Editor's note: Nina-Bytes is a weekday blogging series that features short analysis and commentary on articles from around the web.
In the fall of 2022, the ongoing evolution of American fascism forced me out of my comfort zone as an antifascist analyst in a starkly personal way. Although transphobia and anti-gay persecution have always churned in the undercurrents of modern fascism, the year-long lead up to the 2022 U.S. midterm elections exposed a well-funded, GOP-supported plan to make an anti-trans pogrom a foundational organizing principle for "respectable" fascists in American politics. Predictably, this escalation of trans and LGBTQ persecution in everyday politics worked to unite violent street fascists with Republican fascists in politics, leading to an immediate outbreak of violence and murderous acts of stochastic terrorism.
Unfortunately, even sympathetic media outlets chose to report this phenomenon almost exclusively as it pertained to the (then) upcoming American election. When firing up the trans pogrom failed to produce a Republican "red wave" victory, an already transphobic American establishment quickly lost interest in defending, or even discussing trans rights. As I and many others warned however, an election in which the fascist party seized control of Congress, and numerous transphobes with real political power won re-election, was no sign whatsoever that this latest era of pogrom as politics was now over. Today, just as in Nazi Germany, persecuting trans people, particularly under the guise of protecting children, remains an important skeleton key in the fascist strategy to unlock political power.
How important is transphobia to the American fascist project? Important enough that after attempting to pass a record number of anti-trans bills in 2022, more legislative attacks on trans rights are at the top of the agenda for Republican-controlled state houses here in 2023. For more details, let's turn to this January 7th, 2023 report by Hannah Schoenbaum for AP News:
States target transgender health care in first bills of 2023
I chose this article because unlike the overwhelming majority of mainstream news reports about the anti-trans hate campaign motivating American fascists, this piece does an acceptable job of summarizing the facts within the proper context of this coordinated incitement, albeit barely. Even without mentioning the existence of a larger fascist pogrom however, those facts are themselves quite revealing. As Schoenbaum reports, just days into the 2023 legislative season, eleven GOP-controlled states have introduced or pre-filed bills that would severely restrict trans peoples' access to gender affirming healthcare. This is in addition to continued attacks on trans existence in public life that were also the focus of GOP legislatures in 2021, and 2022.
Crucially for our discussion here however, the majority of these bills are clearly designed to attack and intimidate vital medical, community, and even family support for young trans people, as noted by our author:
"Gender-affirming health care providers and parents of trans youths are the primary targets of these bills, many of which seek to criminalize helping a trans child obtain what doctors and psychologists widely consider “medically necessary care.”
As informed observers have noted, there is of course a method to this malfeasance. Criminalizing the support networks trans people rely on, particularly young trans people, is a way of legally enshrining the othering and de-personing of trans identities. This enforced isolation and dehumanization is a necessary precursor step recognized by scholars as part of the process of genocide, or in this case, a culture-war infused pogrom against trans people. Further demonstrating the point that this is about driving trans people out of public existence and not "protecting the children" is the fact that many of these bills actively restrict adult medical choices regarding transition:
"Legislation pre-filed this week in Republican-controlled Oklahoma, which passed restrictions last year on trans participation in sports and school bathroom usage, seeks to ban gender-affirming care for patients under age 26 and block it from being covered under the state’s Medicaid program.
“This is the worst anti-trans bill I have ever seen filed in any state,” [Erin] Reed said, noting that adult medical transition bans were a “hypothetical escalation” until recently.
Another Oklahoma proposal would prohibit distribution of public funds to organizations that provide gender-affirming procedures to patients younger than 21.
“It’s irresponsible for anybody in health care to provide or recommend life-altering surgeries that may later be regretted,” said the bill’s sponsor, Republican state Rep. Jim Olsen. “Performing irreversible procedures on young people can do irreparable harm to them mentally and physically later in life.”
A similar bill pre-filed in South Carolina, where Republicans control both chambers, also requires that trans adults older than 21 obtain referrals from their doctor and a licensed psychiatrist before they can begin treatment."
Friends, what we're looking at here is a closed loop of fact-free, fascist fuckery. Under the guise of preventing nonexistent child abuse, Republican lawmakers are seeking to criminalize medically-necessary gender affirming care for trans people well into adulthood, thereby legally enshrining fascist propaganda designed to marginalize, and incite violence towards trans people and the larger LGBTQ+ community. If the law says trans care is child abuse and legally inaccessible, it doesn't matter at all what individual Americans feel or believe. Which brings us back to the horrifying context of a larger fascist campaign to isolate, terrorize, and de-person the entire queer community; from the article:
"Cathy Renna, spokesperson for the National LGBTQ Task Force, said she views these bills as the product of “a permissible climate of hate,” driven by disinformation and fearmongering, that made anti-LGBTQ rhetoric more palatable in the years since former President Donald Trump’s election in 2016.
“We have politicians, celebrities and just folks in our communities who were given permission under Trump to kind of pick that scab and do and say harmful things without consequence,” Renna said. “It unleashed a nightmare Pandora’s box of sexism, racism, homophobia, transphobia, antisemitism.”
“When you look at the last few years,” she said of the LGBTQ community, “we feel like we’re under attack in a way that we have not for decades.”
These anti-trans bills are not the first attacks on queer existence in American life, nor will they be the last. The literal erasure of LGBTQ+ identities in our society is not an election ploy designed to win votes; it is a tool which organized fascists dominating American political and cultural life are using to install an objectively fascist order from above. The eradication of queer identities is not only a foundational goal in fascist ideology, but it infamously has a proven track record of empowering fascist domination of nominally liberal democratic societies already. Legalized assaults on trans rights are quite literally the tip of the fascist spear; and latent transphobia in American society is the breach politically empowered nazis are exploiting to seize power.
The simple truth is that you can't beat fascism at the ballot box, you can only slow it down; and anyone who told you otherwise, was probably just looking for your vote. If we're prepared to let fascists criminalize trans people, and drive queer folks out of public life today, there is no limit to who American nazis will target and de-person tomorrow. As a society, we no longer have the luxury of considering trans and queer rights a niche political issue; this isn't about empathy, it's about stopping billionaire-backed fascists from legislating anyone who disagrees with them out of public existence. We will all stand together here, or we will surely die apart; once again I advise you to choose wisely.
- nina illingworth
Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.
You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, Can’t You Read, Media Madness and my Patreon Blog
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