BuzzFeed News lumps in mainstream conservatives with QAnon followers
April 29, 2021
BuzzFeed News is still targeting the former president’s supporters. In a recent piece, the outlet lumps in former President Donald Trump and mainstream conservatives with QAnon followers and white supremacists.
“As right-wing organizations recalibrate their strategies for gaining support in the Joe Biden era, Q adherents represent a large pool of Trump supporters left without guidance,” according to the writer.
She thereby misrepresents a sizeable swath of Trump voters as QAnon adherents, without providing any statistical evidence for just how many such people there are.
The article runs in BuzzFeed News’ “Inequality” section. It gives little consideration to the equal treatment of the countless conservatives not among Q’s ranks whom it associates with QAnon followers.
The author admits that “[t]he overall number of people who had been motivated by their belief in QAnon to commit crimes was low relative to the millions who have been exposed to the conspiracies,” without proof of millions having “been exposed.”
“But for white supremacists looking to recruit,” the writer continues, “connecting sex trafficking to the old ‘blood libel’ conspiracies about Jews using children for ritual sacrifice has been a way in.”
The author uses “white supremacists” or “white supremacist groups” three times in her story. She and her ilk have already begun hollowing out these terms, which may soon be as misused as the word “racist.”
She fails to address the normalization of left-wing crime and violence. The author references “disillusioned QAnon supporters” “who have allegedly committed crimes on the basis of their beliefs.” She neglects to mention the upswell of violent left-wing crime last summer that has since become an ongoing pastime for leftists nationwide.
Throughout the article, the author attacks opponents of child sex trafficking under the guise of condemning QAnon acolytes.
She downplays the victimization of children selling sex when they do so by choice. She notes that “[o]nly about 15%” of prostitutes between the ages of 13 and 24 in a study “said they were [selling sex] under the control of another person.”
The writer thus strongly implies that they’re as well-informed about and capable of prostitution as adults are. In doing so, she doesn’t consider how unjustly she may be treating these children. She does all of the above in a piece in the site’s Inequality section.
The supposed empowerment of child prostitutes fits with BuzzFeed News’ agenda of sexual tolerance. The most the author does to address child prostitution is hand-waving. She attributes child sex trafficking to a bogeyman-like specter of inequality.