Racist, Nazi Trans Woman Arrested After Trans Facebook Group Raised Alarms
Right-wing media have obscured the role of an online transgender support group in alerting authorities to her disturbing, violent posts. Similar material went unreported on Twitter.
by Evan Urquhart
Could this be the first ever documented case of conservatives approving of police intervening to prevent a Nazi with an arsenal of firearms from acting on their violent social media posts? It certainly feels as though Elizabeth West, a trans woman from Oregon who praised the Holocaust, posted Nazi flags and made other hateful posts against Jewish and Black people on Twitter, may represent the very first time conservatives have ever agreed that a person who made violent racist social media posts and stockpiled guns and ammunition should be dealt with by the police.
West was arrested by the FBI last week after months of investigation by the feds, starting back in September when members of a transgender support group on Facebook reported West’s violent posts, where she claimed that transphobia had her “at the end of my rope” and posted pictures of guns saying she’d go out “in a blaze of glory.” The subsequent investigation turned up additional posts on Twitter that included pictures of guns juxtaposed with racist and antisemitic comments.
Unlike the Facebook posts, the Twitter material had not been removed. Whether it had been reported is unclear.
Some right-wing media, including the Daily Wire, have drawn particular attention to West’s transgender identity and downplayed the role of the online trans community in ensuring that her behavior was reported to police. This has resulted in some pretty twisted paragraphs that… well… look for yourself:
screenshot from the Daily Wire
That’s right, the Daily Wire wants to be SUPER DUPER CLEAR that none of the racist stuff was criminal, because goodness knows that wouldn’t be popular with their core audience of *checks notes* racist Nazis.
The full Daily Wire story is an absolute case study in cognitive dissonance. The writer, Luke Rosiak, who specializes in stories fomenting fears that transgender people are violent, seems to want to say at one and the same time that the FBI is overreaching when they target extreme right racists, but also that he approves of a trans woman being arrested. The story carefully avoids mentioning how West’s Facebook posts wound up being reported the FBI, a detail that might lead readers to conclude that the transgender community has no tolerance for violent threats, even when they’re being justified by accusatons of transphobia, and is in fact much more vigilant in reporting individuals who may post a risk than the far-right racists of Twitter are.
West reportedly suffers from bipolar disorder and refused a request to give her guns up to the FBI. The FBI agent involved in writing an affidavit reviewed by Oregon Live reportedly works in a unit that attempts to “determine if someone is on a ‘pathway to violence.’”