In the past month, the social media account "Libs of TikTok," targeted around eleven schools or school districts over anti-LGBTQ+ grooming conspiracies. Shortly after these attacks, some of the targeted institutions received bomb threats, according to an investigation by Vice News.
Chaya Raichik, the individual behind the account, has employed right-wing "groomer" propaganda to target 42 school districts and their staff members. Her accusations have centered on false allegations of these institutions "indoctrinating" children into LGBTQ+ identities and exposing them to sexually explicit content, according to the report.
Of the 42 institutions that Vice reached out to, 11 schools or school districts reported receiving bomb threats while a majority didn’t respond. And only three school districts said that they hadn’t received bomb threats as a result of being featured in a Libs of TikTok post.
Although the school districts couldn't definitively attribute the bomb threats to Raichik's followers, the ones that did receive threats indicated a “disturbing pattern” – they received threats within five days of being featured in Raichik’s post, district officials told Vice.
These accounts claim that they are “protecting” children, but “that's not the main goal of many of their posts,” Sarah Moore, an anti-LGBTQ+ extremism analyst at the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in partnership with Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), told Salon.
One school in Salem, Massachusetts, was featured in a Libs of TikTok post on September 12, and received emailed bomb threats on September 15, 19, and 21, leading to evacuations, Vice News found.
Another was an elementary school near Chicago, which was highlighted in a post on September 15. Over the next four days, the school encountered three threats. The last bomb threat the district received was 25 years ago, a spokesperson from the North Shore School District, told the outlet.
A school in Oklahoma City featured in three Libs of TikTok posts had the state superintendent of education in Oklahoma post a photo with Raichik, lauding her for promoting transparency and accountability in schools, surpassing the efforts of many elected officials. Meanwhile, an elementary school in Western Heights ISD received a bomb threat, Vice News reported.
It comes as no surprise that schools or individuals featured by Libs of TikTok often become targets of relentless trolling, harassment and in some cases even real threats. Last summer, hospitals faced bomb threats after Libs of TikTok began highlighting that they offered gender-affirming care to transgender youth.
The Boston Children’s Hospital received a deluge of harassing emails “including threats of violence” toward their staff after Raichik falsely claimed on Aug. 11 that the hospital performs hysterectomies on children, The Washington Post reported. The hospital does provide hysterectomies to certain patients over 18.
Raichik leveled a similar accusation against Children’s National Hospital in Washington. On August 25, she posted a recording in which she questioned two unidentified hospital employees about the availability of gender-affirming hysterectomies for 16-year-old patients.
Both employees mistakenly stated that the procedure was offered to 16-year-olds, and one even suggested it might be available to even younger patients. However, the hospital clarified that this information was incorrect and that neither of the employees was involved in patient care.
After the recording was posted to Twitter, and was played more than 1.1 million times, Children’s National was inundated with threatening emails and phone calls, a hospital spokeswoman told The Post.
Libs of TikTok has been a significant driver in fueling the baseless “grooming” conspiracy theory, co-opted by some right-wing politicians and pundits. The trope has found its way into mainstream conversations, particularly as Republicans have actively opposed LGBTQ+ rights and introduced policies aimed at undermining them in recent years.
The "Don't Say Gay" bill for example has been referred to as the "anti-grooming bill," with advocates of the bill accusing opponents of preying on children.
The Anti-Defamation League and GLAAD published a report this June, which documented the rise in anti-LGBTQ+ incidents across the U.S. and found that more than half of them were linked to the "groomer" trope.
One of the other facets that they identified was the types of “conspiratorial tropes” that were linked to cases of real-world harm and found that about a third, or at least 191 of the cases, that “included acts of real-world harm, were directly linked to tropes regarding the grooming conspiracy theory,” Moore said.
“So we know that there is a really significant overlap between folks sharing these conspiracy theories online, and then folks getting targeted as a result of the spread of that rhetoric,” she added.
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Raichik has also gained support from notable figures on the right as her account on X, the platform formally known as Twitter, has grown to 2.5 million followers. She has dined with former President Donald Trump and members of Congress frequently interact with content from Libs of TikTok.
Right-wing influencers consistently boost posts from the account, thereby broadening its reach. This places the responsibility on social media platforms to curb the spread of hate online, but little has been done to address this growing issue, advocates say.
“We've seen a number of cases where the platforms themselves need to uphold their policies about hateful content when they're seeing these big accounts that have these large followings violate that content,” Moore said. “They should also be aware, at the same time, of what are the cases of real-world harm that's happening in direct correspondence to some of these posts.”
There have been a number of instances where there's a “clear violation” of the terms of services of platforms and the content that Libs of TikTok is posting, she added.
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YouTube's harassment policy, for example, provides specific instances of prohibited content, one of which involves targeting an individual due to their affiliation with a protected group. However, Libs of TikTok posted a video titled "The Top TEN Worst TikTok Videos of 2021" on their YouTube channel, where they reviewed videos created by individuals they assume to be transgender or part of the LGBTQ+ community, making negative comments about their appearance, Moore said.
“This video should therefore be sanctioned under YouTube's policies,” she said.
In addition to holding platforms accountable, Moore pointed out that addressing the targeting of the LGBTQ+ community is a broader societal concern that calls for a “full society response.”
The ADL is exploring different ideas to mitigate online harm, whether that includes the development of anti-doxxing legislation and other legislative measures that can be used to target those responsible for online harm, Moore said. At the same time, GLAAD is “promoting a positive representation of the LGBTQ+ community on media outlets."
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