Calls for violence against LGBTQ people intensify

[Necroghastia]

Well, Target has little option other than to give in. I mean, it's not like they're a massive corporation with huge amounts of money.

*pretending to have an earpiece*

I'm being told that they're actually just fucking cowards.

The bomb threat came from a pro LGBT group. What do you suggest they should do to stand up to it?

...Uh, source?

[Kerwa]

The bomb threat came from a pro LGBT group. What do you suggest they should do to stand up to it?

...Uh, source?

https://www.cleveland19.com/2023/05/26/cleveland-19-news-receives-bomb-threat-against-5-targets-stores-face-lgbtq-controversy/

[Necroghastia]

...Uh, source?

https://www.cleveland19.com/2023/05/26/cleveland-19-news-receives-bomb-threat-against-5-targets-stores-face-lgbtq-controversy/

Now, I'm not saying that looks like a false flag, but... ceci n'est pas un drapeau.

[Cannot think of a name]

https://www.cleveland19.com/2023/05/26/cleveland-19-news-receives-bomb-threat-against-5-targets-stores-face-lgbtq-controversy/

Now, I'm not saying that looks like a false flag, but... ceci n'est pas un drapeau.

It seems...out of character, but you get a group large enough and eventually someone takes shit too far. Considering no actual bombs were found it seems like a low effort troll meaning someone could decide to do it in the moment and half an hour later be eating Taco Bell and not think of it again.

Anyway, "we can be just as unhinged" isn't a strategy I would endorse.

[Necroghastia]

Now, I'm not saying that looks like a false flag, but... ceci n'est pas un drapeau.

It seems...out of character, but you get a group large enough and eventually someone takes shit too far. Considering no actual bombs were found it seems like a low effort troll meaning someone could decide to do it in the moment and half an hour later be eating Taco Bell and not think of it again.

Anyway, "we can be just as unhinged" isn't a strategy I would endorse.

The thing that's got me suspicious is that Timcast bit. Like, what's that doing there?

[Cannot think of a name]

It seems...out of character, but you get a group large enough and eventually someone takes shit too far. Considering no actual bombs were found it seems like a low effort troll meaning someone could decide to do it in the moment and half an hour later be eating Taco Bell and not think of it again.

Anyway, "we can be just as unhinged" isn't a strategy I would endorse.

The thing that's got me suspicious is that Timcast bit. Like, what's that doing there?

The article I read (USA Today, but I'm not sure what tab that was in) stressed that they were fake or spoofed email addresses, but that is a weird choice. Like, a very weird and very specific choice and I can't for the life of me figure out what the intent of that would be.

It's one of those Catch 22 things. Every time some right winger does something shitty there's a chorus of 'false flag' which gets ridiculous, but then it has happened but usually in that whole 'guilty of what they accuse others of' way.

My takeaway at that point is 'eh, I'm not gonna crack it from my recliner.' I won't get points for 'calling it' but I will look ridiculous if I call it a false flag and it turns out not to be. It's not inconceivable that someone thought a bad idea was a good idea.

But you're right, that is a super weird choice.

[Neo-American States]

Is anything more "cancel culture" than calling in a bomb threat to a store because they sold a book that had ideas you disagreed with?

Wait a minute people can shoot back? That's hypocrisy.

Deja Vu.

Yes, please tell us more about how this “shooting back” is justified

[Ifreann]

The thing that's got me suspicious is that Timcast bit. Like, what's that doing there?

The article I read (USA Today, but I'm not sure what tab that was in) stressed that they were fake or spoofed email addresses, but that is a weird choice. Like, a very weird and very specific choice and I can't for the life of me figure out what the intent of that would be.

It's one of those Catch 22 things. Every time some right winger does something shitty there's a chorus of 'false flag' which gets ridiculous, but then it has happened but usually in that whole 'guilty of what they accuse others of' way.

My takeaway at that point is 'eh, I'm not gonna crack it from my recliner.' I won't get points for 'calling it' but I will look ridiculous if I call it a false flag and it turns out not to be. It's not inconceivable that someone thought a bad idea was a good idea.

But you're right, that is a super weird choice.

Maybe I don't understand how terrorism works, but if I wanted to threaten Target I would send my threats to Target, not to Tim Pool.

[Galloism]

The article I read (USA Today, but I'm not sure what tab that was in) stressed that they were fake or spoofed email addresses, but that is a weird choice. Like, a very weird and very specific choice and I can't for the life of me figure out what the intent of that would be.

It's one of those Catch 22 things. Every time some right winger does something shitty there's a chorus of 'false flag' which gets ridiculous, but then it has happened but usually in that whole 'guilty of what they accuse others of' way.

My takeaway at that point is 'eh, I'm not gonna crack it from my recliner.' I won't get points for 'calling it' but I will look ridiculous if I call it a false flag and it turns out not to be. It's not inconceivable that someone thought a bad idea was a good idea.

But you're right, that is a super weird choice.

Maybe I don't understand how terrorism works, but if I wanted to threaten Target I would send my threats to Target, not to Tim Pool.

Tim Pool is the helpful fool in this case.

Target probably gets dozens of these a day, and they just have someone go in, look around for a bomb, and if there's nothing blinking or with an obvious countdown timer (I'm being slightly facetious) they file it under "yep, another asshat". That's a named folder in the corporate security shared drive. Then it just quietly goes away.

Tim Pool is the fool who will broadcast it and make it public, which puts them between a rock and a hard place. If they do something, they're caving to bigots, and if they do nothing, then they don't have the interests of their customers in mind and are willing to let them be blown up for ideology.

[Bradfordville]

Maybe I don't understand how terrorism works, but if I wanted to threaten Target I would send my threats to Target, not to Tim Pool.

Tim Pool is the helpful fool in this case.

Target probably gets dozens of these a day, and they just have someone go in, look around for a bomb, and if there's nothing blinking or with an obvious countdown timer (I'm being slightly facetious) they file it under "yep, another asshat". That's a named folder in the corporate security shared drive. Then it just quietly goes away.

Tim Pool is the fool who will broadcast it and make it public, which puts them between a rock and a hard place. If they do something, they're caving to bigots, and if they do nothing, then they don't have the interests of their customers in mind and are willing to let them be blown up for ideology.

I have a dark sense of humor, so pardon me but in a dark way it's kind of humorous, the idea of a store witnessing an absolute tragedy take place and saying "well at least we didn't let the terrorists win."

[Galloism]

Tim Pool is the helpful fool in this case.

Target probably gets dozens of these a day, and they just have someone go in, look around for a bomb, and if there's nothing blinking or with an obvious countdown timer (I'm being slightly facetious) they file it under "yep, another asshat". That's a named folder in the corporate security shared drive. Then it just quietly goes away.

Tim Pool is the fool who will broadcast it and make it public, which puts them between a rock and a hard place. If they do something, they're caving to bigots, and if they do nothing, then they don't have the interests of their customers in mind and are willing to let them be blown up for ideology.

I have a dark sense of humor, so pardon me but in a dark way it's kind of humorous, the idea of a store witnessing an absolute tragedy take place and saying "well at least we didn't let the terrorists win."

Let's be clear: the vast majority of bomb threats have no bombs even remotely adjacent to the threat.

Working in corporate America (and especially working adjacent to the security space), you come to realize that corporate America gets threatened with all kinds of violence all the time, and the vast vast majority of it is absolutely toothless. You do an investigation, file a report, and say nothing about it to avoid drawing attention.

And, add to that, corporatism is far more ruthless than you imagine. It's not about whether or not they believe in whatever ideology (it isn't, they probably don't anyway by and large). It's not about even the deaths of their customers (they probably don't care about that all that much either, by and large - have you seen the fried chicken they sell at Target? I rest my case.)

It's about the inevitable lawsuit if they "bravely" wave off the threat and this one singular time the bomb threat actually involved someone who had bombs and an intent to use them. Now it would be easy (relatively) to convince a jury in a civil case that they jumped straight over negligence straight into recklessness, because they "knew" and did nothing, and we start seeing 7 figure lawsuits.

[Bradfordville]

I have a dark sense of humor, so pardon me but in a dark way it's kind of humorous, the idea of a store witnessing an absolute tragedy take place and saying "well at least we didn't let the terrorists win."

Let's be clear: the vast majority of bomb threats have no bombs even remotely adjacent to the threat.

Working in corporate America (and especially working adjacent to the security space), you come to realize that corporate America gets threatened with all kinds of violence all the time, and the vast vast majority of it is absolutely toothless. You do an investigation, file a report, and say nothing about it to avoid drawing attention.

And, add to that, corporatism is far more ruthless than you imagine. It's not about whether or not they believe in whatever ideology (it isn't, they probably don't anyway by and large). It's not about even the deaths of their customers (they probably don't care about that all that much either, by and large - have you seen the fried chicken they sell at Target? I rest my case.)

It's about the inevitable lawsuit if they "bravely" wave off the threat and this one singular time the bomb threat actually involved someone who had bombs and an intent to use them. Now it would be easy (relatively) to convince a jury in a civil case that they jumped straight over negligence straight into recklessness, because they "knew" and did nothing, and we start seeing 7 figure lawsuits.

So The money to be made by pride month tee shirts ends up being potentially outweighed by the money lost in lawsuits if something were to actually go down, or even if people just stop going to target because it seems more likely that fourth of July is coming early to one of their stores.

[Fahran]

Eh? What country was that? Cat calling middle schoolers would get you into problems here…..

I'm from the US.

And good luck trying to get the police to do anything about cat-calling anywhere. We can't even get them to take sexual assault seriously half the time.

[Galloism]

Let's be clear: the vast majority of bomb threats have no bombs even remotely adjacent to the threat.

Working in corporate America (and especially working adjacent to the security space), you come to realize that corporate America gets threatened with all kinds of violence all the time, and the vast vast majority of it is absolutely toothless. You do an investigation, file a report, and say nothing about it to avoid drawing attention.

And, add to that, corporatism is far more ruthless than you imagine. It's not about whether or not they believe in whatever ideology (it isn't, they probably don't anyway by and large). It's not about even the deaths of their customers (they probably don't care about that all that much either, by and large - have you seen the fried chicken they sell at Target? I rest my case.)

It's about the inevitable lawsuit if they "bravely" wave off the threat and this one singular time the bomb threat actually involved someone who had bombs and an intent to use them. Now it would be easy (relatively) to convince a jury in a civil case that they jumped straight over negligence straight into recklessness, because they "knew" and did nothing, and we start seeing 7 figure lawsuits.

So The money to be made by pride month tee shirts ends up being potentially outweighed by the money lost in lawsuits if something were to actually go down, or even if people just stop going to target because it seems more likely that fourth of July is coming early to one of their stores.

Didn't quite get that last clause, but ultimately, yes - cost benefit analysis is the thing.

[Fahran]

Whether or not they can accomplish it now is not the point. Sodomy laws are probably dead in the water, but openly musing about re-litigating them is how you push the Overton window a bit more with every statement. And that's helped by the anti-trans strategy: reactionary state governments can't re-ban sodomy or gay marriage anymore, but they can absolutely use the panic around trans people to make it so that it becomes de facto illegal to be gay in public.

You're operating on the assumption that every member of a fairly broad coalition has the same or similar goals. I don't believe that's the case and, in many cases, the New Right that propelled Trump to power has been far more pro-LGBT+ than the so-called moderate right that prevailed during the Bush years. It's perhaps too early to label that as a long-running theme, but, at the moment, the salient issue has been the negotiation of identity and gender-based rights within society - something quite different from the criminalization of sodomy or the revoking of same-sex marriage. Also, Paxton is probably out, so there's that.

And that's how the war of attrition turns back in their favour - public opinion is a lot easier to influence when LGBT people stop being visible and you ban all content in schools or universities that even mentions the existence of gender non-conformity or non-heterosexual identities. None of this should be surprising considering its this exact kind of long march through the institutions of the state that got them Roe v Wade overturned. And they've got the Supreme Court locked up for another god knows how many more decades - they have the time to wait.

Visibility, in particular the dissemination of videos by conservative activists of LGBT+ activists openly discussing pet theories developed in queer studies departments in the 1980s and 1990s, has been one of the principal drivers of the recent backlash against LGBT+ activists. People tend to like their gay, lesbian, and trans relatives, friends, and neighbors because those people are congenial and adhere to normalcy on some level. People also appreciate positive media portrayals of such people as wanting normalcy and acceptance. When you publish articles about how you want both children and kink at pride, on the other hand, it raises eyebrows and understandably so. While groomer has been often thrown about, it's more accurate to remark that the suggestion is inappropriate and to perhaps ask "what is wrong with you?"

On this note, the politics of respectability has benefitted certain groups in the US disproportionately. Jewish people and gay people are probably the most prominent examples of this in the available literature.

I'm perfectly capable of defending my own words. Are you?

Of course, I can, though explaining the application of critical theory to queer liberationists is a bit odd given it's one of the important underpinnings of almost all modern left-wing activism.

[Cannot think of a name]

Maybe I don't understand how terrorism works, but if I wanted to threaten Target I would send my threats to Target, not to Tim Pool.

Tim Pool is the helpful fool in this case.

Target probably gets dozens of these a day, and they just have someone go in, look around for a bomb, and if there's nothing blinking or with an obvious countdown timer (I'm being slightly facetious) they file it under "yep, another asshat". That's a named folder in the corporate security shared drive. Then it just quietly goes away.

Tim Pool is the fool who will broadcast it and make it public, which puts them between a rock and a hard place. If they do something, they're caving to bigots, and if they do nothing, then they don't have the interests of their customers in mind and are willing to let them be blown up for ideology.

I was an employee at a movie theater that received a bomb threat. I was even in the managers office when he got the call. He just reached into his desk and handed us stacks of passes and when we asked what happened he said "Starts with b, ends with t, and rhymes with 'bomb threat'. He had the projectionists shut down the screenings while we handed out free passes (to a theater where movies cost a dollar...) and called the police who managed to find an old time card clock. Didn't make the news at all I believe.

So...yeah.

[Galloism]

Tim Pool is the helpful fool in this case.

Target probably gets dozens of these a day, and they just have someone go in, look around for a bomb, and if there's nothing blinking or with an obvious countdown timer (I'm being slightly facetious) they file it under "yep, another asshat". That's a named folder in the corporate security shared drive. Then it just quietly goes away.

Tim Pool is the fool who will broadcast it and make it public, which puts them between a rock and a hard place. If they do something, they're caving to bigots, and if they do nothing, then they don't have the interests of their customers in mind and are willing to let them be blown up for ideology.

I was an employee at a movie theater that received a bomb threat. I was even in the managers office when he got the call. He just reached into his desk and handed us stacks of passes and when we asked what happened he said "Starts with b, ends with t, and rhymes with 'bomb threat'. He had the projectionists shut down the screenings while we handed out free passes (to a theater where movies cost a dollar...) and called the police who managed to find an old time card clock. Didn't make the news at all I believe.

So...yeah.

Pretty typical response if some fool doesn’t broadcast it to millions of people.

[Fahran]

Pretty typical response if some fool doesn’t broadcast it to millions of people.

A smart way to handle it. Doesn't give the terrorists the publicity they want.

[Point Blob]

It was stupid the first time someone trotted it out, now it's stupid and worn-out. But, if your point was that you never had one, you've succeeded.

Of course I have a point. It is right there in my name.

Anyway... your judgement is irrelevant. I will continue to be as I am regardless of whether you believe it "stupid and worn-out" or not. I've already categorised you likewise in return.

[Fahran]

Oh, great. Another joker who thinks they're making a huge point by likening identifying as another gender to identifying as another goddamn species. Geee whizzzz, never heard THAT one before. And, really? "Change their ways?" What ways are being changed, exactly? Do they not already use others' preferred pronouns in basic day to day life? Just because a person is cis doesn't mean the pronouns stop being preferred ones.

A more appropriate comparison would probably be related to racial identity, since race like gender is a social construct and passing is an actual thing, but I don't really know why we're entertaining conversations that make poor analogies and that would be more appropriate for the TDT rather than a thread on violence against LGBT+ people.

[Imperiul romanum]

Pretty typical response if some fool doesn’t broadcast it to millions of people.

A smart way to handle it. Doesn't give the terrorists the publicity they want.

Terorists?

[The Black Forrest]

A smart way to handle it. Doesn't give the terrorists the publicity they want.

Terorists?

Yes. Threatening people with a possible bomb does fall under that category.

[Imperiul romanum]

Terorists?

Yes. Threatening people with a possible bomb does fall under that category.

I know

[The Black Forrest]

Yes. Threatening people with a possible bomb does fall under that category.

I know

Ok. Then what was your question?

[Imperiul romanum]

I know

Ok. Then what was your question?

Just why has say terorists