The American right-wingers have already found the reason for the massacre in a school in Tennessee: they are talking about “trans-terrorism” instead of lax gun laws.
The background to the killing spree in Tennessee, USA, in which a person shot and killed six people in a Christian school, is still unclear. But the political right already want to have found the reason. “Antifa-driven trans-terrorism,” is how far-right Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene called the cause of the action of the person named H. The politician is considered one of the most influential women in the US Congress and is more on the right-hand side of the party. And the controversial Fox presenter Tucker Carlson also used the term “trans-terrorism.” On television he said: “The trans movement is the reflection of Christianity and thus its natural enemy.” But what about the alleged trans attacks?
The right-wing in America are apparently trying to create a new image of the enemy – analogous to the socialists and Antifa in the past. The aim is to distract from the real problem – the lax gun laws – and instead to discredit the perpetrator.
Police gave the first name of the person believed to be responsible for the crime as Audrey, but added that she identified as apparently trans. “But we are still in the initial investigation of all of this and whether it actually played a role in this incident,” Nashville Police Chief John Drake said.
In social networks, H. is said to have identified himself with the pronouns “he/him”, i.e. the masculine “he/him”. However, there are hardly any further indications of a trans identification. According to the news magazine “Spiegel”, a professor is said to have said that H. wanted to be addressed as a man after the death of a person close to him.
The suspicion of a motive is enough
It is unclear whether gender identification plays a role in the motive for the crime – for the conservatives, suspicion alone is enough. Right-wing extremists have long targeted members of the LGBTQ community — people who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, or queer. Ex-President Donald Trump announced two weeks ago that he wanted to cut support for schools that promoted “transgender madness”. And at the CPAC meeting of Republican right supporters, Marjorie Taylor Greene also announced that she wants to punish doctors who perform sex treatment on minors.
Shortly after the massacre, the right-wingers started pointing the finger. Podcaster Benny Johnson allegedly claimed on Twitter that four shootings were committed by non-binary or trans people – and spoke of the trans movement turning activists into terrorists. He turned the attack on a Christian-run school into an attack on a Christian church because it owns the site.
According to a report by “Spiegel”, figures from the Gun Violence Archive should make a clear – and different – statement: in the 2,826 massacres in the past five years, three trans people were suspected perpetrators, just 0.1 percent.
But numbers obviously don’t count when it comes to the right sovereignty of opinion – prominent contributions, on the other hand, do. Donald Trump Jr. also spoke on Twitter of “an increase in trans and nonbinary mass shootings” in recent years. “By far the largest group in terms of total population”. And got to the real point of right-wing Republicans: “Maybe instead of talking about guns, we should be talking about the lunatics who are serving gender nonsense to our children?” And the conservative Christian pastor Jackson Lahmeyer wrote in his newsletter: “Christians are the most persecuted group in America.” He’s also trying to distract from the gun problem: Guns aren’t the problem, gender designations are.”
The focus on the gender debate is not new, but it has been brought back into play by the US right with the Tennessee massacre. In some US states, laws have already been passed that restrict LGBTQ rights. In Florida, there is a law that says gender orientation cannot be discussed until third grade. Republican-run Texas is planning similar restrictions.
