<html><head><meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html; charset=utf-8"></head><body dir="auto"><div dir="ltr"><span></span></div><div dir="ltr">Sounds like a conspiracy theory!</div><div dir="ltr">😂😂😂</div><div dir="ltr">Christian evangelicals! Yikes! if you ever bump into them, beware the white ones!<br><div><div dir="ltr"><div>Going to be just like Isis and Al Queda! those white evangelicals will be beheading people before you know it.😱😂😂😂</div><div><br></div><div><img src="webkit-fake-url://5f487656-0604-46fb-bc8c-c1334f7efebc/imagejpeg"></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div><div><br></div></div><div dir="ltr"><br>On Mar 5, 2021, at 10:11 AM, David Walsh via craic <<a href="mailto:craic@lists.integralshift.ca">craic@lists.integralshift.ca</a>> wrote:<br><br></div><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr">
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<b><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#222222;background:white">QAnon has merged with white Christian evangelicals, experts say — and the results could be lethal</span></b><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#222222;background:white">.<br>
Colin Clarke, a senior research fellow at The Soufan Center who studies extremist violence, said the upheaval wrought by the Covid-19 pandemic, the recent presidential election, and the continued prosecution of several overseas wars has created a confluence
of circumstances that scholars would consider a perfect incubator for belief in conspiracy theories and apocalyptic mass delusions.
</span><span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#222222">“It’s not going to get better anytime soon, unfortunately… Conspiratorial thinking is very closely associated with high-anxiety situations and endless wars, elections and
national tragedies,” he said. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="mso-margin-top-alt:12.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0cm;line-height:17.3pt;background:white">
<span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#222222">Moreover, Clarke said there has been a “crossover” between the QAnon systems and evangelical Christianity that is going to imbue right-wing extremism with the sort of violent fanaticism
more associated with al-Qaeda or Isis.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="mso-margin-top-alt:12.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0cm;line-height:17.3pt;background:white">
<span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#222222">“Religious terrorism tends to be more lethal, because people believe they’re serving a higher purpose by committing acts of violence, as opposed to secular groups or ethno-nationalists
who are fighting over territory or land,” he explained. “You can’t negotiate with these people, and you especially can’t negotiate with QAnon, because how do you assuage grievances that don’t exist?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="mso-margin-top-alt:12.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0cm;line-height:17.3pt;background:white">
<span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#222222">Clarke also posited that synergies between QAnon and the American anti-abortion movement — another religiously inspired faction that dominates the GOP — could spark extremist violence
in the mould of the string of bombings carried out by Eric Robert Rudolph between 1996 and 1998. <br>
Another prominent researcher of extremist movements and disinformation, former GOP Representative Denver Riggleman, said the connections between QAnon and white evangelical Christianity have “metastasized” into something else that is both “messianic” and “apocalyptic”.<br>
“This has grown well beyond just something that we can categorize as QAnon,” said Riggleman.<br>
“It’s not going to get better anytime soon, unfortunately… Conspiratorial thinking is very closely associated with high-anxiety situations and endless wars, elections and national tragedies,” he said. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="mso-margin-top-alt:12.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0cm;line-height:17.3pt;background:white">
<span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#222222">Moreover, Clarke said there has been a “crossover” between the QAnon systems and evangelical Christianity that is going to imbue right-wing extremism with the sort of violent fanaticism
more associated with al-Qaeda or Isis.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="mso-margin-top-alt:12.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0cm;line-height:17.3pt;background:white">
<span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#222222">“Religious terrorism tends to be more lethal, because people believe they’re serving a higher purpose by committing acts of violence, as opposed to secular groups or ethno-nationalists
who are fighting over territory or land,” he explained. “You can’t negotiate with these people, and you especially can’t negotiate with QAnon, because how do you assuage grievances that don’t exist?”<br>
Clarke also posited that synergies between QAnon and the American anti-abortion movement — another religiously inspired faction that dominates the GOP — could spark extremist violence in the mould of the string of bombings carried out by Eric Robert Rudolph
between 1996 and 1998. <br>
Another prominent researcher of extremist movements and disinformation, former GOP Representative Denver Riggleman, said the connections between QAnon and white evangelical Christianity have “metastasized” into something else that is both “messianic” and “apocalyptic”.“This
has grown well beyond just something that we can categorize as QAnon,” said Riggleman.<br>
Like Clarke, Riggleman said there are parallels between the radicalization process that is being driven by QAnon in the evangelical community and the Islamic radicalism that the US has been trying to combat since 2001: “There certainly is radical Islam, but
there’s now radicalism on certain evangelical sides, and I think people have been afraid to call it for what it is.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="mso-margin-top-alt:12.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0cm;line-height:17.3pt;background:white">
<span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#222222">But Joe Walsh, the former GOP congressman and conservative radio host who mounted a brief primary challenge to Trump during the 2020 election cycle, said such problems go far beyond
QAnon believers in the Republican Party. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="mso-margin-top-alt:12.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0cm;line-height:17.3pt;background:white">
<span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#222222">Walsh said Trump’s insistence that he, not Biden, won the 2020 election, has been eagerly adopted by a Republican base that is more primed for conspiratorial thinking than ever.
“When I ask people specifically about QAnon, it’s only a rare Trump supporter that can give me any specifics, but damn near all of them are just general conspiracists,” he added. “There’s just a huge general overlap in that most of the Republican Party base
voters now are conspiracy believers… Because the base is evangelical, the base is now conspiratorial, and they are one and the same.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="mso-margin-top-alt:12.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0cm;line-height:17.3pt;background:white">
<span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#222222">Another prominent Republican, ex-GOP Chairman Michael Steele, cautioned that it’s specifically white evangelicals who’ve largely been taken in by QAnon and other mass delusions,
driven at least in part by Trump’s insistence that 2020 election results were not legitimate because Black voters in urban and suburban areas played a significant role in the outcome. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="mso-margin-top-alt:12.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0cm;line-height:17.3pt;background:white">
<span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#222222">Steele predicted that absent a change of course by Republicans in Congress and across the country — or intervention by law enforcement — the potential for violence from radicalized
QAnon adherents and others who’ve been taken in by Trumpist election denial is very real. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="mso-margin-top-alt:12.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0cm;line-height:17.3pt;background:white">
<span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#222222">“It can and likely will get very bad,” he said. “The idea that [Republicans] had better stop before someone gets killed? Well, we’re past that and they’re still engaging, so there
is potentially more violence ahead… You’ve got to accept that and be honest about that because… they’re not putting that flame out… They’re finding more matches and fuel to add to it.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="mso-margin-top-alt:12.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0cm;line-height:17.3pt;background:white">
<span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#222222">Walsh, who in 2010 won election to the House in part by using often fiery rhetoric on the subject of Islamist extremism, said that the day is coming when US law enforcement will
have to take evangelical Christian extremism just as seriously. But he also predicted that his former House colleagues who regularly stressed the need to combat the former will fight tooth-and-nail against any attempt to treat the latter the same way. <o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p style="mso-margin-top-alt:12.0pt;margin-right:0cm;margin-bottom:12.0pt;margin-left:0cm;line-height:17.3pt;background:white">
<span style="font-size:14.5pt;font-family:"Times New Roman",serif;color:#222222">“Any religion, the more fundamentalist and extreme they become, the more prone they are to violence. I don’t know if we’re there yet, but when we enter the era when the FBI or
whoever can say that fundamentalist evangelical extremism is a domestic terror threat, then our government can do what it has to do,” he said. “If we continue down this road, it’s coming… and we’re gonna fall into the world where all of the people like me
— all of these conservative Republicans who demanded that the government do what it has to do to weed out radical Islam in our country — they are going to be the ones standing at the church door, telling the government to stay out.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/qanon-march-4-white-christian-evangelicals-b1812490.html">QAnon has merged with white Christian evangelicals, terrorism experts say. The results could be lethal | The Independent</a><span style="font-size:12.0pt;font-family:"Century Schoolbook",serif"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
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</div></blockquote><blockquote type="cite"><div dir="ltr"><span>_______________________________________________</span><br><span>craic mailing list</span><br><span><a href="mailto:craic@lists.integralshift.ca">craic@lists.integralshift.ca</a></span><br><span><a href="http://lists.integralshift.ca/listinfo.cgi/craic-integralshift.ca">http://lists.integralshift.ca/listinfo.cgi/craic-integralshift.ca</a></span><br></div></blockquote></div></div></body></html>