On MSNBC, Imara Jones highlights relationship between anti-LGBTQ rhetoric, violence, and threats to democracy
Jones: “A huge part of democracy is respect for other people with whom you have differences, right? And if you begin to undermine that ... then you are changing the social arrangement in real time.”
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From the June 3, 2025, edition of MSNBC's All In With Chris Hayes
IMARA JONES (TRANSLASH MEDIA): I wish this was just about a culture war. If it was a culture war, it could be dealt with culturally. But the way that people are experiencing this and the decisions that it's making people make are really life and death at this point.
ANTONIA HYLTON (GUEST HOST): This new report is really striking. They found a year-over-year increase in incidents targeting transgender and gender non-conforming people, but also people who serve in state and local governments, who may not be LGBTQ but just simply support them, educators, librarians. And then they also found a decrease in the attacks on drag performers, who just a few years ago were at the center of the culture war, at the center of state level attacks in new legislation. I'm curious what that tells you about the way that rhetoric shifts — shifts targets — and how communities have taken action to protect themselves over the course of the last few years as they've seen this movement build and build.
JONES: Well, we know that conversation creates permission structures, and we know that permission structures lead to action. It's one of the reasons why, as journalists, for example, you and I can't say certain things because we know that it has an impact and that those things shift the environment, that allow people to believe that they can get away with things, that if we weren't encouraging them through our words, they wouldn't be able to. So I think that you are seeing that, and I think that another thing that we have to realize is that one of the ways that this issue is being used is to acculturate Americans into authoritarian ways of being, and accustomating us to violence against each other in ways that are necessary to undermine democracy. Because a huge part of democracy is respect for other people with whom you have differences, right? And if you begin to undermine that, so that people get used to believing that attacks on communities, attacks on people, attacks on members of the government from certain communities are legitimate, then you are changing the social arrangement in real time. And everywhere that that's been done, both in modern times and historically, it's always the gateway to being able to expand the way that authoritarianism takes hold in communities and in people's daily lives, and I think it's one of the things we have to be really concerned about here.