QAnon Isn’t Gone
It’s Just Resting and Re-Energizing
You saw the QAnon banners prominently and proudly waved by the seditious insurrectionists on Jan. 6 and QAnon followers turned up in Dallas last month expecting to see John F. Kennedy Jr., who QAnon claimed would appear because he never died in a plane crash in 1999.
Many QAnon followers also have coalesced around the other-worldly conspiracy theory that last month’s Astroworld Festival in Houston, in which 10 people died and hundreds more were injured, was a front for a satanic ritual sacrifice.
But since then, the QAnon presence has been pleasingly though ominously silent, coincidentally at a time when one of QAnon’s biggest promoters, Gen. Bone Spurs, has been barred from social media. But that doesn’t mean that the crazies are gone, as evidenced by the announcement by one of the first and craziest, that one-time, losing vice presidential hopeful and viewer of Russia from the window of her Alaska home, the one and thank god only, Sarah Palin.
Palin, who was QAnonish before there was QAnon, was a speaker at the Turning Point USA “AmericaFest2021” conference in Phoenix, Ariz., a star studded lineup of the nation’s most deranged politicians and others. In case you forgot why you couldn’t stomach Palin, she told anyone listening that only “over her dead body” would she be forced to get a COVID-19 vaccination. Unfortunately nobody took her up on her offer, but I didn’t say that , it’s too mean. Yes, I did.
Yes, that is the one and only Palin who was quoted saying such jewels of wisdom as “Mr. President, the only thing that stops a bad guy with a nuke is a good guy with a nuke” and “Bear hunting? Come on up and we’ll fix you up, you betcha. Just be sure you bring some hunting buddies with you, preferably fat ones who can’t run as fast as you.” And BTW, in late March, Palin, her daughter, and 12-year-old son Trig, who has Down syndrome, all contracted COVID-19 and all survived.
Not to be outdone by Palin in her glory, that QAnon darling, Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, R-Ga., said proudly that she hasn’t been vaccinated, and evidently she hasn’t heard that the omicron variant is sweeping across the country, but hey, she’s just a member of the Congress, the body that decides the direction of the most powerful nation on earth, at least for the moment.
“And they’re going to have a hell of a time if they want to hold me down and give me a vaccine,” Greene told the adoring throng, many unvaccinated and maskless, decked out in their MAGA hats and “Let’s Go Brandon” T-shirts, among other sundry nudniks and miscreants, that included such bottom dwellers as the latest and loudest Islamaphobe, Rep. Lauren Boebert, R-Colo.; the great heir to the throne, the one who begged his father to stop the Jan. 6, attempted, coup d’etat, Donald Trump Jr.; and leading Fox provocateur, prevaricator and propagandist, Tucker Carlson, who most recently has been cashing in on the tragedy that is Kyle Rittenhouse.
But do not be fooled or lulled into a false sense of calm because QAnon is simply taking a rest, recharging its batteries for the conspiracy onslaught that is certain to return, with guns ablazing. A report by Media Matters and CNN noted that 49 current or former candidates for national office around the country have publicly endorsed or supported QAnon.
Among the 49 are three from New Jersey, all Republicans, including such rising stars as Edward Durr, who won the race in November to represent the 3rd Legislative District. Durr upset six-time Democratic incumbent, and president of the state Senate, Steve Sweeney.
Durr has a history of bigoted, misogynistic and derogatory comments on social media that would make any QAnoner smile.
Among some of Durr’s postings, he wrote in a 2019 tweet that “Mohammed was a pedophile!” In other online posts, he called the coronavirus “the China virus,” a favorite trumpian lie and blamed an “influx of #illegalAliens” for spreading the disease. He used the QAnon motto and compared vaccination mandates to the Holocaust while denigrating Vice President Kamala Harris on Facebook, writing that she had earned her position only as a result of her race and gender. In 2017, one of Durr’s earliest and slimiest posts came when he called Sen. Robert Menendez, D-N.J., a “pedophile.”
Another with QAnon sympathies is Tricia Flanagan, a candidate for the Congressional seat to represent the 3rd Congressional District. She previously lost a bid for U.S. Senate last year , but collected 17.8 percent of the GOP vote or 72,678 votes in the Republican primary. In response to a QAnon account promoting her candidacy, she posted “ThanQ.”
As part of her current Senate campaign, she tweeted on Dec. 20, about her opposition to the use of masks to stem the spread of COVID-19, another popular claim among the QAnon crowd.
“I’ve said it from DAY ONE & now the research proves — MASKS DON’T WORK AND ACTUALLY CAUSE HARM,” she tweeted, apparently referring to a science that only she and her distorted followers knew about.
In launching her 2022 Congressional campaign, she tried an appeal to fellow conspiracists and America-firsters, when she ran an ad that declared her opponent, Rep. Andy Kim, D-3, “is not one of us” sounding frighteningly like the trump and QAnon campaigns to prove that President Obama was a Muslim and not a U.S. citizen.
Other QAnon-like campaign efforts include Flanagan’s claims that the electoral system is rife with fraud, as evidenced by the defeat of trump because of widespread and imaginary voter fraud. She also has attacked the Biden administration for attacking Christians.
On Oct.20, Flanagan tweeted, “If Biden destroying our American economy isn’t enough. If evidence of election fraud isn’t enough.If hearing the tortured CRIES of the American People having our Freedoms & livelihood RIPPED away by the Democrats isn’t enough for you to lift your voice @GOP. WHAT will be?”
Sounds pretty QAnonish to me.
Then there’s Billy Prempeh. a Republican running in the 9th Congressional District. He lost when he ran for the same seat last year but he did pick up 98,629 votes. His campaign Facebook pages shows Prempeh next to a Q flag, with the QAnon slogan, “WWG1WGA,” which stands for “where we go one, we go all.” Prempeh lso mentioned in a YouTube interview that Q and “the Great Awakening” are “stuff that we’ve got going on right now.”
Prempt is a trumper down to his socks.
“ I also look up to President Donald Trump. He came in as an outsider and when the media tried their best to smear and destroy him they were no match for his policies. The people believed in him and he won. Donald Trump is the only politician I have seen in my lifetime that has made promises and kept every single one of them,” Prempt posted.