Genocide scholars and human rights experts are raising urgent concerns that the United States is entering the early stages of a coordinated effort to eliminate transgender people as a distinct group, according to reporting from the Accountability Journalism Institute’s Important Context newsletter, later republished by the Lemkin Institute.
Lemkin Institute President Dr. Elisa von Joeden-Forgey warned that the country is now in the “early-to-mid stages of a genocidal process against trans and nonbinary and intersex people.” She said Republican political strategy has increasingly centered on using transgender people to manufacture fear, especially around children, families, and rigid ideas of masculinity, in order to mobilize support for extreme policies.
Genocide Watch President Dr. Gregory Stanton echoed those concerns, describing Donald Trump’s executive order denying recognition of genders beyond the male-female binary as a “totalitarian” concept rooted in “Nazi ideology.” Stanton emphasized that such rigid binaries are not supported by nature or many global cultures.
“The Trump administration and its bases… have identified a set of ‘enemies’ or ‘objectionable people’” and have fueled public hostility toward them “in a way that is escalating toward violence,” said Dr. Henry Theriault, former president of the International Association of Genocide Scholars.
Former genocide researcher Haley Brown pointed to anti-trans bathroom bills in 20 states, arguing they “effectively give non-state actors tacit approval to commit violence” by encouraging people to police gender expression “down to the very physiological characteristics” of others. Brown also highlighted the use of “cultural Marxism” conspiracy rhetoric, which frames LGBTQIA+ people and others as threats that must be eliminated.
Theriault noted that trans Americans, who make up roughly 1% of the adult population, face heightened risk as violence rises. Von Joeden-Forgey called the moment “terrifying,” saying, “No one goes to war… on behalf of the victims of genocide.”
“We’re already at the point for trans folks, for immigrants, where the damage is being done,” Theriault said. “So it’s not so much ‘will genocide happen?’ as ‘we got to stop it from happening.’”
