A unicorn costume, a hammer and a perception that pedophiles are utilizing public colleges to destroy democracy: The trial of David DePape for attacking Paul Pelosi was unusual and disturbing.
However take away the costume and the hammer, and the reasoning for DePape’s vicious assault is alarmingly mainstream — pedophile panic.
By that, I imply the outrageous effort not simply by hate-mongering conspiracy theorists to border LGBTQ+ people as deviant and harmful, lumping them in with criminals who sexually abuse youngsters. But in addition a cynical bid by some politicians, clergy and grifters to do the identical.
Anti-LGBTQ+ assaults are in all places, each bodily and political. Hysteria about pedophiles, pushed by conspiracy theories, has trampled fact.
As DePape defined it on the stand, he’s involved about “groomer colleges,” the place lecturers are “queering the scholars, pushing transgenderism to confuse youngsters about their identities to make them extra susceptible to abuse and Marxist indoctrination.”
Sound acquainted? It may have been a quote from a Huntington Seaside Metropolis Council assembly, a Republican presidential rally or a debate on the ground of the Florida Legislature, the place the controversial “don’t say homosexual” invoice final yr was described by an aide to Gov. Ron DeSantis as an “anti-grooming” regulation.
The quote is, in truth, DePape’s abstract of what he discovered from right-wing podcaster James Lindsay about certainly one of DePape’s high targets, a professor of feminist idea and queer research whose home appeared, to DePape, too troublesome to interrupt into. So he went to Pelosi’s brick mansion as a substitute.
When a San Francisco jury got here again with a responsible verdict in opposition to DePape, it was hardly a bombshell. It’s incontrovertible fact that DePape smashed a hammer into Pelosi’s cranium, a brutal act caught on digicam and uncontested even by his personal attorneys.
What was misplaced with the quickness of the in-an-out, no-surprises trial — and what ought to be chilling to any supporter of civil rights — was the protection staff’s argument about why DePape created his elaborate plot, which was going to contain donning the unicorn costume whereas interrogating the sufferer’s spouse, Rep. Nancy Pelosi, about authorities corruption, and, you guessed it, pedophiles.
It wasn’t standard politics. It wasn’t even aimed toward Nancy Pelosi. The highly effective San Francisco Democrat was someplace down a listing that included the mom of DePape’s two sons, Tom Hanks, George Soros, Hunter Biden and efficiency artist Marina Abramovic.
DePape was propelled by the hyper-drive conspiracies which have bled out from web chat rooms onto streets and into college boards — amped-up paranoia about threats not simply to the white Christian values that some understand as intrinsic to our nation’s identification, however to the protection of our kids.
“It’s not simply that she’s a pedo-activist. It’s that she desires to show all the colleges into pedophile molestation factories,” DePape mentioned of the queer research professor he was concentrating on.
“She desires to destroy youngsters’s sense of identification as a result of it’s her opinion that it will make them develop up dysfunctional and sad. And in the event that they’re dysfunctional and sad, they are going to be maladjusted to society, hate society, and wish to grow to be communist activists,” he mentioned.
These sort of beliefs, ugly and unfaithful, can now not be thought of excessive, or extremism.
Take, for instance, this commentary from earlier this yr by Jonathan Butcher, a fellow on the ultraconservative and ultra-influential Heritage Basis:
“For fogeys, rejecting radical gender idea is a matter of defending their youngsters. The remainder of us, although, ought to reject queer idea’s try to realize management of the following technology,” he wrote.
Or the mugshot meme Donald Trump posted not too way back insinuating that pedophiles had been out to get him.
Or Trump’s current sit-down interview with conservative activists Mothers for America, through which he lamented that the “indoctrination applications” at public colleges are “uncontrolled” and promised rapidly to finish them if elected.
Jared Dmello, an professional on extremism and an incoming senior lecturer at College of Adelaide in Australia, instructed me that mainstream politics is “driving an anti-LGBTQ ideology.”
The place as soon as conspiracy was relegated to darkish corners, it now has a symbiotic relationship with the mainstream, he mentioned, every constructing off no matter “proof” or present occasions play into the narrative with such velocity and drive that the sheer quantity of knowledge makes it appear to be it should be true.
“The entire objective is to introduce a lot chaos into the ambiance that it’s onerous to tell apart what’s truth from fiction,” he mentioned.
Mission achieved.
A current Public Faith Analysis Institute (PRRI) ballot on threats to American democracy discovered 59% of Republicans assume that what youngsters are studying in class is a important problem going through the USA. A 2022 ballot by USC discovered that whereas roughly 60% of Democrats assist educating highschool college students about gender identification, homosexual and transgender rights or sexual orientation, solely about 30% of Republicans really feel the identical.
In fact, mother and father have good causes to be involved about public colleges, particularly within the wake of the pandemic when lecturers are burned out, budgets are tight and college students are dealing with sky-high ranges of psychological well being challenges.
However Joan Donovan, an professional in disinformation and a professor at Boston College, instructed me that whereas violence stays uncommon, vigilantes such DePape aren’t the lone wolves we prefer to imagine. She mentioned violence, whether or not by people or teams, goes to extend because the 2024 election nears.
“I want it had been the case that they had been fringe, however they do appear to characterize a bigger sentiment on-line,” she mentioned. “In fact taking motion within the type of assaulting or trying to homicide folks is in and of itself horrendous, however for those who take a look at the sort of discourse that emboldens these folks, it’s the pure consequence.”
Help for political violence has elevated over the previous two years, with almost 1 / 4 of Individuals now agreeing that “as a result of issues have gotten to date off observe, true American patriots might should resort to violence so as to save our nation.” That comes from the current PRRI ballot on threats to American democracy.
That proportion has elevated from 15% in 2021.
However prepare for it: 41% of Republicans who like Trump agreed violence could also be vital, and 46% of Trump supporters who imagine the election was stolen additionally imagine violence could also be a solution. That’s almost half.
By all accounts, DePape was only a lonesome loser, unremarkable and peaceable, till he began delving into conspiracy theories in the course of the pandemic. Dwelling in a Bay Space storage that didn’t also have a lavatory, he spent his free time — hours day by day — enjoying video video games whereas listening to conspiracy podcasters pushing what we had been then calling QAnon.
I received’t go as far as to say he was a sufferer, however he was a vessel for a fireplace hose stream of propaganda, holding all of it in till doing nothing appeared unconscionable. He’s accountable for his violence, however it’s clear he has misplaced the flexibility to parse fact from that swamp of what he calls analysis.
Someplace alongside his journey, DePape started believing {that a} secret cabal of so-called elites was ruling the world and taking part in a cult that sexually abused youngsters.
That’s how DePape got here up along with his record of targets — most of these on it are someplace in QAnon lore — a set of conspiracies that QAnon professional and Michigan State College professor Laura Dilley instructed me “completely are endemic now.”
At its core, the political turmoil brought on by these falsehoods is just not a lot completely different from the satanic panic that dominated within the Nineteen Eighties, pushed by discomfort with extra girls becoming a member of the workforce and leaving their youngsters in day care. Then, too, conservatives vilified the LGBTQ+ group to gas concern that youngsters had been in peril and American society was on the point of collapse.
And Donovan factors out that even the KKK targeted on youngsters and schooling within the Twenties, with the identical arguments about American values.
So none of that is new.
However we’re able to not repeating the previous. Hate and conspiracy aren’t regular. They aren’t American values, to be debated as legitimate political positions.
David DePape was preventing an enemy conjured by lies. That enemy might not be actual, however the hazard of these lies is.