One thing no one can deny: MAGA influencers put a lot of work into pushing really stupid talking points. Most everyone with sense understands that the fires ravaging Los Angeles are, in large part, a predictable consequence of climate change. However, it is an article of faith in MAGA circles that climate change is a "hoax" invented by the "libs" to deny gender-affirming care to cis men, in the form of oversized gas-guzzling trucks. So they quickly jumped into action during a time of immense need, seeking someone or something else to blame. And because the movement takes all its cues from a right-wing influencer named Chaya Raichik — who posts under the name "Libs of Tik Tok" — they've settled on blaming women.
On Wednesday, Raichik tweeted a picture while falsely implying both that the entirety of the Los Angeles Fire Department (LAFD) leadership is female and also that women's inherent inferiority is why the fires are spinning out of control.
The people that supposedly care about women's rights when it comes to trans people openly mock women for their appearance when they're in positions of power. These are the people that actually hate women.
— Alejandra Caraballo (@esqueer.net) January 8, 2025 at 6:40 PM
It would be cool if women occupied the top three positions of the LAFD, but readers will not be surprised to find out this is not the case. The fire chief, Kristin M. Crowley (pictured left), is a woman. But a quick view of the orgaztional chart shows the chief of staff, the head of emergency operations, the head of administrative operations, the heads of the regional bureaus, the head of the prevention bureau, and the head of IT are all men. Out of the 12 leaders on the page, only 3 are women — meaning a full 75% of the leadership team is male. And that is to say nothing of the first responders from Los Angeles County.
Raichik has, so far, successfully rallied the MAGA masses to prevent a community note pointing this out from being appended to her post. But what is fascinating is how much work she seems to have put into pumping out this nonsense. A reverse image search of the photo shows it was taken in February 2016 and posted on the LAFD's Flickr page, which contains almost 57,000 photos. Raichik, or whoever sent her this photo anyway, had to comb through hundreds of pages to find an 8-year-old photo to make this point.
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And what point are Raichik and her MAGA followers making? Not clear! The acronym "DEI," which stands for "diversity, equity, and inclusion," is being thrown around, but an acronym does not actually explain why women in leadership is a bad idea. Commenters responded to the photo with "Answers a lot of questions" and "And that’s all you need to know," but no one is willing to say what answers they arrived at, knowing nothing about these leaders but their gender. Jesse Watters of Fox News recycled this photo but also declined to spell out why he believed women are unable to handle the job of being upper management at a fire department.
"This, right here, ladies and gentlemen? This is the leadership of the LA Fire Department. I sure hope I know what they're doing" (Jesse's point is that they are women and possibly queer women at that so they can't possibly know what they're doing)
— Aaron Rupar (@atrupar.com) January 8, 2025 at 8:15 PM
Watters also griped that the fire chief had marched in Pride parades and claimed, "California is committing suicide before our very eyes. DEI is deadly." He did not explain how either being queer or female made someone less capable of doing the job of fire chief.
They won't say, of course, because they know the claim being implied here is too embarrassingly dumb to speak out loud. The unspoken argument is that women are stupidbrains who can't do anything right, and instead we need geniuses, who are all men like Donald Trump, running things. But they won't come out and say that, because they know that this argument is self-refuting. So instead, they gesture in the direction of the argument, yell "DEI" a lot, and deny that they're misogynist when someone draws the obvious inference for the sexist theatrics.
Welcome to this era of MAGA, where they have given up even pretending their points make sense.
With the election of Trump to a second term, there's been a lot said about the "post-truth" moment that Republican voters live in. But this entire exercise shows that it's beyond that. This is the right's post-coherence era. Even within the context of this false information about the gender makeup of the LAFD, there's no attempt to explain why having women in leadership would harm the ability of the firefighters on the ground to do their jobs. It's just a vague gesture — "ew, women" — and a total unwillingness to explain why women are unfit to serve.
In the not-so-distant past, Republicans would at least try to make their arguments sound plausible, by populating their claims with "evidence," even if it was fake, and framing it as "reasoning," even if it was specious. Much effort was put into fortifying argument-shaped rationales for the belief that women are inferior. Shoddy "evolutionary psychology" claims were put forward, positing that women evolved to be so focused on nurturing that their brains had no resources left for higher-level reasoning. Even centrists got involved, such as economist Larry Summers, who baselessly suggested biology put a hard limit on women's intelligence, one that doesn't exist for men.
There are serious drawbacks to actually making arguments, however. Doing so gives one's opponents a way to rebut your false claims. Critics can demonstrate that you got your facts wrong. They can carefully peel apart the flaws in your logic. Over time, for instance, the pseudo-science of "evolutionary psychology" started to collapse, as real scientists educated journalists and the larger public about why it's demonstrable nonsense. Plus, the "women are just born dumber" claim is harder to sustain in an era when women graduate college at significantly higher rates than men.
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The advantage of incoherence for MAGA is that if you never say anything substantive, there's nothing for critics to argue with. Raichik and Watters have blamed the LA fires on these three women, but they won't say how or why their gender supposedly made them incompetent. If you argue with the obvious implications, they'll just get huffy and deny that's what they meant. We are expected to understand that it's bad for women to be in leadership, but no one will tell us why that might be. But they don't need to defend their point, because their audience is there to affirm "that's all you need to know," without ever explaining what they are even saying.
It's easy to dismiss Raichik as a random who just saw a photo, had an emotional reaction, and can't explain why because she's living the stereotype of female stupidity she promotes. But it appears she — or someone helping her, anyway — spent a good deal of time combing through thousands of photographs on the LAFD Flickr page to find just the right one that would create this "knowing" reaction in the MAGA base, without having to spell out what she's saying here.
It's also why she and her fans are working so hard at keeping the embarrassing facts, especially that most LAFD leaders are men, out of view. The coverup shows this decision was not an accidental or impulsive, but a deliberate effort to sow disinformation. This tactic isn't just sinister, but cowardly. Raichik, Watters, and everyone promoting this nonsense is well aware it's nonsense, which is why they're so afraid to defend it.
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