Chicago Sun-Times

Kinzinger sounds alarm over QAnon

- BY LYNN SWEET, WASHINGTON BUREAU CHIEF lsweet@suntimes.com | @lynnsweet

Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., sounding the alarm over “bad actors like QAnon,” on Sunday stepped up his crusade against conspiracy theories after QAnon follower Marjorie Taylor Greene won a Georgia Republican primary last week and is poised to win a seat in Congress in the heavily GOP district.

QAnon-at-a-glance: The Southern Poverty Law Center, an organizati­on fighting hate and extremist groups, said the QAnon conspiracy theory “asserts that pro-Trump forces will soon take down the socalled deep state.”

In May, Kinzinger, in a video titled “Unplug the Rage Machine,” took a crack at warning off people of baseless claims peddled by conspiracy theorists.

Following the Greene nomination, Kinzinger said in part in a tweet, there is “no place in Congress for these conspiraci­es.” He followed up in a Sunday video headlined “What is QAnon” and in an interview with CNN’s “Reliable Sources” host Brian Stelter.

Kinzinger said on CNN, in trying to debunk a conspiracy theory with someone, “You’re never going to offend somebody over onto your side. You’re never going to offend somebody away from something that they believe, in fact that emboldens them.

“So I think it’s understand­ing that they’re still human, and if you believe in this conspiracy theory stuff, especially QAnon, do some independen­t research, there’s a lot of stuff debunking it, including all the prediction­s that didn’t come true. And now the new “Q” stuff reads like basically a tarot card reader who gives you something so vague that it will absolutely fit into something that happens in the next month.”

Kinzinger said the key is for Democrats and Republican­s to denounce extremism in their own party “because that’s where it’s effective.”

Kinzinger represents the 16th District just south of Chicago and lives in Channahon.

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