Less than 24 hours after Monday’s mass shooting in Philadelphia, in which a gunman wearing a balaclava and bulletproof vest killed five people and wounded two children, right-wing social media was abuzz with speculation about gender identity. of the suspect.
Among those fueling the speculation was Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, who has been repeatedly criticized for amplifying conspiracy theories and anti-LGBTQ sentiment. On Tuesday, Greene tweeted a link to an article by the right-wing news outlet The Post Millennial that includes an image from the suspect’s Facebook page that appears to show him in women’s clothing and jewelry.
“Another trans shooter,” Greene declared in the tweet, which had been viewed more than 853,000 times as of Wednesday night.
A representative for Greene did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
About an hour after Greene weighed in, conservative commentator Rogan O’Handley, who has more than 945,000 followers on Twitter, shared the same article, which does not identify the suspect as transgender or speculate on his gender identity.
“It is time to start having a national dialogue about trans mass shooters who are targeting children,” O’Handley wrotepartly.
O’Handley did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
On Wednesday, Secure America Now, a conservative nonprofit group with 3 million Facebook followers, wrote on the platform that the suspect had been “revealed as a trans” Black Lives Matter activist. A representative for the group did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Robby Starbuck, a former Republican candidate for Congress in Tennessee and a former Hollywood music video producer who has more than 340,000 followers on Twitter, also joined in, declaring the shooter is transgender.
“Keep in mind that the Democrats want you to let the trans mass murderer Philidelphia into the bathroom with his wife and daughters.” starbucks tweetedreferring to Philadelphia.
Starbuck did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Police announced Tuesday that they arrested Kimbrady Carriker, 40, Monday night in connection with the shooting. At a news conference at a church on Wednesday, prosecutors said the suspect had been arraigned and charged with attempted murder, aggravated assault, possession of a weapon without a license and carrying a firearm in public.
While acknowledging social media images that appear to show Carriker in women’s clothing and jewelry, Asa Khalif, a member of the Philadelphia District Attorney’s Office’s LGBTQ advisory committee, condemned the “violent” language coming from the “press conservative” about Carriker. gender identity and shared what the district attorney’s office knows firsthand about Carriker’s gender identity.
“The suspect has not identified as trans. They have only identified themselves as men.” caliph said at the press conference on Wednesday. “But the language spewed out by the conservative press is violent and dangerous, and it is directed at transgender women of color. It’s encouraging the community to be violent, and we’re better than that.”
Khalif condemned those who label trans people as “murderers.”
“They are the most vulnerable to violence,” he said. “They want to live their lives and they have every right to, and we will not allow conservative bigots to use that kind of language to attack trans people.”
District Attorney Larry Krasner expressed similar sentiments.
“There are some people for whom hate is a full-time job,” Krasner said. “And if they can stay away from the facts and talk nonsense, that’s what they’re going to do.”
Conservative lawmakers and right-wing pundits have increasingly tried to blame mass shootings on trans people or spread conspiracy theories started on far-right websites that shooting suspects are trans.
Following a 2015 shooting at a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs, Colo., that killed three people, Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, spread the unsubstantiated theory that the shooter was transgender after a news outlet extreme right reported that the suspect had registered to vote as a woman.
Then, in 2018, some far-right websites and conservative critics claimed without evidence that a shooter who injured three people at YouTube headquarters in San Bruno, California, he was trans.
Last year, following the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that killed 19 children and two adults, users of 4chan, a low-moderation forum website, shared a photo of a trans woman and falsely claimed that she was the deceased assailant, when, in fact, the woman was alive and living in Georgia. Still, the conspiracy theory was widely shared online, including by Rep. Paul Gosar, R-Ariz.; conservative commentator Candace Owens; and Alex Jones, the conspiracy theorist who was successfully sued for defamation for falsely claiming that the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in Connecticut was a hoax.
False claims that shooters are trans or that trans people are more likely to be violent have gained traction since the November shooting at Club Q, a nightclub in Colorado Springs, that killed five people. In the days after the tragedy, lawyers for the shooter, Anderson Lee Aldrich, said Aldrich identifies as non-binary and uses gender-neutral pronouns, sparking a tense online debate over the suspect’s identity.
Then, in March, misinformation spread unchecked after six people were killed in a school shooting in Nashville, Tennessee. At the time, authorities said they believed the suspect, who was killed by police at the scene, to be transgender, but have yet to officially confirm the suspect’s gender identity.
In recent days, some online users have justified their speculations about the Philadelphia shooter’s gender identity by pointing to authorities’ use of gender-neutral pronouns to refer to the suspect. NBC News was only able to find one instance, in a Press conference Tuesday, when a law enforcement officer used the pronouns “they/they” to refer to Carriker. At the same press conference, other city officials later referred to Carriker as a “man” repeatedly.
The spread of misinformation about the gender identities of mass shooters coincides with an unprecedented wave of state bills targeting LGBTQ people and a rise in incidents of anti-LGBTQ hate and extremism.
More than 490 anti-LGBTQ bills have been introduced in state legislatures across the country this year, and an estimated 77 have signed into law, according to a tally by the American Civil Liberties Union, with many of the bills aimed at legislating the lives of trans people. Simultaneously, reports have shown an increase in anti-LGBTQ extremism and hate incidents in the US since June 2022.
