Minnesota Tragedy: NOT The Hate That Hate Produced

We are witnessing a fascinating and predictable transformation in the way the political right wing responds to mass shootings. For decades the strategy has been to deflect from any discussion of the kinds of gun control measures needed to reduce or eliminate such tragedies. Deflection responses have typically been along the lines of: (1) let's offer thoughts and prayers for the victims, (2) the shooter was a mentally ill person that no gun restrictions would have stopped, (3) the only real solution is to have more guns in society so that there is always a "good guy with a gun" around and ready to take out the bad guy. 

Those three "arguments" remain prominent in right wing discourse, but in the last few years we have seen a fourth.  It goes like this: "we are experiencing an epidemic of mass shooters who identify as transgender, and as such have been indoctrinated into a violent cult."  The Southern Poverty Law Center and other organizations have tracked how anti-trans rhetoric is used not only to deflect from discussions of gun safety, but also to sell guns. 

Not surprisingly, when the shooter in the most recent and horrific massacre in Minneapolis turned out to identify as trans, the right wing anti-trans hate machine went into overdrive. This is spite of the fact that (1) there is not an "epidemic" of trans violence in America, (2) trans people are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it, and (3) the Minneapolis shooter had apparently been obsessed with school shooters and Nazism since middle school, a much more likely motivation than gender ideology for the killing spree. 

But just as a thought experiment, let's indulge the right wing fantasy in this post. If trans people are truly becoming more violent and vindictive, what would be the cause of that? Whenever I hear the argument that trans people are inherently violent, I am reminded of Mike Wallace's infamous 1959 television special "The Hate That Hate Produced," a five-part documentary that examined the rise and popularity of the "Black Muslims" led by Elijah Muhammad (leader of the Nation of Islam) and his fiery representative Malcolm X. Even though Wallace provided no evidence that Nation of Islam members had ever committed physical violence against Whites, the message of the program to White viewers was clear: Elijah Muhammad and his followers hate you, want to separate from you, and speak in ways that make violence against you inevitable. 

Unlike the Klan, southern politicians, and other assorted racists, Wallace did not frame Black violence (real or imagined) as something inherent to people of African descent. As Wallace put it in a 1998 interview, "If they felt that hatred, it was in reaction to the hatred that they felt had been directed against them, therefore, The Hate That Hate Produced."

So if, as the right wing fantasies insist, there is a cabal of evil trans activists out there fomenting hate and violence against cisgender people, what might produce that hate?  Imagine being a trans person living in the United States this decade. Consider these facts: 

• The Human Rights Campaign has been documenting violence against trans people since 2013; attacks against trans people of color, especially, can truly be called an epidemic. 
• In 2024 the Republican Party spent over $80 million on transphobic political ads. 
• Hundreds of anti-trans bills have been proposed in state legislatures across the country.
• In United States v. Skrmetti, the Supreme Court essentially held that the principle that medical treatment is a private matter between the person seeking care, their family, and their doctors applies to everyone except trans youth and their families. 
• Donald Trump has signed a number of executive orders seeking to ban transgender people from public life. 
• In August the US Air Force denied early retirement benefits for transgender members with 15-18 years of service, escalating Trump's attempt to rid the military of any trans presence. 

Anti-trans rhetoric, legislation, and scapegoating has had significant impact on public attitudes. As of February 2025, according to Pew Research, 66% of Americans favor laws and policies that require trans athletes to compete on teams that match their sex assigned at birth. Similarly, 56% support laws or policies that ban heath care professionals from providing gender transition care to minors. The most frightening finding, however, is the one that some pro-trans people and allies saw as encouraging: "56% of adults express support for policies aimed at protecting trans people from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces."  ONLY 56 percent?(!). Imagine in 1933 a poll of German citizens that found, "56% of adults express support for policies aimed at protecting Jews from discrimination in jobs, housing and public spaces." 

Given all of the above, we might expect that transgender people would be as violent as cisgender men. But that is not the case. 

Make no mistake: hate and cruelty are prominent in the contemporary United States, fomented and acted on from the highest office in the land to local communities. The Minnesota shooter without question was motivated by hate, but the evidence suggests it was a hate driven by identification with fascists and finding in the experience of prior school shooters a model of how to exact vengeance against "enemies" and get media attention while doing it. That kind of hate is all too common in the United States and is not unique to any one social class. To blame the Minnesota tragedy on something intrinsically evil about trans people, or to blame the overall rise in hate and cruelty on the trans population--a group that faces an existential threat--is the most extreme level gaslighting possible. Or as argued by Abby Vesoulis in Mother Jones Magazine, after noting that 134 of the 141 mass shootings tracked by Mother Jones from 1982-2023 were carried out by men with no known history of identifying as trans or nonbinary, "to blame the unnerving prevalence of mass shootings in America on the existence of trans people here isn’t just a dangerously stigmatizing, politically motivated take. It’s also bad math."