Scapegoating!

So far in 2023, 9,870 people have died from gun violence and there was 132 mass killings in the U.S, as of March 27.

The Nashville mass killer gender identity is unknown.
Trans people face rhetoric, disinformation after shooting
AP News
By Andrew DeMillo
April 2, 2023

Anti-transgender rhetoric and disinformation in the days following the shooting at a Nashville Christian school that killed six people have heightened the fears of a community already on edge amid a historic push for more restrictions on trans people’s rights this year.

Authorities haven’t shared any evidence linking Audrey Hale’s gender identity to the motive for the attack, which killed three children and three adults at The Covenant School last week.

Yet right-wing commentators, politicians and other figures have cited the shooting as they’ve shared false claims of a rise in transgender mass shooters and suggested that the fight for trans rights is radicalizing people.

Advocates worry the comments are further jeopardizing transgender people by turning them into scapegoats, at a time when they’re speaking out against a wave of bills focused on trans people in statehouses across the country.

[…]

“This disinformation, one of the things that it is doing is further isolating, stigmatizing and demonizing trans people, allowing us to be targeted by all forms of violence, both from the state and from individuals,” Jones said. “That’s what the disinformation is doing.”

NBC News said in the article...

Some on the right blame gender identity and not guns for Nashville shooting
Amid a national campaign to ban gender-affirming medical care and LGBTQ literature, some conservatives have seized on a shooting by a transgender person to further their agenda.
By Alex Seitz-Wald and Mike Hixenbaugh
March 28, 2023

In the hours after the shooting at a private Christian school in Nashville on Monday, some conservatives rushed to blame the massacre on the suspect’s gender identity, connecting the tragedy to their national crusade against transgender rights.

Little is so far known publicly about the motives of the shooter, whom police identified as a transgender former student of The Covenant School who resented having to attend the facility.

[…]

“Transgender killer targets Christian school,” the cover of the Rupert Murdoch-owned New York Post blared in giant letters, while the #TransTerrorism hashtag trended on Twitter.

As the right-wing propaganda machines crank out the lies to stir fear into the voters.

There have been dozens of mass shootings this year, and researchers have found that 98% of such attacks are carried out by men. But some far-right politicians and activists used the Nashville shooting to baselessly claim there is an “epidemic of trans/non-binary mass shooters,” as Donald Trump Jr. put it on Twitter.

The focus is on us and not the guns…

Some conservatives including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., and Fox News host Laura Ingraham suggested hormones like testosterone and medications for mental illness were a factor, despite no public information about whether the shooter was taking such drugs.

“Everyone can stop blaming guns now,” Greene tweeted.

We are providing the distraction for the Republicans magician that they need for their sleight of hand on guns.

How a fake Nashville manifesto fueled anti-trans rage online
Trolls and liars are exploiting tragedies to inflame social conflicts. Computer tools for creating images and mimicking human voices make all of it worse.
The Washington Post
By Drew Harwell
March 31, 2023

On Tuesday, a fake manifesto first shared on the message board 4chan, falsely claiming that the shooter at a Nashville school had acted “in the name of trans rights,” was shared by right-wing activists on Twitter and viewed hundreds of thousands of times.

A day later, police raced to schools across Pennsylvania and New Jersey after receiving calls falsely reporting that they, too, were under attack. State troopers later said the calls were “believed to be computer-generated.”

Both incidents highlight how trolls and liars are using computer tools to muddle the truth about mass killings, either to stir up panic or take advantage of the tragedies for ideological gain.

[…]

Police have said the shooter, Audrey Hale, was transgender, citing Hale’s use of male pronouns on a social media account. The Washington Post has not yet confirmed how Hale identified.

This is a terror campaign against us! It is designed to generate fear of us which culminated in the increase of bias crimes against us.

MSNBC wrote…

Transgender activist slams GOP for ‘trying to weaponize’ Nashville shooting ‘for the ballot box’

After Monday's mass shooting at a Nashville Christian school, police said the suspect was transgender. Now some on the right are wrongfully linking this tragedy to their nationwide crusade targeting transgender Americans, who are simply living their lives. Tennessee's already besieged transgender community is terrified. Charlotte Clymer, a transgender activist and the former press secretary for the Human Rights Campaign, and Jim Wallis, founding director of the Center on Faith and Justice at Georgetown University, join Joy Reid to discuss.

They just don’t care what they are doing to us, they dislike our guts so much that they want to see us dead. And they know exactly what they are doing. At CPAC they said that they want to exterminate us.