OH… It's not TRUE because the CDC said so…
QAnon conspiracists believe in a vast pedophile ring. The truth is sadder
Why do conservatives periodically become fixated on elaborate conspiracy theories involving the rape and torture of children? The details of the QAnon narrative don’t bear any relation to the way that child sexual abuse actually happens. The Q believers are correct that the sexual abuse of minors is much more common than many assume, but any relation between their beliefs and fact ends there.
According to the Centers for Disease Control, about one in four girls and one in 13 boys experience sexual abuse sometime in childhood – an alarmingly high number. A sizable minority of those abuses are committed by other children. The prevalence of children being sexually abused by adults is about one in nine girls and one in 53 boys, according to Rainn – a lower but still alarming number. By and large, the adults who sexually abuse children are not strangers or traffickers (or national Democratic politicians). Instead, they tend to be men – and overwhelmingly it is men who sexually abuse children – whom the abused child knows. Ninety-three per-cent of child molesters are known to their victims. fifty-nine per-cent are acquaintances or family friends, and 34% are family members.
This reality does not lend itself to splashy headlines. It does not suggest a predator lurking in the shadows, let alone a dark network of nefarious liberals waiting to steal your children. It is less sensational, and it is also sadder. Acknowledging the real ways that children are sexually abused would mean confronting the ways that families and communities can keep dark secrets and enable harm to the most vulnerable. It would mean confronting the fact that for those it happens to, child sexual abuse is not only a matter of sexual violation but also of betrayal by someone they trusted.
None of these facts are helpful for conservatives, so they disregard them. But that does not change the psychological purpose that QAnon serves for its adherents. When conservatives take up the mantle of child sexual abuse with conspiracy theories and disinformation, they are assuming a moral position that is usually occupied by liberals: defending the powerless, the voiceless, the disenfranchised. It’s not dissimilar to the psychological function of conservative opposition to abortion rights – it’s about conservatives’ need to see themselves not as the inflictors of pain and needless suffering, but as defenders of the innocent. But like in the abortion debate, the innocent victims in the QAnon conspiracy theory only exist in conservatives’ minds.
QAnon is an elaborate fiction dreamed up by Trump fans to meet the psychological needs of those who cannot allow themselves to admit what is plain as day to everyone else: that the man they voted for and support is mendacious, narcissistic, incompetent, corrupt and horrifically unfit, both morally and intellectually, for his office. He is so ostentatiously unfit to be president that the only way even his most ardent supporters can justify his position is to elevate their own denial into a baroque theology in which his opponents are Satanic pedophiles, and he is the defender of the children.
This delusion has already endangered innocent people and taken lives: one supporter of QAnon famously arrived at Comet Ping Pong with a rifle that he shot into the air, and another QAnon believer assassinated an alleged mob boss on Staten Island whom he reportedly believed was involved in the pedophile ring. If the delusion continues to fester and spread, the violence is sure to continue.
Full Blah Blah here
https://www.yahoo.com/news/qanon-conspiracists-believe-vast-pedophile-104043557.html