Vishal P. Singh
Jairo Rodriguez, the right-wing protester and Trump supporter whose disputed police report to the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department led to the controversial arrests of queer volunteers at West Hollywood Pride this weekend, has been confirmed as the owner and operator of an online chatroom which openly discusses killing and decapitating LGBTQ+ people, including one of the arrested volunteers. In addition to violent imagery and hateful anti-LGBTQ+ rhetoric, Rodriguez’s chatroom includes a discussion in which one of his members expresses a desire to commit a mass shooting at West Hollywood Pride if law enforcement officers are removed.
Right Now Views, the moniker used by Jairo Rodriguez to post right-wing protest and provocateur content online, has a Telegram chatroom which currently has 60 members. The primary Telegram channel currently has 852 subscribers (the chatroom and the channel are both linked together on Telegram). The chatroom is filled with far-right and pro-Trump conspiracy theories and hateful rhetoric. It’s typically a place where Jairo Rodriguez can engage with his viewers and they can respond and comment on his content or talk amongst each other.
Rodriguez has spent weeks using his Right Now Views platform to target a queer activist and Pride volunteer who goes by Xodiak for an alleged incident of theft at a drag story hour that Rodriguez was harassing. Rodriguez claims Xodiak stole his phone. Videos from the incident show Jairo with his phone though, leading some to dispute his narrative and police report.
The Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department has confirmed that the arrests took place due to the report from Jairo Rodriguez. In Rodriguez’s chatroom, there has been a steady campaign against Xodiak for weeks— complete with wanted posters and members musing about whether or not they should murder Xodiak themselves. Members also refer to Xodiak with the anti-gay f-slur.
After celebrating the arrests at West Hollywood Pride, Rodriguez made posts regarding a small demonstration at West Hollywood Pride in protest of the sheriff’s police brutality and arrests instigated by Rodriguez. This protest at Pride, billed as “No Cops At Pride,” triggered one response in Rodriguez’s chatroom that read: “pls succed so we can gun them down on site” from a user going by “glorytosweden.” Soon following this call for a potential mass shooting against West Hollywood Pride was another user who posted images depicting a Crusader-style swordsman decapitating a queer person and a noose hanging in front of a Pride flag.
VPS Reports has extracted the raw data from this chatroom in HTML format and am providing these files to the public in the interest of transparency. These files contain the Right Now Views chat logs from May 1, 2023 to June 5, 2023.
The Mayor of West Hollywood, Sepi Shyne, issued a statement regarding the June 3rd Pride arrests by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, calling the images of deputies brutalizing volunteers who were merely setting up an approved Pride booth “deeply disconcerting.” Mayor Shyne continued that she had reached out to the newly elected Los Angeles County Sheriff, Robert Luna, to discuss the incident.
Xodiak is still being held by the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department. Activists raised enough money for the bail but according to activists, an additional charge was added hours before release was scheduled and the sheriffs are now refusing to release Xodiak.
There is a GoFundMe to support Xodiak.