Right-wing extremists have been labeling school employees as "groomers" and "pedophiles" and then exposing their personal information online.
Fox News hosts and Republican lawmakers have been boosting conspiratorial claims that opponents of anti-LGBTQ legislation are sexual predators, and those lies have inspired harassment and threats against educators, administrators and others, reported Vice.
“This stuff isn’t going to change at this point until there’s body bags,” posted a commenter on the right-wing forum Patriots.win.
“Straight to the woodchipper for them,” another responded.
The posters had been commenting on an inaccurate report on TownHall.com that claimed a Connecticut school was giving puberty blockers to an 11-year-old student without the parents' consent, and an account on Patriots.win then posted the school superintendent's address on five separate occasions and called for her execution.
“The superintendent is supporting leftist grooming in her schools. She needs to be executed by our judicial system,” posted that user, using the name ProudAmericanKorean.
That resulted in numerous vulgar and threatening emails and phone calls to officials at Hartford Public Schools District, some of them directly targeting superintendent Leslie Torres-Rodriguez.
“We are taking the allegations and threats directed at our teachers and staff extremely seriously, and we hope that other members of the community will work with us to create the best possible environment for all children,” said a school district spokesperson.
The pedophilia conspiracy theories originated in the QAnon world but have been mainstreamed by Republican lawmakers and conservative media, and right-wing extremists have responded to the escalation with threats that closely resemble chatter about "hangings" ahead of the Jan. 6 insurrection.
“Using this type of false and misleading rhetoric has consequences,” said Daniel J. Jones, president of Advance Democracy, Inc.. “We warned in early January 2020 that similar false conspiracy language around the 2020 election was spurring detailed discussions of attacking the U.S. Capitol. We now fear that we are going to see violent action — fueled by these false pedophilia claims — again.”
Fox News alone ran 50 one-hour segments devoted to pedophilia and sex offenders in the one-month period between March 6 and April 6, according to ADI, but the extremists on Patriots.win and Gab see the conservative network as “an industrial-scale child-grooming operation.”
“The only way [gender ideology indoctrination] stops is with rope," posted Gab user Josef Bosch. "Lots and lots of rope.”
