This week the Media Research Center released a study, “Five Reasons to Defund ‘Public’ Broadcasting.” National Public Radio provided still another reason on Tuesday’s edition of All Things Considered.
Odette Yousef, NPR’s “domestic extremism correspondent” (solely “right-wing” extremism) has previously filed insane stories on a host of topics in that cluster, in 2023 linking the populist anthem “Rich Men North of Richmond” to an “anti-Semitic blood libel.”
But on Tuesday she hurled herself headlong into the abyss, comparing rumors of transgender crimes spread online to Nazism. Host Ailsa Chang set up the appalling segment.
AILSA CHANG, Host: In the hours after a Black Hawk helicopter fatally collided with an American Airlines jet last week, social media erupted with the claim that the craft was piloted by a transgender service member named Jo Ellis, but it wasn't true. Ellis is a member of the Virginia National Guard, and she took to Facebook to show that she was still alive.
JO ELLIS [archive clip]: It is insulting to the families to try to tie this to some sort of political agenda. They don't deserve that. I don't deserve this.
CHANG: Extremism experts say it's part of a familiar political playbook. NPR domestic extremism correspondent Odette Yousef joins us now...so I know that you have closely watched how both popular and political narratives against transgender people have shifted over the last several years. How does all of this fit the patterns that you've been seeing?
YOUSEF: Well, Ailsa, in recent years, it seems like after every high-profile tragedy, there's almost always a social media firestorm claiming that the perpetrator was transgender. You know, we saw it after school shootings in Uvalde, Texas; Apalachee, Georgia; Madison, Wisconsin; and Perry, Iowa, just to name a few.
Now, there was one school shooting in 2023 where the perpetrator was indeed a former student who was transgender....it did further feed a picture that some on the right have been trying to paint about trans people as terrorists or mentally unwell.
One only has to peek at the “trans” debate on X or TikTok or especially left-leaning BlueSky to realize how many online trans-activists qualify as unwell.
Yousef spoke to let another unlabeled liberal group, Elizabeth Yates of the Western States Center, “a nonprofit that works to support inclusive democracy.” If there's no label, you can guess they're like Yousef, experts on "far-right extemism." Yates provided the required smearing soundbites.
ELIZABETH YATES: Some people are spreading this narrative because it's lucrative to pump up their followers on social media and increase engagement and increase revenue....But that is simultaneously increasing the power and visibility of bigoted and authoritarian actors who are promoting this for a specific political agenda.
YOUSEF: So we saw state-level legislators lead anti-trans efforts even a decade ago to restrict trans access to bathrooms and sports teams....now it seems anti-trans measures are politically rewarding. But frankly, it's not a new political strategy.
Chang set up Yousef by asking her "the history behind this strategy." She turned to another expert on the far right.
YOUSEF: To answer that, I spoke to Hanah Stiverson of Human Rights First, which is focused on human rights.
HANAH STIVERSON: One of the first trans health clinics in the world was in pre-World War II Germany. It was the Institute for Sexual Research in Berlin. And it was one of the very first targets of the rising Nazi party.
Tax-funded NPR offered absolutely no pushback to that scurrilous comparison. Stiverson announced on her LinkedIn page "this is part of a larger fascist strategy to turn the nation against our own citizens." Yousef seconded it, and the show host also treated it as truth.
YOUSEF: And so the concern here, Ailsa, is that when it becomes OK to dehumanize one marginalized group or minority group, that can easily turn against another population.
CHANG: That is NPR's Odette Yousef. Thank you, Odette.
