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no bull, and the aftermath.

You know, the unfortunate reality is those points of view are becoming increasingly accepted

by an increasingly large set of Americans who, again, are not your, you know, grandparents

of our extremists. They are the average American who is suddenly willing to engage with the

idea that there are people in this country who are worthy targets for violence, merely because

of who they are, what their identity is, and what they believe, and that it should be,

you know, extremely concerning for, you know, everyone.

I'm Gea Kogatakis, intern at LawFair, and this is the LawFair podcast, August 7th, 2023.

In the last year, the ADL and GLAAD tracked at least 356 incidents of anti-LGBTQ plus hate and

extremism in the US. This marks an alarming rise over the past two years of anti-LGBTQ plus sentiment

and violence. 49% of all incidents were perpetrated by individuals associated with extremist groups.

This seems to point toward a much larger recent focus on the LGBTQ plus community by far

right extremists. I sat down with Megan Conroy, a research fellow at the Digital Forensic Research Lab

who leads its domestic extremism research portfolio, and John Lewis, a research fellow at George

Washington University's program on extremism. Both John and Megan have done significant research

on far right extremist groups and ideologies, as well as their intersections with anti-LGBTQ plus

violence. We discussed the role far right extremist groups previously played in anti-LGBTQ plus violence,

what may have caused a spike in violence against the queer community, and how the extremist groups

committing these acts of violence differ from our traditional conception of the far right.

...