Uh … QAnon Followers Are Winning Elections
We all have nostalgia for what we call the good old days, whether that's the swinging sixties, the time of plentiful Ecto Cooler, or the innocent days when he had fewer than four Spider-Men. And it's truly a sign of the apocalyptical trash fire that has been 2020 that we now get to say: Remember the good old days when Republican candidates only believed that the top Democrat was an illegal alien from Kenya and not a Satanist pedophile?
Statistically (and hopefully), you don't have the foggiest idea what QAnon is all about. A radical far-right conspiracy theory bonanza, its followers worship a character known as Q, as a sort of P.I. prophet who anonymously posts on shitty message boards that he's one of the Top Men in government fighting a liberal deep state cabal. Among other dastardly deeds, this deep state has faked the death of JFK Jr., runs a large pedophile ring for top Democrats, and, most insidious of all, prevents Trump from looking like a functioning adult. It's like the lizard people conspiracy theory and the I'm A Navy Seal copypasta had a baby and then made that baby drink bleach to cure it of the Jewish conspiracy that is the coronavirus.
But while most serious analysts have continued to dismiss QAnon as just a fringe group of far-right weirdos confined to the most divorced corners of Facebook, it's past time to start taking them seriously. According to the liberal watchdog Media Matters for America, 59 Republican candidates for Congress and Senate have pledged some sort of support to the QAnon cause. Worst of all, several of these nutjobs have an actual shot at winning their seats. Just this week, Lauren Boebert, a QAnon believer and owner of a gun-themed restaurant, beat a five-term, pro-Trump political veteran to become Colorado's Republican nominee for the upcoming congressional race.
Meanwhile, Georgia hopeful Marjorie Taylor Greene is poised to become the first U.S. Congresswoman to get elected on the promise that she'll go to D.C. and "take this globalist cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles out."
At this point, almost 600,000 Americans (and counting) have cast votes for QAnon-backed Republican candidates. That makes them a legitimate radical movement inside of American rightwing politics and likely the next Republican Tea Party (or Pizza Party, in this case). So enjoy the simple days when the worst Republicans in the world were just shouting to lock Hilary Clinton up for incompetence because, by 2024, they'll be demanding to throw the entire Democratic party in Guantanamo Bay for having sex with babies.
For more weird tangents and blatant anti-baby leftism, do follow Cedric on Twitter.
Top Image: Gage Skidmore, Wikimedia Commons/Marc Nozell
