Violent Rhetoric Escalates in Defiance of Calls to Investigate Transphobic Bomb Threats

in 1819, a right extremist media company in Alabama, a frightening piece by Craig Monger

You can already tell by the scare quotes around ‘bomb threats’ in the headline of this 1819 piece that this not going to be pretty. Extremists are responding to a call from three major medical associations for authorities to investigate the recent threats made against hospitals and their staff. These death threats, bomb threats, and calls for violence have been motivated by transphobia, and by a firestorm of irresponsable, hate-fueled coverage in the right wing and conservative press.

The story gives an outline of the events, noting that “so far” none of the authors of transphobic propaganda have been found directly responsible for any of the aforementioned threats or calls for violence against the very hospitals they’ve smeared with florid, overheated prose. Then it says this:

Now. There are tactics of both the FBI and the DOJ that certainly are worthy of concern, though perhaps not any more so in recent years. However, to focus on criticizing these government agencies in a context of increasing violence, and while pooh-poohing and handwaving away the people sending bomb threats against children’s hospitals gives off more than a whiff of, well, of January 6. It’s a faint bouquet of political violence, of neo-confederacy, of treason, of sedition, and of turning and biting the same police hand that has fed the white nationalist extremist movement for so long.

Or maybe the fine reporters at 1819, whose executive editor was previously an editor at Breitbart News, are just really, genuinely concerned about some of the tactics of the FBI. Who can say? Certainly not me! I mean, not if I don’t want to be murdered in my bed.