August 27, 2009 12:19 AM UTC

"Obama's War On Queer and Trans Youth"

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• by: Colorado Pols

Details are beginning to emerge about the alleged perpetrator of vandalism against Colorado Democratic Party headquarters in Denver early yesterday morning. As we’ve discussed already, the person in custody has been identified as a member of a far-left “bicycle collective,” but also briefly a temporary worker for a Democratic-aligned 527–Maurice Schwenkler apparently walked a few precincts in support of Democrats right before Election Day last year, a detail that invited obvious questions.

As it turns out, Schwenkler probably just needed the money–if online posts now attributed to this person are any guide, we’re definitely not talking about a friend of Democrats, and our original suspicion of “Recreate ’68”-style radicalism looks pretty much dead on. TPMDC updates:

Details are sketchy, but an anarchist news site, for what its worth, is reporting that a person named Ariel Attack, a “Denver-based anarchist,” has been arrested in connection with the incident. A supporter writes: “At this moment, we do not know Ariel’s status within the jail, especially regarding her gender classification.”

Posts by a writer using the name Ariel Attack have appeared at a site called Queers Against Obama, whose tagline declares that “Obamamania is nothing more than yet another manufactured nationalist frenzy.” One post is titled “Obama’s War On Queer and Trans Youth.”

…Gawker asserts that Ariel Attack is actually the same person as Maurice, noting the facts that only one person has been arrested, and that the anarchist posting says Ariel “is listed in the jail records and media under her birth name.” It seems like that’s probably right.

Assuming that’s true, there’s a broader implication for the story. It seemed to us in writing this post earlier that the goal of the attack was to discredit conservatives, by getting them blamed for it. That was because the one person who had been reliably reported to have been arrested had a background working for a group supportive of Democrats. But now, given that the person arrested has anarchist ties and is on the record as a vocal left-wing opponent of Obama, it looks like that interpretation was wrong. It now seems more likely that the goal was more straight-forward: to express anger at Obama and the Democrats.