She’s at it again: Libs of TikTok creator Chaya Raichik seized on early reports by local law enforcement to suggest that a high schooler who was arrested for making a threat about a school shooting is part of an “epidemic” of “trans violence.” Although police later clarified that they’d inaccurately used he/him pronouns to refer to the student, the account — which currently has 3.5 million followers on X — never bothered to share the correction.
The tactic of blaming trans people immediately and then refusing to backtrack when more details emerge has become a troubling pattern for Libs of TikTok. Following the recent school shooting in Winder, Georgia, Raichik called for “a national conversation about the modern LGBTQ movement radicalizing youth into becoming violent activists,” misrepresenting a CNN report claiming that the shooter had been motivated by fury over society’s acceptance of trans people. The account also seized on inaccurate media reports that a shooter at Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, was trans, fearmongering about a supposed “epidemic of trans violence.”
Raichik previously refused to delete a post blaming an innocent trans woman for carrying out the tragic school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, acknowledging that she had been wrong but defending her decision to leave the post up by asking whether there was “a law against lying.” The post is still live, more than 8 months after it was originally posted.
Libs of TikTok is a prolific source of online misinformation, spreading doctored footage suggesting a drag performer had inappropriately exposed minors to their genitals and a hoax about schools supposedly providing litter boxes for students who claim they are animals. The account has more recently pivoted to stoking fear around immigration and race, and participated in a Trump campaign “war room” during the September presidential debate.
Trans people make up a tiny portion of the United States population. Only 0.6% of Americans over the age of 13 report that they are transgender, according to the UCLA School of Law’s Williams Institute. Trans people are over four times more likely than their cisgender peers to be the victims of violent crime, and they do not commit mass murder at a rate higher than their percentage of the population. The Human Rights Campaign has documented at least 26 violent homicides against trans people so far in 2024.
