New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez realizes who she’s talking to, and instantly her demeanor changes. Turning on her heel, AOC blurts out, “You’re super transphobic and I never want to share space with you!”
What’s a nice Jewish girl like Chaya Raichik doing to get herself attacked by the Squad? Raichik is the woman behind Libs of TikTok, a Twitter account that became a social media sensation and made Chaya, 28, famous. She is widely admired in conservative circles and just as widely hated on the progressive left.
Libs of TikTok started during the Covid pandemic when Chaya began perusing TikTok. She simply reposted on Twitter material already posted on TikTok that she found outrageous or noteworthy. Placed in a different, less sheltered venue, with remarkably little editorializing from Raichik—who was originally anonymous—the reposted TikTok posts had the capacity to trigger shock or even outrage.
Raichik, for example, reposted videos that had originally been shared on various platforms by people who identify as LGBTQ+, including a video of a young child who was taking opposite-sex hormones. Many of Raichik’s reposts bolster the notion that children are being prepared—or groomed, if you will—to engage in non-traditional sexual lifestyles.
A typical Chaya repost featured a teacher talking about a student who allegedly had acknowledged being “agender.” The aggrieved teacher was required to “misgender” the student “every time I see their homophobic parents to protect them cuz their 12.” Chaya supplied a caption: “Why would a teacher need to ‘protect’ a 12-year-old from their parents? This is groomer talk.”
This sort of stuff was just fine in an LGBTQ+ venue, but exposed to the general public, in broad daylight, it was dynamite. The powerful podcaster Joe Rogan noticed and began promoting Libs of TikTok in 2021, giving Raichik an enormous boost in the number of subscribers. All the while, Raichik toiled in anonymity. That changed in April of 2022 when Washington Post reporter Taylor Lorenz revealed Raichik’s identity.
This sort of stuff was just fine in an LGBTQ+ venue, but exposed to the general public, in broad daylight, it was dynamite.
“The anonymous account’s impact is deep and far-reaching,” Lorenz wrote in the article that officially blew Raichik’s anonymity. “Its content is amplified by high-profile media figures, politicians and right-wing influencers. Its tweets reach millions, with influence spreading far beyond its more than 648,000 Twitter followers. Libs of TikTok has become an agenda-setter in right-wing online discourse, and the content it surfaces shows a direct correlation with the recent push in legislation and rhetoric directly targeting the LGBTQ+ community.”
Some on the right were furious, regarding Raichik as a private citizen who would now be vulnerable to harassment. Lorenz, who once wept on MSNBC that her life had been “destroyed” by online harassment, justified blowing Raichik’s cover in a tweet. “Raichik isn’t just some average woman w/ a social media account,” Lorenz maintained, “she’s a powerful influencer operating a massively impactful right-wing media shaping the discourse around LGBTQ+ rights.”
In a way, Raichik should write Lorenz a thank-you note. She has blossomed since the Lorenz revelation. Although guarded about her private life, Raichik appears on TV and clearly gets a kick out of what she’s doing. If she had it to do again, she might not have been anonymous at the start. “I’m a little torn,” she admits. “Because it was anonymous for so long, there was a suspense. I was living in fear of the day that I was going to be exposed, and then obviously we all know what happened.”
Raichik has a moral compass, and it is Orthodox Judaism. She grew up in Los Angeles, where she attended all-girls, Orthodox Jewish schools, and has lived in New York for six years. She is not married and works from home, assisted by one person.
Raichik has a moral compass, and it is Orthodox Judaism.
Libs of TikTok was born of Chaya’s experience of being cooped up in her house all alone during the pandemic. “I was like, oh, let me check out this TikTok thing,” she tells IWF. “So, I went on TikTok and I was like, oh my God, this is like a cesspool of insanity and mental illness. And I was like, this is crazy. So, that’s when I made Libs of TikTok. And I was at first just sharing COVID videos, people worshiping Dr. Fauci, people singing songs about getting vaccines, and people forcing toddlers to wear masks, or getting kicked off of planes, and getting kicked out of stores if they did not wear masks or get vaccinated.”
She continues, “Thank God not in America but in other countries, people were being forced to go to quarantine camps and were dragged out of places for not being vaccinated. I’m on TikTok and I started seeing other kinds of stuff, and I was like, wow, people don’t know what’s going on, and I have to share this content. So, I started sharing all the other types of content, which is really what I focus on now, the gender ideology nonsense, all the woke garbage, the anti-white racism, the whole racial divide that we’re seeing in this country—like critical race theory being taught in schools. That is basically what I focus on now.”
While Raichik was conservative, she was not politically involved before Libs of TikTok. “I am religious, but I don’t ever bring my religion into my work.” She tells IWF. “The Torah is not conservative or liberal. It’s just the Torah. There are parts of it that are conservative, there are parts of it that are more liberal. But I do think my education, my upbringing, and my background in this religious lifestyle did teach me about, for example, modesty and family values, and about certain things that, when I see them, shock me.”
In a way, Raichik should write [Washington Post reporter Taylor] Lorenz a thank-you note. She has blossomed since Lorenz revealed her identity.
Raichik grew up in a large family. “I’m one of eight siblings,” she says. “I have a bunch of nieces and nephews. I have about 400 first cousins. So, I grew up with kids my entire life, and I think that does play a part in what I do. I’ve worked with kids. I’ve been a teacher, I’ve been a camp counselor. Seeing what people are doing to kids today is completely horrific to me, and I feel like anyone with a little bit of common sense is against what they’re doing.”
One of the things they are doing is drag queen story hour. Raichik opposes drag queen story hour. “Even if the drag queen is fully clothed,” says Chaya, “and reading an innocent kid’s book—and they’re usually not—I’m still against it because the people who created Drag Story Hour have said that the whole purpose of it is to get kids to explore a queer or gender-fluid identity. So, I am 100% against drag for kids.”
In other words, Raichik is “super transphobic.” New York Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who called her that in their encounter in the marble corridors of power, lambasted Raichik for posting videos concerning surgeries that doctors at Boston Children’s Hospitals were allegedly performing on children, such as hysterectomies for minor girls.
What’s the genius of Raichik? She mostly merely posts stuff that is already up, at most adding a comment or headline. For this, she triggers outrage. “They are allowed to post it,” she explained to Tucker Carlson, “but we are not allowed to notice it. I’ve committed the crime of noticing what they are doing.”
As many people have noted, why does the Left get so angry when Chaya simply reshares what they themselves are saying in their own words? Don’t shoot the messenger!