There are some people out there who actually believe Democrats, the media, and government agencies are either inter-dimensional demons or psychic vampires running a child sex trafficking ring.

There normally wouldn’t be any reason to waste time explaining this so-called “Q Anon” conspiracy theory, except some of its adherents have now infiltrated prominent government sectors.

The most “prominent” is RepMarjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.), who has spewed so much anti-democratic, racist, violent, conspiratorial filth, she has become a cause celebre among the growing fascist Donald Trump-wing of the republican party.

That infamy is attracting many more like her.

No fewer than 45 Q Anon supporters are running for congressional seats in next year’s mid-term election.

Twelve are from Florida, eight from California, four from Texas, and three are from New York.

Nevada, New Jersey, Illinois, and Ohio have two each; Maryland, Rhode Island, Oregon, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Georgia, and Colorado each have one.

Arizona also has two, one of whom is the supposed source of the Q Anon conspiracies, Ron Watkins.

34 Republican and Independent Q Anon candidates ran for Congress last year.

Two ran for state legislatures.

The conspiracy movement known as “Q Anon” began with the “Pizzagate” incident in 2016, when a theory that Hillary Clinton and other high-profile Democrats, like actor Tom Hanks, were surreptitiously involved in a pedophilia trafficking operation out of the basement of Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C.

One individual took it upon himself to do something about it.

December 2016, Edgar Maddison Welch drove up to D.C. from North Carolina with an AR-15 assault rifle and a .38 caliber revolver, entered the pizzeria, fired off multiple rounds, and searched for evidence of hidden rooms and tunnels–anything to prove the perverse theory was true.

As one might expect, he found none.

Fortunately, no one was shot.

Welch was arrested and later sentenced to 48 months in prison.

But the story did not end there, and Welch, as it turns out, is not an anomaly.

Some actually were still convinced Hillary Clinton was trafficking children; Welch just had the wrong pizza place.

When Donald Trump entered the White House a year after “Pizzagate,” a mysterious entity named “Q” began posting cryptic clues on far-right message boards 4chan and 8chan (recently re-branded 8kun) many interpreted as evidence of a “deep-state” cabal of Democrats and media conspiring to take down Trump, who is the only one capable of destroying their pedophilia network.

“Q” is purported to be a government employee working with Donald Trump, secretly leaking documents to the public.

As risible as it sounds, not only are there individuals in our midst who believe this; QAnon acolytes are running for Congress under the “WWG1GWA–Where We Go One, We Go All” banner.

Scores of Q Anon adherents participated in the deadly January 6 domestic terror attack on the Capitol intending to violently subvert the constitutional process of certifying states’ electoral votes.

Packing government with Trump toadies is a strategy that could ultimately end in the coup that could see Donald Trump in the White House again–for life.

It nearly worked in January.

Speaking on Democracy Now! about the grip on the GOP Trump has over the republican party, John Nichols, national affairs correspondent for The Nation, said:

“We really are looking at the prospect that Trump will seek to implement exactly the strategy that he was trying to implement before January 6 again in 2024.”

Elections matter.

If they didn’t, people like Marjorie Taylor Greene and those who seek to emulate her wouldn’t be so dangerous.

Image credit: Joel Muniz via Unsplash