How Republican Voters Took QAnon Mainstream

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How Republican Voters Took QAnon Mainstream

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/how-republican-voters-took-qanon-mainstream/ar-BB1abB1W?li=BBorjTa&ocid=DELLDHP


Matthew Rosenberg 10 hrs ago


DALTON, Ga. —......................
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QAnon’s growing influence inside the Trump campaign was underscored when the president again refused to condemn the movement after he was asked about it at his town hall in Miami on Thursday night. Mr. Trump, who over the summer praised QAnon adherents for their love of America, first claimed to know nothing of the movement and then, when pressed, said: “What I do hear about it is they are very strongly against pedophilia. I agree with that. I do agree with that.”

There was no acknowledgment of the real-world violence inspired by QAnon, which has prompted a pre-election crackdown by social media networks, with YouTube last week becoming the latest platform to attempt to stop its spread. But dozens of recent interviews in Georgia and other parts of the country offered insights into the pull of a movement that has migrated far beyond the confines of the internet and, much like the Tea Party before it, plays to the sense of grievance on which Mr. Trump’s political career was built

People “feel left out,” said McKray Kyer, 24, the local Republicans’ vice chairman. QAnon, with its focus on criminal “elites,” helped them understand why. “It’s not about what we’re doing wrong — it’s the swamp.”

Mr. Kyer said he had looked into QAnon and was not sure what he believed. But many others interviewed said they believed in some or most of QAnon, and a significant portion of those who did not know the movement’s name were familiar with its themes, especially its talk of rampant child trafficking and devil worship among powerful elites.

Yet the movement is elastic, drawing on any number of well-worn tropes. Even people who explicitly dismissed QAnon as lunacy often volunteered similar conspiracy theories. There was talk of how the pandemic was an outright hoax or, at the very least, being wildly overblown. Many people repeated racist theories about former President Barack Obama or the anti-Semitic notion that the financier George Soros controls the political system.................................