Libs of TikTok’s Chaya Raichik added to database of extremists

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) has added anti-LGBTQ+ hate influencer Chaya Raichik to its public database of extremist individuals, organizations, and ideologies.

The nonprofit civil rights organization’s listing for Raichik credits the Libs of TikTok founder as having “helped revive in right-wing propaganda the anti-LGBTQ+ ‘groomer’ slur, which implies that all LGBTQ+ people are pedophiles. She spreads the anti-LGBTQ+ conspiracy theory that ‘groomers’ have infiltrated every social institution with the intent of ‘sexualizing’ children.”

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Raichik, the SPLC’s listing continues, has used her social media platform to further “an anti-LGBTQ+ disinformation campaign that mobilizes right-wing extremist groups in violent attacks against LGBTQ+ people, spaces and events, as well as against doctors, hospitals, librarians, libraries, teachers and schools.”

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The nonprofit traces Raichik’s anti-LGBTQ+ propaganda back to 2021, when she pivoted from using her @LibsofTikTok account on X (then known as Twitter) to spread conspiracy theories around COVID-19 and the 2020 election to capitalizing on the false “groomer” narrative then gaining renewed traction on the right.

Libs of TikTok now boasts over three million followers on X, and Raichik’s anti-LGBTQ+ posts have been linked to real threats directed at the schools, libraries, hospitals, and individuals she has targeted. Media Matters has tracked harassment and threats of violence aimed at at least 42 institutions, events, and individuals after Raichik posted about them. Her posts have also led to the resignation of multiple educators who have faced harassment due to her online attacks.

SPLC’s profile of Raichik zeroes in on six instances in which children’s hospitals and specific doctors faced harassment and threats of violence following her false or misleading posts about the gender-affirming care they provide.

“Though she claims to be motivated by a desire to protect children, Raichik has targeted children’s hospitals, as well as other spaces and events that directly serve children, for campaigns of abuse and intimidation – putting them in danger of bomb threats, gun violence and exposure to vicious anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric,” according to the SPLC.

The nonprofit also notes a 2022 Washington Post report in which Twitter employees told the paper that they feared it was “only a matter of time” before Libs of TikTok’s post resulted in someone getting killed.

In an October 31, 2023, edition of his newsletter, Michael Edison Hayden, an investigative journalist with the SPLC who has covered threats to Pride events, schools, and libraries that followed Raichik’s posts, described Libs of TikTok as a “time bomb.”

While there is no evidence that Raichik herself has ever directly made a bomb threat, Hayden wrote, “What she has done though is fear monger to an audience of bigots who have a history of tormenting LGBTQIA people and their allies.”

“Surely, Raichik has become aware of this pattern. Still she continues in the same manner, without appearing to change course,” he continued. “My very real concern is that one of these days, someone interested in doing more than threaten people is going to target one of the places she flags with an act of horrific violence.”

“Raichik doesn’t seem like a particularly impressive person to me. She doesn’t appear to be smart. She doesn’t appear to have any artistic talents. She is just the social media grifter who happened to be at the right place at the right time to cash in on a wave of anti-trans hate.”