After tweeting last week that Jimmy Fallon should be ashamed of himself for normalizing hate and bigotry with his fluffy interview of Donald Trump, LGBT activist and journalist Michelangelo Signorile became an online target for the alt-right, the white supremacist group of crazies that make up the base of Trump’s support.
In an onslaught of homophobic tweets laced with the slur “faggot”, members of the alt-right went after Signorile in the harshest terms possible.
https://twitter.com/zzGarrett/status/776779444178472960?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/Supreme_Mentor/status/776772980181348352?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
As Signorile notes, at least one of his Twitter trolls invoked ISIS’ horrific killing of gay people as a possible “solution for freaks like u.”
Some more of the hatred Signorile received, as he recounts in his post:
Someone named “Ceasar” said, “Harvey Milk would have disowned you. You’re an embarrassment to faggots everywhere.” “DN” wrote “massive homo” with an arrow pointed at my name. “Deplorable Navy Vet” (@MrMrwhitefolks) commanded me to, “Grow up faggot and get over it.” “AR Sniper” said, “Any male who uses the term ‘normalizing of hate’ = fag.”
That alt-right white supremacists hate LGBT people might not be terribly surprising. However, it is nonetheless noteworthy given the campaign of misdirection that Trump has conducted this election cycle on the subject of LGBT rights. Signorile explains:
The anger and animus toward LGBT people from these Trump supporters – many of them young – belies the idiotic and dangerous media narrative that posits Trump as “more accepting of gay issues” than other Republicans. (To these Trump supporters, any mention Trump makes of “LGBTQ people” is acceptable, laughable pandering to win the election, as he wink-winks and nudge-nudges to them, as he has on other issues, from deportation to birtherism.) Some of the alt-right anti-LGBT haters’ imagery is bizarre, frightening and fascinating at once. “Animal Cracker,” whose timeline includes tweets mocking gender neutral bathrooms and inclusiveness of LGBT people, has as his Twitter background (depicted at the top of this post) a swatstika in the colors of the rainbow flag, emblazoned within a circle of Jewish stars, all resting in the middle of of a rainbow confederate flag.
Within hours of sharing his post about the alt-right homophobes, those very same homophobes again came out of the wood work to prove the point that Signorile made.
[Top photo via Michelangelo Signorile]
