How 'Posie Parker' Became the Face of the Global Anti-Trans Alt-Right

Max Colbert follows the whirlwind global tour of 'Posie Parker' and the alliance of right wing groups, media outlets and think tanks now supporting her

Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull announcing on GBNews her plan to form a new political party and stand against Labour leader Keir Starmer in the next General Election

Over the last few weeks, Kellie-Jay Keen-Minshull, more commonly known as ‘Posie Parker’, has been organising anti-trans ‘Let Women Speak’ demonstrations across Australia and New Zealand, which were attended by neo-nazis in support, and where she has launched outbursts at anti-fascist and feminist counter-protestors. 

In a broadcast following the event, Keen-Minshull went on to throw doubt on whether the nazis present could potentially be “antifa” or undercover police, claiming that “something was just off”, despite the National Socialists themselves posting about it, and Australian far-right researchers identifying known members of the group. Fellow anti-trans campaigner Angie Jones referred to them in the same broadcast as “Nazis in inverted commas”.

As revealed by Keen-Minshull during a live stream, the Australian leg of her tour was funded by the US-based Conservative Political Action Coalition (CPAC). During the stream, she explained she’d been struggling to raise public liability insurance and that CPAC stepped forward to “cover all insurance throughout our whole trip, which is really kind of them”. 

Keen-Minshull defended CPAC’s involvement, stating “I am not answerable to anyone”, and “before politics are women, and for many women that isn’t true, for many women, before women are politics”, before going on to repeat false claims that drag queen story hour (DQSH) equates to the “sexualisation of young children”, a popular trope among members of the far-right.

As the “Posie Parker” tour continued its New Zealand leg, Keen-Minshull was filmed agitatedly calling counter-protestors “groomers” when they drowned out her speeches in videos circulated on social media. The tour ended abruptly after Keen-Minshull was pelted with tomato juice before she had a chance to speak.

Campaign group Hope Not Hate recently described the overlap between anti-trans rhetoric and far-right extremism, stating ‘Anti-LGBT+ sentiment is deeply rooted in reactionary and far-right milieus, which tend to idealise traditional gender roles and family structures, obsess about societal decline, and scapegoat minoritised groups’.