The Grotesque Politicization of the Colorado Springs Gay Bar Shooting

The motive isn't even known yet, but that hasn't stopped the Left from exploiting the tragedy.

Law enforcement officers document evidence in the parking lot the morning after a mass shooting at Club Q, an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colorado, on November 20, 2022. | (Getty)

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I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised at this point, but it’s still impossible not to react with anything but disgust at the speed with which the media and the Left more broadly have jumped at the opportunity to use the recent shooting in Colorado for political and propagandistic purposes. Before the blood has even dried, they’ve laid the blame at the feet of their rivals and are using the tragedy as an opportunity to aggrandize themselves.

The shooting, which left five dead and at least 25 injured, occurred at “Club Q,” a venue that holds “family-friendly” drag events like “drag queen story time,” and which the New York Times described as “one of the few refuges for L.G.B.T.Q. people in Colorado Springs.” Apparently, that’s enough information for the FBI and their liberal media scribes to treat this as a hate crime, even though it’s still unclear what the shooter’s motive was — if there was one at all — and what his political views are. In other words, they’re making one hell of an assumption.

Moreover, there’s not yet a single fact available to suggest that this had anything to do with trans people, but that isn’t stopping NBC News “disinformation reporter” Ben Collins and his ilk from trying to exploit this tragedy to elicit as much anti-conservative backlash as they can possibly manage:

Tom Elliott @tomselliott

NBC's Collins (@oneunderscore__): "I’m wondering, what could I have done different? ... We have to have a come-to-Jesus moment here as reporters. Are we more afraid of being on Breitbart for saying that trans people deserve to be alive or are we more afraid of the dead people?"

The shooter was arrested a year ago for felony menacing and first degree kidnapping, but the defense attorney decided not to pursue charges, making this another case of a violent criminal set free to cause more harm. But the Left has no interest in talking about this problem. Such details are irrelevant, for this tragedy presents a prime chance to accuse the Right of. . . stochastic terrorism.¹

Ever since the Obama Administration officially broadened the U.S. government’s focus on terrorism to “violent extremism,” the feds and their media lackeys have engaged in a massive propaganda effort to convince us that domestic right-wing violence is the greatest threat facing the country.² The FBI has embraced an unfounded theory of “radicalization” that alleges a direct progression from adopting certain beliefs, or expressing opposition to U.S. policies and the left-wing social agenda, to becoming a terrorist. The point of amping the chimerical spectre of right-wing extremism is to justify new violations of Constitutional liberties; it’s to normalize and impose restrictions on speech and guns, and to curtail due process.

The propaganda wing of the ruling class practically waits with bated breath for something like the Club Q shooting to occur so they can use it to political effect, shoehorning every such incident into a narrow, predetermined narrative: That conservatives are inherently hateful people prone to random, violent rampages. Every effort is being made to twist this tragedy as further “proof” of a white-Right menace, and it’s already being accepted as fact by the Left that this is the fault of anyone and everyone who opposes the satanic practice of mutilating and castrating minors and thinks having little kids attend family-friendly drag events like that shown below is inappropriate:

Christopher F. Rufo ⚔️ @realchrisrufo

This is what we're supposed to call a "family-friendly drag show": an adult male-to-female transvestite simulating a striptease in front of children, while singing "my p*ssy good, p*ssy sweet ...f*ck me all night."

If you don’t support every element of our radical social agenda, the overarching goal of which is the fundamental transformation of society, you are responsible for murder.

The baselessly accusatory coverage is a cheap, grotesque way of demonizing political opponents as part of an ugly blame game specifically intended to silence people with whom they disagree by lumping them into the same category as violent extremists. Highlighting the most fringe elements of a political constituency and claiming it’s the norm, they stoke division and tear at our social fabric. But again: We still don’t even know the motive or the shooter’s political views!

Monday, Colorado Republican Rep. Lauren Boebert tweeted, “The news out of Colorado Springs is absolutely awful. This morning the victims & their families are in my prayers. This lawless violence needs to end and end quickly.”

In response, Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said that Boebert has “played a major role in elevating anti-LGBT+ hate rhetoric and anti-trans lies while spending your time in Congress blocking even the most common sense gun safety laws.” Similar sentiments were shared by countless progressives on social media.

AOC expanded with this:

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez @AOC

After Trump elevated anti-immigrant & anti-Latino rhetoric, we had the deadliest anti-Latino shooting in modern history. After anti-Asian hate w/COVID, Atlanta. Tree of life. Emanuel AME. Buffalo. And now after an anti-LGBT+ campaign, Colorado Springs. Connect the dots, @GOP.

What dots are there to be connected?

The Pulse nightclub shooting that she first references wasn’t connected to Trump, but was instead “intended as revenge for US anti-terror policies abroad,” and the FBI’s investigation found no evidence that the shooter intentionally targeted gay people. Of course, that hasn’t stopped people from grifting off that tragedy:³

Tom Elliott @tomselliott

Pulse Club survivor: "This is what we warned would be the inevitable consequence of unmitigated unbridled hate in this country .. Five people went to a space that was supposed to be safe for them, a space like the one I knew well at Pulse Nightclub, & they came out in body bags."

The Atlanta shooting that AOC mentions was an attack on sex workers by someone who specifically told police he did it because of his sex addiction.

The Buffalo shooter specifically disassociated from Trump in his manifesto, and while he did buy into the “Great Replacement Theory,” he also considered himself an “eco-fascist” and hated Fox News.

So, again: How do you propose we connect the dots, AOC? You prima donna clown of unflagging industry.

What makes all this especially repulsive is that the Democratic-media industrial complex only cares about a tragedy if the Left gains politically from the coverage, otherwise it’s not covered at all. Chicago is basically a war zone right now, with dozens of people shot and killed every week. This past weekend, 20 people were shot, three fatally, including a fifteen-year-old girl. Where’s the outrage? There is none because these incidents can’t be weaponized. Recall how quickly they memory-holed the story of Darrel Brooks Jr., who caused the deaths of six people last year at a Waukesha, Wisconsin Christmas parade in what was explicitly a racially motivated mass killing. The one year anniversary was Monday; Biden still hasn’t visited.

Here’s the thing: The Club Q shooting may very well turn out to be a hate crime. But it shouldn’t matter. The rush to judgement we’re seeing play out in the mainstream media, whose chief operating principle at times like this is “never let a mass shooting go to waste,” is exploitative and sensational. The focus should be on remembering the victims and thinking critically about the social forces that led to this tragedy. Instead, it’s being used to validate a core ruling class belief about right-wing malevolence. The goal is to conflate violence with the Republican Party as part of a ploy to shame conservatives and galvanize Democratic voters.

It’s malicious calumny and morally reprehensible.

1. At the time of this writing, “J.K. Rowling” is trending on Twitter because according to the Left’s stochastic terrorism logic, her belief in biological sex and support for women’s rights leads people to commit violence on her behalf.

2. It’s absolutely absurd to say that domestic right-wing extremism is a greater threat to America than Islamic terrorists. This isn’t the appropriate forum to debate the merits of the War on Terror, but you have to be a special kind of stupid to actually believe a well-financed global network of state-supported Jihadis capable of inflicting military defeats — however inconsequential — on America is in any way comparable to one-off psychotics committing politically-motivated attacks—attacks which are often spoken about by the feds, but examples of which remain vanishingly rare.

3. Democratic Rep. Brianna Titone: “We saw the Pulse Nightclub shooting, and … an uptick in the number of bills that are anti-LGBT & especially anti-trans … And this has been fueled by a lot of people being emboldened by our former president.”