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So Target, in response to complaints and threats and a few creepy viral videos, has decided to yank some LGBTQ+ merch and Pride Month displays from certain Southern stores. As a spokesperson for the company explained in a press release:
For more than a decade, Target has offered an assortment of products aimed at celebrating Pride Month. Since introducing this year’s collection, we’ve experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and well-being while at work. Given these volatile circumstances, we are making adjustments to our plans, including removing items that have been at the center of the most significant confrontational behavior. Our focus now is on moving forward with our continuing commitment to the LGBTQIA+ community and standing with them as we celebrate Pride Month and throughout the year.
Well, good luck with that last bit, because by caving to the threats you’ve made it clear that threats and vandalism work. And that will just invite more of this kind of low-level terrorism from the far right, who won’t be mollified until every last bit of Pride merchandise is removed from your shelves. Or worse.
On his internet show today, professional right-wing demagogue Charlie Kirk made clear that Target’s partial surrender has simply served to put a bigger “target on their back.” Rallying the troops for a continuing offensive, he urged his followers to
keep the pressure on. We need to go after Target in a very serious way. It is time for decent, ordinary Americans who do not believe in radical ideas in either direction to just say I will not allow my kid to be corrupted by this trans agenda and look Target – it looks like they’re caving. They say they’re putting the clothes in the back. I don’t want – I want Target to go bankrupt. I want them to close. I want Chapter 11, okay? …
That’s the only thing they understand is force. 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.
But of course it’s not “everybody” who is offended by “tuck friendly” swimsuits or Pride displays. Recent polls indicate that the vast majority of Americans–some 80 percent in one poll–support LGBTQ+ rights. And a lot of younger people, 21% of Gen Z according to a Gallup poll, are openly identifying as lesbian, gay, bisexual or transgender.
The crusade against LGBTQ+ people is driven by a relatively small number of right-wing influencers and their followers–a loud minority more than willing to resort to threats and violence to push their bigoted cause. They can be beaten, but not if “allies” like Target so quickly surrender to the bullies.
This Pride month could end up being a very ugly one. Far-right activists like the Daily Wire’s Matt Walsh want to make Pride “toxic” to American companies.
The more success they have in shutting down Pride month, the more emboldened they will become.
We can fight back against chuds like the guy in the video above by calling Target directly and telling them how important it is for them to stock Pride month merchandise.
The louder we are, the better.
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I was thinking this morning why didn’t the police make a statement about the threat to Target workers but then remembered that some of those who work forces are the same that burn crosses.
Jenora said it better than me.
@Alan
Speaking as the target of the terrorism in question, my sympathy for this position is non-existent. It’s not a matter of keeping your minimum wage job (literally as well: the people making the decision aren’t the minimum wage workers in the stores, it’s not as though they have a union or anything), it’s about whether they’re going to let fascists start another genocide and be this generations ‘good Germans.’ It’s people answering the question of “What would I have done in Germany when Hitler was coming to power” with “Keep my head down and pretend not to see them systematically murdering my neighbors, because as long as they’re murdering the queers they aren’t coming for me.”. Until they do, of course, but I’ll already be dead by then so I don’t really give a shit.
@Jenora Fuer
There’s never been a time when the US hasn’t been run by and for white supremacists. The nationalist propaganda that passes for public school history classes in the US elides the raw fact that the Founders were genocidal slaveholding oligarchs who wrote a Constitution that ensured the permanent dominance of white supremacist oligarchs. Every last signer of the Declaration of Independence has more in common with Adolph Hitler than with any regular commenter here, or any leftist or progressive anywhere. Indeed, Hitler explicitly used our genocide and Jim Crow as models for his own.
honestly don’t buy pride merch from target anyway. buy it direct from queer creators and shops if you can.
@Alan
I agree with you that responding to terrorism is fraught, and that low-level employees with lower pay are likely to suffer the risks which the C-suite is in charge of determining are “acceptable”.
My problem with Target isn’t that they moved displays to the back of the store b/c windows were being broken or other practical safety measures.
My problem with Target is that when they announced their safety compromises they also insisted that they were still standing firm with the LGBQT+ community that they’ve been supporting for years.
In short, they backed off (wisely or cravenly, take your pick) but then portrayed themselves as the heroes.
I’ve long been a critic of the corporatization of Pride, but their self-serving statement about how they’d sold pride items (at a profit) for more than 10 years (not exactly early adopters!) as if that made them allies was creepy, weird, self-centred, and depressing.
They’re not evil for selling things at a profit. That’s what corporations do. And I don’t hold it against them that they made money off of QTs who wanted to and then did purchase pride items (or anything else) at their stores.
But that’s kinda the point for me. They’re not evil for doing it, but they’re not good for doing it either. And to now insist that they’re the heroes for being as willing to make money off queers as they are to make money off the straight folks, that’s just like announcing, “Hey, we didn’t hate you so much we suppressed our own profits to benefit heterosexism!”
And we should celebrate you for this, nu?
That’s the part where I told them to fuck off. I won’t condemn them for safety measures or risk management, but they’re just a for profit corporation, and asking us to treat them as heroes in all this nauseated me.
I remember back post 9/11 an MI6 guy saying the best response to terrorism would be to ignore it. Completely. Not even reporting it. Cover up any incident up entirely.
The theory being, without ‘the oxygen of publicity’ terrorism is ineffective. Like Chase says, the risk is pretty tiny; it’s all about disproportionate fear. But the risk is non zero of course; and people perhaps understandably adopt a ‘low probability/high consequence’ mindset when they learn of such events.
Of course that’s not possible. We have something called DSMA Notices here. That’s advice for the press on what the Govt would prefer not being published. But they are only advisory. There is no sanction for breaching one. And of course ‘if it bleeds, it leads’ so media will run terrorism stories on the front page.
That is though why the authorities here are very slow to call any incident terrorism.
Terrorism has a glamour about it; it can be sexy. And of course then you open up the ‘one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’ arguments; and all sorts of legal hassle about extradition and prisoners of conscience.
Hence why the authorities here prefer the ‘common criminal’ narrative.
I can see the logic in that.
And now bomb threats in Utah force Target to evacuate some stores.
Again, there probably was no bomb, but would we prefer that Target no evacuate the store?
As I said, this is complicated. I just don’t want Target to get an hero cred for just doing what for-profit businesses do.
@Alan:
I’m pretty sure I’ve mentioned this before here: SF author Dean Ing wrote a novella called ‘Very Proper Charlies’ (later expanded into the full novel ‘Soft Targets’) in which a comedian named Charlie George manages to convince much of the media to help deal with terrorism by treating terrorists as targets of ridicule. None of them would ever be called any name other than ‘Charlie’. The explicit idea was to remove the ‘sexy’ part of terrorism as much as possible.
Of course, the least believable part was that all of the media would actually work together enough to go along with the plan.
So much for the “knuckling under” plan. As the wiser among us anticipated, that’s only emboldened them.
If you give up your lunch money on Monday without a fight, the bully will reliably be back at 11 on the dot on Tuesday, and again on Wednesday, and again on Thursday, and of course on Friday as well. If you deny him it, or at least make him work hard for it, he might decide there are easier alternatives. Maybe nicer ones, too, like simply asking his dad for a raise in his allowance.
These fascist fuckers plaguing the US, and much of the rest of the world, recently will likewise just keep pushing and making things worse until enough people stand up to them.
Last time, people knuckled under and appeased and looked the other way until it got to the point that it took a world-wrecking war to stop them in the end. We should not let things go that far this time around.
Somehow I suspect Target isn’t actually placing worker safety before profit here. Rather, they’re using worker safety as a convenient excuse for the revised profit calculus, after the right wing noise machine has convinced the management that there’s a real consumer backlash over the LGBT stuff.
Meanwhile, Kirk et al. are wording their agitation in the most violent metaphoric flourish possible, while keeping it arguable that it’s “only” a metaphor for financial devastation. Target may be caving in already, but Kirk seems to be suggesting that we’re at a point where a major “woke” corporation must be driven to bankruptcy to “teach a lesson” to the others, and it might as well be Target. How’s that for cancel culture, huh?
I’m not surprised that Target defaulted to doing whatever they thought would maximize employee safety, because I have a family member who used to work at a nearby Target years ago. A group of armed men broke into the store my family member worked at and stole a bunch of electronics during early morning hours when only management was there, forcing management to barricade themselves in the offices until the robbery was over. That store ended up permanently shutting down due to the armed robbery.
TLDR: I have anecdotal evidence from an ex-Target employee family member that Target defaults to whatever actions will maximize employee safety, so I’m not surprised that they’re trying to minimize the profile of this year’s Pride collection in the wake of right-wing terroristic threats.
Target has fucking armed guards around the place already ( this isn’t new, they’ve been there), what the fuck are they for then?
The Klan terrorism worked too, and the result was that the South was abandoned to the terrorists for 100 years. The South managed to kill the incipient Civil Rights movement after World War I through terror with no response. When the Republican Party and President Harding made anti-lynching legislation a priority, Southern senators threatened to filibuster every single piece of pro-business legislation unless the Republican party dropped the anti-lynching bill, and they caved. When Black people saw no one cared, the movement died for 25 years. Now you can say risking a bullet is too much to ask, but risking something is going to be necessary.
@Dalillama:
Security theater? Intimidating and harassing customers? (I’ve got to imagine that having store personnel stalk you around the aisles asking “Can I help you with something? Is there something I can help you with?” gains some added piquant flavor if said personnel are armed.)
According to Target, this is the email that triggered the evacuations.
What we reckon; false flag? Or could it be a genuine outlier?
Must confess, my first though is this may well just be some online edgelord stirring things up. That might be because I’ve just been doing something on ‘prankster’ videos. But there are clearly people out there who just like creating tension and controversy.
ETA: I think anyone genuinely involved in queer politics would have used “LGBTQ+”. Knowing how controversial letter choice can be there. But any experts have any thoughts on that?
I’m guessing it’s a false flag. It absolutely is something online edgelords would do for the lulz, and I can’t pinpoint it, but there definitely does seem something not genuine in the message. But there’s also no reason it couldn’t be real. There are a lot of LGBT+ people out there, and not all of them are nice or even keeled. I think our side is far, far less prone to violence than our enemies. But I won’t deny people are scared, and scared people do unwise things.
@ Alan Robertshaw
I think what rings as false to me in the email is that this is supposedly coming from someone angry enough to make bomb threats, but I get very little sense of genuine anger from the writing. The word choice is off.
For instance, I don’t believe someone genuinely upset enough to engage in terrorism would use the word “protested” to describe the actions of rightwing terrorists, and “vandalism” is even more suspect. Vandalism is generally a minor crime, but it enrages so-called conservatives like nothing else. It’s disrespectful, and nothing gets their fragile goats more. The whole reads to me like the writer is simultaneously trying to downplay the anti-LGBTQ+ terrorism while also making LGBTQ+ people look like the real baddies.
It could be real. Maybe the writer is just a shitty writer/person. I think it’s probably a false flag, though.
@ Vucodlak
Yeah. I did find myself pondering the language. Of course, people who send threats may not consider their words with the precision of a professional public speaker. But some things do seem a bit off.
As you point out, there’s almost a downplaying of the right’s actions. As if to get the casual reader thinking this is a bit of a disproportionate response; and hypocritical. After all, the left are all in favour of protest, and like you say, vandalism just seems a curious world choice. It’s too neutral and accurate. It might be just the ‘small reference pool’ trope; but I’d be expecting proper lefties to either be using much more emotive words like terrorise or more technical ones like stochastic terrorism.
And that LGBT choice just seems a bit odd. Is that in common usage in any lefty circles do you know?
So whilst I don’t rule it out as genuine, I certainly wouldn’t take it at face value.
@Vucodlak @Alan_Robertshaw It’s strange that there’s only one swear in the email. The email doesn’t seem accusatory, but it doesn’t have that pretentious, wordy, Symbionese Liberation Army vibe, either. If I was going to write the same email, it would be something like, “You [redacted] cowards rolled over for the [redacted] pieces of [redacted] who rotted their [redacted] brains on Tucker Carlson. You worthless….” There aren’t any accusatory ‘you’s in the email presented, which I would have expected.
@Alan Robertshaw, @ Vucodlak
Agreed, it sounds more like the kind of letter someone trying to hit as many keywords as they can think of, rather than sincere outrage.
I’ll admit it’s possible that it might be sincere, but something about it just feels too… Formulaic? That’s not quite the word I’m looking for, but it’s the closest one I can think of. It feels more like the actions of a comic book supervillain or the antagonist in Saturday morning cartoons, than anything else.
There’s also the fact most of my acquaintances in the LGBTQ+ community are more likely to send angry “and the horse you rode in on!” or disapproving “you should be ashamed of yourselves” emails and calls than they are in-person protests, let alone do anything criminal.
@Alan
It’s a ridiculously obvious false flag. Any queers pissed off enough to start setting bombs have a million better targets than Target. (Probably more, tbh)
The creator of the artwork that started the rightwing meltdown is getting a lot of hate. You can buy directly from his website.
@Alan
where those bombing threats all stores in different cities? if so then I’m definitely calling bullshit.less then days is way too short to pt all that together. just think you would need at mastermind to come up with the plan and find co-conspirators. then this group who most likely have zero bomb making experiance have to learn how to make a bombs,gather the materials and assemble the bombs. Even if the stores targeted where in the same city I think it still too short of a time frame.
@ fabe
Yeah, bomb making is a difficult, and hard learned, skill. I used to go to a lot of seminars or counter terrorism. The experts were saying that missing fingers and limbs was genuinely something they looked out for.
During the Troubles, PIRA actually had a codeword that they’d agreed with the authorities so they’d know it was really them when they called in a bomb threat.