You are watching in real time as mainstream conservatism warms itself up to embracing QAnon's "liberals are pedophiles" doctrine wholesale.
The reasons are simple: 1) QAnon has been the main pipeline to making GOP crossover voters; and 2) it justifies any fascist "response."
Contrary to some popular(ist) beliefs, Trumpist crossover votes have come far more from QAnon indoctrination than from normie median voters getting turned off by "woke" leftists. So why not lean into it, if you lack moral compunction? It's also directly tailored to existing White Dominionist Nationalist narratives, intersecting with broad anti-Semitic, patriarchal & anti-urbanist narratives. Makes it easy for the folks who don't want to pay taxes for school lunches to pretend they're doing it for the kids. But also crucially, it's the projection.
There is no culture of child abuse and grooming more insidious than conservative religion. From Roy Moore to Dennis Hastert to Matt Gaetz to the priest scandal, these men have always predated on children as their prerogative of power. Like the Quiverfull Duggars & FLDS, the whole idea is to make women and girls the property of powerful older men and their sons, forcing them to have babies as early as possible in direct transfer of ownership from their fathers. Boys are frequent victims of sexual hazing.
Conservative small towns and Friday Night Lights cultures are rife with sexual abuse of children and they know it. It's just the "right" kind, in service of the patriarchal power structures. And it's kept quiet under the rug, repented for on Sunday and recommitted on Monday. It's no accident that teen pregnancy is far lower in liberal counties and states than conservative ones. Kids in liberal communities have better outcomes and suffer less abuse. The institutionalized grooming is almost entirely on the Religious Right. And they know it.
But they play up this angle because it preys on their fears, because they know their kids despise their bigoted value systems, because they project the evils in their own families & communities, and because it justifies their intended policies of bloodlust against liberals. And make no mistake: they will absolutely carry out pogroms based on projected QAnon libels as far as they are allowed when in power. And at the hands of Trump, a man credibly accused of raping a 14-year-old and going into teen locker rooms to see them naked. It's no accident. As they might say, it's all Part of the Plan.
Men are given full authority over their wives and children, and religious leaders over their flocks. They are presumed to have highest moral authority under God, and their actions are rarely scrutinized. Many of these men use their authority to abuse kids. Sometimes, as with child marriage, this is all socially sanctioned in direct patriarchal transfer of girls or abusive hazing rituals of teen boys.
But often it's not. It's hidden abuse, quiet and under table. Except usually these are *open secrets.* The immediate families protect the uncle, the pastor, grandfather, whoever. They blame the child for "tempting" the Good Man. They blame Satan. The child is forced into a cone of silence to protect the Family or Community or Church. This often leads to suicide or other harm. The abuser, meanwhile, is offered an endless cycle of atonement & redemption through prayer--reinforcing the social order and allowing them to abuse again, only to be redeemed and "forgiven" again endlessly. This enabling is perceived as holy permanent struggle against Satan.
The absence of this cycle of shame and atonement in liberal cultures, along with open acceptance of non-normative sexualities and embrace of consent as defining moral line, terrifies conservatives and comes off to them as anarchy.
Dylan Perez
They assume that liberals must be shamelessly abusing kids all the time without sanction, since all of *them* know a dark secret in their communities and liberals apparently have no rules! Except we *do* have rules--rules based on consent and accountability. We don't abuse kids insitutionally the way religious conservatives do because we don't trust patriachal men with that sort of power, we don't blame the victims (or Satan) when abusers abuse, and we hold them accountable publicly to society--not secretly to a convenient God.
So conservatives freak out in moral panics over the fake conspiracy Satanism they imagine happening in liberal communities without their toxic cycle of patriarchal "redemption," while putting cones of silence and victim-shaming around the abuses right under their own noses. In the most evil cases, the reactionaries simply want teen girls to marry rich old men as in The Olden Days, & to kill gay people or force them into the closet while falsely accusing them of pedophilia.
None of this is an accident. It is an old story, just as QAnon is old libel.
Nice essay faggot but you are the problem, leftists normalized this shit, and you’re going down for it. Faggots troons and pedos hang
Josiah Bennett
Religious conservatives are the real pedophiles.
Brandon Morris
Pizzagate was always real, though. We have to have some connection to truth and real events, if we want to survive as a humanity. It's obvious that both parties are controlled by pedophiles.
Carson Gonzalez
And faggots are the real fascists.
Ayden Perry
We're just trying to live our lives.
Joshua Ramirez
Q is too fucking batshit for me to get on board with. Its incoherent nonsense thats like a bunch of different conspiracies rolled together into one weird boomer ARG larp where they pretend theyre in some shitty movie
Ryder Hernandez
>There is no culture of child abuse and grooming more insidious than conservative religion
While I partly agree I think you're overthinking it, perhaps through a marxist analytical frame. There's a simpler explanation than 'it's the manifestation of the conservative patriarchal ethos':
Evangelical churches are big into international adoption, and there used to be a large and rather profitable industry rescuing 'orphaned' children from the third world and giving them new families in the USA. This has fallen by >75% over the last 20 years as countries have become more developed and started saying 'hey can you not help yourselves to our kids pls.' The more difficult adoptions have become, the more money has flowed toward 'consultants' and 'experts' who can help navigate that bureaucratic maze. Things got a lot more difficult in 2017 due to additional restrictions imposed by the state department.
Having problems adopting orphan kids for Jesus? What better way to push back than to suggest those very same kids are no longer available because of competition from Satanic pedos. In short, I think Qanon is basically a smokescreen for the evangelical 'child rescue' industry.
Relevant recent example: WA prayer warrior extraordinaire Matt Shea is in Eastern Europe right now trying to collect a busloads of kids displaced by the war in Ukraine. 'Rescuing' displaced children after any kind of disaster/calamity is a popular and long-established practice among evangelicals. spokesman.com/stories/2022/mar/29/ukrainian-orphans-with-matt-shea-in-poland-get-a-p/
Brody Foster
Lmao yes it’s religious conservatives who demand parades in the street every June to exhibit their pedophilia and grooming behaviors
Nolan Hall
No you’re not you’re trying to save a privileged place in a rotten society.
Camden Rodriguez
You are a degenerative faggot. Do you already have to wear diapers die to incontinence?
Wyatt Gonzalez
>Leftists are pedophiles If you have had sex before 18 years old with someone under 18 years old, then you are a pedophile.
If you were trying to save your lives you’d shut the fuck up about your disgusting sexual habits and not spread ideas and diseases to kids and young men. You’d be quietly trying to live your lives within the society that has been built for you rather than tearing it down to suit your genetically sterile lifestyles.
