The Ridiculous Re-Branding of QAnon
Gonna hace to disagree strongly with ya there, I am afraid.
The official Twitter account of the Hawaiian GOP recently went rogue in a manner that speaks volumes about the way extreme ideologies and beliefs can be rationalized, excused and justified no matter how transparently false and unhinged.
In a series of tweets that were quickly deleted, the Hawaii GOP twitter account defended the actions and beliefs of QAnon by positing them not as the dangerous delusions of the unhinged and easily led but rather as expressions of patriotism by people with bad information but only the best of intentions.
The widely mocked tweet storm embodies what the QAnon crowd laughably seems to imagine are their terms of semi-surrender: QAnon will reluctantly concede that some of the more outlandish aspects of its mythology, like Tom Hanks eating the babies that he sexually assaults as part of a Satanic ritual involving top Democrats and Hollywood celebrities are in fact false, or at the very least exaggerated, and in exchange QAnon should be treated as good-hearted people who were a little misguided because they were misled and not gullible cultists with a very shaky grasp on reality.
With a ridiculously unearned sense of self-righteousness, the account argued, “People who followed Q don't deserve mockery, the world is a complex place, there are bad actors, injustice, corruption - the processes of justice and the mechanisms our Republic are slow by design, abuses and wrongs are always swifter than correction. People want hope.”
Where does that hope come from? According to the Tweet storm, “Hope comes from an unwavering belief in the goodness of the American people-and then engaging in direct civic action.”
Call me cynical but to me that sounds an awful lot like the January 6th insurrection: QAnon folks, Alt-Right extremists and Trump super-fans had unwavering belief in the goodness of the American people, and their wisdom in electing Donald Trump to a second term, and engaged in direct civic action in the form of storming the capitol, vandalizing the building and terrorizing lawmakers on the verge of certifying Joe Biden as the next president of the United States.
The rioters and insurrectionists held out hope that despite appearances, Trump had won a “sacred” landslide over Joe Biden and that January 20th would bring about a great reckoning that they could help bring into existence by invading the Capitol.
The thread closes by once again piously asserting that no one should even think of mocking the beliefs of the Tom Hanks-eats-babies crowd by concluding, “We should make it abundantly clear-the people who subscribed to the Q fiction, were largely motivated by a sincere and deep love of America. Patriotism and love of County should never be ridiculed.”
The idea that patriotism and love of country (or County) should never be ridiculed strikes me as distinctly fascist, as does the notion that patriotism and love of country are inherently good and should NEVER be ridiculed or disparaged.
On the contrary, I would argue that patriotism and “love of country” should definitely be mocked, ridiculed and disparaged because they are the cornerstones of authoritarianism and nationalism.
Authoritarianism and nationalism should always be mocked, ridiculed and disparaged.
I have no doubt that the Germans who put Jews on trains to Aushwitz thought that they were doing so for the greater good of Germany. Hitler appealed very directly to the German people’s sense of exceptionalism, to the idea that they as a people were destined for glory and dominance as long as they destroyed everyone and every thing that stood in their way.
The Hawaii GOP’s tweet thread echoes Trump’s own statements about QAnon.
When asked about QAnon, Trump pretended not to know anything about it except that they were very patriotic, thought he was great and were very anti-pedophilia and very anti-child-murder and who could possibly object to an organization that was pro-Trump, pro-patriotism and anti-child molestation and child-murder?
I was skeptical of some of QAnon’s claims, to be honest, but this one feels legit.
The problem is that QAnon isn’t a harmless belief system or a victimless ideology but rather a new variation of some of the oldest anti-Semitic tropes known to man, most specifically Blood libel, which is the belief that Jews murdered Christian children in order to use their blood to make matzah for Passover.
Blood Libel could consequently be defended the same way that Trump and the Hawaii GOP have defended QAnon. After all, the Blood libel folks were anti-child murder and anti-cannibalism. Who could possibly be against that, other than child rapists and child murderers?
Of course Blood Libel had nothing to do with keeping children safe from the non-existent crime of Jews killing Christian babies so they could taste their sweet blood and everything to do with justifying violent programs against Jews on the ostensible basis that they were saving children.
On a similar note, QAnon has nothing to do with fighting pedophilia and political corruption and everything to do with demonizing and scapegoating political opponents and spreading the deathless notion that rich, evil Jews like George Soros and the Rothschilds secretly run the world and will do anything to hold onto that power.
There’s nothing harmless or good about QAnon just as there’s nothing harmless or good about Blood libel.
Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise. It doesn’t matter how pure QAnon thinks its intentions are. QAnon is peddling bullshit anti-Semitic conspiracies in a garish new package that should be renounced as profoundly dangerous by the right as well as the left.
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