Letters to the Editor: The right has been calling liberals 'baby killers' for years. No wonder QAnon took hold
To the editor: Thank you for publishing Virginia Heffernan's column likening QAnon propaganda to "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," a particularly vicious anti-Semitic forgery that helped form the basis of Nazi propaganda.
The QAnon attacks are built upon decades of conservatives declaring their opponents were "baby killers." Recently, President Trump said Virginia's Democratic governor favored "executing babies after birth." Rep. Doug Collins (R-Ga.) blamed the late Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg for 30 million "murdered" children.
If people have accepted these statements as fact, then ideas of ritualistic killings, child abuse and cannibalism are just a step away to the true believers.
Joseph Goebbels was the master of Nazi propaganda mentioned by Hefferman. Trump has chosen to utilize many of Goebbels' most deceiving techniques: the big lie, distraction, the bandwagon effect, name-calling and more. They are deliberately used to galvanize his supporters and attack his enemies.
Trump believes that Americans who disagree with him are his enemy, while foreign dictators are his friends. This is very dangerous.
Today, when so many Americans have never heard of the Holocaust, we all must do our best to represent what is best in our nation.
David Dillard, Los Angeles
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To the editor: "Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it" — philosopher George Santayana's warning and Heffernan's column on the conspiracy theorist cult QAnon need to be repeated.
Our real-world conditions of fires, hurricanes, the pandemic and social unrest are unnerving for most of us, but the ridiculousness of QAnon is in another realm. The historical context Heffernan supplies, rooting QAnon in the virulently anti-Semitic forgery "The Protocols of the Elders of Zion," is the nugget of truth that won't make it to the Twitter feed.
The "Protocols" is a history lesson that needs to be reexamined. Rational-thinking people will read the truth, recall their history and know it for the dangerous precedent it was. The problem is the hysteria of QAnon is whipped up in 30-second bites of social media frenzy that are repeated and twisted until they become a concoction destined to undermine civil society.
The ability of the Trump machine to spin a web of lies and conjure the impossible resembles the behind the curtain ministrations of the Wizard of Oz. We need more truth tellers to call out these doomsday prophets.
Barbara McCurtis, San Diego
