When Chaya Raichik—former Brooklyn real-estate agent behind the stochastic terroism-promoting LibsofTikTok account on Twitter—appeared publicly for the first time on Tucker Carlson’s daytime Fox Nation show last week, she claimed she was exposing her identity so that she could take her campaign against the LGBTQ community public. Both she and Carlson claimed she was simply reposting unedited videos with only bare-bones commentary, and that there was nothing hateful about doing so … before launching into a bigoted rant describing the LGBTQ community as a “cult” comprising “evil” people “out to groom kids.”

Denials notwithstanding, the real-world effects of Raichik’s targeted attacks—which have played an outsize role in the far-right’s mounting campaign of threats and violence against the LGBTQ community, revolving around the spread of rhetoric depicting them as pedophilic “groomers”—have been far-reaching. A recent survey of those effects by the antifascist veterans group Task Force Butler found that “almost one in four locations, events, or individuals that were directly targeted by LibsofTikTok experienced some form of digital or real world harassment or other consequence after being profiled by the account.”

Raichik, whose account has 1.3 million followers, herself actually boasted about her real-world effects in the interview with Carlson. “My account is very influential and effective,” she said. “I mean, we’ve gotten about a dozen teachers fired—we’re weeding out bad teachers who are grooming kids—we’ve gotten a handful of drag shows canceled.” She also bragged that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis credited her account with helping to pass the state’s notorious “Don’t Say Gay” law.

In reality, the LibsofTikTok account has targeted a number of teachers for alleged “grooming” simply for acknowledging students’ queer identities, such as the Oklahoma teacher fired for a video telling LGBTQ kids rejected by their parents that they are loved. Other teachers have faced a barrage of harassment from Raichik’s fans simply for posting comments celebrating a discussion of pronouns with colleagues.

Moreover, Raichik has helped fuel anti-LGBTQ threats by targeting both drag shows and Pride events such as last summer’s Coeur d’Alene, Idaho, annual Pride in the Park gathering, which resulted in attracting a phalanx of neofascist Patriot Front marchers, as well as a number of armed “Patriots” who prowled around the gathering. The stochastic terrorism in which she indulges now attracts armed extremists at LGBTQ events as a regular occurrence, and in Colorado Springs, it was part of a dynamic that unleashed a mass-shooting event.

The report from Task Force Butler examined LibsofTikTok’s tweets for six months (April 26-Nov. 21, 2022). It found that Raichik’s account consistently calls out geographic locations in about 10% of its tweets. And while not all of the 281 tweets identified as “including targeting data against a person/place/thing” produced harassment, 66 of those targets nonetheless “experienced some form of real world or digital harassment within three months of the LoTT Tweet.”

It also found that the harassment occurs within 17 days of being targeted by Raichik on Twitter, but half of all targets of LibsofTikTok’s digital harassment experienced real-world consequences within five days.

Raichik’s rhetoric in the Carlson interview demonstrated how the targeting works—namely by identifying the target community with a universally reviled behavior to demonize and scapegoat them. Raichik described gender-affirming care as “teachers talking about grooming kids, and the doctors are mutilating kids, sterilizing kids.” She claimed LGBT activists are “indoctrinating kids,” and she felt the need to call out “anti-white racism.”

Near the end of the interview, she unleashed a bigoted rant that encapsulated her eliminationist agenda:

I think there’s something so unique about—the LGBTQ community has become this cult and it’s so captivating. And it pulls people in so strongly, unlike anything we’ve ever seen. And they brainwash people to join, and they convince them of all of these things. And it’s really, really hard to get out of it. It’s really difficult. And there are studies on this. Like, there’s been a lot of reporting on this.

Carlson asked: “Do you see a spiritual component to any of this?” Raichik hesitated, then said:

I think they’re evil. We try to … We try to break it down a lot. We discuss why is this happening. And I think sometimes the simple answer is they’re just evil. They’re bad people. They’re evil people. And they want to … They want to groom kids. They’re recruiting.

As the Anti-Defamation League observes, Raichik’s wildly popular account “attempts to generate outrage and stoke anti-LGBTQ+ hostility by reposting selected out-of-context social media content created by LGBTQ+ people and liberals.” Among her most notorious tactics is bald-faced lying about the queer community and its defenders.

Raichik's since-deleted tweet falsely smearing Congresswoman Katie Porter.

There are numerous examples, but in the past few months alone, the fabrications have been consistent. LibsofTikTok played a leading role in spreading a false story claiming that Idaho schools were teaching porn literacy to children. Earlier this month, she posted a video of Congresswoman Katie Porter discussing how the “groomer” rhetoric falsely demonizes LGBTQ people, which Raichik tried to turn on its head, claiming that Porter was saying that “pedophilia isn’t a crime—it’s an identity.”

The latter lie quickly spread to Republicans in Congress like Texas Congressman Ronny Jackson, who tweeted: “Katie Porter just said that pedophilia isn’t a crime, she said it’s an ‘identity,'” Jackson claimed. “The sad thing is that this woman isn’t the only VILE person pushing for pedophilia normalization. This is what progressives believe!”

As Daniel Dale noted on Twitter: “The transcript clearly shows she was arguing that LGBTQ people are *falsely* called groomers and pedophiles on social media merely because of their sexual orientation and gender identity. She did not defend pedophilia.” Raichik later deleted the tweet.

Besides exposing the hollowness of her claim not to be a hatemonger in the Carlson interview, Raichik also accidentally confirmed a fact widely suspected for months: She had been a participant in the Jan. 6 insurrection. In April, internet sleuths dug up tweets she apparently made on the day of the Capitol siege at the account that later became LibsofTikTok, showing her in the middle of the mob attacking Congress.

During the Carlson interview she also wore a distinctive ring on her right hand. Antifascist researcher Chad Loder promptly found photos showing the ring on the hand of a previously unidentified Jan. 6 demonstrator with a strong resemblance to Raichik. He also combed through video evidence, all of which led him to conclude: “Chaya Raichik was not merely present near the Capitol on January 6th, but that she trespassed on restricted Capitol grounds that day.”

Those “restricted grounds” were closed to the public on the day by order of the Capitol Police. However, the Department of Justice so far has not prosecuted anyone for simply entering these restricted areas unless they violently attacked police officers or later entered the Capitol, and there is no evidence that Raichik did either.

However, the evidence that Raichik is currently leading a campaign of stochastic terrorism against the LGBTQ community is not only abundant, but clear and damning.

Republished with permission from Daily Kos.