The QAnoning of our political discourse

[Nevilledog]

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Don Moynihan
@donmoyn
New: I explain the mainstreaming of QAnon ideas and language in our politics, specifically the labeling of political opponents as supportive of child abuse.

How this ugly smear matters in education and for Biden's nomination of Judge Jackson to SCOTUS. 🧵

donmoynihan.substack.com
The QAnoning of our political discourse
Unfounded accusations of "grooming" or child abuse are becoming the norm. Why?
6:48 AM · Mar 20, 2022

https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/the-qanoning-of-our-political-discourse?s=w


Earlier this week Republican Senator Josh Hawley, wrote a widely viewed thread about President Biden’s nominees to the Supreme Court, Ketanji Brown Jackson. The central theme was that Brown was too sympathetic to sex offenders. Factcheckers debunked the claim, noting that Brown’s views were relatively mainstream, and that Hawley had relied on mischaracterizations while quoting her words out of context.

If Hawley’s criticisms could be so easily rebuffed, why bother with this line of attack? The answer reveals something about the decay of American political discourse in the Trump era.

Hawley sought to tie Brown to a well-defined and increasingly common trope in American conservatism, which is that public institutions are overrun with child predators.

The point of Hawley’s attack is not to make the charges stick in any substantive way, but to create an association between Brown and this broader trope. And in some immediate sense this worked. Simply by airing the claims, Hawley gave conservative media an excuse to run them.

Hawley does not claim that Brown herself is engaged in any illegal acts. But he casts her as a bit player in a familiar narrative, upholding a system of mass pedophilia. Since he sits on the Senate Judiciary committee that will hold hearings on Brown’s nomination, he will have ample opportunity to push his claims to an even wider audience.

*snip*

[Bernardo de La Paz]

1. I hope people are going to frustrate Hawley by maneuvering him into looking like an obvious fool. nt