I AM INSUFFERABLE
MY THREATS
Why is it that I'm partly responsible for the death of Nex Benedict? My threats from followers. The bomb threats. The threats of violence and hate for those who are good people. These threats and my followers who support my hateful posts, are the ones who place kids like Nex in danger, so yes, I am partly responsible. "If you hate a person, you hate something in them that is part of yourself. What isn't part of ourselves doesn't disturb us.” My projection is staggering.
In August 2023, an Ellen Ochoa Elementary School (part of Union public Schools in Tulsa, Oklahoma) librarian's video was edited and shared by Libs of TikTok and reposted by Oklahoma State Superintendent Ryan Walters. After the video was shared, both Ellen Ochoa Elementary School and the librarian's home received multiple bomb threats. Bombing threats were accompanied by letters to media threatening to bomb "every school in the union district", unless the schools stopped " pushing this woke ideology".
In August 2023, Libs of TikTok accused a California elementary school of being "racist against white people". The next day, a bomb threat was emailed to the school and it was evacuated; local police described the email as having "racial undertones”. Around the same time, a library in Davis, California became the target of bomb threats after Libs of TikTok tweeted about an event in the establishment which resulted in a group of speakers being asked to leave over speech that was hostile towards trans athletes. According to local police, the threats were laden with hate speech of some kind.
In September 2023, a school in Illinois received three bomb threats in four days after Libs of TikTok posted a picture of one of its classrooms where a Pride flag was hanging. The school evacuated students twice, on consecutive days, after the threats were received.
In February 2024, NBC News reported that at least 33 instances of bomb threats against organizations that Libs of TikTok had previously posted about, saying, "the timing suggests that Libs of TikTok posts have been used to pick targets." In at least 3 instances, those bomb threats led to criminal charges against at least 9 individuals.
In July 2022, OutLoud North Bay, a centre for LGBT youth in Ontario, received hate messages and death threats after Libs of TikTok posted tweets in response to the centre announcing a drag show for children. Also in July, Libs of TikTok made a tweet criticizing the Conservative Jewish camping network, Camp Ramah in Northern California, for "housing kids according to their gender identity rather than birth sex".
On August 10, 2022, Libs of TikTok reposted a video of a therapist who works with sex offenders who have been jailed. In the video, the therapist says their pronouns and advises people to use the term "minor-attracted persons" (MAPs) instead of "pedophiles", arguing that the latter term has "moved from being a diagnostic label to being a judgmental, hurtful insult that we hurl at people in order to harm them or slander them".
They also argue that pedophiles do not choose their attraction to children and should not be solely defined by that one aspect of themselves. Libs of TikTok only posted the first two minutes of the video, which made it sound like the therapist was advocating for acceptance of pedophilia and for people to be nicer to child sex abusers. In the full version of the video, the therapist condemns child sex abuse crimes. Libs of TikTok's reposted video has been promoted by Russian and European disinformation networks, such as Tsargrad TV.
Michael O'Brien, a pediatrics resident at a hospital in South Carolina, said that he received threats after Libs of TikTok, on August 15, retweeted a tweet in which he had criticized the account. O'Brien reported some of the threats to his employer's public safety office: "I got three specific threats that came from within a 50-mile radius of where I live", adding that "The threats felt very tangible. I had to take action to protect my partner and warn my family."
In September 2022, Libs of TikTok claimed that workshops for transgender youth and their families run by the American healthcare company Kaiser Permanente were being held "without parental consent" despite the workshops being designed for both children and parents. Also in September 2022, a tea shop in Salt Lake City reported receiving "an endless barrage of harassment" after Libs of TikTok's Instagram account reposted a video featuring a young girl dancing with a drag queen inside the tea shop.
On November 20, 2022, Libs of TikTok received renewed media attention following the Colorado Springs nightclub shooting, a mass killing that took place at an LGBTQ venue in which five people were killed and dozens more were injured. Club Q, the venue targeted by the shooter, frequently hosts drag events, including those advertised to an all-ages audience. The Independent noted that Libs of TikTok often attracts negative attention to such events with her social media accounts and that harassment and threats are often sent by her followers against patrons and performers following her postings.
Hours after the shooting, Raichik used her Twitter account to target a "drag organization" in the same state where the massacre took place, underlining the names of two Colorado state legislators, one of whom was trans, for supporting it. The Advocate criticized the post, saying that: "In the hours after news of the Club Q shooting spread, Raichik, for example, doubled down on her anti-LGBTQ+ messaging by posting about other drag-inclusive events in the state."
They drew attention to an interview previously published on their website with Juliette Kayyem, a former assistant secretary at the Department of Homeland Security, in which she stated that social media accounts such as Libs of TikTok practice stochastic terrorism by provoking extremist outrage against marginalized groups, but using "vague language that allows the agitator to deny responsibility for the act".
On September 23, 2022, a two-minute video of Dr. Katherine Gast (co-director at the University of Wisconsin-Madison's UW Health gender services program) describing gender-affirming surgeries was reposted by Libs of TikTok with the caption: "Gast happily describes some of the "gender affirming" surgeries she offers to adolescents including vaginoplasties, phalloplasties, and double mastectomies." In an emailed response to NBC News, Libs of TikTok stood by her characterization of doctors who work in transgender healthcare. Although Gast does not perform genital surgery on minors, she does perform mastectomies (also known as "top surgery") in some cases for older teenagers after evaluations by mental health care professionals and doctors, and with parental consent.
The original tweet by Libs of TikTok received almost half a million views, one of eight in a thread about Gast and her patients. Senator Ted Cruz tweeted: "She does this to children. Sterilizes & mutilates them. Before they are old enough to consent." Gast and her family were doxxed and her clinic has received "harassing phone calls".
After analyzing Libs of TikTok's online activity in April 2022 through November 2022, a counter-extremism research group named "Task Force Butler Institute" estimated Raichik singled out a specific event, location or person over 280 times, resulting in 66 incidents of harassment or threats against her targets.