Spanish-language right-wing media joined the crusade against Pride Month, fearmongering about a “globalist agenda” to “indoctrinate” children and celebrating boycotts of corporations celebrating Pride.
In April, trans influencer Dylan Mulvaney shared a sponsored post with Bud Light, resulting in an intense boycott campaign against Anheuser-Busch that culminated in a swirl of bigoted attacks against Bud Light and Mulvaney, plummeting sales and creating financial hardships for thousands of independent distributors nationwide. In May, Target announced it was removing some of its merchandise celebrating Pride Month after becoming the focus of a similar boycott that included harassing employees and calling in bomb threats to store locations around the country.
Calling for and celebrating boycotts is not a new tactic for right-wing activists. This year, the right took a more strategic approach to boycotting Pride Month, targeting dozens of corporations in hopes of intimidating them into compliance and even seeking to cash in on the outrage.
In the days leading up to and throughout June, Spanish-language right-wing media, including pundits on Americano Media – the network angling to become the Spanish-language Fox News – joined the effort to make Pride Month toxic, celebrating the bigoted and sometimes violent campaigns against companies like Anheuser-Busch and Target and fearmongering about a “globalist agenda” to “indoctrinate” children.
Celebrating corporate boycotts and villainizing companies celebrating Pride
Spanish-language right-wing media outlets and personalities took to social media to celebrate the right’s boycotts of Anheuser Busch and Target, including false claims that Target’s Pride collection included imagery promoting a “satanic” agenda.
- Voz Media, a Texas-based conservative news start-up that recently acquired the bilingual conservative news site El American, shared an article praising conservatives who “penalize companies that promote gender ideology,” adding, “Go woke, go broke.” They also shared an article celebrating Target hitting its “worst stock market value so far this year after its LGBTQ campaign.”
- Popular right-wing Facebook blog Estamos Unidos shared a meme of a grim reaper knocking on Target’s door with a scythe and a trail of blood coming from Bud Light’s and Disney’s doors.
Fearmongering about an agenda to “indoctrinate” children
Spanish-language conservative media personalities also spent Pride Month fearmongering about the “LGBTQ+ lobby” and a “globalist agenda” to “indoctrinate” children.
- In an exchange on Twitter, Eduardo Menoni, a conservative social media personality with over 170,000 Twitter followers, claimed, “The LGBTIQ+ lobby … wants to indoctrinate our children.”
- Americano Media’s Emmanuel Rincon shared a tweet mocking Megan Fox’s children, claiming, “They will grow up extremely confused and without understanding their own identities, biology, and needs because the promoters of the WOKE wave decided to change their gender.”
- Jesus Marquez, a host on Americano Media’s Battleground Americano, claimed Pride Month is “used to advance an agenda of total control,” adding, “first over our children in the schools and now obviously at a corporate level.”
- Freddy Silva, a host on Americano Media’s Entre Lineas, called a federal ruling against Tennessee's anti-drag show law a “defeat” in the fight against the “globalist agenda that is determined to carry out this type of indoctrination.”
- On Americano Media’s Hablando de Frente, Dania Alexandrino highlighted a recent book-banning rally in Rockville, Maryland, claiming, “It is not just simply for Christian parents, but it is also about common sense” to protest “all of this indoctrination and sexualization of children.”
- Alexandrino also allowed her guest, Orlando Lugo, to claim the LGBTQ community “is a political organization” that promotes “indoctrination” against “Christian culture,” which he described as “natural law.”
- On Americano Media’s Entre Lineas, Catalina Stubbe, the national director for Hispanic outreach for the book-banning group Moms for Liberty, applauded Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ budget cuts to LGBTQ programs, claiming he is “protecting taxpayers, and the university students, and all the children from having to finance their and their children’s socialist, radically divisive, and sexually depraved [indoctrination].” Stubbe added, “Being LGBTQ” is “not an achievement,” so “it is normal for parents to call for a stop to this ridiculous celebration and to stop indoctrinating our kids.”