The Democratic Party Has a Fatal Misunderstanding of the QAnon Phenomenon [View all]

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

Tweet text:
Ben Collins
@oneunderscore__
·
Feb 6, 2021
This is a very good piece. I haven't seen ties between QAnon and poverty or even education level. The ties are mostly circumstantial, like sudden losses of a job or a loved one, and -- more importantly -- how much people know about how the internet works.

The Democratic Party Has a Fatal Misunderstanding of the QAnon Phenomenon
Their belief that this surreal conspiracy has arisen because of the poor education of its adherents is based in classism, not reality.
newrepublic.com

Ben Collins
@oneunderscore__
There are other, obvious, non-exclusive ties among QAnon followers -- deep belief in the omnipresence of Satanists, racism, antisemitism, etc. But traditional education level and income is all over the place.
2:02 PM · Feb 6, 2021

https://newrepublic.com/article/161266/qanon-classism-marjorie-taylor-greene

The Democratic Party Has a Fatal Misunderstanding of the QAnon Phenomenon
Their belief that this surreal conspiracy has arisen because of the poor education of its adherents is based in classism, not reality.

On Thursday, the House voted to strip Georgia Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene of her committee assignments, putting an end to one chapter of what’s sure to be an ongoing saga in the chamber’s Republican caucus. In a meandering nonapology in the hours before the vote, Greene, who has endorsed an impressive array of conspiracy theories, including QAnon and claims that Hillary Clinton had raped, mutilated, and consumed the blood of a child, characterized negative coverage of her as—surprise, surprise—more “cancel culture” run amok. While Greene’s rise bodes poorly for the country, some have already decided her newfound celebrity is good news for the Democratic Party’s electoral prospects. On Tuesday, Politico reported that the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee intends to focus on QAnon in its messaging, ahead of the 2022 midterms, in the hopes that the specter of more Greenes in Congress will push more people away from the GOP. “They can do QAnon, or they can do college-educated voters,” DCCC Chair Sean Patrick Maloney said. “They cannot do both.”

Actually, they can. Trying to tether the GOP more tightly to the extremism it’s cultivated makes sense, and the strategy may help prevent some moderate suburbanites from returning to the party’s inordinately big tent. But polls have shown few differences on QAnon between voters with and without college degrees—Civiqs’s latest survey, for instance, registers 72 percent opposition and 5 percent support for the theory among graduates. The split is 71 to 5 among nongraduates and 78 to 3 among postgraduates. And, notably, Americans without college degrees are less likely than graduates to have heard of QAnon in the first place. If this is a surprise, consider the fact that Greene herself went to college. And when she runs for reelection next year, she’s sure to enjoy the support of many college-educated Republicans who, whether they personally believe in QAnon or not, want to keep as many right-wing firebrands as they can in Congress. Those who think such voters will inevitably doom the party would do well to remember the 2010 midterms—despite the Tea Party’s rhetoric and antics, Republicans took the House in a historic wave.

Of all the “big lies” distorting our politics, one of the largest and most popular—back in 2010 and now—has been the notion that our political divisions are the product of under- or miseducation. The Republican Party’s flight into lunacy, it’s often suggested, has a fairly simple cause. The unwashed aren’t getting The Facts in school or from their media sources, and it’s up to the enlightened to shower The Facts upon them—perhaps, as some “disinformation” experts recently suggested to The New York Times, with a “reality czar” at the White House manning the hose. This was the explanation many turned to as the Trump era began, and it was the explanation many turned to for how it ended. Take the remarkable lede that topped a piece from The Atlantic’s Caitlin Flanagan on the Capitol rioters last month:

Here they were, a coalition of the willing: deadbeat dads, YouPorn enthusiasts, slow students, and MMA fans. They had heard the rebel yell, packed up their Confederate flags and Trump banners, and GPS-ed their way to Washington. After a few wrong turns, they had pulled into the swamp with bellies full of beer and Sausage McMuffins, maybe a little high on Adderall, ready to get it done.

*snip*