↓↓↓ Celebrating stochastic terrorism. https://t.co/TVrShpHJgA
— JoeMyGod (@JoeMyGod) November 6, 2023
Will Carless, at USAToday — “When Libs of TikTok tweets, threats increasingly follow”:
Brookings, South Dakota. A university LGBTQ+ group is hit with a flood of hate mail, culminating in a bomb threat that terrifies students.
San Lorenzo, California. A drag queen story hour is one of several Pride events across the country stormed by suspected members of the extremist street gang the Proud Boys. The men shout homophobic slurs and threats, and a performer hides in a back room, waiting for police to arrive.
Philadelphia. Boston. Pittsburgh. Washington, D.C. Akron, Ohio. Threats hit hospitals and medical clinics, and some temporarily evacuate their patients while law enforcement assesses the danger.
Then comes summer and fall 2023, at least two dozen public schools and libraries start receiving bomb threats. In California, Colorado, Oklahoma and Wisconsin, they cancel classes and evacuate students.
These cases, and many more, share a common link: The victim of each threat had also been targeted, in the days before, by the enormously popular conservative social media channel Libs of TikTok.
In almost every case, the perpetrator of the threat is unknown, and Chaya Raichik, the far-right influencer who runs Libs of TikTok, says she opposes violence, and that because there have been almost no arrests, there’s no proof the threats come from her followers.
But whoever is making the threats, the posts show a clear pattern. USA TODAY has confirmed dozens of bomb threats, death threats and other harassment after Libs of TikTok’s posts since February 2022, based on exclusive new research from the progressive analysis group Media Matters for America.
Numerous news reports have covered individual threats, noting the target had also been mentioned by Libs of TikTok. But the new analysis of years of tweets, including archives of many Raichik has since deleted, shows the pattern is more extensive and pervasive than has been previously known – and that threats, specifically against schools, have ratcheted up significantly in the past two months…
Horrifying Read: Libs of TikTok, Domestic Terrorist OrganizationPost + Comments (101)