It's telling how normalized events like this have become; they barely make ripples now in the national news. On Monday, Tucker Carlson of Fox News used his massive cable news audience — an average of over 3 million viewers a night — to spread a QAnon-style conspiracy theory and encourage people to commit violence against teachers and health care providers. Media Matters collected the clip. It's hard to follow for those who aren't already well-versed in the right's mythology accusing LGBTQ people and their allies of "grooming" children to be victims of sexual abuse. But what is undeniable is that Carlson is calling for violent vigilantism in response to his false accusations against doctors and teachers.
Carlson is light on examples of this alleged grooming but heavy on hyperbole and accusations implying that every child who sees a doctor or enters a classroom is in danger of being sexually abused by some liberal cabal. Yes, schools have sex education and children's hospitals offer affirming care for LGBTQ kids. But the fantasy that Carlson spins out has nothing to do with these banal realities. He claims hospitals are "castrating" children, a claim that has no relationship to painstakingly slow care protocols for gender non-conforming minors, care which is mostly focused on mental health approaches and sometimes hormonal treatment. (Surgery is generally reserved for adults.) We see this in Carlson's accusation that sex education is offered to puberty-age children in order to sexually stimulate teachers. In reality, such education is important for preventing sexual abuse.
