QAnon is a sprawling internet conspiracy theory as ugly as it is unfathomable. It weaves together anti-government fever dreams into an absurd narrative that portrays President Donald Trump as waging a secret battle against Satan-worshiping pedophiles who run a global child sex-trafficking ring. Allegedly Hillary Clinton, Tom Hanks and the Dalai Lama may somehow be in on it. (They’re not.)
The QAnon theory centers in part on the discredited notion that there is a “deep state” anti-Trump cabal within the U.S. government. QAnon has links to an earlier loony tale known as “Pizzagate,” which claimed a Washington, D.C., pizzeria was the headquarters of a sex trafficking ring involving Clinton. Pizzagate compelled a North Carolina man to fire a rifle inside the restaurant in a misguided attempt to free imprisoned children, so there is danger connected to these hoaxes.
Ideally, Illinois voters could spend their lifetimes never hearing about this except that QAnon talk is spreading this election season, and two Chicago-area Republicans seeking U.S. House seats have promoted the movement on social media and declined to denounce it. Philanise White of Chicago, running against Rep. Bobby Rush in the 1st Congressional District, and Theresa Raborn of Midlothian, running against Rep. Robin Kelly in the 2nd Congressional District, both have promoted QAnon by tweeting a recognized QAnon slogan as a hashtag.
National news reports have identified White and Raborn as two of as many as a dozen Republicans running for Congress who have associated themselves with QAnon. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who is expected to win a U.S. House seat from Georgia, said that Q, the mythical leader of QAnon, is a “patriot,” according to NPR. She has called the theory “something worth listening to and paying attention to.”
Like Taylor Greene and others, Trump has not condemned QAnon, which helps fan its notoriety. “I don’t know much about the movement, other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate,” Trump said last month.
That’s a heck of a friendly statement by a president on a ludicrous theory that says North Korea’s Kim Jong-Un is a CIA puppet and German Chancellor Angela Merkel is Adolf Hitler’s granddaughter (she’s not).
Philanise White in 2019 tweeted the QAnon slogan #WWG1WGA, which stands for “Where we go one, we go all.” Since then she’s been listed in news report, including by Axios and Forbes.com, as citing QAnon. Given the chance to renounce QAnon, she’s opted against doing so. When we asked White’s campaign if the candidate supports the QAnon conspiracy theory or welcomes QAnon support of her campaign, White’s camp replied by email: “Why the interest in Q and/or QAnon over Blacks supporting President Trump? Q/QAnon has never come up as a concern of the constituents.”
Theresa Raborn tweeted a video of Gen. Michael Flynn, Trump’s former national security adviser, in which Flynn recites the QAnon hashtag. Raborn said she retweeted the video because she comes from a military family and respects Flynn. She told The Washington Post she “could not definitively debunk or definitively confirm” the theory. When we asked Raborn if she supports QAnon, she had plenty to say, but nothing bad about its theories and adherents. “I’m not just going to tell someone they are crazy or a conspiracy theorist until I know for certain, and I just don’t have time to research it. The little bit I do know is there is Q and there’s people that take those posts and are trying to decipher it like it’s some coded thing. … One tweet and all of a sudden I’m supposed to support it? I don’t really support it and I’m not going to make fun of it.”
White and Raborn must see some benefit in showing respect for QAnon. They secured their Republican nominations after running unopposed in primaries. The GOP in the Chicago area is so weak that it struggles to recruit and support viable candidates in many elections. That’s how the Republican Party ended up in the embarrassing position of having Arthur Jones, a neo-Nazi and white supremacist, running for Congress in 2018 in the 3rd Congressional District. Republicans didn’t realize who Jones was until it was too late to enlist another challenger. Jones ran again this year, but thankfully Mike Fricilone of Homer Glen, a worthy candidate, also entered the race and won. Fricilone will face Democrat Marie Newman in November.
One Illinois Republican speaking out on QAnon is Rep. Adam Kinzinger. “I think conspiracy theories are going to be the thing that destroys this country in the long term because they undermine faith in government,” he told CNN last month. Kinzinger wants Republican leaders to repudiate QAnon: “It’s fake. Condemn it, please guys,” he said.
That’s pretty simple political wisdom. It’s deeply concerning that White and Raborn cannot decipher the truth about conspiracies and won’t dissociate themselves from the movement. Voters: Don’t send hoax-stokers to the halls of Congress.
Editorials reflect the opinion of the Chicago Tribune Editorial Board.
Get our latest editorials, commentaries and columns delivered twice a week in our Fighting Words newsletter. Sign up here.
Join the discussion on Twitter @chitribopinions and on Facebook.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email letters@chicagotribune.com.
