QAA Podcast - Episode 256: Libs Of TikTok And Bomb Threats of Schools feat. Will Carless

Episode Date: November 24, 2023

Libs of TikTok is the name of a social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms run by a woman named Chaya Raichik. In just a few years it has catapulted from a relative unknown to a right-wing media force. Raichik mostly reposts videos, photos, and screenshots designed to stir the ire of her followers. The vast majority of her output concerns the LGBTQ community, for example calling out teachers for sharing their pronouns with students and hospitals for offering gender-affirming care. The accounts have been amplified by the likes of Joe Rogan, Glenn Greenwald, and other big names. The account’s posts often include the names, social media handles, and other identifying information of its subjects, leading to harassment campaigns against the individuals and organizations it spotlights. Raichik’s obsessions often go on to become mainstream topics of conservative discourse. She commands the attention of some of America’s most powerful right-wing politicians, and her influence has empowered the account’s conservative fanbase to threaten and protest children’s hospitals, teachers, school districts, drag shows, and more. To get a better idea of the real world impact of Libs of Tik Tok, we are joined by Will Carless. He is a reporter for USA Today and he recently published an investigation titled “When Libs of TikTok tweets, threats increasingly follow.” And for this report, Carless got a rare personal interview with Raichik herself. REFERENCES Michael Flynn and family pocketed leftover money from his legal defense fund, filing claims https://www.semafor.com/article/11/13/2023/michael-flynn-and-family-pocketed-leftover-money-from-legal-defense-fund-filing-claims The AP incorrectly reported that QAnon Shaman Jacob Chansley has “disavowed the QAnon movement” as he plans an Arizona congressional campaign https://www.mediamatters.org/associated-press/ap-incorrectly-reported-qanon-shaman-jacob-chansley-has-disavowed-qanon-movement When Libs of TikTok tweets, threats increasingly follow https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/investigations/2023/11/02/libs-of-tiktok-tweets-death-bomb-threats/71409213007/ TIMELINE: The impact of Libs of TikTok told through the educators, health care providers, librarians, LGBTQ people, and institutions that have been harassed and violently threatened https://www.mediamatters.org/libs-tiktok/timeline-impact-libs-tiktok-told-through-educators-health-care-providers-librarians

What's up QAA listeners? The fun games have begun. I found a way to connect to the internet. I'm sorry, boy. Welcome listener to the 256th chapter of the QAA podcast, the Libs of TikTok and Bomb Threats of Schools episode. As always, we are your host, Jake Rockatansky. And Travis View.

Libs of TikTok is the name of a social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, and other platforms run by a woman named Haya Reichick. In just a few years, it has catapulted from a relative unknown to a right-wing media force. Reichick mostly reposts videos, photos, and screenshots designed to stir the ire of her followers. The vast majority of her output concerns the LGBTQ community, for example, calling out teachers for sharing their pronouns with students and hospitals for offering gender-affirming care. Her accounts have been amplified by the likes of Joe Rogan, Glenn Greenwald, and other big names. The accounts posts often include the names, social media handles, and other identifying information of its subjects, leading to harassment campaigns against the individuals and organizations its spotlights. Reichs' obsessions often go on to become mainstream topics of conservative

discourse. She commands the attention of some of America's most powerful right-wing politicians, and her influence has empowered the accounts conservative fan base to threaten and protest children's hospitals, teachers, school districts, drag shows, and more. To get a better idea of the real-world impact of Libs of TikTok, we're joined by Will Carlos. He is a reporter for USA Today, and he recently published an investigation titled When Libs of TikTok tweets, threats increasingly follow. And for this report, Carlos got a rare personal interview with Wrightcheck herself. So, Will, thank you so much for joining us today to discuss her reporting.

It's an honor and a privilege, guys. Thank you. Yeah, I'm glad to finally have you on. We've been chatting for years about Q&N and related matters, so this is a long time coming. Glad to have you on the show. Before we get into your recent report, I thought it would be worthwhile to bring back QAnon News.

Because there has been a couple of really, I mean, relevant news items to my interests. Now, first off, Jacob Chansley, better known as the QAnon Shaman, famous for having his photo on basically every news outlet in the world on January 7th, 2021, because of his involvement in the capital riots, he appears to be planning a run for Congress in Arizona with, of course, the Libertarian Party. So he issued a candid statement of interest. He filed paperwork with the Arizona Secretary of State's office. So he seems to

be serious about this. Yet another example of believing in QAnon totally destroying and then empowering your life. I mean, this is, this is a long way he's come from standing alone outside the Arizona Mall shouting about pedophiles. And I assume if he, you know, is elected into office, he will do the same except probably, you know, from behind a podium of some sort. I thought he denounced QAnon, right? Didn't he, didn't he say he doesn't believe in QAnon and it was all nonsense these days? I kind of say, I don't recall when he did this. I mean, I mean, maybe I haven't followed every single one of his tweets. I know that when I went to his first public event right after he got out of prison in Scottsdale, Arizona, he had a, you know, he spoke at a church, to a big crowd.

He said that he was all for what he called the Q psychological operation, while acknowledging it was, it did include some disinformation. He cited, for example, you know, QAnon followers should believe that JFK Jr. is alive and that kind of thing. But he seemed to still have a positive attitude towards Q&on. just a few months ago. Now, you're not the only person to say this. The Associated Press article related to this story said that, quote, although he previously called himself the QAnon Shaman Chansley has since disavowed the QAnon movement. I don't know if that's fully accurate. I disagree. Look, I'm sure, I'm sure if you spend, you know, enough time in the federal penitentiary system, you're going to start coming to terms with separating yourself from

some aspects of the movement that got you into prison in the first place. So that makes sense to me. You know, it's, you can disavow Q as the arbiter of the future, you know, or classified information, and still totally embrace the general sort of emotion that believing in QAnon sort of brings you, as well as, as a lot of the conspiracy theories that are woven in, right? Well, as I learned from your show, like, there is no such thing as Q&N, right? I mean, it was just there at their Q, there's Q, and there are ANONs, but there's no such thing as Q&M. So the second story I want to cover is that according to a recent filing, recent legal filing, members of Michael Flynn's family pocketed hundreds of thousands of dollars and leftover money from a legal defense fund that was set up for Flynn as he faced federal investment. investigation over the, you know, is involved in the 2016 election. So this is relevant to us because

he set up, because a lot of that money that came flowing to him, came from QAnon followers who donated the Flynn because they thought that he was going to help take down the deep state. And so this is really interesting. So this information came from testimony from Michael Flynn's sister that came from a defamation case involving CNN. So in this case, members of Flynn's family sued CNN because that report referenced the fact that they all took the digital soldier oath, and they, I don't know, this is, it's a very flimsy lawsuit, in my opinion. So here are the details. So according to the motion, of Flynn's sister Barbara Redgate, who was a trustee for

the defense fund, testified that she didn't mind taking money from people who use Q&N hashtags as long as they were directing people to the legal defense fund. Now, after paying Flynn's lawyers with the defense fund money, Barbara testified that she was paid about $265,000 and that Flynn was paid whatever was left over in the account. And she claimed that this was somewhere, it was more than $250,000, but less than a million. Wait a minute.

Wait a minute. So she got $250K for running the fundraiser and he got maybe potentially half a million dollars, something like that? Yeah, yeah. It wound up like, I mean, this is obviously. pretty slimy. I don't know if there are anything like any legal stipulations involved with like how these funds are supposed to be distributed. Did they even pay the lawyer? I mean, which lawyer did they have? Was it the guy from the jail cell in the Simpsons? I mean, yeah, it's, it sounds like this, this defense fund is is basically what

we thought it was, is that it was like, you know, perhaps the way to cover these legal bills, but it sounds like there was at least hundreds of thousands, maybe more than a million dollars. left over that they could skim from. These legal defense funds are always like sketchy though. I mean, I've reported on the ones that grew up around the proud boys, you know, both before and after January 6th,

the oath keepers, like, I mean, there seemed to be very few sort of federal and other laws like surrounding what is and is not a legal defense fund. Like, I mean, where are the boundaries of what that money can be used for? It's never been made clear to me. And if there's a whole bunch of money

left over, then what do you have to do, have to go out and commit another crime so that you can use the money in your legal defense. I mean, it seems pretty arbitrary. Right. I mean, if you raise this on like GoFundMe or whatever, you know, GoFundMe isn't going to come after you to see, well, hey, we want to just making sure all the money that you got from us that went directly to the lawyers. Nobody's checking on that. Look, you could have enough money for the lawyers and say, hey, why don't we raise a legal defense, you know, why don't we raise a defense fund and, you know, not only will that offset the, you know, offset the cost of whatever our legal expenses are, but hey, you know, we might have a bunch left over afterwards.

And Flynn was pardoned, right? I mean, he was pardoned twice by Trump, I think. So if you're pardoned, then your legal case essentially goes away, right? Or was he pardoned, I guess he was pardoned after he was already found guilty. Yeah, I think so. Yeah, yeah. He was, yeah, After he was found guilty, he was awaiting sentencing. And the sentencing hearing was delayed for a long time because of COVID. And then, of course, he was eventually pardoned. But, yeah, I mean, it's just a rock solid drift because, because, like, you could, you could just say, help, help, up being attacked by the deep state.

And that's just for the, you know, literally millions of QAnon followers, that's a, that's a quite enticing rallying cry. Sure. Because you feel like, you know, you can, you can do more than just post. You can, you know, you can donate money to your hero Flynn. In theory, if you know you're going to be pardoned anyway, then you can probably get a pretty cheap lawyer, right? Because who cares? Yeah, you can hire old gill.

I wonder how long he kept this defense fund going and his advertising and his cries for money going even after he got information from Trump. Like, don't you worry, you're going to get pardoned before I leave office. That's a moment where you're standing in the living room with your family going, hey, I just talked to President Trump on the phone. he's going to pardon me. And the legal defense fund, it's still climbing. We're at two million dollars already. This is, oh, boy, this is going to be great. I mean, this, how much worse is this than any other number of, like, things that people give their money to, though, right? I mean, it's a free country. You can give your money to whoever you want to, right? But I mean, I think, I think the point here is, like, if it's, if there's no legal defense going on, then, and you're giving to a legal fund, then you've got to have at least a bad taste in your mouth when you figure out it was actually spent on. on, you know, Christmas ornaments or something else, right? Yeah, go and commit some other, you know, small type of misdemeanor crime, you know, just so you can hire a lawyer at least and say, well, hey, look, it's going to the lawyers.

Now, let's move on to Libs of TikTok and your reporting, Will, because, I mean, we've talked about this account before because it is very troubling. We spoke to Taylor Rowens, who wrote that article for the Washington Post, in which we revealed, she revealed the person behind the account and the history of what was involved in making this. And I think this is kind of an interesting story of like not to absolve Haia Rai check of what she's done, but the way in which social media itself and social media attention kind of created a monster because she had tried a few different strategies of ways that she could build a presence online. And this particular one of just driving panic and fear and hate about gay and trans people seemed to be the one that just struck for her. So, I mean, like, how did she think she came upon this content strategy that she's using? I think it just as you say, it was trial and error, right?

I mean, she tried all these different things, and this is the one that she saw catch a light. I mean, she, you know, she's many things, but, like, knowing her audience and knowing how to strike a chord is something that she's clearly very adept at. And, of course, the unfortunate thing, well, among the unfortunate things with that is what we found and what we reported on, which is these threats that came out of that whole campaign and the fact that people just aren't content to just kind of snigger at people, but they, in some cases, are kind of taking matters into their own hands as well and calling in these threats, which is pretty awful.

Yeah, I wanted to get like a better handle on the content that lives of TikTok posts and the threats because you hear that and it sounds bad, but the way you list in your article and the media matters has also done a good job of this as well. I'm just laying out example after example of example of the connection between what the account posts and real world harm. So I want to like just walk through a couple of examples that you discuss. So one thing that you discuss, so on March 16th, 2022, Libs of TikTok targeted Doran Becker Children's Hospital in Oregon. And this is part of the Oregon Health and Science University's health system, and they were targeted for providing gender-affirming care to youth. So what happened

after that? Well, right after that, they started receiving a huge harassment campaign that then eventually grew into a bomb threat that led to serious disruption at the hospital. I mean, unsurprisingly, these hospitals, they're big corporations. They don't really like talking about this stuff very much, but in this case, you know, it was revealed that there was harassment both of the individual doctors and then also the hospital itself. And that's a pattern that just keeps playing out. But, I mean, to talk a little bit about the content of what higher posts on libs of TikTok, I think it falls into a couple of different categories.

What she will say and what she did tell me in my interview with her was, look, I'm just posting what people post themselves. And in a lot of cases, there's some truth to that. I mean, she basically takes a clip from a video that a progressive teacher, usually an LGBTQ plus advocate teacher or doctor has posted online, and she will post that. Now, in a lot of cases, that comes with kind of a snarky comment or a dog whistle, something that's clearly designed to sort of, you know, to mock this person. So that's what I think a lot of people find very hurtful about this account, is that you have these people who are kind of trying to put out there in the world,

these messages of allyship and these messages of love and support. And by mere virtue of putting them on her account. She's basically saying, look how ridiculous and in some cases how insidious and awful these people are. That's her insinuation. And of course, this all plays into this broader right-wing, far-right narrative that anybody who supports LGBTQ causes is, you know, is coming for your kids, is a groomer, is a paedophile that has become really the central rhetoric of the far right and conspiracy theorists over the last couple of years and has led to numerous instances, is not just of harassment and threats, but also of real-life violence and death, as, you know, as you guys know.

So a lot of people have said, you know, she knows exactly what she's doing and she is playing into that audience. Sure, like she's not looking at these videos and going, oh, well, here's something interesting, you know, here's an interesting idea of how to communicate a certain thing in schools or hospitals or any administration or just somebody in their bedroom or whatever, saying, you know, I want to post this so other people can see, you know, know, sort of other walks of life. I mean, she's looking at these videos, I imagine, and going,

oh, this is going to drive people insane. Oh, this is going to piss people off a lot. I mean, that's the nature is I think that when you are running an account, you know, when you are on social media and you are trying to keep your subscribership or, you know, grow your following, you are looking for stuff that you know is going to push the buttons of the audience that you already have. And given that her audience is, you know, right wing, it's, of course, you know, she's looking for stuff that she knows is going to, you know, for lack of a better word, trigger her followers. And she doesn't just stop there, right? I mean, in cases where she has posted things that were obvious hoaxes and obviously sort of designed by people to sort of trip up people

on the far right, she also posts things completely out of context. And without any sort of explanation. She'll take sort of short clips from things. She'll also post just outright what turned out to be outright untruths. You know, for example, she posted about a hospital that was alleged to be performing hysterectomies on children. That just wasn't true. And she ended up having to delete that tweet and along with lots of other tweets, you know, admitting that she had kind of made a mistake on that. So I think it's like she likes to portray herself as a journalist. But first of all, there's a massive amount of kind of bias. There's a very significantly sort of biased MO in everything that she does.

And she gets things wrong. You know, if I, as a journalist, had made the sort of mistakes that she'd made just in the last year, I probably wouldn't have my job anymore. So it's kind of this idea that like, oh, I'm just a journalist doing journalist stuff, but it's like, well, you're doing that, but you don't have any of the editorial guidelines. You don't have any of the sort of loyering and fact checking that goes into our work. you're just sort of putting things out there and sort of the consequences be damned, essentially. Yeah, and it's like, it's really aggravating.

So obviously her primary, you know, goal is clearly to get engagement. It's not about like, you know, helping a clearer understanding of anything in particular. I mean, whenever she gets sent something, because I get the sense that the majority of her content is something that her followers send to her. And she sort of recognizes something to that recognizes content that will generate a lot of outrage and therefore a lot of shares and likes and follows and stuff. And then then she adds the, you know, the appropriate framing that will maximize that amount of rage. And then that's what she goes with.

Like, I don't think her goal is actually to, you know, to illuminate anything as much as inspire, you know, hate, the kind of hate that gets a big engagement for her accounts. Yeah. Well, let me just. to play devil's advocate there for a second and be sort of fair to her. So her stated reasoning for creating this account, what she told me was to quote, raise awareness about the situation in America. She says there's a clear pattern of the sexualization of children going on in public schools and I think that's a problem. I think it's super harmful and I want to call it out and raise

awareness to it. So to be clear, like, I agree with you. I mean, I think that clearly by looking at her content, you can see that, you know, it's mainly, it's mainly based around getting as much engagement as possible. And I think it's fair to look at her past as well, her past attempts to kind of create viral content that then grew into this. Like clearly that's what she wants to do as a content creator. But there is a sort of, there is a, I guess a philosophy behind it. It's not a philosophy that a lot of people agree with, but it's also a philosophy that a lot of people in this country do agree with, which is shown by the amount of followers that she gets, you know. So I guess what I'm saying is like it's not baseless kind of kind of clickbait content driving like it is it does have at its foundation sort of like a goal a stated goal and she's been clear about that and it's a goal that some people agree with and a lot of people don't agree with does that make sense yeah yeah but I think it would be closer to describe her as a kind of like anti gay and trans activist even that feels really charitable I feel like it really is and it's like when examining her account it really

really is more base engagement than anything else. That's just my interpretation. Yeah, I mean, and, you know, through the lens of social media, I mean, this all gets, you know, amplified because these are moments that would otherwise be private moments between, I don't know, teachers and students or, I don't know, confessionals, but the fact that they're posted online, you know, and who posts them? Is it the poster themselves? Is it somebody who also is, you know, subscribes to the same sort of ideology that Haya does? So they go, oh my God, this, is, you know, this is awful. So I'm going to videotape this to make fun of it and post it on social media and then it gets shared to her. It's just, yeah, it just seems, it just seems like

a pipeline of bullying that sort of ends up on this very sort of massive platform where, you know, it's going to get even more views, more engagement. It's going to rile people up even further to the point where it trickles out into the real world, like the article discusses. It's also, to be very clear, it's coming from a place of flawed logic and flawed. you know, and conspiracy theory essentially, you know, it's coming from this idea that, as I mentioned earlier, that anybody who is an ally or in any way feels, believes in a progressive kind of world for the LGBTQ community is engaged in a conspiracy to corrupt children. I mean, she's very frank about that. Like, that's what she believes. And, you know, obviously that's not true, you know,

as anybody who knows anything about the LGBTQ community knows. So, to be very clear, but I guess what I'm saying is like, I think for hire, it's not, it's not just about engagement. It's about sort of driving that narrative. It's about keeping that, you know, conspiracy going and keeping that conspiracy alive and recruiting more people to that conspiracy, which, again, is sort of the central tenet at this point of the far right in the United States. Right. And like only focusing on content that is going to drive that conspiracy further. Like a great example is, you know, when, I don't know about you guys, but when I was in middle school, we had a square dancing unit. I don't know. Did you guys have to take square dancing in middle school

or anything like that? In the United Kingdom, weirdly square dancing. Yeah, it was like, we had this whole unit and you learned how to square dance. It's like, that's not a part of my call. That comes from, that comes from a like Puritan sort of thing that has nothing to do with education or my background or anything. And yet everybody in school, in my, In my middle school, you know, you had to do this and it was part of your gym class or whatever. And it's like, well, nobody's highlighting any of that. Nobody's talking, you know, there's, you know, she's not pointing out all of the, you know, all of the moments in which another culture's sort of traditions or beliefs or practices are forced on, you know, children.

It is only focused on this one thing, which, which I think Travis, you know, made, made the point of. I also want to talk about some of the other people that, uh, that lives of TikTok have targeted because it's not just, uh, big institutions. Um, so lives of TikTok has also targeted individual doctors as you discuss in your piece. Um, you, you, uh, discussed the example of, uh, last October, right check posted a video of Dr. Catherine Gast, and, uh, she's the co-director of the University of Wisconsin Madison's UW health gender services program. And in this video, she described gender-affirming operations, and what was the result of the attention that that Ritechek gave this doctor?

Well, GAST spoke with NBC News at the time and told them that, you know, this was pretty terrifying. It was a scary and overwhelming time, she said, and I think anybody who's ever found themselves at the center of sort of the far-right, you know, troll storm and just the far-right ecosystem for a few days knows that it's pretty horrible. I mean, it happened to me last week, you know, I kind of became the target of hire and a few other people, and it gets, it gets pretty jarring, you know, now in, in, in gas case, I believe she was getting like literal threats to her phone, like threats to her person to her life. And I mean, this is just a doctor who's, again, like trying to do good in the world, trying to make people's lives better and has their care and their work taken, you know, out of context. And then the next thing they know they're being threatened with their lives. So, And that's happened, like, again and again. I was reading a story this morning about a teacher who has been threatened just last week

because they were targeted in an individual post. So, like, that's what we were really trying to get at with this story, right? Is it's like, if this happens once or twice, you know, because this account is calling these people out, then it can be, you know, it could be seen as like an outlier. But this has happened like literally dozens of times over the last two years. And it's actually like speeding up. there are more and more cases of these actual literal bomb threats being called in and this disruption to, you know, not just to individuals, but to schools and libraries and hospitals and all the

rest of it. So it's like, it's the pattern that I think is the most damning thing about this. Whatever your motivation, whatever's driving her to post these things, like the result of what she's doing is at this point, like, inescapable. Like, it's happening. There's lots and lots of evidence to show that it's happening. And there's lots of evidence. to show that there's a correlation between what she posts and those threats that come out. Yeah, you're right. It has happened over and over again. And one of the most interesting things that I saw from reporting is the specific examples of schools that were threatened and even had to, as a consequence, had to, you know, disrupt the school operations. I mean, could you talk about

what you learned about those instances? Yeah, so most recently this happened up in Davis, in California, where what happened was you had an event at a library in Davis, which is a sort of fairly small city in California. And at this event, it was actually a Moms for Liberty group, which I think you guys have done some reporting on as well. And Moms for Liberty, this kind of far right, you know, parents' rights group was holding this event and the people in the event kept on misgendering female trans athletes

and kept basically calling them men. And one of the library staff stepped in, and said, look, this needs to stop. Like, you need to stop doing that, and they wouldn't. And then they ended up actually canceling the event and kicking them out because of it. Now, that clip went viral, libs of TikTok tweets about it. And then the next thing you know, that library starts getting bomb threats. That then extended to the local school district that started to get bomb threats as well.

And I think they're up to like seven bomb threats. And those schools have had to, you know, they've had to literally close. They've had to send students home. These kids' education has really been disrupted as a result. And it's like, now, hire will say, well, do you have any evidence that that's my followers doing that? And, you know, in each and every instance, look, is the person calling in the bomb threat and saying, I'm doing it because lips of TikTok told me to or because lips of TikTok tweeted about you yesterday? No.

But again, what we showed with our reporting, what we showed what media matters kind of pulled together was this correlation. There's a tweet. And then in the days that follow, there's a threat. And not only that, but the threat is directed almost always along. the same line. So if the tweet is about LGBTQ stuff, then the threat is about LGBTQ stuff, right? And so there's, it's, you know, there's no doubt that that correlation is there. And yes, schools have really been the target over the last two or three months. There have been something like, I think it was 16 different individual threats to school districts. And it's like, it's

seriously impacting like kids learning in those districts. It's really, it's really quite sad to, you know, to see. Yeah. I mean, that's certainly one of the things. that makes me call bullshit on the claim that this kind of activity is motivated by concerns for the welfare of children. Because if there's anything that, like, you know, harms their welfare of children, it's, you know, forcing them to not be able to attend school or their library for several days. Another anecdote that you have in your reporting concerns here, the South Dakota State University Gender and Sexualities Alliance. And you spoke to someone named Alyssa Gonzalez about what happened there.

So what was the story? So, yeah, this was a really interesting one. This is one of those examples of where Lips of TikTok tweeted something that just wasn't accurate. And what happened was they tweeted an image of somebody wearing a nude illusion, which is essentially like a bodysuit that makes you look nude. And they claimed that this was at a drag show, an all-age drag show held up, held by the Gender and Sexualities Alliance at South Dakota State University. It actually wasn't. It was from a previous year's drag show at which no children were present.

But it didn't matter because once it hit libs of TikTok, it got out there and the next thing that they knew, they were getting all of these threatening phone calls and threatening emails and that eventually culminated in a bomb threat. And so I spoke with Alyssa, who's the president of the GSA, the group that put that on. And what was really remarkable about that story is that Alyssa told me that she had gone home for the holidays around this time of year, last year. when she got a call from the police department about, about the bomb threat. And in her situation, she was actually standing, like, in her parents' house and when she took this call, and her dad was like, hey, what was that about? And she ended up having to come out to her parents.

Like, she had not previously come out to them, and this conversation, this bomb threat, kind of really pushed the issue. And now, for her, luckily, everything went great. Her parents were very supportive and constructive, but that just kind of shows, I mean, That's just one example that I found of, like, talking to someone where I was actually able to connect with the person who was, you know, at the center of the threat. And it just shows, like, the ripple effects of this activity, you know, like, it's not just the threat itself. Look, a bomb threat is scary, right? A school shutting down is scary.

But, like, how many other, like, psychological impacts are there out there to people? You know, how many kids who, you know, maybe there's a kid out there who's, you know, been involved in what has been a target in a school shooting? And like, and this is bringing back all the trauma of that as they have to be, like, taken out of their classroom, right? I mean, it's like, it's not just the observable damage that's being done. I think it's like just the multiple, multiple ways that these, that this resonates and that this, you know, ends up causing harm to people. Yeah. And also, you know, all for the fact that these, you know, however many hundreds of thousands of followers that she have, can just believe the thing that they already believe. You know, it's not even, you know, correct me, if I'm wrong.

but I don't feel like, you know, her content is necessarily changing minds. I mean, maybe it is, you know, maybe she's radicalizing people to be anti-gay, anti-trans. But I have to believe that for the most part, she's just stoking a fire that is already roaring. And yet all of these people's lives, you know, people who are affected by her posts, you know, their lives are affected significantly. In this specific case, you know, being forced to come out to your parents, you know, maybe before you're ready. And it's like all for what? So, so the people who are affected. who already are anti-gay, anti-trans can be like, oh, yeah, more, yeah, more of the stuff that I, you know,

more of the stuff that makes me mad when I watch it, good. It's just like, the whole thing feels so gross and, and, ugh, it's just another moment where, where I am so, I am so sad for our species with how popular and essential social media has become to our, you know, our way of life. Really, mostly for the worst. It's mostly for the worst, folks. I really think I was hoping the Trump the Trump impression was going to come out it's it's really I think it's more than that too I think it's more than just kind of like appealing to people's kind of base hatred and base you know biases because as I've kind of mentioned a couple of times like I really genuinely think that that sort of anti trans issues particularly but anti-LGBQ issues in general that's kind of becoming like the

GOP platform, at least the far-right GOP platform, right? That's what has become like the glue that is keeping the, you know, at least the far right of the Republican Party together. And it's almost like, I mean, this whole show is based on Q&N, right? And Q&N is so fascinating and it's been so interesting. And essentially what Q&N kind of boils down to, right, is it's a brand, right? I mean, it's a, it's an idea. It's a sticker you can put on your car that sends other like-minded people the message that like we're in the same team like it's a dog whistle and that is increasingly what anti-trans sentiment and thought and ideas have become they've become this this kind of dog whistle and this symbol to the rest of kind of your club that like you're all in the same club together

and it's sort of filling in many ways it's filling the void that qanon kind of you know has has increasingly left behind so yeah i don't think it's it's it's just about that. It's also about just reassuring the base, like, reassuring the far right base that, like, hey, there's still an idea that we all agree with, right? There's still this thing, even if Trump goes away, even if he doesn't, you know, doesn't win, even if QAnon kind of fades into insignificance, like, there's still this thing that we all agree with, right? And we're going to keep fight again. We're going to keep pushing it. Yeah, anti-gay, anti-trans, anti-communist. Right. And what's really remarkable is like if you talk to young people, like if you talk to like the teenagers who like are apparently like being mortified by this stuff is it's like this is genuinely like they see it. A lot of them see it as like this is the civil rights issue for them. This is these this is the thing that they are going to fight for. And you know, it's it's it's a really interesting place to be in 2023 because what the trans population is is a fraction of this country. I mean it's like less than two percent. But yeah,

the amount of time and effort that the far right has devoted to sort of making that population the center of attention is like it's it's really it's really eye-opening I think well and I think there's probably the added effect that because this kind of hatred and rhetoric is so public that maybe that percentage is smaller because people are you know increasingly more fearful to live how they want to live like there was this uh there was a person at our live show one of our live shows in, I believe it was Colorado, and we did a short Q&A after the show, and they stood up and they said, you know, they asked, you know, I'm curious to know what kind of resources you guys follow where you get your information from. I want to tap into that because I'm afraid for my life

and I want to, you know, I want to have as much information as possible so I don't go to a place that's, you know, potentially dangerous or this, that, and the other thing. And we were all at a loss for words. It was incredibly heartbreaking to hear, you know, It's one thing when you see it online, but when you're in the same room with somebody and you're standing across from them and you can see that they are afraid for their own safety just to be who they are. It is, it's just awful. It's shocking that we're still there in like 2023. Yeah. There is, you know, that there's, that there are, you know, hundreds of thousands, millions of people out there who are literally fearful for just living in the skin that they live in.

You know, I hear that, I hear that a lot in my reporting. We actually did a really big investigation at the end of last year into an all-aged drag show in Texas, in Roanoke, Texas, that sort of became the center of attention and we delved a lot deeper into it because actually anti-fascists showed up armed to protect

this drag show. You guys might remember those kind of viral videos and viral photos of that event, but it's like, that's where we are right now. We're at the point where if you are, not even if you're trans, but even if you are like a drag performer who is trying to sort of share like

love and understanding and acceptance, like you literally need the protection of armed allies who come to the event with you to protect you from the people who wish you harm, right? I mean, that's a pretty remarkable place to be in 2023. Yeah, I mean, this is why I think this reporting is so valuable because obviously not every single instance of someone being seriously threatened or harassed is publicly known. Like, I know that because it's not a fun thing to talk about publicly. And, you know, I know I don't talk about every single instance of like trolling harassment I'm the subject of, number one, because I don't think that's an interesting story. And then number two, because I know that this sometimes just empowers the trolls. I know

how trolls operate. I know they like, they like the thrill of knowing that they got a reaction out of someone. And so, you know, so like, you know, trying to just take this with, with good grace is just a way of denying that. Now, not everyone has that luxury when like, you know, well, they're being like we're in the subject of very serious life-threatening threats. But yeah, this is like, this is really is this, what we know about what stuff you report is almost certainly just the tip of the iceberg of the very harmful impact of, you know, this just never-ending hate campaign that's coming out of lives of TikTok. And to be clear, like we put ourselves in the firing line, you know what I mean?

Like if I get descended by like far right trolls because I wrote a story about like hierarchic like you know I turned my Twitter off and it's like well I just got to deal with that for for a couple of days because I put myself out there but like I reached out to people in the course in the course of writing that story I reached out to people who had been tweeted about like that week by lives of TikTok and I said hey just wanted to know like you getting more more more harassment and like three people who I reached out to like came straight about to me like oh my god I had no idea what was going on I suddenly started to get all of this stuff in my inbox and like all of these hateful messages and all this hate, and turns out it was because of this. I didn't

even know that this was out there. So it's not like, like, it's a different playing field when, again, when I write a story about hire, I interview her, she decides to sick her followers on me, like whatever, like that's fair game, you know, to a certain extent. But if you're just some person who, again, is trying to put a message of like joy and love and allyship out there, and then that video gets taken out of context and gets put onto this site. And the next thing you know, you're getting, you know, all of this hate. Like, honestly, what this story reminds me of is I did a story a few months ago about a guy called, uh, I don't even want to name him, but let's just say like a far right troll. He's a like literal neo-Nazi who was organizing something, um, was organizing

a campaign on telegram. Now, his was much more blatant. He was basically saying, go and attack these people, go and like, you know, ruin their day, go and ruin their week. Like, go, go, go attack these people and it was mainly like LGBTQ accounts on like Instagram but again just like random people that have been kind of plucked out of midair and this guy was just like sicking his followers on them now higher sort of dabbles with the idea of saying like go after these people she has in a couple of times like sort of said oh it would be terrible if these people got a lot of phone calls but again like she can sit there and say like I don't tell people to go out and do these threats and I condemn them and all the rest of it, but what she hasn't done is say, don't do this, right?

She hasn't at any point said, please don't go and threaten people and send bomb threats, right? Which she could do. Yeah, it's a wink, it's a wink, wink, not, not. It's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's, I mean, I, I, I, I don't think that she could plausibly say, look, look, I, hey, I had no idea that this person was going to be the subject of, you know, all of these hateful messages or, you know, trying to get them fired from their workplace or whatever, you know, whatever the outcome is. I don't think even, I don't even think she could convince herself that that is not a part, you know, of what

she's doing. Right. Because we all know that. We know how mean people can be on social media because they don't have to face any consequences. They can just, you know, they can sit and be as mean as they want to be and they can close their phone and they can go on and live and they can live their life. But the person on the other end is the one that has to, you know, reap, reap all of the consequences. It's, it's really unfair. And we shouldn't lose track as well at the fact that this is an extremely vulnerable population. I mean, this is a, this is a group of, this is a segment of society that has a far higher suicide rate than, you know, than the average. It's a, as we, as you talked about earlier, it's a, it's a population that is already, like, fearful and scared and

having to deal with, like, harassment, you know, from other places. And that's the specific audience that is increasingly, like, getting, getting targeted by this. Like, you know, leave aside the doctors, leave aside the teachers for a minute, leave aside the librarians, like, look at just like the, the trans people or the LGBT. BTQ people that she posts about, like, those are, you know, those are people who are already vulnerable and already being targeted in society. And they're being laser focused on with this, you know, with these campaigns. So for this piece, you managed to get in the interview with Ritech herself, which is a bit of a feat considering her hostility to the press. I'm

curious how you swung that. I think it's the first interview that she's done with someone who wasn't a complete sycophant, like, frankly. I just reached out to her on Twitter. I was like, hey, I'm writing this story, and I'd really like to talk to you. And she said, she wrote back saying, look, I'll do it, but only if I can record the whole thing. And I said, that's fine. I mean, I've got nothing to, you know, nothing to hide at all. Like, let's do it. And then, yeah, got a call from her and we talked for about 45 minutes. has interesting uh and like she we spoke to her i mean did she totally like just like seemed to play dumb act like she had no culpability for you know for the connection between what she posts and then

what the subjects of her post have to go through yes essentially yeah i mean what she now she did several times condemn like these bomb threats she said look i don't want anyone getting bomb threats i don't want anyone getting hurt like i completely i'm completely against that i think they should be investigated, but she, you know, openly denied the fact that they're connected to anything that she's posting. She essentially said, look, you don't have any proof that these people are doing this because I tweeted about them. And her sort of big argument that I think she'd kind of thought long and hard about back at me was like, hey, if I get a bunch of death threats after you write this story about me, are you the journalist then responsible for those death threats? And my response

to that was like, look, I write a lot of stories, right? about a lot of different people, and if over the course of two years, if someone put together a study and came to me and said, look, over the course of like two years, dozens of people that you've written about have been threatened. Like, I would take that very seriously, right? And I think that anyone who's in the dissemination of facts, business, which is what we do, would, you know, in good conscience, take that seriously. Like, imagine if, imagine if someone came to you guys, imagine if, like, Project Veritas or something came to you and were like, hey, guys, you know, I just want to let you know, like, in dozens of occasions, like, over the last two years,

like subjects of QAnon Anonymous of like face death threats and intimidation and harassment. I mean, you'd be, you'd probably think twice about that, right? You'd be concerned about that. But what she did was just deny it. She just denied the connection, said, you know, like, you have no proof. This is somebody who's inspired by me or driven by me. Like I literally think she will maintain that line up until the point where somebody either calls in a death threat and sort of literally says, like, I saw you on lives of TikTok or

libs of TikTok, you know, told me about you, or, God forbid, you know, goes out and commits an act of violence and, you know, openly says, like, I'm doing this because I saw it on this channel. So, you know, hopefully we don't get to that point, but she's certainly not kind of backing down on anything that she says or does. And I think that that's also sort of indicative of the right-wing content creator. You know, I can say for our part, you know, when we first started this show, there was always a constant conversation about trying to examine, you know, whether we were punching down or we were, you know, there were times where we edited stuff out because we felt like this is a small account that's doing something sort of crazy and, you know, yeah, it's funny, but it feels bad. I mean, we were constant, you know, and still, you know, to this day, we're constantly try to be aware of, of that, of even people who we, we completely disagree with. you know, politically or ideologically, we try to, you know, I speak for myself, but I think

Travis would agree. I think we, we try to take into account the, the human affect of, you know, whatever we cover. And I think that when it comes to, you know, right wing or, you know, extreme right wing content that is that's part of it right because they they do believe that they are in this like you like you said you know this civil war that they are you know that this is these are the hills that they're willing to die on and you know posting online attacking people online each is a bullet you know on on the front lines of this this sort of war that they believe that they're in yeah i mean 100 percent and and you know it's just the thing is that all this this has been such an interesting kind of journey to go on reporting this story and kind of dealing with the,

you know, with the backlash that resulted from it from the far right and kind of dealing with, you know, with evidence that came out of it because it's, it sort of crosses over a lot of different interesting things that are going on right now, right? Because I mean, there's this sort of weird blurring of like what's journalism and what's not, you know, and what I would say is like, look, there are plenty of like conservative news sites that are every single day, reporting about what they consider to be like outrageous activity going on in schools and outrageous activity like and just this sort of idea that the LGBTQ community is kind of taking over or whatever they pick your conspiracy theory right like and they're doing it like at least with a

sort of a veneer of like journalistic integrity they're doing it in terms of like they're not just riling people up like they're sort of trying to put facts out there and like let people make their mind up but they are you know they have a focus right in the same way that like a lot of media organizations on the far left have a focus, right, and are constantly engaged in, like, trying to make the other side look bad, right? But what Hire doesn't do is she is, she's sort of trying to walk this line that she's a journalist, but again, she's not, she doesn't play by the journalistic rules. And a great example with that, and I hate to bring this up, because as you mentioned earlier, Travis, like, we're not the story, right? Like, we're the,

we're the reporters, like, we're just kind of getting stuff out there. But, you know, she has, she's released two videos, like, since this story came out, both of them, like, attacking me and attacking my integrity. And she's very, very selectively, like, edited out parts of that video to, you know, make her point. And, like, of course she was going to do that. Like, I mean, we knew that she was going to do that the moment that I signed up to do the interview.

But the point is, like, she hasn't included any context. She hasn't included my side. She hasn't contacted me and said, hey, like, I'm doing this. I'm going to make this video. Like, do you have a comment on it? You know, like, the mere fact that I not only reached out to her, but then spent 45 minutes to, like, listening to her, hearing her out, discussing it with her. Like, that's what actual journalists do, you know?

And if you're not going to do that, then you can call yourself a content creator, call yourself, like, whatever you want to call yourself. But, like, I don't know, it's not what I consider to be journalism. Yeah, we saw, like, on her page, she included a photo of herself holding the issue of USA Today with like, you know, her Twitter handle on the, you know, on page one, seeming very proud of this very unflattering story about how she's helping inspire bomb threats at schools. But she seemed to be proud of it because, you know, it was like,

oh, this old thing is like, well, I'm being attacked by the mainstream media. So I'm like over the target. I mean, it's all, I think, a real bullshit performance. She also changed her background image to one of, like, it's the lives of TikTok logo, but with like little fuses coming off it. So they're like bombs. So it's like, look, You don't get to, in the interview, say, I completely, I'm completely against this.

I don't think people should do this. And then, like, act proud and, you know, sincerely, like, happy about the fact that there's a story written about you causing bomb threats. Like, I mean, those two things to me are mutually exclusive. Yeah, you can't have it both ways. You can't be, oh, I'm proud. I'm proud of the, you know, quote unquote activism that is happening around my content. But I'm also totally, totally.

surprised that deep state USA today would frame me in such a negative way. This is, this is crazy this thing that they are accusing me of. And I'm so proud of this crazy thing at the same time. It's all wink, wink, nod, because she knows, I think that, you know, I'm making an assumption, but I don't think she's scared in any way that this is going to cost her engagement or followers. And if anything, you know, it's a badge of honor, like you said. And what all we can do is, Like, I'll just point back to the reporting. I point back to the story. You know, I say, hey, the facts are there.

Like, make your own mind up. Like, go read the story. Go look at the correlation. Go look at these, you know, instances, all of which I verified, by the way. You know, media matters did the initial work and said, and did the initial correlation and, like, found these. I then confirmed every single one of them, like, called every one of these institutions, spent a long time, spent weeks, you know, making phone calls, emails, like, trying to

confirm this stuff. The facts speak for themselves. Like, we put out a set of facts. it's there like she can spin it any way she wants to and other people can spin it whatever way they want to like i'm just going to point back at the reporting and say like it's there go read it you know what was the demeanor of of the folks you know who worked at these institutions that you talk to i'm sure on the one hand they they were happy that there was a you know a real journalist calling to verify these these facts but what was there because you know if you're working in a hospital that's that's not easy work

I mean, we always say, you know, when life gets hard, like, hey, you know, at least I'm not an emergency room operator, you know, that has to, you know, life and death every single day. But to add this on top of what's already pretty well known to be a very stressful sort of occupation. But yeah, what was their sort of emotional sort of reaction when you talk to them? Well, so the hospitals are kind of in their own camp, right? Because hospitals have like PR people. They have, you know, they have a whole PR apparatus. They're also, you know, a business. And their overwhelming response was essentially, like, we don't want to talk about this.

Like, this happened in the past. It's over. We're done. We don't want any more publicity on this. You don't want any more negative publicity. Now, the schools that I could reach and the individuals that I could reach, it was one. First off, I mean, their sort of fear and upset had largely kind of congealed into anger. And that anger was, like, as far as they were concerned, like, there was no doubt where this harassment campaign started.

and where these threats came from and who had caused them. Like, they all firmly pointed the finger at, you know, lives of TikTok. They said, look, this was like nothing. This was like a little controversial thing or in some cases wasn't even a controversy until that tweet went out and then it went haywire. But I'd say there was some defiance. There was some kind of teeth gritting and like, we will overcome this kind of stuff. But there's also residual fear.

Like there were several people who wouldn't talk to me and who were clearly wanting to put this behind them, you know, or just didn't, didn't want to kind of rip the band-aid off this, like, awful experience that they'd had, you know, and I think that that's something that I see time and time again with people who've been victims of, like, the far-right kind of harassment, of far-right harassment campaigns, is like, if they come out the other side and they're recovering from it and sort of, you know, trying to heal the wounds, like, they don't want to talk about it, you know, like, it's a horrible experience and they don't want to open back up again. They do not want their name in print again.

you know now there are some brave people like alissa who we mentioned earlier from from south dakota and you know she told me her whole story and kind of describe the whole thing and um there's a great like kind of quote in my story where where they basically she basically says look she basically told me look we've kind of come out the other end and now what we do in our meetings is like we read these comments or we read the tweets that have been directed at us but we kind of read it in a stupid voice you know so we're kind of like mocking them take the power away yeah And she said, oh, she said, it feels like, oh, we've made it. We're making news and people are going to notice us.

And if they notice us, then we can talk more too. We can still say that despite all this, we're here, we're queer, we're out, and we're proud. And that sums up, like, what some of the people who come out the other end of these campaigns told me. Well, you know, I'm going to leave it there, because that's, I think, for a very disturbing story, that's about the most positive note we could end it on. So thank you so much, Will. Can people read more of your work? Well, definitely on USA Today.

I mean, if you just Google Will Carlos, you know, USA Today, then that'll take you to my author page. That's got all my stories on it. And they can follow me. I'm at Will Carlos. And, yeah, hit me up. All right. Thank you so much, Will. Thank you, guys.

Thanks for listening to another episode of the QAA podcast. You can go to patreon.com slash QAnonanonymous and subscribe for $5 a month to get a whole second episode every single week, plus access to our entire. higher archive of premium episodes, of which there are now, what, Travis, like 200 and 30? Like over 250? Yeah, I mean, yeah, we got the 200 plus premium episodes, plus 10 episodes of trickle-down, plus 10 episodes of Manplant, plus soon to be, very soon to be, 10 full episodes of Spectral Voyager. It is a content bonanza. Yes, it's a pretty, I must say, It's a pretty good value for $5. And look, if you're itching to hear the premium content,

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QAnonanonanonymous.com. So, listener, until next week, may the deep dish bless you and keep you. It's not a conspiracy, it's fact. And now, today's auto QU. So USA Today wrote this insane hippies on me, and I actually agreed to an interview for it, and I spoke with Well, he's a journalist,

for 45 minutes. I recorded the whole thing. And what they left out of the art, article is that I denounced violence and called for law enforcement to take action about these bomb threats. Not once, not twice, not three times, but a total of 14 times. Will mentioned that in some obscure paragraph. He mentions it once, like she says she opposes violence. But he conveniently leaves that all the other times that I oppose violence and bomb threats, and the fact that I never even once called for violence or bomb threats. But the whole framing of the article

is how I'm some harmful, hateful, dangerous, violent terrorist who's inciting bomb threats. I've never advocated for any sort of violence. I have never called for violence or to call them bomb threats. I think that the FBI should 100% use the fullest extent of the law to go after anyone calling it fake bomb threats. Like I said, I've never once called for any kind of violence or anything like that. So are these threats happening? If they are, why aren't the people being arrested?

Who are these people? If I had called for violence, then I would understand making a tweet like that. But I never have, and it's not the goal of my account. Everybody knows that. I have repeatedly called for law enforcement. I am very pro-law enforcement. I've never called for violence. I've never called for bond threats.

In fact, I celebrated when that woman was arrested for making bomb threats at Boston Children's Hospital. If someone decides to call in a bomb threat, that person obviously has issues and they should be arrested. I'll say it again, I've never called for violence. I'm against violence in any form. Thank you.