David DePape’s dark journey from Obama backer to QAnon extremist accused in Pelosi attack – and how to navigate his current situation
by Chris Hayes
A look at the connections between David DePape, the man who was arrested for allegedly threatening to shoot Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, and his connections to QAnon and Alex Jones.
The story: We began in September 2019, when Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (AOC) and her fellow progressive supporters were hit with an almost unprecedented political attack. A group calling itself “QAnon” tweeted, “The truth is out there, and it kills us to keep ignoring it.”
It was a claim so ludicrous that the mainstream media couldn’t even make the argument. But that didn’t stop it from becoming the basis for an anonymous but very real conspiracy theory that spread like wildfire.
QAnon was a bizarre theory in the first place. It was a conspiracy theory that posited that a shadowy group of wealthy, influential men around the world had been conspiring secretly since at least the late 1970s — but that they’d finally been successful at their mission of changing the outcome of the 2016 election.
The theory has been called a “deeply weird” and “bizarre” and “almost impossible” theory.
But what is not at all bizarre, is the fact that the same QAnon conspiracy theory has claimed that a supposed “deep state” conspiracy has been operating behind the scenes, infiltrating and manipulating the elected branches of the US government since at least the late 1970s. QAnon claims that there was no conspiracy and that everything was a hoax cooked up by deep state operatives to keep Americans afraid and subservient to the federal government.
The theory has also been called “the most influential conspiracy theory” by the Washington Post, “the most convincing theory” by the New York Times, and “probably the most sophisticated psychological theory” by the New York Daily News.
