The American Far-Right Hates Harry Styles. Why is Everyone Laughing? — Part 4: Electioneering
On December 21st, 2022, the British music website NME ran an article titled, “Gucci faces backlash for Harry Styles ad with toddler mattress after Balenciaga row.” When I saw the article, my blood ran cold. The origin of this claim was a conservative on Instagram five days earlier who obviously believed in the conspiracy theory QAnon. NME reported on the conservative posts verbatim and seemed to have no understanding that the claim was based out of a conspiracy theory at all. My attempt to reach out to the company and the author of the article produced no response. As you can (probably) see, the article has still not been removed many days later.
In the past three essays, we’ve talked about how the right-wing has mostly used Harry Styles’ self-expression and sexuality as a sort of queer specter, flattening him into a stand-in for “gender ideology,” “grooming,” “the gay agenda,” “the woke agenda,” etc. We’ve also talked about left-wing apathy and cruelty from both in and outside of Styles’ fan community. This time, we’ll be looking at shifts in discursive tone surrounding Styles in late 2022. We’ll see how the tone on the far-right shifts when Styles goes to bat for Texas Gubernatorial candidate Beto O’Rourke in the 2022 midterm elections. Then, we’ll talk about how people behaved when he broke up with Olivia Wilde, and what it tells us about the flow of negative information to the far-right. Finally, we’ll walk through conservatives’ first attempt to integrate Styles into their QAnon conspiracy theories about pedophilic elites grooming children — what QAnon is, where Styles fits into it, and how it spread to the point where NME picked it up.
Note 1 — CONTENT WARNING. This entire article will be discussing homophobia, transphobia, biphobia, and femmephobia, mostly from a far-right lens. The sections on Beto O’Rourke and QAnon will be discussing homophobic conspiracy theories, and the section on QAnon will be mentioning child sexual abuse as that is baked into the QAnon conspiracy theory. If you are triggered by discussions of child sexual abuse, please be very cautious when reading that section. I will do my best not to enact any harm with my content, but there is only so much I can do when I am discussing the words of bigots who want us exiled from public life.
Note 2 — This essay series exists primarily to contextualize Styles’ online abuse for people who are fans of or neutral about Harry i.e. the generally well meaning. I would appreciate it if the essay was not shared with bigots as a “gotcha” on social media as just writing it already puts me at risk for harassment. Thank you!
Beto O’Rourke
On October 2nd, Harry Styles endorsed Beto O’Rourke onstage at his fifth night of his Austin, TX residency. This was very positive at first — the most popular quote retweets on the Harry Styles Daily Love on Tour (HSDLOT) Twitter post are prominent supporters of the Democratic party who were very pleased with Styles for his endorsement. Left-wing groups and publications that praised Styles included Planned Parenthood Texas Votes, Reform Austin, and NowThis. Two days later, on October 4th, O’Rourke posted a photograph of himself and the polka-dot clad Styles to Twitter captioned, “Thanks, Harry!” The intense homophobic conservative backlash was immediate, creative, and concerning.
Conservative Twitter users responding to O’Rourke’s tweet mostly approached it as an opportunity to joke that O’Rourke and Styles were in a gay relationship. Twitter users compared the two men to the snack food Twinkies, juxtaposed the gay romantic comedy Bros over the photograph, said they needed to get vaccinated for monkeypox. One enterprising Twitter user animated O’Rourke’s mouth to say “I’m gonna get pounded tonight.” Styles was repeatedly called a clown for the way he was dressed. Photos of Styles wearing a dress and being intimate with men were used as a tool to discredit his opinions. All of this was hilarious to Trump-approved Twitter asshole catturd2, who quote retweeted the post with four laughing emojis as an incitement to further harassment on October 5th.
While all of this was happening on social media, the right wing got to work writing hateful articles about the endorsement. “Watch: British Pop Sensation Harry Styles Endorses Beto O’Rourke for Texas Governor During Austin Concert” was published by Breitbart on October 3. The photograph used to illustrate the article was a MET Gala photo where Styles’ head was turned to the side to show off his pearl earring. Breitbart reminded their audience that he had donated $1 million to gun control non-profit Everytown. The article received 519 comments, the majority of which were homophobic. [Ed. Note 1] He was misgendered repeatedly as “it,” made fun of for wearing dresses and earrings, accused of being transgender or female, and called every slur that the Breitbart censors would allow. The article was not promoted on Facebook, but it did get posted to r/conservative where it received 196 homophobic and insulting comments and 234 upvotes.
“Harry Styles Endorses Beto O’Rourke For Texas Governor During Concert In Austin” was published by the Daily Wire on October 4th. In the article, “journalist” Amanda Harding mentioned that Styles supports Biden, abortion, and the LGBTQ community. She then noted that Styles had “come under fire for refusing to define his sexuality, which some critics claim is just a ploy for attention.” The article received 340 comments, many of them shaming Styles for wearing women’s clothing and misgendering him. Many commenters also claimed that Styles and O’Rourke must be in a gay relationship or spreading disease. The article was posted to 9 conservative groups on Facebook and shared 23 times from those groups, reaching a CrowdTangle total follower count of 14,801,669 people.
On October 5th, conservative commentator and contributor to the Daily Wire Michael Knowles released a video called “Harry Styles Only Endorses in One Direction.” In the video, Knowles claims O’Rourke now has “an absolute lock on the men wearing dresses vote,” that Styles has “entirely stopped wearing pants [and] only wears dresses.” He notes that Styles has “worn a pride flag as clothing” and has donated to Everytown. The video received 1,100 likes and 323 comments, mostly dismissing his endorsement as meaningless or being queerphobic to Styles.
It is worth noting that the previous video was excerpted from Episode 1102 of Knowles’ podcast, The Michael Knowles Show, titled, “Velma is Super Duper Gay in New Scooby Doo Movie.” If it wasn’t obvious from the title, Harry Styles’ degradation shared airtime with other anti-LGBTQ stories. These stories included: “Velma is a Lesbian in New Scooby Doo Halloween Movie,” “Planned Parenthood Peddles Puberty Blockers to Kids,” and “UK Child Gender Clinic Referrals Have Skyrocketed.” Knowles engages in these unhinged rants every single day. Rants from Episodes 1101 and 1103 included: “Gays: We’re Expected Not to be Parents?” (1101) “Vermont High School Bans Girls from Girls Locker Room in Favor of Trans Guy” (1101), “Top School Psychologist Trying to “Resettle” Kids into “Queer” Homes” (1103), and “Oklahoma Governor Weakens Child Trans Surgery at Hospitals” (1103). Each full episode draws around 60–70,000 views on YouTube. According to PodScribe, 510,000 people listen to the Michael Knowles Show as a podcast, though for various reasons I believe that to be a low estimate.
The homophobia, biphobia, and transphobia that Styles faced for endorsing Beto O’Rourke (and for just. . .existing, generally) was so normalized by October that very few people seemed to know or care about it. On November 13, the queer nail art influencer Matt Bernstein (aka mattxiv) tweeted a clip from Tucker Carlson Tonight in which transphobic influencer Oli London complained that children today were taught to idolize “weak men like Harry Styles [and] weak politicians like Beto O’Rourke.” His commenters seemed entirely unaware of why the two men were being lumped together, and found Styles’ name-dropping to be hilarious. Nobody was disturbed that Styles was being used to demonize gender-nonconformity on the most watched cable TV show on the planet. They didn’t care.
(That was a lot. You should take a break now.)
Breakup with Olivia
After nearly two years together, Harry Styles and Olivia Wilde broke up on November 18, 2022. Many alleged fans elected to be extremely weird about it. They posted pictures of cake congratulating him on the breakup (assuming against reason that he would be happy about it), joked about women he might date next, and accused the relationship of being PR. Some of these fans believed in conspiracies that he was in a secret relationship with one of his One Direction ex-bandmates, but a lot of them didn’t. I noticed that some people who had never made negative comments about Wilde during the relationship were celebrating as well. It was an orgiastic release of misogyny and resentment towards the relationship that seemed to transcend the rigidly structured in-groups found in Styles’ fandom. It was one of the worst evenings on Twitter, maybe ever.
As always, this negativity found its way to the American right-wing. On November 27th, Candace Owens posted a YouTube short titled “The Harry Styles and Olivia Wilde Relationship was a PR Stunt.” This was an excerpt from her podcast, The Candace Owens Show, that we discussed in “Part 1: The Panopticon.” [Ed. Note 2] Apparently, Owens had been predicting the break-up for a while on her show, and she was as delighted it had occurred as Styles’ fans were. Owens claimed Styles and Wilde had dated “as a PR stunt” to promote Don’t Worry Darling and that both of them got “richer and more famous because of it.” The video was viewed over 107,000 times, receiving 5,300 likes and 252 comments. A few of the comments were conspiracy theorist fans excited to have their ideas validated, even if the person agreeing with them was aligned with white supremacists, anti-LGBTQ groups, and fascists. The fact that many of the other commenters seemed deeply homophobic and transphobic did not seem to matter to them at all.
I tell this story for two reasons. First, because the next section on QAnon is really fucked and I think that a breather is needed. Second, because I think a lot of Styles’ fans believe that what they say about the people in his life doesn’t matter and that defending him specifically on social media is enough to prevent the hate. The fact is that positive words never trickle down to the far-right, but negative words almost always do. It is not enough to ratio conservatives or to hold generally progressive beliefs. To truly reduce the spread of hate, it is the responsibility of fans to be affirming of sexual fluidity and gender non-conformity — including not celebrating the end of Harry Styles’ relationships like a goddamn weirdo. I would also love if conspiracy theorists reading this would maybe stop believing in conspiracy theories, but I am pretty sure none of them are reading this, so, lost cause.
Anyway, let’s talk about QAnon.
Gucci HAHAHA
Imagine if I told you that society was secretly run by a cult of Satan-worshipping pedophilic elites called the “Deep State” who rape and kill children in order to extract a substance called adrenochrome from their blood as a sort of youth serum. The only people who can stop these elites from doing this is former president of the United States Donald J. Trump, who is actually a genius. One day “The Storm” will come for these elites, led by Donald Trump, and they will pay for their crimes by going to jail for a zillion years or whatever. For the uninitiated, that’s what QAnon is. At least 15% of Americans believe in it, so it’s a significant voting bloc in politics right now. We are in Hell!
QAnon is considered a “big tent” conspiracy, which means adherents of other fringe beliefs (anti-vax/mask, New World Order, white genocide, election denial, etc.) often find a home inside QAnon communities. Adherents (particularly female adherents) are often lured in by calls to #savethechildren from sex trafficking while being initially unaware that they are engaging in conspiracy theories. Obviously, this intersects with the conspiracy theory that queer people are grooming children that we discussed in “Part 2: All That Glitters.” QAnon has tried to raise their profile by fearmongering about pedophilia and human trafficking many times, most notably with the Wayfair sex trafficking conspiracy in 2020 and with Balenciaga-gate in November and December 2022. [Ed. Note 3] It is the latter conspiracy theory that we will be focusing on in this essay, as that is the conspiracy theory that QAnon adherents think Gucci HAHAHA is a part of.
In the winter of 2022, the luxury brand Balenciaga released several controversial photoshoots to advertise their new bags and shoes. These ads contained young children holding teddy bear bags clad in fetish gear, as well as other problematic elements that aren’t relevant for the purposes of our discussion. QAnon and the far-right quickly latched onto this story, claiming it was evidence of widespread child abuse and pedophilia among society’s Satanic elites. Balenciaga is owned by Kering Group, which also owns Gucci, Saint Laurent, Bottega Veneta, Alexander McQueen, Brioni, Boucheron, Pomellato, DoDo, and Queelin. Once there was no more #content to wring out of the Balenciaga scandal, QAnon began looking outside of the company for another right-wing target. They set their sights on the Gucci HAHAHA campaign.
To understand why the right-wing thought Gucci HAHAHA would be an easy target, we have to go back to the line’s announcement. [Ed. Note 4] On June 20, 2022, the account @HarryNiallNews reported that Alessandro Michele and Styles would be collaborating on a fashion collection together, named Gucci HAHAHA. They paired the post with a photograph of Styles and Michele attending the MET Gala together in their camp-inspired clothing. Ben Shapiro quote retweeted this to say that “Parody is dead.” The post received 755 likes, 51 quote retweets without comment, and 102 replies, which inspired Matt Walsh to chime in, saying, “Is the ‘HA HA HA’ meant to denote the fact that these two dudes look ridiculous as hell?” His own post garnered 1,400 likes, 95 retweets without comment, and 113 replies. It is likely that the people who chose to go after Gucci HAHAHA would have been aware that right-wing thought leaders and social media users would be very receptive to another round of fixating on Styles’ clothes.
On December 16, conservative activist Kaya Jones posted a photograph of Styles wearing a teddy bear t-shirt and standing next to a bed for the Gucci HAHAHA collection. Though the post has since been deleted, the conservative publication Evie Magazine has preserved the caption — “Why is a grown man posing with a child’s bed @gucci ? Please explain why a children’s mattress has anything to do with fashion ??? And what’s with the pink [teddy bear emoji] t-shirt.” The post received thousands of replies, all of which were outraged at the image. QAnoners (and those adjacent to the conspiracy) quickly dubbed the mattress a “toddler mattress/bed.” They also fixated on Styles being an “adult man,” that the photo was called a “performance piece,” and that the teddy bear was “pink.” Once they were sufficiently outraged, they went to Gucci’s December 15 post about the line and started to leave abusive comments underneath it.
At first glance it might seem that this outrage was about pedophilia generally. Some of the most popular comments — “Is this an ad for kids mattresses? If not… why is a kids mattress included with a man in a fashion ad… what are you trying to normalize [tear emoji],” (2555 likes) “What the actual funk is this???? Why are the obsession with kids?????” (2563 likes) and “Leave our kids alone! #cancelgucci” (3349 likes) — do not explicitly say anything about queer people. However, it is useful to remember that, unlike the Balenciaga ads, there are no children or references to children in this photoshoot. The users are merely disturbed that Styles is wearing a pink teddy bear and that the photograph could suggest he might be around a child at some point. This is the logical endpoint to the right-wing connecting Styles to the groomer conspiracy for two years — large numbers of people attacking him online because they assume he is part of the pedophilic elite.
(That was a lot. I’m going to go get a coffee to clear my head. You should take a break too.)
Evie Magazine posted the article to their TikTok account on December 16 with the caption, “A lot of the comments of people are upset by Gucci’s newest campaign. Gucci is owned by Kering, the same company that owns Balenciaga. #balenciagacancelled #gucci #balenciaga #greenscreen.” The woman in the video focuses on the teddy bear t-shirt, which she says, “kids are associated with,” and says he is with a “kid’s mattress.” She also implies that the campaign is called Gucci HAHAHA because “they are laughing at us.” To date, this video has 141,000 views, 12,700 likes, and has been shared 910 times. This quickly spread to other TikTok accounts, the most popular of which was riristea, who has 110,500 followers and whose video (posted on December 21st) got 445,000 views.
The conspiracy theory made its way to Twitter on December 18th via conservative television presenter Gillian McKeith. Gillian posted up the photo of Styles with the mattress to her Twitter account, saying, “Why does #gucci have Harry Styles, a grown man posing with a child’s mattress and a pink teddy bear t shirt? Im not loving this.” Her post received 3,700 retweets without comment and 17,700 likes. Unfortunately, many people were unaware that this was a homophobic QAnon dog whistle, and her 3,300 replies and 2,800 quote retweets attracted both people agreeing with her and people eager to tell her that she was stupid. This did not stop conservatives such as Sophie Corcoran and Oli London chiming in to feed the controversy.
On December 19th, the New York Post, the Daily Beast, and The Daily Mail picked the story up. Two days later, Uproxx, NME and the Los Angeles Times all posted up the claims without mentioning they arose from conservatives who believed in QAnon. The Daily Wire posted about it on the 21st as well, using the title “‘Sick’: Harry Styles’ Gucci Campaign Draws Ire For Pink Teddy Bear, Child-Sized Mattress Following Balenciaga Debacle.” Commentators Ben Shapiro and Matt Walsh (as well as the main Daily Wire account) each posted about it four times (via CrowdTangle) on Facebook, ensuring that Daily Wire readers would see the story every day multiple times a day between December 21st and December 25th. Shapiro’s comment on the scandal is illustrative of what conservatives actually cared about here — “Harry Styles epitomizes masculinity for the Left precisely because he seems entirely bereft of it.” Unfortunately for them, their Christian readers were too busy loving Christ and their families to care that much about Harry Styles’ t-shirt. Thank God.
As of January 2022, none of the publications I mentioned previously have issued any corrections to their pieces. I suppose 12,000 words into this piece that it shouldn’t surprise me anymore that the mainstream media is perfectly fine laundering unfounded homophobic accusations about Harry Styles in exchange for the clicks they need to keep the lights on. Yet I can’t help but be disturbed that major publications seem to be unable to see what they are doing to him — and, by extension, to all queer people. If the Los Angeles Times can’t manage to see what they’re doing to Harry Styles, how can we trust them to not spread homophobic rumors about the rest of us?
Up next — Does anybody want to joke when no one’s laughing in the background?
Series: “The American Far-Right Hates Harry Styles. Why is Everyone Laughing?”
Ed. Note 1: A substantial number of conservatives also used the anti-British insult “limey” around this time. These people are so racist that they are racist against the British.
Ed. Note 2: Owens doesn’t time stamp the clip on her YouTube channel or in her podcast descriptions, and none of her podcast episodes released close to November 27th advertise this clip, so I could not tell you what episode it is. It is likely episode 46, 47, or 48, but I do not want to subject myself to more of her unhinged ranting about queer people to find out.
Ed. Note 3: To read the Washington Post article on the Wayfair conspiracy, press the “Esc” button while the page is loading. That should get you through the false paywall. Also, this article is being written on January 4, 2023, so I can’t know if more things developed with regards to Balenciaga-gate after that time.
Ed. Note 4: The great-granddaughter of Gucci is currently involved in a sexual abuse lawsuit, and this was eventually tied into the scandal. However, this is not the primary reason the scandal existed, so I will not be focusing on it in this piece. Her alleged assault was mostly treated as an afterthought, even though she appears to be a conspiracy theorist too, which I guess shows you how much these people actually care about survivors.
