In July 1920, the editorial page of The Washington Progress, a North Carolina newspaper, took up the problem of lynching and laid the blame squarely on Black people. The editorial offered a pro forma nod to legal respectability by acknowledging that “lynching is deplorable and cannot be approved.” But this show of condemnation was made merely to allow the editorialists to write that Black people were the root cause of lynching because there were too many cases where a ”white woman” was attacked by “a brute of a negro.” According to the editorial, “The negroes might as well realize this fact once for all. If the best element of the colored people will [choose to,] they can aid in stamping this crime out to retain the good feeling that now exists between the races. No matter how much lynching be deplored if this thing continues the crime of lynching will multiply.”
Sarah Churchwell quoted this editorial in her 2018 history Behold, America, noting that it shows how lynching was used to reinforce white supremacy. Lynching may have existed outside the law, but it upheld the racist status quo. Though the supporters of the white supremacy frequently deplored the transgression against legal authority, they remained willing to use violence to both smear the Black victims of lynching—and to terrorize the survivors. Lynching was no mere act of passion carried out by its perpetrators alone. It was an act of social violence that served racists who would never personally dirty their hands by tying a hangman’s noose.
On November 19, a gunman opened fire at Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colo. The shooter killed 5 people and injured 25 before he was brought down by patrons. Mass shootings, including those motived by homophobia and transphobia, have become all too common in 21st-century America. What made the Club Q shooting a new development was the way the extreme right reacted to the incident. They abandoned the customary calls for thoughts and prayers accompanied by expressions of sympathy for the victims. Instead, rhetoric on the right that called to mind the lynching culture of the late 19th and early 20th century. The victims were blamed for their own deaths and injuries, with repeated suggestions that the very existence of gay and trans people in public spaces is a provocation that caused the crimes.
Matt Walsh, host of a show for The Daily Wire, suggested that the alleged problem of children attending drag shows was the root cause. “According to the left, the drag queen-child combination has become dangerous,” Walsh claimed. “They say it’s a ‘lightning rod’ for violent backlash.” He added, “But even by their version of events, if it’s causing this much chaos and violence, why do you insist on continuing to do it? If according to you, it’s like putting people’s lives at risk, if the effort to have men cross-dress in front of children is putting people’s lives at risk, why are you still doing it? Is it that important to you?”
On his nightly show on Fox News, Tucker Carlson featured Jaimee Michell, founder of an anti-trans group called Gays Against Groomers who blamed what she called the “evil agenda” of gender-affirming care for young people. According to Mitchell, “unfortunately, the tragedy that happened in Colorado Springs the other night was expected and predictable. We all within Gays Against Groomers saw this coming from a mile away. And sadly, I don’t think it’s gonna stop until we end this evil agenda that is attacking children.”
The victim blaming of Ellis, Walsh, and Michell should be seen as not just bigotry but also implicitly a threat. The right is trying to create a new lynching culture, with LGBTQ people as the target. The lynching culture of Jim Crow America had both a legal and extrajudicial side. The legal side were all the laws that affirmed white supremacy. The extrajudicial side was the actual lynching, which was often winked at by the police and respectable society.