Trans Bans Expand: Anti-LGBTIQ+ Lawfare and Neo-fascism

Abstract Introduction Anti-fascist theories suggest different meanings for anti-LGBTIQ+ rights laws. This paper explores how 2023 increases in US anti-LGBTIQ+ bill attempts can be explained. Methods A Critical Discourse Analysis of 1054 US anti-LGBTIQ+ state-level bill submissions from 1 Jan 2018 to 31 December 2023, compared 2023 trends to previous data. Results The co-ordinated neofascist mobilisation behind US hyper-productivity and erratic contradictory justifications of anti-LGBTIQ+ bills expanded exponentially, emphasising less resisted campaigns. Initially smaller bills targeted political weak spots: transgender youth in primary schools, bathrooms and politically enabling Republican-governed states. Increasingly bills expanded in number, frequency, size, and punitive reach against LGBTIQ+ and other citizens’ rights, in wider contexts (higher education, public and Democrat-governed spaces). By 2023, bill strategies used hypocritical and hypothetical anti-LGBTIQ+ logics; replicated federally to thwart democratic and economic structures. Conclusions Anti-fascist, Queer and critical socialist theories explained the 2023 bills’ increase as building upon past partisan mobilisation on wedge transgender state election issues; towards neofascist diminishment of increasingly wider-ranging and higher-level US democratic structures, rights protections, and economic functioning. Policy attacks on vulnerable social groups’ rights — particularly trans youth — can signal ‘early stages’ within neo-fascist strong-man state-identity creation supporting democratic structure diminishments. Policy Implications Multi-level multi-cultural pluralist democratic institutions and support structures with inter-reinforced rights recognition expansions should be required by and should protect the rights of all citizens.