MAGA Republican groups go from attacking teachers and librarians to target children's hospitals: expert warns
MAGA Republicans have spent the last two years going after teachers and librarians for teaching about slavery or highlighting Black leaders like Martin Luther King, Jr. and Harriet Tubman.
Speaking to MSNBC's Mehdi Hasan, reporter Brandy Zadrozny explained that the recent bomb threats called into Boston Children's Hospital are just more of the same from the right-wing that has been going after anyone helping to treat transgender children. The Washington Post reported that a right-wing digital group is behind attacks on a Washington, D.C. children's hospital. To make matters worse, social media sites are allowing it to continue.
"Children’s hospitals across the U.S. are facing growing threats of violence, driven by an online anti-LGBTQ campaign attacking the facilities for providing care to transgender kids and teens," the Post reported.
Zadrozny said that this is the next step for MAGA Republicans, who she believes are setting their sights on attacking doctors and hospitals.
"Like you said, this is an ongoing way of anti-LGBTQ sentiment, the far-right and from the loudest conservatives on Twitter," she explained. "And that sentiment has hit libraries. We've seen librarians targeted. Schools, we've seen kindergarten teachers, and elementary school teachers targeted. And now, we're heading to children's hospitals. Literally, these folks have doctors, librarians, school teachers in their target."
She explained that Twitter suspended "Libs of TikTok" for their policy against threats of violence and harassment, but after a week the group is back targeting specific teachers with harassment. Meanwhile, TikTok is allowing threats of violence to grow on it's platform despite claiming they don't allow "hateful behavior" on the platform.
Zadrozny explained that the right-wing account thinks that teachers are somehow indoctrinating children to be gay, after Gov. Ron DeSantis's (R-FL) so-called "don't say gay" legislation.
"You know, here's the problem, it's that none of these tech companies have a north star when it comes to moderation, right? This is violence. This is harassment. It's clear what these accounts are doing," she explained. "But with their policies, they literally have to wait until somebody gets hurt or killed to say, 'oh, this is the promotion of violence.' Just like we saw with Jan. 6th. Nothing got Donald Trump kicked off the platform until something dangerous, until violence actually happened. And by then, it's too late. At this point, the way that we've built social media, it's already been weaponized. And so, even kicking 'Libs of TikTok' off now would hardly really do anything. They could still target on another social media platform or another person who just would come up and take 'Libs of TikTok's place.' It happens all the time. I don't actually see a way out of it."
On Thursday, President Joe Biden sounded the alarm about the right being filled with violence and urged Americans to stand up against movements like these that incite violence.
See the full conversation below:
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