Greene won her primary in a heavily Republican House district and then her Democratic opponent mysteriously dropped out of the race. Q-curious Republicans have also won primaries to challenge Democratic Senate incumbents in Delaware and Oregon.
“While most people who run under the QAnon banner will be rightly laughed out of the voting booth, the fact of the matter is that a movement this broad, with this many followers, is bound to elect QAnon participants,” Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, told CNN. “They are growing, they are engaged, and unlike other fringe movements, they are fielding candidates, at all levels from local to national races.”
Greene and Delaware Republican Lauren Witzke have distanced themselves a little from their earlier QAnon advocacy, while Oregon’s Jo Rae Perkins says it’s a “resource for information” that’s “kind of like a clearing house. And that's what I really like about Q. That's one thing that I like, the other thing is that there are questions in the Socratic method.”
A clearing house for claims that Democrats are a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles and Donald Trump is a brave warrior against that, mind you.
Right now it’s three candidates, only one of whom is likely to win, and none of whom are currently willing to wrap QAnon in a total embrace. But this is the leading edge—we’ve seen more than once how fringe Republican ideas quickly come to dominate the party—and the conspiracy theory has entered a dangerous new phase, “popping up on Peloton forums, circulating among Instagram influencers, and gaining traction with anti-vaxxers, yoga communities, and new moms,” Lili Loofbourow writes. In this new form it’s often veiled, but then again most cults don’t approach recruits with “Hi, would you like to join our cult?”
Once again, Republicans are poised to take the United States to an even darker place than we’ve previously seen. This is dangerous.
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