Evidence that Colorado Springs Club Q shooting was motivated by LGBTQ hatred
A former Proud Boy testifies about the group’s “failed” efforts. Further evidence suggests the defendant in the Colorado Springs nightclub shooting was motivated by LGBTQ hatred. And House members want answers about how hate groups raise money on crowdfunding sites.
Extremism reporter Will Carless is off this week, but there was plenty of news to go around. Here’s the week in extremism, from USA TODAY.
Crowdfunded extremism
Crowdfunding sites may raise money for charitable causes or families suffering from injuries or disasters. But as USA TODAY’s Jessica Guynn and Will Carless have reported over the past two years, the same kinds of web sites also make it easier for American extremist groups to spread their message.
A study by the Anti-Defamation League, first reported in USA TODAY last month, found that extremists had raised more than $6 million on crowdfunding sites since 2016.
This happened in spite of terms of service that sometimes bar fundraising campaigns that promote hate or racism.
The sites include well-known GoFundMe, but the study also found much of the fundraising passes through GiveSendGo, which bills itself as a “Christian crowdfunding” site.
Now, Democrats in Congress say they want action. A group of more than two dozen House Democrats on Thursday asked the Treasury Department to outline what steps it has taken to stop extremism on crowdfunding platforms. "As you know, the intelligence and law enforcement communities are gravely concerned about the threat of domestic violent extremists," the lawmakers wrote. An answer is due by March.
Hate crimes in Colorado Springs?
When a gunman opened fire in a Colorado Springs LGBTQ nightclub, killing five people and wounding 17, it was the kind of attack experts had long feared amid a rising tide of anti-gay rhetoric.
Still, there were questions about the defendant now accused in the Club Q shooting, and the extensive raft of hate crimes that were brought in the charges. A court hearing Thursday shed more light on those questions, and our colleague Justin Reutter was there.
Defense attorneys had argued there was no evidence that defendant Anderson Aldrich had committed a hate crime. But District Attorney Michael Allen said evidence showed the defendant had a “distaste for LGBTQ.”
As Reutter reported:
Prosecutors cited images previously shared by a discord account associated with Aldrich, including an image of a rifle sight centered on a participant of a pride parade, as well as hateful videos posted to a website administered by Aldrich, including a "neo nazi-mass shooter terrorist training video."
District Judge Michael McHenry declined to drop any of the 323 charges in the attack. An arraignment is set for late May.
Another ex-Proud Boy speaks
Our colleague Ella Lee continues to watch the Proud Boys trial in Washington, D.C. Prosecutors allege five members of the extremist street gang conspired to stop the certification of the 2020 election.
This week, the one Proud Boy who has pleaded guilty to seditious conspiracy took the stand to explain the group’s frame of mind.
On the stand this week as a witness, Jeremy Bertino said the group’s members saw themselves as leaders of the political right, and their job was to “save the country.” He said the group was the “tip of the spear,” and that they had come to view law enforcement as “the enemy.”
"We would have to take the reins, lead the people to freedom," Bertino said. "And freedom was an opposition of a tyrannical government that we felt was being installed as opposed to voted in."
Bertino himself faces up to 20 years in prison for the sedition charge, plus more time for other charges.
More: 'The revolution had failed,' ex-Proud Boy testifies
Who the Proud Boys are: They joined looking for brotherhood. They found racism, bullying and antisemitism
Stat of the week: 14
A reminder: that’s the number of bills scholars found in state legislatures across the country that aimed to ban, censor or criminalize drag shows. And that number is now more than a month old.
As we reported last month, PEN America, a nonprofit organization that champions freedom of speech, found those bills in its January analysis.
The issue continues to simmer in the culture wars over transgender rights and drag performances – both in TV-show pundit-land and in real American communities that get torn apart by the controversies, including one that was the focus of our special report in 2022.
This week, a Canadian drag performer who had starred in that country’s “Drag Race” TV show took to Twitter to encourage parents to keep their kids away from drag shows – not because they’re dangerous, but because right-wing activists will film their children.
As Carless explains here, this has indeed happened – shots of children even at “all ages” drag shows have been used, sometimes out of context, to stoke outrage against those shows. But other performers have framed things a different way. The issues with the shows, and the reasons for them, are far more complex than pundits describe. “American flashpoint,” our special report, is a good place to learn more.
A drag show, a protest, a line of guns: How the battle over one issue is tearing at America
Last week in extremism: Buffalo shooter sentenced to life; Charlottesville marcher dies of suicide
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Evidence Colorado Springs Club Q shooting was motivated by LGBTQ hate
