Caving to Violent Right-Wing Threats Will Only Make Things Worse

It's never been about "fairness in sports," and it's never been about "the children." The right simply does not want trans people to participate in society.

Hello, dear readers. Parker here.

On Monday, I wrote a piece about how I hope brands make their decisions about what sort of Pride Month pandering they want to do and stick with it. I made the point that the right would stage coordinated freakouts this year, emboldened by rising anti-LGBTQ sentiment. I emphasized that it was really important that brands decide to stick with whatever they planned to do.

Brands Need to Make Decisions About LGBTQ Pride Marketing Right Now, Not When the Right Has a Predictable Meltdown

And then the very next day, Target panicked in response to right-wing tantrums, lies, and threats of violence, with a spokesperson saying that “we’ve experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and wellbeing while at work,” and “removing items that have been at the center of the most significant confrontational behavior.” Target knew this was coming, as right-wingers have been having meltdowns over the super corporate, super sanitized Pride displays of past years. Even so, it caved to terrorism.

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How do you think people on the right reacted to that? Do you think they said, “Oh wow, thank you, Target! You’ve addressed our very real and not-at-all insane demands to reduce the visibility and drop inventory of some of your Pride collections. We are happy that you heard us, and we are going to get along now.”? No, of course not. They saw it as evidence that their campaign of terrorizing store employees and vandalizing in-store displays was working.

A 2021 Target Pride display. Take Pride, merchandise display, Target Store, Queens, New York. (Photo by: Lindsey Nicholson/Education Images/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

The people over at Media Matters have chronicled some of the right-wing responses to Target’s capitulation:

During the May 24 edition of The Charlie Kirk Show, right-wing activist Charlie Kirk made clear that the right wasn’t finished with Target yet, saying that he wanted “skull and bones all the way down to the absolute nails of the stores.”

“That’s the only thing they understand is force,” said Kirk. “Pain is a teacher and the pain of crossing the line to perverting our children and grooming them, it’s going to be a lesson I hope corporate America watches because ordinary America is pushing back. We must push for the bankruptcy of Target. Make it happen everybody.”