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Notes -
#”We’re coming for your children.”
The LGBTQ+ movement kicked out NAMBLA, genuine pederasts, in the 80’s in order to get sodomy laws aimed at consenting adults off the books. The American anti-pedophilia majority took a generation to accept this disavowal at face value.
The Pizzagate section of the Q or QAnon movement revived the bailey that gay people generally want to rape children to cultural relevance, and did so around the time the trans rights movement was pushing acceptance of transition. The motte version is that the gay community reproduces through social memetic contagion since they won’t reproduce sexually. One potent variation is the ironic and practically self-parodying “trans genocide” meme
The drag queen story hour program made the idea scarily realistic even to parents who didn’t subscribe to any of that conspiracy theory nonsense. And now there’s a new twist.
As chronicled by NBC News:
In the 21-second clip, circulated by a right-wing web streamer channel, dozens of people march in the streets and are clearly heard chanting, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re not going shopping.” But one voice that is louder than the crowd — it’s not clear whose, or whether the speaker was a member of the LGBTQ community — is heard saying at least twice, “We’re here, we’re queer, we’re coming for your children.”
To conservative pundits, activists and lawmakers, the video confirmed the allegations they’ve levied in recent years that the LGBTQ community is “grooming” children.
But to Brian Griffin, the original organizer of the NYC Drag March, if that’s the worst they heard, it’s only because he wasn’t there this year.
Griffin said he chanted obscene things in the past, like “Kill, kill, kill, we’re coming to kill the mayor,” and joked about pubic hair and sex toys during marches. People at the Drag March regularly sing “God is a lesbian.”
“It’s all just words,” Griffin said. “It’s all presented to fulfill their worst stereotypes of us.”
The “coming for your children” chant has been used for years at Pride events, according to longtime march attendees and gay rights activists, who said it’s one of many provocative expressions used to regain control of slurs against LGBTQ people. And in this case, they said, right-wing activists are jumping on a single video to weaponize an out-of-context remark to further stigmatize the queer community.
Conservative politicians and pundits have increasingly referred to advocates for LGBTQ rights as “groomers,” associating people who oppose laws that restrict drag performances or classroom discussions of gender identity with pedophiles. The charge is an echo of a decades-old trope anti-gay activists have used to paint the community as a threat to the country’s youths, an allegation that some advocates say endangers LGBTQ people. And the intense reaction to the video has scared some attendees, who insist the quip has been taken out of context.
“It’s really scary to us,” said Fussy Lo Mein, a drag performer and activist who was at this year’s march and declined to give their real name because of safety concerns. “It doesn’t represent everybody — it represents that individual. I thought it was a dumb idea, and I started chanting on top of it with alternate verses.”
This seems to be equivalent to the Charlottesville “White Rights” event where “Jews will not replace us” was supposedly chanted. The outgroup only hears “WE ARE A THREAT TO EVERYONE YOU LOVE AND EVERYTHING YOU HOLD SACRED,” while the ingroup appreciates the nuance and gets a bit freaked out at the outgroup seeing only the surface level interpretation.
Speaking of QAnon, the focus there seemed to be Jeffrey Epstein and his ilk, or a bunch of wealthy straight guys diddling young girls. How has that morphed in the last few years into an obsession with drag queen groomers?
Is the continuity just a focus on the intersection of children and debaucherous sexuality that just follows where the news and vibes go, almost unconsciously?
No.
QAnon wasn't concerned with Epstein much. More with Pizzagate, a scandal quite distinct from Epstein and focused very much around suspicions of actual child abuse by well connected people.
Sounds like Epstein is 100% what they're looking for. The real deal. Drag queens far more speculative.
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I was totally with you…
Until I listened to the martyrmade episode on Epstein. The last couple of hours he spends talking about that story and it gets pretty difficult, imo, not to agree that there does seem to be something there.
I’ve said before around here: martyrmade is an unbelievable treasure of a history podcast. The episodes I’m talking about (about Jeff Epstein) take about 6 hours tracing a path from sexual abuse allegations in Ireland, to Belgium, and finally working its way through DC and the US. I highly recommend it, but also sort of caution it because it’s a bit of an info hazard. You might someday end up replying to people talking about the absurdity of pizzagage with “welllllllll actually…”
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And the widespread child sex abuse cases in the Catholic Church was something I didn't believe, either, because I couldn't believe it was real.
Too many instances of the powerful, the rich, and the important covering up things and relying on "but that can't possibly be happening, it's too crazy, it sounds like conspiracy theory" to outright dismiss anything.
"Child porn ring in a pizzeria, yeah right" - believe it like the Satanic Panic and daycare abuse of the 90s? Or dismiss it like the cases where it turned out prominent people were abusing their positions? Either way you're out of luck.
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Take another whiff, Comet Ping Pong Pizza stinks to high heaven, and so does James Alefantis.
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So, so many things didn't meet the smell test there. Hotdogs costing $100k ? Gay man's instagram being full of photos of children, sometimes taped to tables ?
You can look up the details and tell yourself it was all entirely innocuous.
Powerful people interested in kids isn't anything unusual. Justice minister ordering early release of a psychopathic sex criminal, well.
In any case, when it's a 'Pizzagate' but in Belgium, even NYT can afford to write about it.
/images/16879624277005746.webp
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I suggest this MartyrMade blogpost for a quick summary. Whatever's going on with Podesta, Comet, and that group's taste in art, it's pretty weird. My guess is that they're cringey, sophomoric jackasses that enjoy shock value, but the enthusiasm for child-rape "art" still marks them as a bunch of creeps in my book.
I'm on your side in this (and wanted to thank you for that article about Patricia Piccinini, her sculptures are incredible and I am annoyed I had never seen her work before) but I don't think it's that outlandish for a punk band to use pedophile imagery - punk is about shocking the establishment, and you can't shock the establishment by biting the head off a bat or pretending to worship the devil any longer. My guess is - if the symbol is really a pedophile symbol - it was poorly thought out edginess. And I am highly suspicious of the symbol's veracity, because I've spent most of my life on the dark side of the internet (and am fluent in hobo code) and never saw it before.
I expect it probably was a symbol used by a group of pedophiles at some point, but it's almost certainly not a common or universal one since there is no single pedophile community and instead lots of small groups and individuals that don't associate with or even know about each other.
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A child sex ring run buy a guy whose Instagram feed looks like this iand who somehow makes a 50 most powerful people in Washington despite no real obvious qualifications beyond dating David Brock is a good bit smellier, no matter what his day job is. Cheese pizza is old chan slang for child porn; they are a bit over sensitive.
Is he probably just a gay matchmaker in a pre-Grindr world with a very dark sense of humor, yeah, but there's plenty of smoke in his online tracks. And you beat any smoking embers you find in a political campaign. Brock was one of the loudest voices against Trump. So going after him through a sketchy personal connection is political hardball and has been standard procedure for a long time in Washington.
I don't want to say too much because she is/was a minor, but the girl is the daughter of a former business partner of Alefantis and there were a bunch of other photos of her in weird poses with captions like "Hotard."
I'm not alleging anything, just supplying additional information. I don't know how to interpret the facts. I do know one theory was that the girl had been one of many kidnapped, but that is not the case.
I once wrote a quality contribution (tm) on my opinions around pizzagate at https://old.reddit.com/r/TheMotte/comments/jv161w/culture_war_roundup_for_the_week_of_november_16/gcw167l/?context=3&sort=best
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I'd like to see the results. Let's start with Jose Andres the other DC chef who was on the same 50 most powerful people in Washington list. I'm curious what the most bizarre posts you'll find will be.
https://instagram.com/chefjoseandres/
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