Many of us have heard about QAnon, but there is also BlueAnon which is not talked about as much. The reason we are in such trouble as a society is a majority of politically active people believe in one or the other. I use "politically active" because I don't think anywhere near a majority of Americans (aka "normies") believes in either.
I'm still not even exactly sure what QAnon is, other than a crazy bunch of conspiracy theories which led to some idiots storming the Capitol on January 6. I also consider Trump's "Stop The Steal" and the ongoing election "audit" here in Maricopa County (a county where the GOP has 4 of the 5 county supervisors and the county recorder, who supervises elections, is a Republican, but somehow a sophisticated conspiracy led to Biden narrowly carrying Maricopa while simultaneously allowing all these other Republicans to be elected) as QAnon Lite at a minimum.
BlueAnon is the Left equivalent of QAnon, a bundle of conspiracy theories believed and promoted by many Democratic activists and the media.
I was reminded of the pervasiveness of BlueAnon while reading an article by Charles W Cooke about Rebekah Jones. Jones is the self proclaimed "data scientist" who supposedly found that Governor DeSantis of Florida was cooking the books on Covid. In reality, Jones is an IT person who constructed a dashboard for the state but had nothing to do with data handling. She's a known fabulist who has been fired from several jobs but nonetheless become a darling of many on the Left and the media because she has cleverly pushed a narrative the Left loves, as Cooke's article explains. In turn, it has inspired a whole series of BlueAnon conspiracy narratives about DeSantis which have all proven false.
Although a cursory examination of Jones and her claims would have easily shown them to be fraudulent she received glowing coverage from MSNBC, USA Today, NY Times, Washington Post, NBC, Cosmopolitan, Forbes, Fortune, NPR, Yahoo News, and CNN (though Jake Tapper of that network was the only journalist to raise questions about her). This highlights one of the main differences between QAnon and BlueAnon; unlike QAnon, BlueAnon is openly reported as credible news and endorsed by media which has historically presented itself as non-partisan.
Nothing in Cooke's article is new. I've followed the Rebekah Jones saga since May 2020 and most of this has been known for many months and reported in other sources ignored by Democrats. Indeed, it is the unshakeable belief in Jones despite overwhelming facts to the contrary that brand this as prime BlueAnon.
In late March 2020, I thought Florida was headed for a New York type Covid disaster, based upon what I thought about the virus at the time. I was wrong. It turns out Governor DeSantis has done a reasonably good job navigating between keeping Floridians safe and avoiding the economic catastrophe faced by those in some other states. It's a particularly impressive accomplishment given that Florida has the largest percentage of 65+, the most vulnerable to Covid, of any state
Of course, the Daddy of BlueAnon theories, the Ur-moment, is Russia Collusion!! It was all fake (as laid out in my series) This BlueAnon theory was widely reported for three years and Rachel Maddow became BlueAnon central on it. It also spawned a whole subset of BlueAnon beliefs; Deutsche Bank, Alfa Bank servers, Michael Cohen in Prague, Trump Tower Moscow, Russian financiers for the Trump Org, the Ukraine plank in the GOP platform, Carter Page as mastermind, Cambridge Analytica, all of which were false, as was the Steele Dossier, the original source for the theory.
Nonetheless, the power of BlueAnon can be seen in the April 2020 results of a Harvard-Harris poll in which 53% of respondents believed the Steele dossier, "was real in its findings of Trump colluding with the Russians" and helped the Democrats to regain control of the House in 2018.(1)
BlueAnon also thrives when the press and its followers repeat a false story often enough to each other that it just becomes an accepted belief, with no one questioning the underlying facts. That President Trump, in the aftermath of Charlottesville, proclaimed there were "fine people on both sides" of the statue argument and included white nationalists and neo-nazis in that description, is widely accepted, and was crucial in cementing the Trump as nazi fascist racist theme the press was developing. At the time I accepted it since I don't like listening to Trump, had not watched the press conference, and mistakenly still had enough residual belief in the mainline press to accept what they were reporting on a public statement was accurate. It was only a year or so later upon coming across a transcript of the press conference that I realized the story was false; Trump on two occasions in that same press conference stated he was not including white nationalists and neo-nazis in his characterization of "fine people", saying "them I totally condemn" and calling them "bad people". If you tell someone today what Trump really said and they refuse to believe you, they are BlueAnon.(2)
BlueAnon also has its panic inducing theories. An example was the claim in August and September 2020 that President Trump was planning to use the U.S. Postal Service to steal the election in November. This one was seized and promoted not just by the press but by Democrats in Congress and became a big story for a few weeks though there has never been a legitimate shred of evidence to support it and the theory was dropped as soon as it was no longer useful.
We'll end with the biggest and most powerful BlueAnon conspiracy of them all - Critical Race Theory and systemic racism. This conspiracy theory would have us believe there is a secret conspiracy of white people, including Jews, to manipulate the English language and the structures of society to maintain white privilege and supremacy. CRT is a perfect example because in order to believe in the theory it requires the faithful to deny the reality all around them. Further, it is a theory under which one, and only one, factor, explains everything in society and any questioning of the theory is proof that the questioner is part of the conspiracy. That the theory has become the express basis for the policies of the Biden Administration poses a grave danger to the survival of America as a free country.
If there is a white conspiracy it sure looks like the least effective conspiracy I know of. Here's reality:
Millions of non-whites want to, and do, emigrate to the United States though we are told by CRT the country is an appalling racist society.
Millions of non-white immigrants - Asian, Hispanic, African - are doing quite well in America with Asian and African incomes above average white income and Hispanic incomes rapidly approaching parity despite CRT telling us there is systemic discrimination against them.
Saying Black Lives Matters is celebrated, saying All Lives Matter will get you fired, despite what CRT tells you.
Black people are privileged over white people when it comes to college admissions and being hired and promoted in academia, by foundations, government, media and large corporations despite the conspiracy posited by CRT.
Unarmed black people killed by police receive national coverage while the killings of non-blacks in similar circumstances remain local stories (search Tony Timpa, Michael Ramos, Daniel Shaver, Hannah Fizer - the last a 25 year old unarmed white woman shot five times by a policeman while driving to her job at a convenience store in an incident 19 days after George Floyd died). Perhaps we do need to be saying All Lives Matter.(3)
We live in one of the most multi-cultural, multi-ethnic societies in human history and most people get along on a day to day basis, despite the alleged white conspiracy.
In the 19th and early 20th century, black people tried to pass for white because being white was an advantage. In 21st century America, white people try to pass for black, hispanic and native American because it gives them an advantage. This should not be happening according to CRT.
The prime example of reality versus theory is our VP, Kamala Harris. Her high-caste Brahmin mother emigrated to the U.S. because it offered her opportunities she could not find elsewhere. Her high-caste mixed-race Jamaican father emigrated to the U.S. because it offered him opportunities he could not find elsewhere. Harris realized it was critical to her political success to be seen as an authentic black person. She got her political start as mistress to the most powerful politician in California, the most populous state in America, who happened to be black. All of this has led to a successful political career which should not be happening under CRT theory.
A recent example of reality versus theory is the recent rise of Stop Asian Hate! with Asians cast by CRT as the victims of white supremacy. The reality is that white progressives and black activists have teamed up to deny Asians access to colleges and universities and are actively working to destroy gifted and STEM public school programs or eliminate meritocratic admissions because too many Asians are being too successful in such programs. Meanwhile, we all continue not to talk about the truth we all know which is that for years blacks have disproportionately been the perpetrators of violent attacks on Asians. For more on this read the last part of With Only One Lense, Vision Is Impaired.
The theory versus reality divide is particularly painful to recognize for me since in today's climate my posts on this topic would probably get me fired from many jobs if I had not already retired. This despite the fact that for my entire life I have been committed to the equal treatment of my fellow citizens and acknowledging the century of disgraceful treatment of freed slaves and their descendants as they sought assimilation into American society and were rejected both South and North (see
Readings on Slavery for some reflections on this). Nonetheless despite my beliefs and my actions over my lifetime I am considered racist under CRT, not an anti-racist, and my writings critical of it serve in their twisted reasoning as proof of my racism. How did we come to this? How did people who think like this come to power?
One could go on and on about this but CRT, like other BlueAnon and QAnon, is simply a mass delusion.
As Arnold Kling recently observed:
When I consider the political/cultural climate these days, it feels like a nightmare in which I am on a highway and all the other cars are being driven by 4-year-olds . . . There seem to be few adults in the room in politics, universities, or even major corporations.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(1) Both Trump's "Stop The Steal" and the Democrat "Russian Collusion" are election conspiracy theories.
In the case of "Stop The Steal" Trump's frequent claim he won in a landslide is nonsense and he knows it, according to an interview his recently resigned Communications Director gave to Politico in December 2020. According to Alyssa Farah, while the campaign's internal polling showed the race tighter than the public polls, the final results conformed with their polling which showed Georgia as the only state they thought Trump would win that he didn't. And the Dominion software conspiracy theory is flat out insane.
The Russia Collusion theory involved the 2016 election and was false but used by Democrats, as noted above, to influence the 2018 and 2020 elections as led by Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi they denounced Trump's election and presidency as illegitimate. There is one significant difference between 2016 and 2020. In 2016, Hillary was urged by several IT security experts to contest the results in Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and Michigan based on discrepancies they claimed to have found between counties using electronic voting machines versus those using optical scanners and paper ballots. Clinton declined to do so, while Trump took a different course in 2020.
Is it possible that more local, smaller scale fraud could have led to Trump's loss of the crucial states? Possibly, but even if so, almost impossible to detect after the fact, though the Democrat's insistence on voting changes that negatively impact ballot security are not reassuring in that respect. Making each vote count means ensuring both voter access and ballot security, a point lost on many.
Exit question: If the conspiracy theory you believe in says that the sitting President is a neo-nazi, racist, and fascist who, if reelected, will end democracy, wouldn't it be immoral for you not to do everything in your power to prevent his reelection, including altering election results?
(2) President Trump's July 3, 2020 speech at Mt Rushmore prompted a similar distortion by the Democrats and the media. In a clearly coordinated effort the speech was labeled as "dark and divisive" by multiple outlets and described as being about "dead traitors". As with Charlotteville, these were outright lies. You can read the speech and my analysis here.
(3) I've watched the videos (from the police officer cameras) of the Shaver and Ramos shootings and believe both were unnecessary and unjustified and found the Shaver incident particularly awful to watch. Is there a need for policing reforms? Yes. In the immediate aftermath of Floyd's death there was an opportunity for reform as even voices such as Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity joined the outrage. But Democrats and their paramilitary wing were more interested in a broader societal transformation that would benefit them electorally, deliberately sabotaging any bipartisan efforts, making this a race issue and not a policing issue, while ironically using the "Jim Crow" era filibuster to stop Senator Tim Scott's police reform proposal and using BLM as a wedge issue.
Regarding theory versus reality, the number of unarmed blacks killed by police in 2019 is between 13 and 27, depending on which database you use, while killing of unarmed non-blacks is about 3X that of blacks. The percentage of blacks killed is roughly consistent with the percentage of crime committed by blacks in the U.S. The impact of theory as amplified in media can be demonstrated by recent survey data showing a large proportion of self-described white liberals believe at least 1,000 unarmed blacks are killed each year by police, a number approximately 50X greater than reality. As far as interracial black and white violent crime it accounts for only about 3-5% of all violent crime and 80% of it is black on white.
