Of all the big lies that Republican officials and media personalities have deployed for partisan advantage over the past several years, the most sickening by far is their current campaign to depict Democrats as “groomers” — meaning that they are sexual predators who recruit underage victims.
For years this sort of smear was weaponized against gays and lesbians. These dark insinuations have surfaced again and again in right-wing propaganda ever since the 2016 “Pizzagate” fabrication, accusing the most prominent Democrats of imprisoning children in the basement of a Washington, D.C. pizza parlor to be kept as sex slaves. There was, by the way, no basement. Most recently the perverse accusation has been raised to defame Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson during her successful Supreme Court confirmation hearings, when Republican Senators claimed that she is “sympathetic to pedophiles.” Ironically, it was Judge Jackson who sentenced a man who opened fire in the pizza parlor with an automatic rifle duped into believing that he was rescuing the nonexistent child prisoners.
From this conspiracy sprouted the QAnon cult, founded online by a dubious figure with ties to child porn, now running for Congress in Arizona. In fact, more than 70 QAnon proponents are running as Republicans in this year’s midterm election. The worst of the latest round of bizarre pedophilia slurs have been promoted by Fox News and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis. This nonsense originated from an outfit known as “Libs of TikTok,” whose author was anonymous until The Washington Post exposed her identity and outraged her right-wing fans. Chaya Raichik, the disinformation spreader, is a Brooklyn real estate salesperson.
The “groomer” charges are of course lies, but they are not just ordinary falsehoods. When Republicans — from internet crazies to Rupert Murdoch’s cable sewer to U.S. senators — claim that Democrats are guilty of sexual predation, they are engaging in a frame-up designed to deflect from a disturbing truth: the perverse and criminal conduct of literally scores of Republican officials, activists and clergy — factual, indisputable and appalling.
Republican sexual hypocrisy is a longstanding cliche in American politics, from the hordes of closeted anti-gay gays and moralizing adulterers like Kenneth Starr to the former president whose debauched lifestyle has never troubled his evangelical worshippers. Yet now the Republicans’ “groomer” accusations have raised the ante — and inadvertently opened a Pandora’s box of newspaper and TV clips describing the criminal sexual misconduct of a long roster of Republicans.
An astonishingly comprehensive Google document of these offenders, complete with more than 800 citations and links, can be found under the rubric of #RepublicanSexualPredators. It has apparently been maintained and updated scrupulously for years — and undoubtedly will be added to for years to come.