Bill Berkowitz for BuzzFlash: America’s “White Boy Summer” Puts LGBTQ+ People in Crosshairs
July 2, 2022
By Bill Berkowitz
In San Lorenzo, California, a group of men, thought to be members of the Proud Boys, invaded a public library to heckle and intimidate a local drag queen, Panda Dulce, who was reading a children’s book to kids during Drag Queen Story Hour; in Idaho, thirty-one members of a group called Patriot Front were recently arrested on suspicion of plotting to violently disrupt an LGBTQ pride event; Proud Boys and the group Protect Texas Kids recently rallied outside of a Disney-themed drag brunch in Arlington, Texas; and, in New England, a homegrown group calling itself the Nationalist Social Club has been recruiting young white men for their neo-Nazi movement.
These recent incidents, dovetailing with the American right’s increasing attack on LGBTQ people, are indicative that this could be what white nationalists, are hoping and planning for: A “white boy summer.”
“White Boy Summer” is the title of a hip-hop song, released in the summer of 2021 by Chet Hanks. It was a play on Megan Thee Stallion's 2019 hit song, “Hot Girl Summer.” While Hanks may have wanted his song to signal that boys just wanna have fun, this summer, white nationalist groups have different thoughts on their minds; adopting the slogan and using it for their own recruiting purposes.
Writing about “White Boy Summer” a year ago, the Anti-Defamation League pointed out that, “’White Boy Summer’ (WBS) has shown up in extremist channels and rhetoric in three distinct ways: general ‘shitposting,’ racist and misogynistic tropes and explicitly white supremacist propaganda. Many memes on extremist channels have strategically adopted aesthetically pleasing imagery to disguise or distract from their real messages; layers of these seemingly playful images of summer fun can be peeled away to expose messages of hatred and calls to action.”
Regarding the incident in San Lorenzo, California, MSNBC’s Hayes Brown recently reported that, “Kyle Chu, whose drag name is Panda Dulce, told Teen Vogue that they were sitting with librarians singing a song to welcome the kids when ‘eight to ten Proud Boys marched in with their cameras outstretched.’ Chu said that one of them ‘had an AK-47 shirt that said ‘kill your local pedophile’ on it.’ After the police were called, and the Proud Boys escorted out, the event was allowed to finish — but Chu said it was a ‘traumatizing event’ that they’re still processing.”
As the Associated Press’ Amanda Seitz recently reported (https://apnews.com/article/islamic-state-group-technology-buffalo-government-and-politics-4e3dc9e6aeee05161acdc3c0e17a278b) “White nationalists and supremacists, on accounts often run by young men, are building thriving, macho communities across social media platforms like Instagram, Telegram and TikTok, evading detection with coded hashtags and innuendo.”
According to Seitz, “The Department of Homeland Security warned Tuesday that such skewed framing of the subjects could drive extremists to violently attack public places across the U.S. in the coming months.”
One of the “white boys” latest targets is drag queens. According to The San Francisco Chronicle’s Ryan Kost, “right-wing agitators have seized on drag as the latest front in the culture wars, part of an ongoing effort to paint queer people as groomers and pedophiles” (https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/drag-queen-anxiety-right-wing-17251516.php).
The placing of drag queens in the right’s crosshairs appears to be a coordinated effort. “Late last month, the influential antigay and anti-trans Libs of TikTok Twitter account, which has more than 1 million followers, tweeted a thread of family-oriented drag events, including the story hour in San Lorenzo, Libs of TikTok, which, according to the Washington Post, is run by a real estate agent in Brooklyn, did not respond to a request for comment,” Kost reported.
Florida Republican Senator Marco Rubio recently took credit for “shut[ting] down a planned drag storytelling event at the Ramstein Air Base in Germany.”
Christopher Rufo, the man who helped spark the movement to ban critical race theory and discussions of gender and sexuality from classrooms, tweeted, “Conservatives should start using the phrase ‘trans stripper’ in lieu of ‘drag queen.’ It has a more lurid set of connotations and shifts the debate to sexualization.” The ADL’s late-June 2022 report noted that “The final element of extremists’ online use of WBS is its incorporation into explicitly antisemitic and white supremacist propaganda. Posts depicting notorious mass murders including Dylann Roof, John Earnest and Ted Kaczynski as heroes of ‘White Boy Summer’ have circulated online, most frequently in accelerationist channels on Telegram. These violent individuals have long been lionized and promoted by white supremacists as heroes for the white race.”
Pride Month 2022 is nearly over, but there’s no sign that attacks on the LGBTQ community will stop.
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