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.
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JO ELLIS: 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. Hi, Odette.
ODETTE YOUSEF, BYLINE: Hey, Ailsa.
CHANG: OK, 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. Frankly, given how many school shootings we see in the country, Ailsa, that was an outlier. But it did further feed a picture that some on the right have been trying to paint about trans people as terrorists or mentally unwell.
You know, in fact, GLAAD, an LGBTQ advocacy group, has found trans people to be four times more likely the victims of crimes than the perpetrators. And I think it's worth noting in all this that as the Trump administration has focused energy and time in these early weeks on things like trans military service, trans youth access to medical care, trans legal recognition on documents like passports, trans people make up less than 1% of the U.S. population.
CHANG: Right. But how does the administration's policy relate to the disinformation spread online by some social media accounts?
YOUSEF: I spoke about this, Ailsa, with Elizabeth Yates. She's with the Western State Center, which is a nonprofit that works to support inclusive democracy.
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 - right? - like, grifters that way. 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, and that helped push the issue into the mainstream. And now it seems anti-trans measures are politically rewarding. But frankly, it's not a new political strategy.
CHANG: Yeah, say more about that. What's the history behind this strategy?
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.
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.
YOUSEF: Thank you.
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