The Driving Force of the GOP
The Driving Force of the GOP
QAnon and White Nationalism
On Wednesday, President Joe Biden gave his second speech issuing a warning for the future of American democracy. “This is also the first election since the events of Jan. 6 when the armed, angry mob stormed the U.S. Capitol. I wish I could say the assault on our democracy ended that day, but I cannot,” he said.
Biden is right. And while the assault on democracy didn’t start on January 6, I believe this country has not begun to reckon with the rapid radicalization that occurred during the course of the pandemic.
When I was undercover at in-person events in 2020 and 2021, everyone acted like we were in a pre-pandemic world. Masks were a symbol that someone was likely an “enemy” of the right. Hugs and high fives were commonplace; sharing drinks and appetizers with strangers at a post-event bar outing was done without second thought. Whether it was a $1,500 conference or a “Save the Kids” rally, these experiences were a reprieve from the isolation of the pandemic (often exacerbated by friends and family not wanting to hang around COVID denying germ factories).
Starved for camaraderie and wanting to make connections with like-minded people, everyone would eagerly share their favorite conspiracy theories. They would pass on the names of up and coming QAnon influencers, and exchange contact information with each other. Someone might start off by going to a rally because they’re tired of sitting at home and agree that child sex trafficking is bad, and walk away hours later with a rolodex full of everyone in their local anti-mask community, and a Telegram full of the latest conspiracy pushers.
“[Trump has] made a big lie an article of faith in the MAGA Republican Party, the minority of that party,” Biden said in his speech. I had to rewind it twice to make sure I heard him right. A minority? Maybe that was true in February 2021, but it’s not true now. Yet legacy outlets still seem to want to play to both sides in the idea of “fairness.” People still shy away from the idea of partisanship. For reasons I cannot understand, there is still a staunch refusal by many to acknowledge that the entire GOP is rotted with white nationalism and QAnon conspiracy.
Jared’s tweet made me think about July 2021, when someone on Twitter confidently told me only cranks cared about CRT — and those cranks were the minority and didn’t matter. The first time I heard CRT break into the ranks as a top concern for America was at Trump Doral in April 2021. I was at Women for America First’s (a co-organizer of the DC Stop the Steal rallies) Save America Summit. QAnon influencer Landon Starbuck gave a 30 minute speech falsely claiming Democrats use CRT as one of their many tools to make children more susceptible to child sex trafficking.
The left is not going to stop human trafficking. They're going to grow this business. And let me tell you how. Left policies, left ideology, big porn, big tech enable human traffickers…
We have to get rid of CSE in our school system, comprehensive sexuality education, they'll call it inclusive. They'll call it science. They'll call it medically accurate, it is all a lie. And when you dig in deep and you read and you see what they're doing to groom our children, they're sexualizing our children. They're radically sexualizing them and turning them this is a pedophile agenda. This is a globalist pedophile agenda…you have teachers teaching about porn as a means of sexual liberation, sexual, explore your sexual identity. So it's also coming baked in with critical race education, identity, gender identity education it's coming through all of that, too. It's not just in your face with this overt sexual language…
Nothing is going to change as long as Democrats are in power, as long as their policies keep proliferating children, the supply in human trafficking is increasing…
And [kids] sense of identity is being chiseled away and chipped away by this radical sex ed, by this critical race theory crap, this garbage in our schools.
This idea is driven by the right’s notion that CRT teaches white children to hate themselves. Landon was suggesting that as CRT wears down kids’ confidence, they are more likely to be trafficked.
Landon’s speech had a powerful impact on the women at the summit. I heard about CRT dozens of times before the summit was over. And why wouldn’t I? If you truly believe that something is being taught to your child in an effort to chip away their resilience to being trafficked, wouldn’t you talk about it nonstop, too?
By July 2021, I was listening to young white nationalists rage about CRT. At American Populist Union’s first conference, held in tandem with TPUSA’s Student Action Summit, Vince Dao condemned the establishment for its handling of CRT.
Even today, after all we've seen, the conservative establishment still cowers. They refuse to say that critical race theory is anti-white. They refuse to ever take a principled stand on LGBT. They refuse to take a hardline stance on literally anything. Perhaps the single greatest embodiment of the failure of the conservative establishment has been their unwillingness to even stick up against the political persecution of conservatives by the American regime.
At a 20th anniversary 9/11 memorial event in Kentucky, General Flynn talked about CRT.
People don't vote. Off-cycle elections, most people don't even know when the school board elections are going to be…they don't run them on normal cycles. I am so sick to my stomach about this critical race theory. I was at an event last night looking at this book that's given out to 10 year olds. I mean, it's talking, it's unbelievable. It's you know, it's undescribable. To me, this book that's given out to 10 year olds, is child abuse. It's horrific. It's in schools all over this country, public schools. And so you know, I'm in a non joke.
He might be a high paid keynote speaker, but I call him marbled mouth Flynn for a reason. This rant was absolute nonsense. Flynn never told us what the book was about (perhaps it was too “undescribable”?), but no one seemed to notice. They heard all the buzzwords and ate it up, associating CRT with child abuse — and back at the hotel, Flynn’s speech was the talk of the town.
By November 2021, CRT was a banner issue in school board races. I spent hours watching school board debates and combing social media profiles to make a spreadsheet about candidates running in Virginia. I had to dedicate an entire column to Critical Race Theory.
A year later, CRT remains a hot button issue. Just two days ago, Rep Jim Banks wrote an opinion piece for Fox News, headlined “There should be no critical race theory in foxholes.” Countless news articles about CRT are published every week, and it’s a topic of debate for all levels of elections.
So much for CRT being a crank-only issue.
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This is just a great article. Many thanks for taking the time. Key for me is this: "For reasons I cannot understand, there is still a staunch refusal by many to acknowledge that the entire GOP is rotted with white nationalism and QAnon conspiracy."
I keep a watching brief at a forum devoted to Ayn Rand and Objectivist Living. The epistemic collapse on the forum is partly explicable via your analysis.
I just have one elemental question: Has anyone asked themselves WHY some on the Right are angry?