QAnon Conspiracy Theorists Smear a Gay Jewish Legislator, Republicans Join In.
California State Senator Scott Wiener, a Democrat and a gay Jewish man, had been targeted for months by relentless homophobic and antisemitic attacks from far-right conspiracy theorist. Then, Republican politicians joined in.
Wiener, who represents San Francisco, reported in September of 2020 that he had been doxxed, with his home address posted online, and that he had received death threats. The attacks were spurred by believers in the antisemitic QAnon conspiracy theory, who falsely claimed that Wiener was a pedophile after he introduced a bill to correct an outdated law that could unfairly target gay and queer teens and young adults.
A quick overview: The outdated legislation allows judges to use discretion about adding someone to the sex offender registry for penile-vaginal sex, but does not allow that same discretion when it comes to oral or anal sex. This means that if a case involves, say, a sixteen-year-old and eighteen-year-old have consensual penile-vaginal sex, a judge can use their discretion and decide not to put the eighteen-year-old on the registry. However, if the teens were engaging in anal sex, the eighteen-year-old would automatically be put on the registry. A young gay men, therefore, could be labeled a sex offender for engaging in consensual sexual activity, while a young straight man engaging in a similar consensual sex act might be granted discretion. This is the inequality that Weiner’s bill seeks to correct.
QAnon conspiracy theorists, however, have spread the falsehood that Wiener’s bill seeks to decriminalize pedophilia or make it no longer a felony offense. That disinformation has expanded into personal smears of Wiener himself. Gay men have been smeared as pedophiles by homophobes for decades. Jewish men were often portrayed as perverts by the Nazis, and still are to this day. Because QAnon is, at its core, an antisemitic conspiracy theory about a pedophile sex trafficking ring, Wiener’s identity as a gay Jewish man — coupled with the history of smearing gay men and Jewish men as perverts — Wiener became an instant target.
In addition to being doxxed and threatened, Wiener has been harassed with antisemitic images doctored to elongate his nose and change his hairstyle to that of an observant Orthodox Jew. In June, as JTA reported, a California trade union ran ads on Facebook featuring Wiener with a handful of Monopoly money — a similar image as those used by Republicans to target Jewish Democrats in the 2018 midterms.
Republican politicians seized upon the salacious headlines about Wiener and, likely in part because they saw an opportunity to cultivate support from QAnon believes, added their voices to the attacks. Sen. Ted Cruz (R-CA) and Donald Trump, Jr. — both of whom have promoted antisemitic tropes and rhetoric in the past — were two notable figures:
