The news today is that terrorists are threatening Target because it’s selling some clothes they don’t like, and Target is caving to their demands. That’s it, distilled to its simplest form.
To get more specific, garbage human conservative MAGA supporters, some of whom buy into QAnon conspiracy theories, but also others who are just Matt Walsh types, are making very real threats of violence against Target stores, because of the Pride merchandise they’ve been selling. This is part of their full-on Nazi war against all LGBTQ+ people, but especially kids.
And Target, citing genuine fear for its people, is acceding to some of the terrorists’ demands, removing certain unspecified apparel items from its shelves.
As with everything white fascist Christian conservatives believe, this all started with easily debunked lies, lies they might not believe if they were capable of occasionally stopping and asking themselves questions like “Really? Is my brain broken right now? What is goddamn wrong with me?”
Where it started, where it’s going, etc.
Justin Baragona at the Daily Beast explains that MAGA trash and their media organs started going wild the past few days with claims that Target was selling “tuck-friendly” swimsuits for toddlers. You know how toddlers are.
This is not true. Target has swimsuits like that for adults, as part of its Pride line, as the Associated Press explains in an article that’s accessible to anybody who can read or who can flag down a policeman or a grownup to read it to them. They have extra fabric in the crotch, it says. Let’s start a war.
And that’s what the squealing pigs are doing, spreading their bullshit online and threatening Target stores in person. And Target is unfortunately giving in, apparently moving some Pride displays to different sections of its stores, and announcing changes to its merchandise:
“For more than a decade, Target has offered an assortment of products aimed at celebrating Pride Month,” a spokesperson for Target told The Daily Beast.
“Since introducing this year’s collection, we’ve experienced threats impacting our team members’ sense of safety and wellbeing 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.”
Target said that despite the removal of Pride-positive merchandise, “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.”
Cool. Totally normal.
Apparently it started a couple weeks ago, with a bullshit tweet from whatever loser freaks run the “Gays Against Groomers” Twitter account, which seemingly exists solely to defame, hurt, and incite violence against LGBTQ+ people. (It’s like LibsOfTikTok, but obviously its name implies more internalized self-hatred.) The tweet featured the voice of any generic white woman who’s ever asked to speak to the manager at Chili’s, walking around a section of Target that had clothes for Pride month and complaining.
“They are indoctrinating and grooming them with LGBTQ ideology. It is highly inappropriate and disturbing,” they wrote. The tweet encouraged likeminded fascists to give Target the “Bud Light” treatment. What cool lives these people lead. And they wonder why literally no human of value wants to be anything like them.
Then the complaints about the “tuck-friendly” swimsuits came before the lies about “tuck-friendly” swimsuits for kids came and now here we are. They’ve even gotten a good old-fashioned Satanic panic going about some designer who contributed to the Pride line.
Surprise, Matt Walsh has helped spread the lies about the swimsuits, because he spends all his days directing his hate toward transgender children, because he has a preternatural obsession with things like this, and he’s just a liar:
Baragona summarizes how the MAGA Nazis’ lies spread into the regular media:
[C]onservative pundits and personalities soon followed suit with their own deceptive videos and images, prompting the Murdoch-owned New York Post to report that “Target’s ‘tuck-friendly’ swimwear for kids sparks outcry.”
Fox News’ digital site soon followed up by noting that consumers were “creeped out” by the swimwear, though the article did not specifically claim the bathing suits were for children. The network later reported that Target held an “emergency” meeting to avoid another “Bud Light situation.”
And then Newsmax, which reported on “tucking bathing suits for little girls.” And more:
“Target now with what are called tucking bathing suits for little boys who want to look like little girls in swimsuits,” Newsmax anchor Rob Schmitt said on Friday night, adding: “I maintain we will look back on this moment in this country and we will just shake our heads at the idiocy that we let take control. It is astonishing.”
And on Monday night, alongside an on-air graphic blaring “Target’s ‘Tuck-Friendly’ Swimwear For Kids Sparks Outcry,” Newsmax host Eric Bolling insisted that the store was offering “underwear for kids to tuck or not to tuck.”
Charlie Kirk called Target CEO Brian Cornell a “groomer pervert” and a “very sick person” and said he “really has like a fetish for going after children,” and we really hope that guy sues Charlie Kirk until his fucking head spins.
And then there’s what’s happened in stores, because the fascist monkeys are just following their leaders. The Wall Street Journal reports that “people have confronted workers in stores, knocked down Pride merchandise displays and put threatening posts on social media with video from inside stores,” as we’ve already alluded to in this post.
Apparently in the South they’ve moved the displays away from the fronts of some stores because workers are worried about their safety.
This is America right now. And this is fucking terrorism.
Target told the Wall Street Journal through its spox that it knows some people won’t be happy with it acceding to some of these people’s demands. “We have a longstanding commitment to the LGBTQ community, and we stand firm in that,” they said, “but the reality is that the safety situation has become untenable.”
Literally the definition of terrorism is instilling fear in order to force the political/societal changes you want. And because America has the stupidest terrorists with the most pointless lives in human history, America’s terrorists are losing control of their bowels because they don’t like the clothes at Target.
It makes sense when you consider that they’re also losing control of their bowels because a beer company was nice to a transgender person one time for five minutes and losing control of their bowels at Disney because Mickey Mouse doesn’t want LGBTQ+ kids to kill themselves.
But on that note, we need to remind ourselves that these Nazi Christian terrorists are pathetic cowards. Most of us who are adults of a certain age have heard for many years that you don’t negotiate with terrorists, and you don’t obey them.
Yes, absolutely, you have to protect innocent people’s safety, so please no one think we’re attacking Target here. We love you, Target.
But you also can and should loudly tell these people to go fuck themselves, like the LA Dodgers just did — belatedly — in response to extremists mad at them because they’re allowing some funny drag queens who dress like nuns to be part of their Pride Night. Because the truth is, if you give these garbage humans an inch, they will absolutely take a mile, and then they’ll demand more. Likewise, if you force them to cry it out, that’s what will happen.
Remember that they are having these conniption fits because they can’t win a fair election to save their lives. This is happening because every normal person in America fucking hates them and doesn’t want to be around them and definitely doesn’t want these white Christian groomer freaks around their kids. (Fundamentalist Christians and other white fascist Christian types are the real groomers. We talk about it a lot. All of this is projection.)
This is happening because their voting power is dying of old age and it’s being replaced by young voters who hate them so much they cannot even verbalize it.
They know it. Otherwise Republican lawyers and professional election suppressors wouldn’t be giving presentations on how to keep young people from the voting booth. They know they repel normal people.
So.
You can’t cancel Pride. In fact, that’s the last thing you should do, as Michelangelo Signorile argues here. You can’t cancel drag shows. You don’t refuse to market to or partner with one demographic simply because a bunch of inbred MAGA people are spreading blood libels about them.
As Timothy Snyder explains in On Tyranny, you “do not obey in advance,” and that counts for authoritarian movements that are actively plotting to steal this country from the majority of decent people who inhabit it.
These fucking losers aren’t being exactly subtle about their goals:
These people need to be told to get bent every time they open their mouths. They need to be reminded that their little hate movements will be nothing more than skidmarks in the history books within a couple decades.
And yes, that includes by corporations like Target. Let the fascist Nazi crybabies babies cry it the fuck out. We promise your stock prices won’t dip for very long. By next year the morons will have moved on to being upset because there’s a new Barbie doll they don’t know how to masturbate to.
Besides, everybody knows these goobers don’t go to Target anyway. They go to Walmart.
Eat shit, motherfuckerrrrrrrrrrrrrrrs.
The end.
[Daily Beast / Wall Street Journal]
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