Mod: I know what the results are, but how did it happen? How could so many people come to accept so much weird crap, and then turn it into their personal political beliefs?A GOP congressman said so many Republican voters now believe in the QAnon conspiracy theory it could destroy the party (MSN.comlink): GOP Rep. Peter Meijer has warned that the rise of the QAnon conspiracy theory movement could destroy the Republican Party from within in remarks to CNN.
Meijer is one of few
Republicans who've spoken out against the rise of conspiracy-theory-driven beliefs among a swath of the
GOP grassroots. He was one of only
10Republicans in the
House who voted to impeach
Donald Trump for inciting the
Capitol riot on
Jan 6.
"The fact that a significant plurality, if not potentially a majority, of our voters have been deceived into this creation of an alternate reality could very well be an existential threat to the party,"Meijer, a freshman congressman from Michigan, told the network.
The
QAnon movement emerged from messaging boards
4chan and
8chan, to be adopted and promoted by
Trump allies on the far right as it spread through the
Republican Party. A
Republican congresswoman,
Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of
Georgia, pushed the conspiracy theory before her election last year though in recent weeks has claimed she does not believe in it.
Adherents claim, groundlessly, that a
Satanic cabal of
Democrats and
Hollywood stars secretly manipulate world events and run child trafficking networks. They revere
Donald Trump as a savior figure, who will dismantle the cabal
But the belief of adherents that Trump would halt Joe Biden's inauguration and defeat his foes in a day of violent reckoning has failed to materialize, and Meijer warned that the despair could fuel political violence.
"When we say
QAnon, you have the sort of extreme forms, but you also just have this softer, gradual undermining of any shared, collective sense of truth,"
Meijer said. He told
CNN that conspiracy theories fuel "incredibly unrealistic and unachievable expectations" and "a cycle of disillusionment and alienation" that could lead conservative supporters not to vote or could even lead to more violence like the
January 6 attack.
Mod: More at the link.
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