The latest claim that the United States is in a “genocidal process” against trans people is wildly overblown and misunderstands both the word genocide and how public policy works in a democracy.
The Left has a habit of weaponizing words, and “genocide” has become their newest blunt instrument. Slapping that label on policy debates turns hard questions into moral bludgeons and shuts down honest discussion.
That spin machine now includes outlets and institutes treating opposition to certain medical interventions for minors or criticism of ideology as proof of a coordinated campaign to destroy a people. The result is a rhetoric storm that confuses heated policy fights with actual mass extermination.
No, really.
Earlier this week, the Lemkin Institute for Genocide Prevention and Human Security issued a haunting warning. Dr. Elisa von Joeden-Forgey, president of the Lemkin Institute, stated that the U.S. is in the “early-to-mid stages of a genocidal process against trans and nonbinary and intersex people.” Dr. Gregory Santon, former president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars, flags “a hardening of categories” surrounding gender in a “totalitarian” way.
Stanton argues that this is rooted in Nazi ideology’s surrounding gender — this same regime that killed many LGBTQIA individuals in the name of a natural “binary.” As Von Joeden-Forgey said, the queer community, alongside other “minority groups, tends to be a kind of canary in the coal mine.”
In his first year in office, Trump and his Cabinet’s anti-trans rhetoric has only intensified, with a report released late September by journalist Ken Klippenstein in which national security officers leaked that the FBI is planning to classify trans people as “extremists.” By classifying trans people as “Nihilistic Violent Extremists,” far-right groups would have more “political (and media) cover,” as Abby Monteil reports for them, for anti-trans violence and legislation.
While the news is terrifying, it’s not unprecedented – the fight against trans rights and classification of trans people as violent extremists was included in Project 2025, and in the past several weeks, far-right leaders’ transphobic campaign has expanded: boycotting Netflix to pressure the platform to remove trans characters, leveraging anti-trans attack ads in the Virginia governor’s race and banning professors from acknowledging that trans people exist. In fact last month, two Republican members of Congress called for the institutionalization of trans people.
Let’s be clear about what genocide actually is. According to Oxford, it’s “the deliberate and systematic killing or persecution of a large number of people from a particular national or ethnic group with the aim of destroying that nation or group.”
Trans people are not a national or ethnic group, and the present policy fights do not meet that definition. Disagreeing about medical treatment for minors, or limiting certain procedures for adolescents, is a policy judgment about children and parental responsibility, not evidence of an organized campaign to wipe out a people.
The claim that the gender binary is some niche Nazi export is silly and misleading. Societies and science have long acknowledged two sexes as a biological reality; pointing that out is not an endorsement of other horrific ideologies. Suggesting otherwise simply equates ordinary beliefs with totalitarian evil, and that rhetorical move is dishonest.
There have been violent incidents involving people who identify as trans in recent years, and those facts deserve honest attention rather than being swept under some protective narrative. The Covenant School shooter, Audrey Hale, was trans. The Annunciation Catholic Church shooter, Robert Westman, was trans. Trinity Shockley planned a mass shooting and is also listed as trans, and other violent actors cited in reporting have been described the same way. Those are facts about individual crimes, not proof of a unified political strategy.
To quote Sir Ian Fleming, “Once is happenstance, twice is coincidence, three times is enemy action.” Saying that violent acts by some who identify as trans justify labeling an entire political or demographic movement as genocidal is an overreach, but cataloging patterns of violence and threats to public safety is legitimate. Classifying violent actors is about safety, not silencing debate.
The Left has sharpened the language of victimhood so that policy disagreement can be reframed as existential destruction. First they broadened definitions of racism to include structural power, and now they stretch “genocide” to cover speech and laws they dislike.
There is also the inconvenient fact of elected officials who are themselves trans. We have a sitting member of Congress who is trans. How many genocides let their victims sit in the halls of government?
That is the scariest part of it all.
