Washington Post journalist Taylor Lorenz recently posted this interview she conducted with Chaya Raichik, founder of the highly controversial — and notoriously transphobic and anti-LGBTQ — account Libs of TikTok. Lorenz describes the interview on her YouTube page:
Chaya Raichik, founder of Libs of TikTok spoke with me about the great replacement theory, the death of a 16-year-old non binary child in Oklahoma, why she won't delete her false accusations about the Uvalde shooter, her views on gender, feminism and more.
From the interview:
TAYLOR LORENZ: Let's just get back to the great replacement stuff, because I'm curious, what are your thoughts on that whole ideology?
CHAYA RAICHIK: I mean, how many — there were times that — there were some months over the past three years that there were more illegals coming into our border than children being born in the U.S. Is that not — does that not look like they're trying to replace us?
LORENZ: I guess, sort of imagining America as a melting pot —
RAICHIK: They're bringing in a whole new population.
LORENZ: — isn't that sort of what America was founded on?
RAICHIK: But they're actually bringing in more people than are actually being born.
LORENZ: So I guess it sounds like you do sort of ascribe to this theory of a great replacement. How does that make you —
RAICHIK: I just look at the facts and the numbers.
LORENZ: Well so, let's just give a corollary, right? A lot of Jewish people fled, you know Europe, came here also as immigrants and there's a lot of criticism towards Jewish people in those movements, in those far-right movements. So I'm just wondering, as a Jewish woman, sort of how you feel about that and your role in cultivating this fan base that might think of you as a minority, an outsider.
RAICHIK: Not all cultures are equal. Yeah.
LORENZ: So, I know you have a lot of concerns about educational materials and books, library books and things, especially —
RAICHIK: They're importing people who want to destroy America and who want to — who come here and do not stand for what America stands for. So, and I think, and we see it, there's time after time after time after time, they come in, they're destroying our cities, they bring crime with them, and they are bringing them in to replace us. And, yeah, I think people from various countries, they're all different.
On YouTube, Lorenz also includes this condensed version of a recent piece about Raichik in The Washington Post entitled, "How Libs of TikTok became a powerful presence in Oklahoma schools":
Libs of TikTok is run by Chaya Raichik who has amassed an audience of millions as a far-right influencer who targets LGBTQ people. Though she lives in California and Florida and is registered to vote in California, she has become an increasingly powerful and ever-present figure in Oklahoma.
Raichik's growing role in Oklahoma became a subject of speculation this week after Nex Benedict, a 16-year-old nonbinary student at Owasso, Okla., died following an altercation in a girl's bathroom at the public high school they attended.
On Thursday, Oklahoma City Councilor Sean Cummings lambasted Raichik for stoking anti LGBTQ hate in the state, saying that she has "blood on her hands."
Raichik was recently appointed to the Oklahoma Library Media Advisory Committee and has sought to have books depicting LGBTQ people and sex education removed from school libraries.
In September, Raichik visited Oklahoma and met with Walters. She also attempted to speak at a local Oklahoma school board meeting to question the board members about a high school principal who performed as a drag queen who Raichik had posted about (the board denied her request to speak). Raichik also claimed that various Oklahoma school districts were featuring "porn" books in their libraries.
Last year, Raichik posted about an elementary school librarian in Tulsa. She shared a TikTok video featuring the librarian that had been edited to include the teacher's name and school, the Ellen Ochoa Elementary School in Tulsa. Shortly after Raichik's post, the school received a bomb threat. Ryan Walters also retweeted Raichik's post about the librarian.
Raichik said that she has only visited Oklahoma once, but decided to get involved in state politics and education after discovering and posting about LGBTQ teachers in the state. She said of her decision to involve herself in Oklahoma: "[they] unfortunately have a lot of wokeness in a red state and I'm trying to help."
Before her rise to online fame, Raichik worked as a real estate salesperson in Brooklyn. In November of 2020 she created the account that would eventually become Libs of TikTok. After attending the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol, she amassed a growing audience by promoting covid denialism, casting doubt on the 2020 presidential election results, and promoting false stories about child sex trafficking.
Soon, Raichik's account on X was being promoted by high-profile right-wing influencers and podcasters including Joe Rogan. She received funding from Babylon Bee founder Seth Dillon which allowed her to leave her real estate career and focus on growing the account full time.
On Thursday, Dillon tweeted that he'd cut ties with Raichik and that the two were "no longer working together". Raichik told the Post that they'd parted ways for "personal reasons."
Raichik's attacks on LGBTQ people escalated throughout 2021 and 2022. She advocated that any teacher who comes out as gay to their students be "fired on the spot." 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. Her followers skyrocketed on X from around 60,000 in July 2021 to over 2.8 million today.
Raichik's posts about schools, hospitals, and libraries who provide services for LGTBQ youth have preceded dozens of bomb threats, harassment, and death threats against staff. Earlier this month, NBC News identified 33 instances, starting in November 2020, when people or institutions singled out by Libs of TikTok subsequently reported violent intimidation. Raichik has repeatedly used her platform to villainize and attack LGBTQ people, especially trans people.
Raichik has amplified false claims that the Lakewood church shooter was trans and accused an innocent trans woman of carrying out the Uvalde shooting.
I suffered through the entire 53-minute interview. My personal opinions after watching it are that Taylor Lorenz has a lot more patience and fortitude than I do, and that Chaya Raichik is embarrassingly vapid, at best, and willfully ignorant, defiant, unrepentant, and dangerous at worst.
See also: "Libs of TikTok" unmasked in Washington Post exposé
