Over the weekend, the Hawaii Republican Party ventured into some fraught territory: defending adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory. Its Twitter account cast them as patriots who were “largely motivated by a sincere and deep love for America,” and it blamed the media for being too sensational about it. A top official later resigned over an “error in judgment” in posting the thread.
On Monday night, though, a similar argument made its way onto the airwaves, courtesy of one of the most popular prime-time shows in cable news.
Fox News Channel’s Tucker Carlson decided to take his own swing at defending QAnon supporters, in a way. Like the Hawaii GOP, he didn’t promote or subscribe to the wild and baseless theory about a mass pedophile ring in the U.S. government, but he cast its adherents as victims of looming persecution, denied basic civil liberties. As with many things on his program, it boiled down to a familiar argument: The mainstream media and powerful forces are trying to silence people and control what you think — that, to use the modern parlance, they’re being “canceled.” Continue reading.