The founding father of Armed Queers SLC, a pro-gun LGBTQ group being investigated by the FBI for potential ties to accused Charlie Kirk sniper Tyler Robinson, has been recognized as a radical transgender political organizer with ties to the communist politics.
Armed Queers SLC quietly scrubbed its on-line presence after Kirk was assassinated, however a legislation enforcement supply informed The Submit that every one open-source data on the group was downloaded and handed over to the FBI.
The cache of knowledge contains posts from Ermiya Fanaeian, the kid of Iranian immigrants, in keeping with the supply aware of the federal investigation, whose Instagram bio requires “Revolution + Trans liberation in our lifetime!”
She has additionally advocated violence to realize the goals of LGBTQ teams, citing the Stonewall Riots for instance in a TV interview on the campus of College of Utah.
“Generally violence, protest, and actually riots and people sorts of loud rebellions should happen for tangible change,” she stated.
The feds are nonetheless deciding whether or not to convey fees towards Robinson and dealing to find out whether or not anybody else was concerned in Kirk’s killing.
Nonetheless, Fanaeian and Armed Queers SLC are on investigators’ radar because the FBI has widened its probe to incorporate a possible “prolonged community” that might have aided Robinson within the Sept. 10 sniper assault at Utah Valley College.
In 2020, Fanaeian, 25, began the Salt Lake Metropolis chapter of Pink Pistols, a nationwide group “whose mission is to arm LGBTQ folks,” Utah’s KUER wrote that yr in a puff piece heralding Fanaeian’s involvement within the group.
“I used to assume that weapons had been a scary factor,” Fanaeian informed the outlet. “Again then, I might have agreed with Joe Biden’s assertion to take everybody’s AR-15s away. And now I personal one.”
It was fairly a pivot — only a yr earlier, she based the native chapter of March for Our Lives — David Hoff’s group, which campaigns to limit gun rights.
Nonetheless, the honeymoon part with Pink Pistols was short-lived; Fanaeian, then a College of Utah pupil, and the group parted methods only a yr later. Pink Pistols now disavowing any connection to the previous chapter chief.
“Whereas initially welcomed, she started utilizing the Pink Pistols identify to advertise broader political points, violating our rule that we’re a single-issue group devoted solely to the protected, authorized, and accountable use of firearms by the queer group,” Pink Pistols wrote in an announcement this week.
Fanaeian based Armed Queers SLC, which hosted a lecture on “queer resistance” on the College of Utah in September 2023 — about 45 miles from UVU the place the 31-year-old Turning Level USA founder was killed.
Flyers selling the occasion hosted in partnership with self-described “leftist pupil group” Mecha de U of U characteristic a younger lady clad in two ammo belts and clutching an AK-47, along with her finger on the set off.
Fanaeian additionally helped launch a pupil examine group for the Occasion for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), with a curriculum that features names like Karl Marx and Vladmir Lenin.
Fanaeian’s inspiration to kind the group got here from “historic communist and socialist revolutionaries of the mid 1900s” together with Fidel Castro and the Black Panther Occasion, in keeping with the college’s pupil newspaper, the Day by day Utah Chronicle.
“The Occasion for Socialism and Liberation just isn’t a liberal motion — we’re a leftist motion,” Fanaeian informed the outlet. “We’re an anti-capitalist motion. We’re a working class revolutionary motion.”
PSL’s important backer is Neville Singham, a US millionaire tech mogul with intensive ties to the Chinese language Communist Occasion (CCP) who bankrolls different radical organizations together with Nationwide College students for Justice in Palestine, Worldwide Individuals’s Meeting, Code Pink and ANSWER Coalition.
