meme to every time there's a shooting. There's a specific picture of Sam Hyde holding a rifle

that people will post and say, I'm getting this picture that, you know, this was the shooter at whatever. It's been at Parkland. It's been at El Paso. It's been at Uvalde. Every single shooting this happens. And with this shooting, someone photoshopped some lady's head onto Sam Hyde and claimed immediately that it was a transgender person. This also ties into the Highland Park shooting, where the shooter wore women's clothing at some point to try to escape, and the right continually tries to claim that that makes it a transgender shooting. Anyway, please continue, Gare. Yes.

So by going through their online portfolio dated as far back as 2022, I found a self-portrait that has a different social media username titled at kree.tivdre. I think dre is for like Audrey. And this also appears to be an old Instagram handle before they changed it to at creative Aiden. Hale's website also has another self-portrait just tagged with the name Aiden and Aiden Creates. That one appears to be from maybe slightly after, but it's kind of unclear with how the website is laid out.

So although the Instagram page for this person appears to be taken down, it's unknown if they took it down or if Instagram took it down, but it is gone and there's no archive of it. It appears that Hale did have other social media accounts that are still online besides the aforementioned LinkedIn. A TikTok account by the name of Iam underscore Aiden 10 shares a profile picture with Hale's own website, and it also links to Hale's Instagram page, which is mentioned on Hale's website. The TikTok was seldom active, but their first visible post is from March 15th, 2022.

There are two other posts from that month, and all three of these posts are like about late 90s, early 2000s video game nostalgia. And thanks to TikTok's username embedding feature, we can see that the account used to be called AudreyVideoGameNerd underscore 10 before being changed to IamAiden10 sometime between March 16th and April 15th of last year. Hale's last visible post is just from over a month ago, February 9th, 2023. And yeah, just as a note, kind of, I've gone over less of this than you, but I've combed over what's

available. I don't notice any of the normal red flags. There's not even like pictures of this person posing with firearms. There's not threats. There's one video where they seem to be mourning a friend or a relative, but it's a pretty normal, like in memoriam style video. None of their art strikes me as disturbing in any way. No, it's one red Ram one. They have, they have one piece of shining fan art that the right's been using. It sticks out, but also like the shining is one of the most popular movies of all time. Yeah. No, nothing.

As someone who's looked through the social media accounts of a lot of shooters, this account is relatively normal. There's nothing in here that would be immediately red flags. They did a lot of corporate work. I think they did artwork for the city of Denver. Yeah, it looks like it. They were being commissioned to do graphic design for a lot of businesses, a lot of local events in Nashville. There is one other thing from their website that I will mention. Part of their bio, they have this sentence that says, there is a childlike part of me that loves to go and run around on the playground.

And the rights using this in a weird groomer a weird, like a groomer way being like, Oh my God, this, this kid wants this, this, this adult wants to go around with two playgrounds and their child. Like this is, this is a completely normal thing to say.

This is like, this is not a red flag. This is, I, I also enjoy going on the playground. This is not a red flag either. This is just part of weird culture war stuff. Yeah. Yeah.

They have another thing about being a kid forever and ever as well. It just seems that they, you know, connected with childhood things and were fond of those kind of things. Yeah. And like psychologically maybe being kind of stuck in the past or whatever is a part of how they describe or justify this in their manifesto. We just don't know. But the point of the matter is,

if you had looked at this person's social media prior, and this is very different for most shooters, you would not have thought, oh, this is a person who is of danger to people. There's just not signs in it. I mean, the one thing that is, the kind of last thing I'll mention is the, I think the two other adults that were shot, one was a custodian. There was a, was a, I think it was like a substitute teacher. Yeah. Um, they, they were all in their sixties. Um, it's unclear how long those two other people have been with the school. Uh, the head of the school has been, been there for a while.

Um, but I mean, uh, because, because it is a preschool through sixth grade school, Hale would not have been at the school relatively recently. I can try to, I'm trying to do like quick math here to be like, if you would, if you'd be in sixth grade and you're now 28. 17 years ago. Yeah. 11 years old, right? American is plus five.

Yeah. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. So it's certainly, it's, it's started in 2001. So yeah, that's, that is, that is, that is possible. Yeah. I do want to note a couple of things before we move on to the right wing reaction. One of them just kind of, again, to, to sort of boil it down based on what is available publicly. We know this person seems to have been born and raised as Audrey Hale, um,

started going by Aiden at the latest sometime last year. Uh, their LinkedIn shows them at that point as using he, him pronouns. Um, still, but, but still with the name Audrey,

but still with the name Audrey, it is actually very much at this point still unclear how they precisely identified what pronouns they used. We certainly don't know whether or not they were on any kind of like hormones, not that that would have an impact on any of this, but we have very little actual information. The police are saying that they identify themselves as transgender in the manifesto. Police are saying that they identify themselves as transgender in the manifesto. At some point, we might learn more as a result of that. But it is a lot of what's being put out as either unclear or wrong in one way or the other. There's just a lot of information that is kind of missing about this person. People are jumping to conclusions on stuff.

So we will probably learn more there later. One more note on stuff. So we will probably learn more there later. One more note on this. The police are the ones that initiated the use of the term manifesto. Now, there was no manifesto published by the shooter. We do not know if this is a quote unquote manifesto, like, at all. The police have claimed that they found writing when they raided this person's house. So this writing discussing things around their gender or what they were doing, this could be anything from like a suicide note to just like a diary or a journal. So by using the word manifesto, they're kind of trying to tie it into that. We simply at this point do not know if this was a manifesto at all. Like we just – that is a very loaded term in this context. I think it's notable that the shooter did not publish anything, whereas usually when there's manifestos, they are published online, right? The shooter themselves will publish it online,

and that is kind of part of their entire attack. That is not the case here. The shooter did not publish anything about this attack online that we've found or that anyone's found. So I think that's an important thing to note when we're talking about the use of the word manifesto here. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter? Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows, presented by iHeart and Sonora. An anthology of modern day horror stories inspired by the legends of Latin America. From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures.

I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of my Cultura podcast network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating.

I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives. I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment.

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Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. in terms of like the importance of a manifesto you know speaking as someone who has written professionally about a number of them manifestos are obviously useful especially when trying to analyze why someone did something what their political goal may have been if there indeed there's a political goal what their radicalization pathway has been. But a crucial thing is to never ever take a manifesto purely at face value. Manifestos are political writings by terrorists, right? That is what a manifesto is. And they are writings that are kind of calculated to achieve a goal. And I don't know what this person put in their manifesto. Their manifesto may just have been a perfectly like accurate summation of

their feelings of why they did this terrible thing. That's possible. We sit, we don't know at this point, but manifestos are a part of understanding a shooting and what the goal was of the shooting and what the individual hope to accomplish, but they cannot and never should be taken at face value. And that's what a lot of media are going to do if this ever does get public. So please always show care and skepticism of directly reading from a manifesto.

Like even in the case, you know, there's just a lot like in the Christchurch manifesto of like bullshit, shitposting jokes and stuff thrown in there with the real stuff. It's generally possible to get to gather and understand motive from a manifesto. And I am, you know, I will read it if it becomes available, but be very careful with such things. I will read it if it becomes available, but be very careful with such things. Yeah, speaking of not being careful, let's talk about the right-wing response to this. Because I think broadly speaking, it's fair to characterize it as they are claiming this is part of a line of terror attacks by transgender people. There's a lot of folks saying that this is reason to ban gender-affirming care, to ban hormone therapy, to ban trans people from purchasing firearms. This is pretty rampant on

the right already. It became very quickly. So I actually want to go over one thing I just came up and saw while Gare was talking that I think is interesting is Candace Owens. Candace Owens is a right-wing commentator, unfortunately quite influential and has a sizable platform. I want to quote from her initial response. This was the immediate response when all the information was out was that there had been a shooting at this school. I live in Green Hills and I'm positively devastated for the families impacted by this tragedy. Please suspend your politics and instead do what these families at this Christian school would want, pray.

That's a perfectly reasonable response, at least for somebody who believes in prayer. Within a matter of like an hour or so, it became clear that, or information began to come out that the shooter was likely transgender, at which point Candace suspended her statement about not making it politics. She posted shortly after, transgenderism is a mental illness. Keep your children away from transgendered individuals and their parents. People that support and encourage this are monsters and should be kept

away from children. They yelled at, Matt Walsh made a statement, why haven't we been given the name of the mass shooter yet? And Candace responded, because they're wiping the socials so they can make things up about the person. She noted as to a post by Matt Walsh being like, the question is why this culture is producing so many people who want to carry out attacks like this, take the guns and you'll still have a country infested by homicidal sociopaths. Where are they coming from? What is creating them? Candace responded, I would start with the fact that we now celebrate clinical insanity while we admonish normalcy. People are aspiring to mental illness because they receive attention and oftentimes are

awarded for perversity. She is essentially taking the stance of like, we have to blame this on the fact that this person was transgender and being transgender is a mental illness, right? That's the stance Candace is taking. That's the stance a lot of folks are taking. One of the most widely shared posts from a right winger on this was by a guy named DC underscore Drano. He notes himself as a husband, patriot, lawyer, constitutionalist, and anti-woke. He has 686,000 followers on Twitter. He has been relentless in posting about this as an act of transgender terror. He has spread some of the information that Garrison

added on this podcast about this person's social media posts. And his posts are some of the most widely read and liked that I've seen. One of them reads, unconfirmed reports identify the Nashville shooter as Audrey Hale, a biological female that identifies as he, him on their LinkedIn. Authorities believe the transgender shooter previously attended the Christian school. He then follows, we will not let this story be swept under the rug. Trans terrorism must be confronted head on and stopped. Tennessee just passed laws restricting sexualized drag shows for children and banning the genital mutilation of children. Was today's mass shooting at a Christian school by a transgender killer an act of domestic terror? And when will we start talking about transgender mass murderers targeting innocent schoolchildren in our schools? Enough is

enough. And in this, they posted a link to a Reuters story about a shooting from last year, I think it was, in Colorado, in Denver. This was a shooting where two people, one of whom was transgender, walked into a school in Denver and shot at several classmates, killing one. They claimed it was revenge on classmates over bullying. McKinney, the transgender shooter, has been sentenced recently, so it's been in the news. shooter has been sentenced recently, so it's been in the news. This is being billed as like a transgender terrorist attack because, spoiler, there's very few cases of trans people carrying out acts of violence, so they're kind of grabbing what they can in order to try and make an argument that this is part of a trend. In the absence of any kind of manifesto, people are claiming that trans identity motivated the killings. The police

seem to have helped to jumpstart this. All right, so first off, we're going to play, before we continue, we're going to play a clip of the police press conference where the police chief of Nashville talks about what has happened and talks about the information that they have about the shooter based on apparently the manifesto that they have and the maps that they have about the shooter based on apparently the manifesto that they have and the maps that they have. So we're going to play that now. Our investigations tell us that she was a former student at the school. I don't know what grade she's attended or grades, but we do firmly believe she was a student there.

Does she identify as transgender? She does identify as transgen shooter have any criminal in the apartment or house going over that pertain to this day, the actual incident. We have a map drawn out of how this was all going to take place. There's right now a theory that we may be able to talk about later, but it's not confirmed. And so we'll put that out as soon as we can. Is there any reason to believe that how she identifies is as any motive for targeting the school?

We can give you that at a later time. There is some theory to that. We're investigating all the leads and once we know exactly we'll let you know. So was this a targeted attack? It was. Do you know about a history of transgender man or woman? Don't know any history of mental illness at this time, but we are looking at that as an investigation is ongoing. And I'm sorry. Should we identify as a transgender man or woman? Woman. All right. So, yeah, Garrison, you want to start off here?

Yeah, I think giving like the most charitable reading of that, I think it's possible that this police chief does not have as a uh as a full or i don't think this police chief has as an in uh as an in-depth understanding of gender theory as some of us or the listeners do so it's just confused by that question is it a trans man or a trans woman and he answers by saying yeah they're trans but they are a woman um so i think that that could be what's going on and then we have outlets like nbc news saying that the person's a transgender woman because they also are for one not doing like very basic digging uh online and are also just making i just usually enjoy repeating the police's talking points when stuff like this happens,

because it's just easier. Hey everybody, Robert here. Shortly after we finished this, the police chief of Nashville, John Drake, went on Lester Holt's NBC show and gave another statement that was much more accurate than the previous statement that we just played you, which the right wing is making a lot of hay

out of. In the statement, they note that the shooter attended the school as a child and was resentful of the school and of being forced to attend it, that the school was the target and not any specific individual and that the victims were random. They also, in this statement to Lester Holt, the police chief makes a lot less of a deal about the fact that the shooter was trans. It seems like the first statement that they made was based on either incomplete information or in the heat of the moment. But I'm going to play you this statement and then we will continue the episode. It sounds like things are moving very quickly. You describe this as a targeted attack. Can you elaborate? targeted attack. Can you elaborate? Absolutely. So the person we know as Audrey Hale, she's a 28 year old Nashvilleian. We have belief or we feel that very strongly that she went to school here

in the Nashville area and she went to that actual school. And so there's some belief that there was some resentment for having to go to that school. Don't have all the details of that just yet. And that's why this incident occurred. Did Hale target, in your mind, did Hale target the school or someone in the school? REP. RONALD WELLS, She targeted random students in the school, just whoever, and persons. Whoever she came in contact with, she fired rounds. JOHN YANG You recovered what you described as a manifesto.

You have also said that Hale identified as trans. Do you believe there is a connection to that? REP. RONALD WELLS, We feel that she identifies as trans, but you believe there is a connection to that? We feel that he identifies as trans, but we're still in the initial investigation into all of that and if it actually played a role into this incident. As we know more, we'll definitely make that known. But right now, we're unsure if that actually played a role. But does the manifesto point you in a particular direction that you can reveal? It does.

It has. In the initial investigation, we've turned it over to the FBI. We've looked over it as well. And it indicates that there was going to be shootings at multiple locations, and the school was one of them. There was actually a map of the school, detail and surveillance, entry points, and how this was going to be carried out on this day. Welcome. I'm Danny Thrill. Won't you join me at the fire and dare enter

Nocturnum, Tales from the Shadows Presented by I Heart and Sonorum An anthology of modern day horror stories Inspired by the legends of Latin America From ghastly encounters with shapeshifters to bone-chilling brushes with supernatural creatures. I know you. Take a trip and experience the horrors

that have haunted Latin America since the beginning of time. Listen to Nocturnal Tales from the Shadows as part of Michael Duda Podcast Network, available on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I found out I was related to the guy that I was dating. I don't feel emotions correctly. I am talking to a felon right now, and I cannot decide if I like him or not. Those were some callers from my call-in podcast, Therapy Gecko. It's a show where I take real phone calls from anonymous strangers all over the world as a fake gecko therapist and try to dig into their brains and learn a little bit about their lives.

I know that's a weird concept, but I promise it's pretty interesting if you give it a shot. Matter of fact, here's a few more examples of the kinds of calls we get on this show. I live with my boyfriend and I found his piss jar in our apartment. I collect my roommate's toenails and fingernails. I have very overbearing parents. Even at the age of 29, they won't let me move out of their house. So if you want an excuse to get out of your own head and see what's going on in someone else's head, search for Therapy Gecko on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

It's the one with the green guy on it. Hey, I'm Jack B. Thomas, the host of a brand new Black Effect original series, Black Lit, It's the one with the green guy on it. to protecting and celebrating our stories. Blacklit is for the page turners, for those who listen to audiobooks while commuting or running errands, for those who find themselves seeking solace, wisdom, and refuge between the chapters. From thought-provoking novels to powerful poetry, we'll explore the stories that shape our culture.

Together, we'll dissect classics and contemporary works while uncovering the stories of the brilliant writers behind them. Blacklit is here to amplify the voices of Black writers and to bring their words to life. Listen to Blacklit on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. guess yeah i mean i think a big part of this is that after a mass shooting in uh any national paper or or other media outlet you're always trying to be first with something and that creates a situation where like you don't fact check you don't do the basic ocean looking up right you just like cops have said something get it out get the most get a get a ton of clicks uh and then that leads to this disappointing sort

of repetition of half truths or like in falsehoods that we're seeing yeah and it leads to it provides a lot of so one thing that the right has always understood is that the immediate aftermath of a story that breaks into the news is, you call it the wet cement period, where if people are talking about it, if you can lasso a narrative and drag it out in front of everybody and get momentum behind it, then that effectively becomes reality for an awful lot of people. And it's very important, which is why they're all immediately falling into line on this. One of the posts that I just ran across is from Benny Johnson,

who's a right-wing media guy. So Benny Johnson says, the Colorado Springs shooter identified as non-binary, the Denver shooter identified as trans, the Aberdeen shooter identified as trans, the Nashville shooter identified as trans. One thing is very clear,

the modern trans movement is radicalizing activists into terrorists. Elon Musk responded to this with an exclamation point, which is great. The Colorado Springs shooter was not non-binary. The Colorado Springs shooter's lawyers made that claim briefly while they were trying to cobble together a defense after this person killed two trans people and shot up an LGBT nightclub. The Denver shooter is the person we just talked about. Well, I mean, also, they also could be referring to that. Yes, probably.

Yeah. Yeah, and yeah, it's like it's it's it's frustrating, like what they're doing with this stuff here. Like, it's very obvious, especially in trying to wrap in the attack of a right-wing terrorist on an LGBT club to part, like, to an act of, like, claiming that it's an act of transgender terrorism. particularly among people who paid for blue checkmarks on the new Twitter, because that's like, yeah, this is kind of the first mass shooting we have had in the new, Elon's kind of new checkmark thing, where like people are able to kind of verify themselves for money, and we're about to see all of the old verified accounts lose verification. We'll talk a little bit more about how well that's actually working for them later, which is actually less clear. So that's possibly a positive thing.

But, yeah, I mean, it's pretty obvious. Andy Ngo's posted about this. He's another he works for a place called the Post Millennial. He's a right wing ghoul. He says the shooting comes amid a surge of far left death threats in Tennessee over the state's, you know, anti trans laws. He provides no evidence of this. He does quote or cite an M&M's ad that Audrey Hale made that is like a pride ad that says, born this way. It's like a rainbow of M&M's that says, born this way, appears to be something that they may have done for money. I don't know. Isn't really relevant to the situation.

One of the uglier posts that I found on the right comes from a guy who identifies himself as an American dissident, Stu Peters. He's the executive producer of Died Suddenly, which is one of these right-wing attempts to connect every single death of a person who got vaccinated to the vaccination, which is a ghoulish thing to do anyway. vaccinated to the vaccination, which is a ghoulish thing to do anyway. And yeah, they initially leapt into, there's a lot of like ugliness in here. Stu is one of the more open folks, calling them a tranny named Audrey Hale, who was a former student of Covenant School. They kind of interpret the police statement, which is at least very warbly, as the police saying this was a direct attack on Christians, which the cops have not yet said. Stu posts, police admit this was a targeted attack on Christians by a demonic tranny.

For some context, another one of his posts is arguing that Zelensky is waging war on Christians. So, you know, this should be seen with guys like this, in addition to being the troubling thing that it is part of kind of the broader, like, echo chamber that the right has set up for itself. Like this is troubling and problematic and to a degree frightening, and they're going to continue to try to push for disarming trans people as a result of this. I suspect we'll see states introduce bills that are red flag laws just for trans people. This is the kind of thing that I am worried about. But it also is kind of worth seeing this as this is very much in line with the other kind of right wing echo chamber panic stuff that is that is

everywhere. And so far, while this is deeply concerning, I'm not seeing evidence that it's breaking out of the right. And like, that doesn't mean it's not a problem. But it is kind of worth noting, the actual trending tags right now on Twitter are not what you'd expect. The Tennessee shooting is not trending on its own in a particularly high position. It's substantially lower than the Uvalde and Highland Park shootings, both of which are trending right now. This is based on a Twitter account I use that is not my Twitter account. It's just a blank account. So I'm hoping to get a little bit less of a bias thing. When I looked at my own accounts trending, it was Uvalde and Highland Park as well as Columbine was trending. Sam Hyde is trending, you know, because he always does after a shooting as a result of

this stuff. Guns is trending. I think AR-15 was trending on one of my accounts. um but the i'm not yet seeing evidence that this is anywhere like that the anti-trans stuff has made it outside of the right-wing fever swamps yeah um you you are getting like in and again that does not mean it's not troubling uh it is deeply troubling but it's also not um when i'm looking at sort of liberal and centrist responses to this, it's noteworthy that what is trending is Uvalde and Highland Park and Columbine because what's common is people sort of putting this within the continuum of America's nightmarish problem with mass shootings, particularly at schools, which is the right way to see this. shootings, particularly at schools, which is the right way to see this. This is part of an ongoing series of violent acts and a mass shooter culture that exists within this country. And obviously, it's tied to the availability of guns. It's tied to a number of things. But it is kind of worth

noting that when it comes to what most people are seeing as a result of this. It is another mass shooting in America and not trans people are carrying out terrorist attacks. That is so far, at least, just like a thing I'm seeing in the right wing fever swamps. Yeah, I think Marjorie Taylor Greene is one of the first like sitting politicians to make a statement focused on the shooter's gender identity saying how much hormones like testosterone and medications for mental illness was the transgender nashville shooter taking everyone can stop blaming guns now and like this style of messaging is just blaming the shooting on like hrt and mental health medication but there's no indication at this point that the

shooter was taking testosterone or was on any medication. But this is just a clear attempt to tie this shooting into the campaign against trans healthcare that Green has been doing for years now. And to make trans healthcare seem like the reason that this shooting took place. This person has kind of already become like Schrorodinger's like gender affirming care right where like and you know suggesting they're doing attacks because they can't access gender affirming care marjorie telegreen's accepting that the gender affirming care they did access made them become more violent like same thing with jack sobiek who was saying that testosterone increases aggression yeah jack posobiec is an influential Republican advisor and commentator.

He's a fascist. He's a terrible person. He's the guy who initially spread the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. But he is influential on the right because of his ability to get stuff to go viral on the base. I guess one thing we should mention that that kind of ties into is that Posobak's been repeating some talking points that Tucker Carlson focused on a few nights ago during his show. There was an NPR segment about trans people who are purchasing firearms to defend themselves that interviewed somebody on a number of folks. One of the people they interviewed is a person who goes by Queer Armor on Twitter about why they've chosen to be armed

and like advocate other trans people arm themselves for self-defense. Tucker took quotes from that person and made a very fear-mongering piece about how NPR and the liberals want to create an army of trans stormtroopers and disarm regular Americans, right that's the piece yeah talking of like i guess armed americans one thing that's also trending is this like incredibly crass photo that the representative for that fifth tennessee's fifth district which is the district the school was in who's called andy ogles ogles maybe posted for his christmas photo i guess which is him it's a classic republican politician photo right entire family uh everyone holding a different variant of an ar-15 and it's yeah like i think regardless of

what you think about guns this is kind of crass to be parading them as like culture war tokens like this and i've noticed uh that's been trending across a lot of the list of timeline I'm seeing. Yeah, this is at the nexus of a number of things that are like fucked up about this country. I'm just enjoying Ian Miles Chong's timeline, unfortunately. Who is Ian Miles Chong? Right wing agent provocateur. Yeah, he lives in Thailand, right? Malaysia, I believe.

Malaysia. Malaysia. Malaysia. He has like half a million Twitter followers, relatively influential on the online sphere. His telegram is Culture War Room, which is, you know, giving you what you need to get, I think. So I'm just going to read this tweet and obviously like all the sort of content warnings you'd expect.

Today, a mass shooter murdered three children and three adults at a christian school in nashville tennessee the murderer pronouns was were was transgender and had written a manifesto detailing their intentions which come days after tennessee passed child protection laws intended to curb children from being subjected to trans surgeries and other irreversible procedures their heinous actions follow a month of media-driven rhetoric about a trans genocide and calls for a so-called trans day of retribution in the united states it is conceivable that much of the conservative public derided as cis is now open season for gender extremists who have been terrorizing women who dare to speak out against a woke ideology when they tell you what they intend to do believe them so hale has posted nothing

about a trans day of retribution uh has posted nothing uh publicly about being trans really there's not a single post discussing their gender identity online um this is just they're just trying to yeah weird political points by purposely like making it sound like this person was writing about this stuff online and there's no evidence that they had writing about this stuff nor is there any of it online that we can find and yeah i don't know i mean it's it's it's basic stuff that people like him do in the aftermath of like any type of event like this yeah you know we're gonna to end now because anything, pretty much any more we said

would be getting into speculation or just belaboring the point about these fucking right-wing ghouls. But I do want to end on a post from a follower, a Twitter personality, who I consider to be pretty savvy. They go by Juniper on Twitter. They noted this. 15 years ago, anytime there was a shooting,

they would blame it on Muslims, and if it were a Muslim, they would go hog wild trying to indict all Muslims. They're doing that right now with the Nashville school shooting, and will try to indict all trans people. Just don't engage. See a Matt Walsh take that is incredibly aggravating? Ignore it. See a politician tweet misgendering the shooter while simultaneously trying to blame all trans people? Ignore it. Anyone with a brain and a shred of empathy will see right-wingers as Hey, everybody. Hey, everybody. Garrison and I are going to put together a post, a Substack post, sort of synthesizing their research and what I've got so far in the right-wing response. And we'll be posting that up.

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