QAnon Candidates Are Winning Local Elections. Can They Be Stopped?

[Nevilledog]

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Vera Bergengruen
@VeraMBergen
NEW: A wave of QAnon-tied candidates has been elected to local office across the country in recent months. Some communities are desperately trying to fight back. Others are shrugging it off.

For the past two months, I've been tracking them down.

QAnon Candidates Are Winning Local Elections. Can They Be Stopped?
Since Trump’s defeat, the QAnon movement has quietly entered a different, and arguably more dangerous, phase
time.com
7:19 AM · Apr 16, 2021

https://time.com/5955248/qanon-local-elections/

In November, Lucas Hartwell, a high school senior in Grand Blanc, Mich., noticed something strange about his school district’s newest board member.

Amy Facchinello’s Twitter feed was full of apocalyptic images and skulls made of smoke. There were cryptic calls for fellow “patriots” and “digital soldiers” to join an uprising, and vows that nothing could “stop what is coming.” In the posts she shared, the COVID-19 pandemic was cast as a dark plot engineered by Bill Gates, while George Floyd’s killing was “exposed as deep state psyop.” Facchinello, elected that month, was now one of seven people in charge of shaping Hartwell’s education.

After a few hours of research, Hartwell had a name for her bizarre ideas: QAnon. He shared her posts on social media, directing people to a Wikipedia page about the right-wing conspiracy theory, which alleges that a sinister cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles is running the country. But few in Grand Blanc, a town of 8,200 outside Flint, seemed as alarmed as he was. So Hartwell, 18, decided to bring up the matter at a school-board meeting in January. Reading from a speech on his laptop, he addressed a Zoom audience that included Facchinello. Hartwell noted the FBI had identified QAnon as a potential terrorist threat. How could she serve in this position, he asked, “when it seems you represent none of the values we stand for as a community or, even more importantly, as Americans?”

There was a brief silence. “Thank you. O.K. Next,” said the moderator, moving on to a question about vaccinations.

Today, Facchinello, who did not respond to requests for comment, remains in her post. But Hartwell isn’t giving up. “I think for these far-right conspiracists or radicals to be infiltrating the most basic unit of American government, on an elected level, that’s just really disturbing to me,” he says. “And they just sort of get away with it.”

*snip*

[flying_wahini]

1. Other than educating people about the dangerous nature of Qanon and getting out the vote

What else Can we do?

[I_UndergroundPanther]

2. Could it be

We have a lot more schizo affective people in the population,a symptom of it is having bizzare beliefs and latching on beliefs.

My ex was schizo affective. He was into all sorts of strange conspiratorial belief systems. However he was politically on the left . Dragged me into crazy beliefs that led to crazy situations . Glad I am no longer with him..

[Baked Potato]

3. Expose their QAnon-Curious behaviors. Ask questions like this student did.

Then, if their off-duty behavior manifests itself in any way detrimental to official functions or good order, try to get them relieved or vote them out.

The QAnon phenomenon has taken the place of religion so as to explain real occurrences in a way in which people can offload guilt and/or responsibilities. That is a powerful tool in the hands of those who want masses to behave in a certain way.

[BoringUsername]

4. They can be stopped by people voting for their opponents obviously

Idk, you'd think most people would be fed up with this QAnon nonsense right about now. Now those sensible people just need to show up to vote so these nutcases don't get elected.

[joetheman]

5. Yes, we fight back by running in and winning elections above their local level and then

deny them funding and services.

[dalton99a]

6. They must be exposed and removed.

In other cities, the challenges of navigating the pandemic have swamped efforts to oust an offending official. When photos emerged in January of Williams posing at several events with a member of the Proud Boys, a far-right extremist group, the Clark County school board seemed at a loss as to how to respond. Busy with school reopenings, it opted to ignore them. A Las Vegas parent who has pushed for Williams’ resignation sympathizes with the board’s predicament. “They’re trying to get all these kids back to school,” the parent says. “They can’t exactly address the fact that ‘O.K., one of our new board trustees is affiliated with terrorists.'” (Jennings, Williams’ spokesman, says she has cut off all communication with Proud Boys members since the Capitol insurrection.)

Las Vegas parents are waiting until Williams has served the required six months before they can push for her to step down. Other communities are in a similar holding pattern. Residents of Huntington Beach are circulating petitions to recall Ortiz, one of which has more than 3,200 signatures but seems unlikely to succeed. Armacost remains in office in Sequim, where locals have formed a group called the Sequim Good Governance League to elect new candidates and block the rise of other conspiracy theorists. “This has galvanized a local movement of people who are saying, ‘Well, enough is enough,'” says Stringer, who heads the league’s legal committee. “This is about combatting the spread of conspiracy theories and the effect that has on our governmental institutions.”

The quandary is real. Local elections that elevate cranks to office are no less legitimate than the one that Capitol rioters were trying to overturn. On the other hand, choosing to ignore blatant conspiracy-mongering, or writing it off as protected political speech, risks cementing appeals to mass delusion as an accepted path to office. “This trend of local officials who have a lot of direct authority over decisions in their communities using disinformation as a strategy to get those positions is toxic and dangerous,” says Graham Brookie, the director of the Atlantic Council’s Digital Forensic Research Lab. And for many of these officials, who are able to get away with deleting old QAnon posts and dodging questions, a school-board or city-council seat may be a springboard to bigger platforms.

For now, those conspiracy theorists remain in charge of everything from children’s education to city budgets to the livelihoods of members of the community. Ava Butzu, an English teacher in Grand Blanc, said many faculty members had been aware of Amy Facchinello’s QAnon posts, but kept quiet out of fear for their jobs. “Everybody was terrified to speak at that first meeting,” says Butzu, who thanked Hartwell, the high school senior, for being the only person brave enough to call her out. Every time Americans choose not to speak out, they’re “ceding territory” to conspiracy theories, she says. “It’s a battle of inches.”

[Tommy Carcetti]

7. Very nearly happened in my hometown.

A school board candidate, who I actually went to school with, was espousing some wild Q beliefs all over Facebook, as well as some very backwards ideas on race. She then suffered a very public mental breakdown over Facebook, paused her campaign for a month, but then went right back to campaigning.

She lost, but still managed to get 40% of the vote. Post mental breakdown.

[crickets]

8. K&R for the post and the discussion.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

9. Adding a link:

QAnon Nutbags Are Swarming Into Local Elected Office
April 17, 2021