QAnon's Takeover of the GOP Is Virtually Complete

[Nevilledog]

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Jacob Silverman
@SilvermanJacob
Having abandoned democratic politics, Republicans at all levels have become Q-pilled, either embracing QAnon directly or appealing to it through fake moral panics centered on child exploitation. QAnon is the party's default rhetorical register now.

nymag.com
QAnon’s Takeover of the GOP Is Virtually Complete
It would be hilarious if it didn’t involve people in positions of real influence.
10:11 AM · Mar 26, 2022

https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2022/03/qanons-takeover-of-the-gop-is-virtually-complete.html


No paywall
https://archive.ph/N2oD5

QAnon’s infiltration of the Republican Party has proceeded with frightening steadiness over the last couple years, its growing foothold marked by the arrival of conspiratorial politicians like Marjorie Taylor Greene. According to Business Insider, Ron Watkins, widely believed to be one of the authors of the Q posts that started the movement, is one of about 36 Q sympathizers running for Congress in the 2022 midterm elections. QAnon’s adherents tend to espouse some selection of bizarre beliefs from the conspiracist’s buffet that includes accusations of pedophile politicians eating children, secret political tribunals in Guantanamo Bay, a great bloodletting, and Donald Trump swooping in to free us from evil. One day. Or maybe the day after. The prophecy is flexible, which is why it has evolved and endured.

This week brought us evidence that QAnon thought has spread further than we knew: into the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the very highest levels of the Republican Party. It is increasingly difficult to separate the movement’s demented beliefs from the ideology of the already democracy-averse GOP, its traces evident in legislation, media appearances, and leaked private communications.

The latest exemplar of the GOP’s descent into anything-goes nuttery is Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas and a well-connected conservative activist who recently admitted to attending the January 6 Stop the Steal rally in Washington, D.C. Ginni’s right-wing beliefs have long been known, but leaked texts between her and then–White House chief of staff Mark Meadows revealed Thomas’s commitment to overturning the election, based on an apparently sincere belief that Joe Biden had stolen the presidency. She encouraged Meadows to help put a stop to Democratic perfidy. “The majority knows Biden and the Left is attempting the greatest Heist of our History,” went one message to Meadows, encouraging him to stand strong.

The texts also revealed that she has traveled far down the QAnon rabbit hole. She made reference to “watermarked ballots” that signaled a secret Trump-led military “sting operation.” She described a plot hatched by the “Biden crime family & ballot fraud co-conspirators” who were already being arrested and shipped to floating barges off the coast of Guantanamo Bay. She wrote messages supporting Sidney Powell, a lawyer whose deranged media appearances made her such a liability that she was forced out of Trump’s circle. But Thomas strongly supported Powell, a QAnon favorite. “Don’t let her and your assets be marginalized instead … help her be the lead and the face,” she wrote to Meadows on November 13.

*snip*

[old as dirt]

1. Q vs. Guinan - Star Trek TNG - Whoopi Goldberg

[TygrBright]

2. Good article. This is the "money shot" in my view:

"If you had any lingering pretensions that our political elites know better than the average QAnon-pilled zombie, it’s past time to let them go. The people in charge of the Republican Party are mostly old and poorly informed operators who believe some of the most asinine theories to emerge from social-media bilge. Granting them some measure of savviness — saying that this is red meat for the Republican base, or that it keeps the checks from right-wing billionaires coming in — is to offer too much credit. More than that, it risks absolving them through some nod toward political practicalities when, mostly, this is all pretty evil and disturbing."

Exactly.

sadly,
Bright