Garrison Davis

Independent news sites and sub-stack style blogs have to build an audience to generate traction and stay operating.

It turns out, thousands of people constantly freaking out creates high social media engagement.

This creates a loop where trans panic fear-mongering boosts social media engagement, which further encourages more irresponsible clickbait framing.

Those who are successful may slowly develop a new class position, which then needs to be maintained.

Financial incentives may even pressure journalists who have done good work in the past to

to fall back on panic-driven engagement bait to attract new traffic.

This isn't exclusive to trans outlets either.

Following the assassination of Charlie Kirk, Ken Klippenstein reported on his sub stack that the FBI was about to, quote, designate transgender people as violent extremists.

His report contained no new verifiable information.

The core evidence was an unnamed quote-unquote senior official who told Klippenstein he quote-unquote feels like trans people could be labeled nihilist violent extremists.

Klippenstein has previously misunderstood the nihilist violent extremism label.

The term actually predates the second Trump administration and refers to groups like 764, child sextortion rings, and communities like the school shooter fandom TCC.

Hours before Klippenstein's report was published, the Heritage Foundation and the Oversight Project publicly released a petition calling for a new classification of extremism called trans-ideology-inspired violent extremism to categorize attacks they believe are motivated by transgender ideology.

The petition memo denied that all trans people and their allies would be designated domestic terrorists under this label

Only those who, quote, encourage, promote, condone, take, or incite unlawful violent action or threats based on this ideology, unquote.

The Heritage petition also runs contrary to Klippenstein's report by advocating against the use of the nihilist violent extremism label to describe transgender-motivated violence.

A heritage petition to establish a new category of extremism is different from an unnamed official who feels like trans people as a whole could be labeled as nihilist violent extremists, and it's important to understand that distinction.

That was last September.

It's now half a year later, and neither of these things has come to fruition.

The closest we got was in late September following Trump's Antifa terrorism executive order with the National Security Presidential Memorandum No.