This is a cross-post with Lavender Guard. The original can be found at their website.
Since the tragic Covenant School shooting in Nashville on March 27th, the capitalist media and fascist reactionaries have begun a campaign of defamation on several trans women. Kayla Denker, a trans communist and armed community defense advocate, as well as Alana McLaughlin, a trans MMA fighter of similar political background, have been continuously slandered as terrorists, antifa thugs, extremists, and supporters of Audrey Hale, the perpetrator of the Covenant School shooting. In typical fashion, the capitalist promise of free speech and free press seems to only mean the right of the ruling class to lie with impunity while silencing and drowning out the truth. It would seem ruining the life of upstanding citizens is of no consequence to the fearmongering corporate media when profit can be made from inciting outrage!
Two particularly harmful lies have been boosted by the mainstream press. On March 5th, Ms. Denker posted a video on TikTok and Twitter posing with a rifle and a caption supporting armed self defense:
However, after the Nashville shooting, right-wing trolls sent her video viral, insinuating that it was published after the shooting and in solidarity with Audrey Hale. This blatant lie was then picked up on by the Daily Mail, who not only repeated the lie — and as of writing this article, the lie remains published — but the article as originally published called her an Antifa member and implied a connection between her and a “Trans Day of Vengeance” march — which had also been scheduled prior to the shooting. Ms. Denker has made clear she has no affiliation with any organizations and was not involved with organizing any march. In a follow-up video responding to the press coverage, she resolutely refuted any connection with or sympathy for Audrey Hale, condemning his actions. Similar coverage was made by Newsweek, though the story has since been edited to reflect proper chronology.
Even with a late (and partial) correction to the record, it’s clear that the damage of the inflammatory rhetoric and defamation has already been done, as Ms. Denker privately expressed fears that she may lose her Archeology job over the overwhelming onslaught of character assassination from the press and social media.
It seems that Ms. Denker’s fears were well founded. After two weeks of probation — enough time for the media to move on — she was indeed fired from her job as an archeologist. Where are the crusaders against cancel-culture who will defend a trans woman wrongfully terminated over pressure from social media? Where are our valiant defenders of free speech? Apparently nowhere to be found! And as if potentially ruining a woman’s career were not enough, Ms. Denker has also been the victim of an onslaught of personal hate, harassment, and even death threats. Apparently the volume of death threats reached such an unprecedented degree that the FBI contacted her to warn her about them and even encouraged her to remain armed.
Then there is the coverage of Alana McLaughlin — or rather, a right-wing sock puppet account posing as Alana:
This is not Ms. McLaughlin’s account, nor her words. Any child could easily recognize this cartoonishly villainous monologue as bait intended to incite feelings of victimhood in Christian nationalists. And yet the excellent journalists of the Daily Mail, with all the integrity of a used condom, uncritically shared the post without investigation, going so far as to label the troll as an “activist.” Such malpractice! Such apathy to truth! It’s truly unforgivable. Furthermore, as a trans woman in sports, Ms. McLaughlin is certainly no stranger to controversy; commenting on the disinformation, she simply expressed intentions to sue the Daily Mail:
This is not simply the honest failure of the journalism industry, nor even simply the opportunism of individual actors in the market. Ms Denker and McLaughlin are simply casualties amid a coordinated push to target the rights of all trans people, who are being held collectively responsible for the actions of Mr. Hale. Take, for example, Benny Johnson, production chief at Turning Point USA, who tweeted to an audience of over a million people that: “One thing is VERY clear: the modern trans movement is radicalizing activists into terrorists.” Former president Donald Trump, as well as representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, both publicly speculated about the role of hormones in Mr. Hale’s actions, despite no evidence that he was even on hormone replacement therapy — let alone in lieu of any evidence that masculinizing HRT causes violent aggression in trans men. Donald Trump Jr. similarly expressed that “there’s a clear epidemic of trans/non-binary mass shooters.” Ben Shapiro, infamous fascist pundit and media personality, went so far as to advocate banning trans people from owning firearms. These sentiments are a clear pattern of escalating fascist rhetoric from the far-right demagogues in media and politics.
As the American Empire loses its grasp on its position in the current imperialist order, as conditions within the empire continue to deteriorate and destabilize, it is increasingly imperative for fascists to manufacture a scapegoat responsible for all the woes of society — lest people develop class consciousness and turn against the capitalist system. Between the necessity to create such a bogeyman, and between the financial imperatives of profit-driven and advertisement funded “news” networks to prioritize clicks and views beyond all else, this hate mongering is the inevitable result. Capitalism, decaying empires, they breed hate and fear to sow division among the ranks of the working class, to prevent unity and solidarity, to prevent revolution. Only once political and economic power has been seized and nationalized by the working class can this crisis of disinformation be resolved! Only then can fascism be vanquished for good! Only then can transmisogyny be destroyed!
As for Ms. Denker, like all the other casualties of the capitalist press, she is now left to fend for herself. Please consider contributing to her gofundme campaign to cover legal and survival funds.
