The Global Project Against Hate and Extremism (GPAHE) is deeply concerned by the recent, apparently non-peer reviewed study commissioned by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services which purports to link support for established medical guidance on transgender care and the support of individual rights to “left-wing authoritarianism” and the justification of political violence. This study is not a neutral scientific inquiry, itself acknowledging that violence connected to gender ideology “remains largely undocumented.”
Instead, this study attempts to reframe a healthcare consensus as a security and radicalization concern— furthering the administration’s aims of dehumanizing and abusing the transgender community. This study also seemingly supports the Heritage Foundation’s demand that the FBI create a Transgender Ideology-Inspired Violent Extremism (TIVE) domestic terrorism category so that the full weight of the government can be brought to bear on perceived potential threats.
When a government attempts to relabel mainstream medical positions as an indicator of dangerousness, what it is actually doing is laying the groundwork for treating a position, and the people who hold it, as a threat to be monitored. And it will not stop with the transgender community.
This attempt should alarm everyone regardless of their views on the underlying medical questions as the release of this study fits neatly into the administration’s goal of labeling those who support inclusive democracies and civil rights for marginalized communities as domestic terrorists.
NSPM-7, the president’s memo on countering domestic terrorism, clearly states that government agencies should target those perceived as promoting “anti-Americanism, anti-capitalism, and anti-Christianity; support for the overthrow of the United States Government; extremism on migration, race, and gender; and hostility towards those who hold traditional American views on family, religion, and morality.” What the government calls domestic terrorism are largely First Amendment protected activities that it is reframing as terrorism. It is part of the administration’s attempts to further its narrative that its own far-right, authoritarian, and illegal activities are correct, and those opposed to it are terrorists.
We cannot ignore this latest attempt to rewrite facts. It is only the next step in a long-ranging plan to completely undermine our democracy and pervert true American values. GPAHE has long documented how authoritarian movements turn the machinery of the state against vulnerable communities by relabeling political dissent and identity as security threats. A federally commissioned report that pathologizes agreement with pediatric and psychological standards of care fits that pattern. We urge policymakers, medical institutions, and the public to reject the premise that supporting a person’s identity is evidence of extremism.
