Washington Post Unmasks Viciously Anti-LGBTQ Twitter Account that Promotes ‘Groomer’ Label – the Right Is in Outrage Overdrive
The anti-LGBTQ tweets have not just gone viral but appeared on Fox News and in the right-wing media echo chamber.
The tweets, often targeting LGBTQ people, have had an impact on legislation, including Florida Governor Ron DeSantis’ “Don’t Say Gay” law, and helped fuel the vicious “groomer” label the right – including Governor DeSantis’ press secretary, Christina Pushaw – has embraced as a weapon against the LGBTQ community.
And now The Washington Post has unmasked the person behind the Twitter account Libs of TikTok, and conservatives are outraged beyond belief. “Libs of TikTok is basically acting as a wire service for the broader right-wing media ecosystem,” Ari Drennen, the LGBTQ program director for Media Matters told The Washington Post’s Taylor Lorenz. “It’s been shaping public policy in a real way, and affecting teachers’ ability to feel safe in their classrooms.” Reporting on conservatives’ outrage over The Post’s report, Rolling Stone calls Libs of TikTok “an openly bigoted and homophobic social media account that reposts so-called ‘liberal’ content culled from various platforms repackaged to produce maximum engagement via rage clicks.” Meanwhile, according to The Post, the Libs of TikTok account had been “leaning hard into ‘groomer’ discourse, calling for any teacher who comes out as gay to their students to be ‘fired on the spot‘” all the way back in January, and before. “Libs of TikTok has become an agenda-setter in right-wing online discourse, and the content it surfaces shows a direct correlation with the recent push in legislation and rhetoric directly targeting the LGBTQ+ community,” The Post adds. “The anonymous account’s impact is deep and far-reaching.
