QAnon Candidates Coming To A SQool Board Election Near You!

What could possibly go wrong?

Donald Trump lost the election and "Q," the anonymous internet troll that somehow took over much of rightwing America, has gone silent. So what are the QAnon faithful to do? They'd been waiting years for Trump to unleash "The Storm" and send all the evil Democrats and Elites to Guantanamo to be tried, or at least executed.

Unfortunately, as Ben Collins reports at NBC News, the Q faithful may have found something to do other than sit at their computers yakking on Facebook. A bunch of 'em are running for office, especially school boards, so they can actually be the Loose Change they want to see in the world.

Also, even as they're working to go sort of mainstream with their crazy beliefs about the world being run by a shadowy international cabal of child-eating pedophiles, they're also distancing themselves from the actual "QAnon" branding, because many of them finally recognize everyone else thinks they're fucking nuts, for some reason.

As an example, Collins presents one Drake Wuertz, who in late June spoke at a Seminole County, Florida, school board meeting about all the mythical child abductions, and how good decent Americans need to stop all that by running for school boards. (Wuertz appears to be a former WWE wrassler and "referee" who got shitcanned by the entertainment company for being a Q weirdo.) He just wants to protect the children!

They're being carried away through our education system, through the woke ideology that's infiltrated professional sports, through the sexual grooming and pedophilia that's apparent in the entertainment industry. [...] We need to run for precinct committees, we need to run for City Council, run for school board and primary the RINOs in this room.

Wuertz went on to warn that mask mandates are evil because he thinks they "make it easier for sex traffickers to target kids in our community," which is a popular but utterly bullshit idea among the pro-virus crowd.

Collins even managed to get an interview with Wuertz, whose social media feed is all full of QAnon icons like Michael Flynn and references to QAnon phrases like "the Great Awakening" and "My Penis Is Made Of Cheese."

But like many people who have trafficked in QAnon material, Wuertz has begun to distance himself from the movement.

"I can tell you that I 100 percent don't subscribe to Q theories. Q theories hurt the mission of fighting sex trafficking and bring negative attention," Wuertz said in an interview. Wuertz also denied making comments in the most recent school board meeting about masks being used by child traffickers and declined further comment.

As far as we can tell, Wuertz is not yet running for school board, but we won't be surprised if he does, assuming he can get the cheese whiff out of his shorts.

Collins also notes that QAnon adherents have enthusiastically glommed onto the Right's latest hobbyhorse, the alleged threat of "critical race theory" in public schools:

In California and Pennsylvania , people who previously espoused QAnon have run for school board positions, sometimes melding conspiracy theories with anti-CRT sentiment. In June, the National Education Association, a prominent teachers union, warned that "conspiracy theorists and proponents of fake news are winning local elections. And their new positions give them a powerful voice in everything from local law enforcement to libraries, trash pickup to textbook purchases."

Mike Rothschild, author of   The Storm Is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy , told Collins that the cleverer QAnon people are keeping up the conspiracy theories while dropping the label:

If you identify as QAnon, people look at you like you're crazy. But if you passionately talk about how we need to be saving children and protecting them from trafficking, then you come off as a compassionate person who really cares about the welfare of children [...] You're no longer one of those crazy cult people who thinks Hillary Clinton is trafficking kids in a tunnel under Central Park.

At least one person with a QAnon background is actually serving on a school board; Grand Blanc, Michigan, school board member Amy Facchinello was the subject of student protests after social media posts surfaced in which she'd been talking up the conspiracy stuff.

One post, discovered by student Lucas Hartwell, read "Q ANON CONFIRMED BY TRUMP," and numerous other tweets included the QAnon motto "WWG1WGA," or "where we go one, we go all."

When asked about the posts, Facchinello, who was recently elected to a six-year term and said she does not plan to resign, told The Michigan Advance , "There's no such thing as QAnon."

Seems like she'll need to work a bit on perfecting her Jedi Mind Tricks, as seen in the popular fiction Firefly Galactica. 

And one prominent Q person, Tracy "Beanz" Diaz, even managed to get elected to a county GOP executive committee in South Carolina, after being endorsed by Michael Flynn.

So now we're all going to have to keep a closer eye on local elections, because do we really want delusional conspiracy theorists in charge of our schools? Or rather, more of them? Even if they aren't spouting stuff about child abductions, the CRT bullshit is going to stir up a lot of crazies who'll want to protect kids from actual history. 

[ NBC News ]

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