The title isn't click bait. I'm not being over the top. This is something that evangelicals involved in QAnon actually believe. It is a core conviction among many evangelicals that Democrats are eating babies in satanic rituals and running pedofile sex-trafficing rings.
On the face of it, I know, it seems crazy. How could anyone believe this insanity?
You can't go from A to Z so quickly, from thinking people are normal to believing they eat babies. That's too far a leap. But QAnon evangelicals didn't start at A, thinking Democrats were normal human beings, they were starting at W or X, just a short hop to Z. How did they get to W or X? The answer is the abortion cultural wars.
I'm sure most people know that evangelicals are overwhelmingly pro-life. And a fair amount of evangelicals hold that conviction with some degree of nuance and complexity, even toleration. But there is a more radical fringe of the pro-life movement, where death threats originate, where pictures of fetal remains are shown online and on protest posters, where the words "baby killer" are regularly used. In this part of the anti-abortion world, Democrats have, for decades, been called satanic, described as gleefully, and for profit, sacrificing children to Molech.
Now, my point here isn't to dismiss pro-life proponents. As I said, many evangelicals hold complex and nuanced pro-life views that show great empathy for the women facing such choices. Broadly speaking, I'd describe myself as pro-life. My point in this post is that, when you look at the most extreme belief among QAnon believers, that Democratic leaders are satanic, baby-eating pedofiles, and wonder how anyone can believe this, evangelicals aren't starting at A and jumping all the way to Z. Many evangelicals have been marinating in extreme "satanic baby-killing" rhetoric for many, many years. And for these people, QAnon wasn't an extreme jump. QAnon was a plausible and predictable next step.
