Madness Descends

They were once the scourge of social media. Now they're aiming for a foothold in Congress.

QAnon, a social media creation for those who like their conspiracy theories on steroids, might see a couple of its adherents elected to congress this November.  At least one has the overt backing of Donald Trump.

According to one congressional candidate for America’s House of Representatives, Covid-19 and the Black Lives Matter movement are a screen “for pedophilia and human trafficking”. 

Another has claimed the US has a “once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out”, while several others running for national office have posted cryptic memes hinting at a powerful global elite that must be abolished. 

These believers in QAnon, a conspiracy theory labelled a potential domestic terror threat by the FBI, are all running for national office – not as fringe independents, but as Republican candidates.

Remember, "pizzagate"? Yeah, it's the same bunch of loons. The GOP, having already succumbed to the Tea Party contagion, how seems powerless to resist QAnon.

Travis View, the co-host of the QAnon Anonymous podcast, which tackles the conspiracy theory, said that QAnon followers tend to be “extremely politically active”, both in terms of voting and promoting candidates online. 

That could be one reason why there has so far been little condemnation of these candidates, or of QAnon itself, from senior Republicans. 

“I cannot find a Republican leader who has said a bad thing about QAnon,” View said.
“I’m so fascinated by the weird line that Republican leadership is walking right now. Republicans cannot afford to spare a single vote, so they need to get as many voters on board as possible. 

“That may explain why they’re doing this weird dance where they don’t want to say a bad word about QAnon, but also not give any explicit endorsement to QAnon either.”

Forbes has more detail on the QAnon campaign to break into Congress.

The Washington Post reports on the ways the Trump administration openly flirts with QAnon, despite the FBI designating it a terrorist organization.

The erroneous ideas defining QAnon — that Trump is a messianic figure fighting the so-called deep state, that he alone can be trusted, that his opponents include both Democrats and Republicans complicit in years of wrongdoing and that his rivals are not just misguided but criminal and illegitimate — represent core tenets of the president’s reelection campaign, especially as his poll numbers slump.

Meanwhile, the salvation envisioned by QAnon believers, including military takeover and mass arrests of Democrats, rhymes with the president’s vow to use the armed forces to “dominate.” They back his endorsement of hydroxychloroquine, an antimalarial drug that has not been proved to prevent coronavirus infection, and cast skeptics, including Anthony S. Fauci, the nation’s leading expert on infectious diseases, as a deep-state plant.

“We’re seeing the Trump campaign tack closely to an almost explicitly QAnon narrative,” said Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “I don’t expect to hear the president talking about pedophilia or Satanism, but I expect to hear almost everything else.”

Meanwhile, in his own personal alternative universe, Trump is back at it. Apparently fed up with all the sunlight shining on Dr. Anthony Fauci, Trump is back on the attack.

Donald Trump launched an extraordinary attack on his own top infectious disease expert, Dr Anthony Fauci, arguing against the doctor’s claim that high rates of infection in the US stem from a less aggressive reaction to the virus in terms of economic shutdowns and stay-at-home orders. 

“Wrong!” countered the president as he retweeted a video of Fauci making the point in recent congressional testimony. 

Fauci had explained that differentiations between surging US infections and a sharp decrease seen across Europe could be explained by the different reactions to the virus. Fauci said most European countries shut their economies down by 95%, while the US only shut down its economy by half. 

Trump countered: “We have more cases because we have tested far more than any other country, 60,000,000. If we tested less, there would be less cases. How did Italy, France & Spain do? Now Europe sadly has flare ups. Most of our governors worked hard & smart. We will come back STRONG!”