Republicans risk legitimizing QAnon now

[pppolitics]

Experts who study the QAnon conspiracy theory say one of its supporters was bound to make it to the halls of power eventually.

It looks as though that supporter will be Marjorie Taylor Greene, who won her runoff in a Georgia congressional primary race Tuesday night and will now have a pretty clear path to winning the general election in November and coming to Congress.

But what’s less expected is to see Republican leaders be mostly quiet about QAnon, a webbed network of baseless theories. At its most basic, it alleges that there is a secret group of elites working to get President Trump out of office and that Trump will help reveal those pedophilia and Satan-worshiping elites before they can destroy the country.

Not only does Greene support “Q,” as its adherents calls its mysterious leader, but she also has made racist comments in the past. Some Republican leaders have tsk-tsked her for such comments. But The Post’s Isaac Stanley-Becker and Rachael Bade report that “on her words promoting QAnon, meanwhile, her potential future colleagues have been mostly mum.”

[...]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/08/12/republicans-risk-legitimizing-qanon-now/

[Estrella]

Greene won, what, 57% in the runoff? QAnon is already legitimate among the Republican base. It may be shocking to people in their metropolitan blue bubbles, but a movement like this being popular among people who believe in creationism, birtherism, 9/11 conspiracies, Democrats being socialists/communists/whatever, Pizzagate or anything that Fox News says isn't surprising in the slightest.

If Trump was just slightly less strategically stupid, I could actually imagine him being behind creating QAnon. But then the bastardized version of conservatism that dominates the GOP has already proven to be more than capable of creating insane* conspiracy theories on its own.
 
* And I mean this literally - these things are what you normally hear from someone with paranoid schizophrenia. Of course, 57% of GA-14 Republican primary voters aren't schizophrenic, which makes that result even more worrying.

[GP270watch]

 QAnon is big with Democrats and non Republicans too. It's hasn't infiltrated the mainstream party but go to any hood and the number people who believe in conspiracy theories about Illuminati, the "global elites", who follow Alex Jones, believe the moon landing was fake, the Earth is flat, all kids of antisemitic conspiracies is way higher than you'd expect, it is quite sad. The funniest thing is that it's really disruptive because you try to talk about policy that has real cause and effects on their lives and they tell you that Biden and Hillary are sacrificing children...

 It's nuts.

[Alben Barkley]

QAnon is big with Democrats and non Republcians too. It's hasn't infiltrated the mainstream party but go to any hood and the number people who belive in conspiracy theories about Illuminati, the "global elites", who follow Alex Jones, believe the moon landing was fake, the Earth is flat, all kids of antisemitic conspiracies is way higher than you'd expect, it is quite sad. The funniest thing is that it's really disruptive because you try to talk about policy that has real cause and effects on their lives and they tell you that Biden and Hillary are sacrificing children...

 It's nuts.

The internet is cancer.

Crazy conspiracy theories existed before the internet, sure. But they have an audience like never before thanks to it.

Still, I highly doubt the vast majority of people in this country even have heard of these theories, let alone believe them. Is it still too many? Yep.

[Progressive Pessimist]

They don't see it as a risk. They gave their pound of flesh to Trump and his ilk and are ambivalent to it if they aren't already recognizing that it's the next logical step in their party's devolution, whether Trump gets re-elected or not. Doctor Frankenstein had more control over his monster than the GOP do over their monster of a base and the politicians they elect in primaries.

[Saint Milei]

Who cares. Majorie is better than 99 percent of congress just off the fact that she blasts neocons

[All Along The Watchtower]

Who cares. Majorie is better than 99 percent of congress just off the fact that she blasts neocons

This is a terrible post.

[HAnnA MArin County]

Who cares. Majorie is better than 99 percent of congress just off the fact that she blasts neocons

This is a terrible post.

Don’t feed the deplorables.

[Former Crackhead Mike Lindell]

What is QAnon?

Is it the belief that there's a 'good' Deep State?

That Trump's supposed genius happens entirely off-screen?

That an attention-seeker on an imageboard has such insight - that boils down to 'Democrats bad, Trump good, we'll get them soon' - is some sort of prophet?

What's their endgame?

Where do the 'QAnon movement' see themselves in 5, 10 years?

Are they the natural evolution of The Tea Party? A fringe pushed further into the realms of conspiracy and fantasy, as their ideas drift further from reality?

Is it a cult? A movement? A religion?

Will they ever save the millions of children - whom they affectionately call 'mole people' - being hidden and trafficked underground in tunnels?

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

What is QAnon?

Is it the belief that there's a 'good' Deep State?

That Trump's supposed genius happens entirely off-screen?

That an attention-seeker on an imageboard has such insight - that boils down to 'Democrats bad, Trump good, we'll get them soon' - is some sort of prophet?

What's their endgame?

Where do the 'QAnon movement' see themselves in 5, 10 years?

Are they the natural evolution of The Tea Party? A fringe pushed further into the realms of conspiracy and fantasy, as their ideas drift further from reality?

Is it a cult? A movement? A religion?

Will they ever save the millions of children - whom they affectionately call 'mole people' - being hidden and trafficked underground in tunnels?

But muh trained marxists!

[TiltsAreUnderrated]

What is QAnon?

Is it the belief that there's a 'good' Deep State?

That Trump's supposed genius happens entirely off-screen?

That an attention-seeker on an imageboard has such insight - that boils down to 'Democrats bad, Trump good, we'll get them soon' - is some sort of prophet?

What's their endgame?

Where do the 'QAnon movement' see themselves in 5, 10 years?

Are they the natural evolution of The Tea Party? A fringe pushed further into the realms of conspiracy and fantasy, as their ideas drift further from reality?

Is it a cult? A movement? A religion?

Will they ever save the millions of children - whom they affectionately call 'mole people' - being hidden and trafficked underground in tunnels?

All good questions. We've yet to see how the Q caucus seriously differs in policy preferences from the standard pro-Trump types and presumably there will be some diversity of opinion among them so the Q platform can't all be extrapolated solely from Greene's policies. If it turns out they don't actually have coherent proposals for the most part, them going mainstream might only deepen partisanship as opposed to shifting the Republican party in a particular ideological direction.