The Right-Wing Attacks On Tim Walz Are Weird

LOADING ERROR LOADING For the last four years, conservative and right-wing activists and pundits have been engaged in a culture war that demonizes racial justice, the LGBTQ community and progressive ideals. Tim Walz (D) as her running mate on Tuesday, the culture warriors immediately dusted off their old playbook to attack Walz. Walz, a veteran and former teacher, has been a champion of LGBTQ rights, public education and racial equality — a platform that is anathema to Republican ideology. Scandalized by the idea, Chaya Raichik, the person behind the Libs of TikTok account, which is dedicated to smearing the LGBTQ community, began calling Walz “Tampon Tim,” suggesting that he should be embarrassed by advocating for period products. Elsewhere, Fox News’ Jesse Watters recently took aim at Minnesota’s new flag, which debuted this year, and blamed Walz for the change. “This guy changed the flag of the state to look more like Somalia,” Watters claimed this week. Also, the star design that conservatives allege was a copy of the Somalian flag was actually intended to be a literal representation of the state motto, “The Star of the North.” But that hasn’t stopped conservatives and right-wing figures from making false claims like this and others about Walz. During a recent Fox News appearance, Stephen Miller, who was a senior adviser to Trump, said Walz and Harris would “turn the entire Midwest into Mogadishu,” also citing Walz’s backing of refugee resettlement programs. Meanwhile, Angela Morabito, the spokesperson for the Defense of Freedom Institute, a conservative nonprofit, posted claims on social media Tuesday that Walz kept “pornographic books in Minnesota schools” and “promoted critical race theory.” These are popular lies among conservatives and right-wingers, who have spent the last three years attempting to ban books that promote racial equality or have LGBTQ themes from schools by falsely claiming they are sexually explicit or harmful to children. Advertisement But some of the most unhinged attacks have come from Christopher Rufo, a conservative activist who is largely credited with manufacturing a panic about critical race theory and helping Florida Gov. As part of an effort to whip up a moral panic, conservatives have been smearing transgender people as child abusers, falsely suggesting that books that discuss gender and sexual orientation are sexually explicit, and claiming that critical race theory, a college-level framework for understanding racism and policy, is really about hating white people. After Glenn Youngkin won the governor’s mansion in 2021 while running on a “parental rights” message in Virginia, Republicans coalesced around the idea that a faux moral panic in the aftermath of the George Floyd protests could lead to electoral success. Advertisement But in the 2022 elections, the candidates who ran on right-wing social issues, like Doug Mastriano in Pennsylvania, Paul LePage in Maine and Tudor Dixon in Michigan, lost their races. DeSantis’ short campaign for president floundered from beginning to end, despite his attempt to take his “anti-wokeness” bona fides to the national stage. – This Summarize was created by Neural News AI (V1). Source: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/tim-walz-weird-attacks_n_66b3b3ebe4b0e4caf7f4fb63