QAnon Cheers Republican Attacks on Jackson.
Democrats See a Signal.
Criticism of Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson’s sentencing
decisions emerged as a theme among Republicans — and renewed debate about the
party’s stance toward QAnon.
David D.
KirkpatrickStuart A. Thompson
By David D.
Kirkpatrick and Stuart A. Thompson
March 24,
2022, 3:00 a.m. ET
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/03/24/us/qanon-supreme-court-ketanji-brown-jackson.html
The online
world of adherents to the QAnon conspiracy theory sprang into action almost as
soon as Senator Josh Hawley tweeted his alarm: that Judge Ketanji Brown
Jackson, the Biden administration’s Supreme Court nominee, had handed down
sentences below the minimum recommended in federal guidelines for possessing
images of child sexual abuse.
“An
apologist for child molesters,” the QAnon supporter Zak Paine declared in a
video the next day, on March 17, asserting without evidence that Democrats were
repeatedly “elevating pedophiles and people who can change the laws surrounding
punishment” for pedophiles.
By
Wednesday, as Judge Jackson appeared for the third day before the Senate
Judiciary Committee, claims that she was lenient toward people charged with
possessing the illegal imagery had emerged as a recurring theme in her
questioning by Republicans.
“Every
judge who does what you are doing is making it easier for the children to be
exploited,” said Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, picking
up the line of attack.
Never mind
that those sentences did not come up at Judge Jackson’s confirmation hearing
last year to a federal appeals court, that other judicial nominees have faced
no questions about similar sentencing decisions, or that a former federal
prosecutor called the allegations “meritless to the point of demagoguery” in
the conservative National Review.
The line of
attack has set off a new debate over the Republican Party’s stance toward
QAnon. A White House spokesman this week accused Mr. Hawley of pandering to the
conspiracy theory’s believers among his party’s rank and file, calling his
comments an “embarrassing QAnon-signaling smear.” Conservatives, in return,
blasted the Biden administration for invoking the specter of QAnon for its own
political agenda, to fire up the Democratic base without addressing the
questions.
“Left
Invokes QAnon After Josh Hawley Exposes Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Soft Record on
Child Sex Offenders,” declared a headline on the right-wing website Breitbart
that was widely shared this week in QAnon circles.
A spokesman
for Senator Hawley declined to comment on his motivations.
Although
few QAnon followers appeared to take notice of Judge Jackson’s sentencing
record before Senator Hawley’s tweets, her judicial career had touched the
roots of the conspiracy theory: an earlier internet myth known as Pizzagate.
That
debunked theory held that Satan-worshiping Democrats were trafficking children
out of the basement of a Washington restaurant, and in 2017 a believer armed
with an assault riffle stormed in and fired his weapon. Judge Jackson, as a
district court judge, sentenced him to four years in prison, saying his actions
“left psychological wreckage.”
The QAnon
conspiracy theory was born a few months later when an anonymous writer — often
signing as Q — elaborated on the discredited myth that a cabal of top Democrats
was abusing children. Q purported to be a top official close to President
Donald J. Trump and asserted that the president was waging a secret war against
the cabal.
Slogans
about protecting the children became catchphrases that QAnon adherents used to
identify one another, and their bizarre fantasy — initially encouraged by
far-right news outlets, then promoted by a ring of social media influencers —
appeared to spread widely among Trump supporters. At least two Republican
lawmakers elected in 2020 had made statements supportive of QAnon, and
prosecutors say that many people involved in the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the
Capitol subscribed to the theory.
Among those
now echoing the Republican allegations about the judicial nominee, in fact, is
Ron Watkins, a former website administrator who is widely believed to have
played a major role in writing the anonymous Q posts. Mr. Watkins, who has
denied any part in the Q messages, is running for the Republican nomination to
an Arizona congressional seat, largely on the strength of his QAnon association;
this week, he qualified for the ballot.
“Judge
Jackson is a pedophile-enabler,” Mr. Watkins wrote Wednesday on social media.
“Any senator who votes to confirm her nomination is also a pedophile-enabler.”
QAnon
Telegram channels on Wednesday grew increasingly agitated. “She has committed
unbelievable crimes against humanity with her judgeship,” one user wrote. “If
she gets confirmed the victims remain victims & trapped in the misery
bestowed on them,” said another. Some talked of violence.
Polls
suggest that QAnon supporters have continued to make up a significant portion
of the Republican base even after Mr. Trump’s departure from office
contradicted Q’s predictions. One poll last October found that about 60 percent
of Trump voters had heard of QAnon, and 3 out of 10 of those Republicans viewed
it favorably.
Yet the
same poll found that Democrats were far more likely to say they had heard a lot
about QAnon and also overwhelmingly to reject it, and other polls, taken after
the attack on the Capitol, indicated far more widespread condemnation.
Democrats thus have much to gain politically from linking the name “QAnon” to
Republicans questioning a Supreme Court nominee, the polls suggest, but
individual Republicans might benefit by signaling to QAnon supporters without
explicitly naming the movement.
“You
wouldn’t talk about the extreme stuff, but you would talk about how people in
elite power are enabling traffickers,” said Bond Benton, an associate professor
at Montclair State University who has studied QAnon. “That is a secret
handshake to the Q crowd.”
Other
conservative commentators have noted that soft-on-crime or soft-on-sex-crime
accusations against politicians or judges have long resonated widely with
voters regardless of connection to QAnon, disputing the accusation that the
Republican questions are any kind of covert signal.
Others on
the right have also accused Democrats of employing their own dog whistles —
notably when Amy Coney Barrett, a practicing Catholic and now a Supreme Court
justice, was nominated to an appeals court. Many conservatives have said that
they heard a covert appeal to anti-Catholic or anti-religious bigotry when
Senator Dianne Feinstein, a California Democrat, told the judge that “the dogma
lives loudly within you.”
Jim Manley,
a former top aide to the Senate Democratic leadership who helped wage a
half-dozen battles over Supreme Court confirmations, said that party elders
often understand the Senate math makes confirmation highly likely and prefer to
get it over quickly, without mudslinging that could alienate moderate voters —
in this case, by evoking QAnon.
“But I
learned the hard way that there are always some in the caucus — especially
those who may be thinking about running for president — who are going to want
to throw some red meat to the base,” Mr. Manley said. “They just can’t help
themselves.”
David D.
Kirkpatrick is an investigative reporter based in New York and the author of
“Into the Hands of the Soldiers: Freedom and Chaos in Egypt and the Middle
East.“ In 2020 he shared a Pulitzer Prize for reporting on covert Russian
interference in other governments and as the Cairo bureau chief from 2011 to
2015 he led coverage of the Arab Spring uprisings. @ddknyt • Facebook
Stuart A.
Thompson is a reporter in the technology department covering misinformation and
disinformation.
@stuartathompson
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