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Experts: Anti-LGBTQ rhetoric could galvanize extremists

By REBECCA BOONE ric has been on the rise in
Associated Press Idaho and elsewhere.
BOISE, Idaho (AP) — As "There is a very clear rela-
hate speech targeting tionship between normaliz-
LGBTQ people increases ing this hateful content and
among some far-right influ- having extremist groups try
encers and others online, to mobilize around that in
experts are warning that hateful actions," she said.
extremist groups may see "We can see a direct rela-
the rhetoric as a call to ac- tionship between the spec-
tion. trum of anti-LGBT rhetoric
Such may have been the from statehouses into these
case when 31 members of extremist groups."
the neo-Nazi group Patriot Domestic extremist groups
Front were arrested in Co- see conservatives as po-
eur d'Alene, Idaho, on Sat- tential allies, Bjork-James
urday and charged with said, and they’ve found
conspiracy to riot at a Pride anti-LGBTQ sentiment is
event, said Sophie Bjork- one of the easiest ways to
James, an assistant pro- “build a broader coalition
fessor in anthropology at among the radical right.”
Vanderbilt University who “Unfortunately, I think it is
researches the white na- a strategy that is working,” James Hammond, the mayor of Coeur d'Alene, right, speaks as Lee White, the police chief of
tionalist movement, racism she said. Coeur d'Alene, looks on during a news conference at the Coeur d'Alene Library, Monday, June
and hate crimes in the U.S. 13, 2022, about the arrest of more than two dozen members of Patriot Front near a pride event on
Saturday in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho.
The arrests came as a toxic Continued on next page Associated Press
brew of anti-LGBTQ rheto-