When far-right commentator Michael Knowles announced from the podium at the Conservative Political Action Conference last weekend that transgenderism must be completely eradicated from public life, Rolling Stone CPAC Speaker Calls for Transgender People to Be Eradicated, under the banner GENOCIDAL MANIA. But hours later, after Knowles threatened multiple news outlets with libel suitsRolling Stone editors changed that headline to CPAC Speaker Calls for Transgenderism to Be Eradicated, and put GENOCIDAL in terrifying quotes, which is appropriate since editors fear lawsuits.

Knowles claims to argue that transgenderism and transgender people are two different things, and he was careful about using the ism. He said: There can be no middle ground in dealing with transgenderism. It’s all or nothing.

Let’s not think too much about this. If he had said that Judaism must be eradicated, or if he had proclaimed an all-or-nothing solution to homosexuality, no one would misunderstand the murderous intent of such a message. The story would have earned a front page in every major newspaper in the US and abroad. (Which I hope one day will be the case when it comes to the threat of trans genocide by a major political party.)

For the record, trans people have existed in every culture throughout history, which has been documented extensively. By turning trans existence into an ism, conservatives try to misrepresent a struggle for equality as a culture war.

The campaign against black history is another attempt to make a group’s existence an ism. Critical race theory is taught as an upper-level elective in some law schools, not to children in public schools. In reality, when Ron DeSantis of Florida and other Republican governors ban CRT, they are banning the teaching of basic historical facts such as the details of slavery, the events leading up to the Civil War, what happened during Reconstruction, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights Movement . (You know, the kind of thing on posters during Black History Month.)

The state of Florida has also banned discussion of sexual orientation or gender identity

the third grade class three

, and further inappropriate instructions so that queer and trans children do not feel safe enough to come out. When DeSantis says the vigil in Florida is to die, he goes after people. Again, the propaganda strategy is to turn some people into a problematic idea of ​​wokeism and then stamp out the ism.

It is also the legal strategy. As the gas-lit GOP base attacks drag queens, transgender people and LGBTQ nightclubs, its leaders are introducing anti-trans laws into state legislatures at a staggering pace (more than 410 in the first three months of 2023), according to the Human Rights Campaign targeting transgender people. people, especially trans children.

It is worth remembering that, according to the Holocaust Encyclopedia, more than 400 anti-Jewish decrees and decrees were issued during the first six years of Hitler’s dictatorship. Many were state laws, but state, regional and municipal officials also issued a barrage of exclusion orders in their own communities on their own initiative. Was the legislation anti-Jewish or anti-Jewish? Does it matter, given what happened next?

Here’s some good news: Rolling Stone’s headline now reads: CPAC speaker calls for transgender eradication and somehow claims he’s not calling for transgender eradication. The updated

current version of the

story

quotes features

Erin Reed, a transwriter and law researcher and needless to say the terrifying quotes are where they belong, around ism.

Here’s oneism we

should

to quote: fascism. We should have been using it for years to describe what is happening, but few people in the national media opt for it, opting instead for blunt substitutes like anti-democratic or extremism or ultra-MAGA. By wondering how the majority of Americans can clearly see where things stand when news sources use corny euphemisms instead of the correct word: fascism.

Perhaps national media outlets are careful about deploying this ism lest they be branded extreme or lose audiences. Or maybe they’re saving it for the right moment, lest they become the boy who cried wolf. If so, now is the right time. When a political party calls for the extermination of a group of people, that is fascism.

No doubt about that. Diana Goetsch is the author of the memoir This Body I Wore, a 2022 Best Nonfiction selection from the Washington Post.