Last summer, Joe Rogan, a podcaster with millions of listeners, began pushing a hitherto obscure Twitter account.
“Libs of TikTok is one of the greatest f***ing accounts of all time,” the podcaster said.
The anonymous account had already garnered popularity among conservatives by reposting left-wing memes and videos from social media in which individuals debated subjects such as racial justice and gender identity.
Around 65,000 people were following Libs of TikTok, a parody account that mocked liberal “hypocrisy” and “wokeness.”
With Rogan’s support, however, the account rose to the top of the conservative world. The number of people who follow Libs of TikTok has risen to over 920,000 in just a few days, and it is now frequently quoted by Republican politicians and right-wing media.
As the account’s fame expanded, it shifted its focus to problems that would elicit conservative fury. Its attacks on the LGBTQ community grew into a full-fledged campaign against transgender people and the teaching of sexuality in schools, mirroring Republican-controlled states’ onslaught on trans rights.
Libs of TikTok has fueled the conservative concern with teaching race, sexuality, and gender in American classrooms by seizing on videos posted by gay or non-binary educators seeking to explain, sometimes awkwardly, how they confront their own sexuality to pupils.
For LGBTQ activists, schools have been dubbed “government-run indoctrination camps.” Its overt homophobia coincided with a frenetic political right-wing drive to portray instructors who discuss sexuality with students as paedophiles, “groomers,” and predators.
By December, Libs of TikTok had demanded that any gay teacher who came out to his or her students be “fired on the spot.”
Right-wing politicians and pundits flocked to the story, citing the account’s cherry-picked tweets and videos as proof that American schools were teeming with child predators trying to indoctrinate their students with critical race theory or groom them into homosexuality.
Libs of TikTok had even influenced law by the beginning of this year. The narrative “truly opened my eyes” to the alleged pro-LGBTQ agenda among left-wing teachers, claimed Christina Pushaw, the press secretary for Florida’s firebrand Republican governor.
After a few days, DeSantis signed the “Don’t Say Gay” bill into law in Florida, which makes it illegal for teachers to talk about sexuality or gender identity with students under the age of 18.
After appearing on the account, Libs of TikTok stated that it had assisted in the firing of many professors.
Tyler Wrynn, an eighth-grade English teacher in Oklahoma, resigned earlier this month after Libs of TikTok circulated a TikTok video he posted at Christmas.
“Hey, if your parents don’t love and accept you for who you are this Christmas, f**k them. I’m your parents now. I’m proud of you…I love you,” Wrynn stated in a message to LGBTQ youngsters who have been rejected by their parents.
Wrynn was denounced as a “predator” by Republican legislators. The video has since been seen over 200,000 times, and Wrynn has received death threats, according to him.
Chaya Raichik, an estate agent from New York and the creator of Libs of TikTok, had remained largely anonymous until this week, when a Washington Post article traced the origins of her account through earlier guises in which she promoted Donald Trump’s unfounded claims that the 2020 presidential election was stolen, and live-tweeted from the insurrection at the US Capitol on January 6 last year.
The response from the right was swift and venomous. Taylor Lorenz, who wrote the article, was accused of hypocrisy for “doxxing” Raichik, a term for outing people who wish to remain anonymous. Lorenz’s critics noted that the reporter has herself campaigned against online harassment.
“The question Libs of TikTok often raises — & the Left wants to ignore — is do parents have a right to know what their children are being taught in their public school, or not? No Taylor Lorenz hit piece can change the fact that America’s parents are with us, not the groomers,” tweeted Donald Trump Jr.Tucker Carlson, the Fox News presenter who had championed Libs of Tik Tok when it was suspended for violating Twitter’s hate speech policy, leapt to Raichik’s defence.
“No news organisation in America has done more to reveal the reality in American schools than Libs of TikTok,” Carlson said, noting that the videos unearthed by Raichik were “idiotic and disgusting”. He accused Lorenz of “acting as the Stasi for the deep state”.
Supporters of Lorenz meanwhile pointed out that Raichik’s followers were only too enthusiastic about doxxing when it came to teachers being smeared as paedophiles. Lorenz herself tweeted that Raichik “isn’t just some average woman with a social media account” but a “powerful influencer operating a massively impactful right-wing media shaping discourse around LGBTQ+ rights”.
Raichik’s following surged by more than 200,000 in the three days after the Washington Post article was published, and she has launched a Substack account, offering exclusive content for paid subscribers.
“Some of these people … are literally evil and they’re grooming kids … They should not be in schools, they should not be teachers,” she said earlier this month. “It is a little bit hard for me, but I think it has to be done.”
Image Credit: Getty
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