The GOP Is Weaponizing LibsOfTikTok’s Anti-‘Woke’ Hate

In the year since Chaya Raichik was unmasked as the operator of the hate-filled Libs of TikTok Twitter account, a primary vector of the right’s outrage, she’s doubled down on her attacks on the LGBTQ community, teachers, and medical professionals across the country.

In June she posted the location of a drag show in California that was then stormed by the Proud Boys. She also posted the locations of drag shows in Dallas, and in Coeur D’Alene, Idaho, where 31 members of the Patriot Front were arrested before they could reach the show.

In August she tweeted over a dozen times about Boston Children’s Hospital and its gender-affirming care facilities, falsely claiming that they were providing gender-affirming hysterectomies to minors. As a result, doctors and nurses received death threats and the hospital received a bomb threat.

In the days and weeks after these threats were made, Raichik made false claims about numerous other hospitals, including Akron Children’s Hospital, the Children’s National Hospital in Washington, D.C, and at least half a dozen others. After Raichik tweeted about them, staff at those facilities were threatened and harassed. 

And in November, hours after a man shot and killed 5 people at an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Raichik targeted a group that supports young drag performers and that was holding an event in Colorado.

Raichik has also targeted dozens of teachers who promote inclusion and diversity in their classrooms, many of whom have faced online harassment or have lost their jobs after being features on LibsOfTikTok.

Despite all of this—or more likely because of it—Raichik has been richly rewarded. Her social media following has skyrocketed, she is raking in tens of thousands of dollars from her Substack subscribers, she has published a children’s book that depicts teachers as predators, she’s dined one-on-one with former President Donald Trump, and she’s appeared numerous times on Fox News and Newsmax.

And on Thursday, she will crown her hugely successful year when she takes the stage at the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), the largest gathering of conservative activists in the U.S.

“Chaya Raichik has made a name for herself by singling out the most vulnerable members of our society for harassment,” Ari Drennen, the director of Media Matters’ LGBTQ Program, told VICE News. “Inviting her as a speaker is a gesture of contempt towards every teacher, every medical provider, and every other American who cares first and foremost about making the world a kinder and safer place.”

Raichik is scheduled to speak on the opening day of the conference on a panel titled, “Don Lemon Is Past His Primetime.”

“Chaya Raichik’s appearance at CPAC shows how she is only in it for notoriety and money,” Alejandra Caraballo, Harvard Law School clinical instructor and transgender activist, told VICE News. 

Raichik’s attendance at the conference is symptomatic of the conference’s lurch to the extreme right in recent years as it’s gone global and embraced authoritarian leaders. Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán hosted a version of CPAC in 2022, and Brazil’s former President Jair Bolsonaro will speak at this week’s conference.

CPAC has fully embraced Trump’s MAGA movement, and figures like Reps. Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene are headlining the conference, while Republican Party big hitters like Speaker of the House Rep. Kevin McCarthy, Senate Majority Leader Sen. Mitch McConnell, and former Vice President Mike Pence stay away.

And those lawmakers who are in attendance will be the same ones who have been listening to Raichik’s rhetoric and using those arguments to craft repressive legislation.

“Right now, she’s at the center of an entire culture war about trans people’s right to life, liberty, and happiness, where politicians are working to enact laws that prohibit doctors from providing care,” Joan Donovan, misinformation expert and author of the book Meme Wars, a about how online extremism has undermined U.S. democracy, told VICE News.

“Raichik is at the front line of this right-wing offense, leading the charge against trans people,” Donovan said. “This is the same playbook that Breitbart and [Steve] Bannon have run for years against anti-fascist activists and Black Lives Matter. This right wing movement believes that politics is downstream from culture because culture often needs to shift for political opportunities to open up. The media hype around Raichik’s transphobic and homophobic tweets incite hate and harassment, but also open new avenues for regulation as she demonizes the existence of trans life as a matter of public concern.”

Raichik’s bombastic social media content is a perfect fit with Trump’s own use of social media, so it was no surprise that Raichik met with Trump last month. NBC reported their meeting was one of a number he took with social media influencers ahead of his 2024 presidential campaign.

And there is little doubt that Raichik has influence on social media.

At the time Raichik was unmasked as the operator of the Libs of TikTok account last April, she had around 650,000 Twitter followers. Rather than losing followers as a result of her unmasking, her account gained 200,000 new followers and has kept climbing since.

The main Libs of TikTok account has over 1.9 million followers while Raichik’s account in her own name has a further 200,000 followers, giving her an incredible reach on the platform.

But Twitter isn’t the only platform where Raichik has influence. She has 45,000 followers on YouTube even though she has posted only three videos and none for over a year. On Instagram, she has 370,000 followers and on Facebook she has 61,000 followers. 

On Trump’s Truth Social, Raichik has over 1.1 million followers

She even has 140,000 followers on the YouTube-rival Rumble, even though she has yet to post a single video. She also has significant followers on more fringe platforms like Gab (30,000), Gettr (84,000) and Parler (5,000).

One of her first acts when she was exposed as the Libs of TikTok operator last April was to promote her Substack to her new followers.

Today, the Libs of TikTok Substack has 131,000 subscribers, “thousands” of whom had paid subscriptions, meaning that Raichik is raking in between $10,000 and $45,000 monthly based on the cheapest subscription tier.

And just this week Raichik sought to capitalize even further on her fame by launching a children’s book, which is unsurprisingly designed to teach children about “predator” teachers. The book, titled “No More Secrets,” costs $19.99, but a signed copy will cost you an extra $20.

While Raichik has been temporarily suspended from Twitter and Facebook numerous times, there appears to be little suggestion that her hugely influential accounts are in danger of being banned any time soon.

Indeed, she has regularly interacted with Twitter CEO Elon Musk, who has a transgender daughter. Earlier this month, Musk responded positively to one of Raichik’s tweets that mocked a nonbinary person’s request that people refer to them with the correct pronouns, and in December he liked a transphobic tweet from Raichik.

Raichik did not respond to VICE News’ request for comment, but an excuse she and her supporters have commonly used to defend her attacks on vulnerable people is that she’s simply reporting content that’s already publicly available. 

In reality, the content in Raichik’s posts is frequently taken out of context and accompanied by misleading comments, and the individuals who are featured in her posts are ill-equipped to deal with the resulting firehose of abuse from Raichik’s huge following.

On Monday, she posted a video of a queer teacher who says she loves being able to teach her students that they can be themselves, and she likes to think of herself as their “school mom.” 

The video has been viewed half a million times, and Raichik’s followers responded in the comments section immediately. 

“Not a teacher. A groomer,” one replied, while another follower added: “This is the definition of grooming.”

In the comments, the teacher was called a “pervert,” a “predator,” and a “pedophile” in the responses and one of Raichick’s followers even threatened violence: “Anyone telling my daughter to call them ‘Mom’ would be picking themself off that floor.”

While Raichik did not name the teacher in question, her TikTok handle was shown, and in the comments of several of her other videos she has now been attacked and labeled “a groomer.”

A number of the other TikTok accounts that were featured on the Libs of TikTok account this week have subsequently gone private or been deleted completely.

One person Raichik has conspicuously failed to call out is CPAC organizer, Matt Schlapp, who last year was accused of sexual assault by a Republican staffer who said in a lawsuit that Sclapp groped his genitals. 

“She is being rewarded with generous speaking fees and book deals for her efforts over the past year demonizing and dehumanizing LGBTQ people as groomers and sexual predators,” Caraballo said. “Given those incentives, it’s no surprise she would overlook the fact that CPAC is organized by Matt Schlapp, a man credibly accused of sexual assault.”

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