The problem with GOP disinformation on social media is that one, it's easy to spread, and two, the right-wing disinformation machine rewards those who do spread it willingly and directly. That's the case with Chaya Raichik of NYC, who discovered that retweeting viral political TikTok videos on Twitter made for the perfect format for "owning the libs" and especially her attacks on the LGBTQ+ community. Now, her two-year campaign has gotten her nearly two-thirds of a million followers, including several major influential cable TV and talk radio appearances.
Chaya Raichik had been working as a real estate salesperson in Brooklyn when, in early November 2020, she created the account that would eventually become Libs of TikTok.
Under her first handle @shaya69830552, she minimized covid, cast doubt on the election results and promoted a dubious story about a child sex trafficking ring. On Nov. 23, 2020, Raichik changed handles, this time going by @shaya_ray and identifying herself publicly as a real estate investor in Brooklyn. She began doubling down on election fraud conspiracies using QAnon-related language. Early that December, she joked about launching a clothing line titled “voter fraud is real.”
In January 2021, Raichik started talking about traveling to D.C. to support Trump on Jan. 6 at the Stop the Steal rally. When violence broke out at the Capitol that day, she tweeted a play-by-play account claiming to be on the ground. “They were rubber bullets from law enforcement. 1 hit right next to me,” she said. She posted videos from the crowd and spoke of tear gas being deployed nearby. After saying she left the riot, she used Twitter to downplay the event, claiming that it was peaceful compared to a “BLM protest.”
Later that month, Raichik cycled through two more Twitter names, this time focusing on state politicians. First under the handle @ChayaRaichik and the display name “Chaya Raichik,” and then under the new handle, @cuomomustgo, she railed against New York Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo (D), calling for him to resign. She promoted the efforts to recall California Gov. Gavin Newsom (D). She also began posting about Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), calling him “actually brilliant.”
By early last March, she pivoted to a parody account titled @houseplantpotus, pretending to tweet as if she was a houseplant living with President Biden. She revamped her avatar to look like a small shrub with Biden’s face on the leaves. At that point in time she also claimed to be proudly Orthodox Jewish, live in Brooklyn and work in real estate in her Twitter bio.
But the house plant parody never took off. On April 19, 2021, she pivoted her account once again, this time to Libs of TikTok.
Just four months after getting started, Libs of TikTok got its big break: Joe Rogan started promoting the account to the millions of listeners of his hit podcast. He mentioned it several times on the show in August, then again in late September. “Libs of TikTok is one of the greatest f---ing accounts of all time,” he said. With his seal of approval, Raichik’s following skyrocketed.
Libs of TikTok gained more prominence throughout the end of last year, cementing its spot in the right-wing media outrage cycle. Its attacks on the LGBTQ+ community also escalated. By January, Raichik’s page was leaning hard into “groomer” discourse, calling for any teacher who comes out as gay to their students to be “fired on the spot.”
Her anti-trans tweets went especially viral. She called on her followers to contact schools that were allowing “boys in the girls bathrooms” and pushed the false conspiracy theory that schools were installing litter boxes in bathrooms for children who identify as cats. She also purported that adults who teach children about LGBTQ+ identities are “abusive,” that being gender-nonconforming or an ally to the LGBTQ+ community is a “mental illness,” and referred to schools as “government run indoctrination camps” for the LGBTQ+ community.
“Libs of TikTok is shaping our entire political conversation about the rights of LGBTQ people to participate in society,” Drennen said. “It feels like they’re single-handedly taking us back a decade in terms of the public discourse around LGBTQ rights. It’s been like nothing we’ve ever really seen.”
A one-woman show, feeding the right-wing outrage beast with instant, viral red meat, day after day. No wonder then she's become a superstar in the red state echo chamber.
And there are thousands and thousands more like her. If you want to know how things got so dark, so quickly around here, it's people like Raichik.
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