{"id":18240,"date":"2021-04-05T10:36:50","date_gmt":"2021-04-05T17:36:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/?p=18240"},"modified":"2021-04-05T10:36:52","modified_gmt":"2021-04-05T17:36:52","slug":"one-republicans-lonely-fight-against-a-flood-of-disinformation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/occupysf.net\/index.php\/2021\/04\/05\/one-republicans-lonely-fight-against-a-flood-of-disinformation\/","title":{"rendered":"ONE REPUBLICAN\u2019S LONELY FIGHT AGAINST A FLOOD OF DISINFORMATION"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

After losing an ugly congressional race last year, Denver Riggleman is leading a charge against the conspiracy-mongering coursing through his party. He doesn\u2019t have many allies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Denver
Denver Riggleman, a Republican former congressman from Virginia, recounted trying last summer to warn his colleagues that the QAnon conspiracy theory was dangerous.Credit\u2026Matt Eich for The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Jeremy<\/a><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

By Jeremy W. Peters<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

April 3, 2021 (NYTimes.com)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

AFTON, Va. \u2014 Denver Riggleman stood virtually alone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was Oct. 2, on the floor of the House of Representatives, and he rose as one of only two Republicans in the chamber to speak in favor of a resolution<\/a> denouncing QAnon. Mr. Riggleman, a freshman congressman from Virginia, had his own personal experiences with fringe ideas, both as a target of them and as a curious observer of the power they hold over true believers. He saw a dangerous movement becoming more intertwined with his party, and worried that it was only growing thanks to words of encouragement from President Donald J. Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWill we stand up and condemn a dangerous, dehumanizing and convoluted conspiracy theory that the F.B.I. has assessed with high confidence is very likely to motivate some domestic extremists?\u201d asked Mr. Riggleman, a former Air Force intelligence officer. \u201cWe should not be playing with fire.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Six months later, conspiracy theories like QAnon remain a threat that most Republicans would rather ignore than confront, and Mr. Riggleman is out of office. But he is ever more determined to try to expose disinformation from the far right that is swaying legions in the Republican base to believe in a false reality.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Riggleman is a living example of the political price of falling out of lock step with the hard right. He lost a G.O.P. primary race last June<\/a> after he officiated at the wedding<\/a> of a gay couple. And once he started calling out QAnon, whose followers believe that a satanic network of child molesters runs the Democratic Party, he received death threats and was attacked as a traitor, including by members of his own family.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The undoing of Mr. Riggleman \u2014 and now his unlikely crusade \u2014 is revealing about a dimension of conservative politics today. The fight against radicalism within the G.O.P. is a deeply lonely one, waged mostly by Republicans like him who are no longer in office, and by the small handful of elected officials who have decided that they are willing to speak up even if it means that they, too, could be headed for an early retirement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI\u2019ve been telling people: \u2018You don\u2019t understand. This is getting worse, not better,\u2019\u201d Mr. Riggleman said, sitting on a stool at his family bar one recent afternoon. \u201cPeople are angry. And they\u2019re angry at the truth tellers.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Riggleman, 51, is now back home in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains, where he and his wife run the bar and a distillery. And for his next move in a career that has included jobs at the National Security Agency and founding a military contracting business, he is working with a group of other experts to shine a light on what he calls the \u201csocial disease\u201d of disinformation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

His experience with the issues and emotions at work is both professional and personal. He was so intrigued by false belief systems that he self-published a book about the myth of Bigfoot and the people who are unshakably devoted to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Mr.
Mr. Riggleman is working with a group of other experts to shine a light on what he calls the \u201csocial disease\u201d of disinformation.Credit\u2026Matt Eich for The New York Times<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Riggleman, who first ran and won in 2018 after the Republican incumbent in his district retired, joined the arch-conservative Freedom Caucus and was endorsed by Mr. Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now he says it \u201cgives me shivers\u201d to be called a Republican. He hopes to show that there is still a way to beat back the lies and false beliefs that have spread from the fringe to the mainstream. It is a heavy lift, and one that depends on overcoming two strong impulses: politicians\u2019 fear of losing elections and people\u2019s reluctance to accept that they were taken in by a lie.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Riggleman summarized his conversations with the 70 percent of House Republicans he said were privately appalled at the former president\u2019s conduct but wouldn\u2019t dare speak out.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201c\u2018We couldn\u2019t do that in our district. We would lose,\u2019\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s it. It\u2019s that simple.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Stocky, fast-talking and inexhaustibly curious, the former congressman is now working for a group of prominent experts and academics at the Network Contagion Research Institute, which studies the spread of disinformation in American politics and how to thwart it. The group has undertaken several extensive investigations<\/a> into how extremists have used propaganda and faked information to sow division over some of the most contentious issues of the day, like the coronavirus pandemic and police violence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Their reports have also given lawmakers a better understanding of the QAnon belief system<\/a> and other radical ideologies that helped fuel the riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Riggleman said he had written one report about the involvement of far-right militants and white supremacist groups in the attack specifically at the request of a Republican member who needed help convincing colleagues that far-left groups were not the culprits.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting lawmakers to see radical movements like QAnon as a threat has been difficult. Joel Finkelstein, the director of the Network Contagion Research Institute, said that in June, when the group tried to sound the alarm on QAnon to members of Congress, Mr. Riggleman was the only one who responded with a sense of urgency and agreed to help.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe were screaming it from the rooftops,\u201d Mr. Finkelstein said. \u201cWe said: \u2018This is going to be a problem. They\u2019re growing increasingly militant in their conspiracies.\u2019\u201d When the institute\u2019s members spoke to Mr. Riggleman, he said, \u201cWe showed him our data and he said, \u2018Holy moly.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Far from a theoretical or overblown concern, disinformation and its role in perpetuating false beliefs about Mr. Trump\u2019s election loss and its aftermath are problems that some Republicans believe could cripple their party if left ignored.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a sign of how widespread these conspiracy theories are, a recent poll from Suffolk University and USA Today found that 58 percent<\/a> of Trump voters wrongly believed the storming of the Capitol was mostly inspired by far-left radicals associated with antifa and involved only a few Trump supporters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere was a troika of us who said, \u2018This is going to a bad place,\u2019\u201d said Paul Mitchell, who represented Michigan in the House for two terms before retiring early this year in frustration. He said he had watched as members dismissed Mr. Riggleman, despite his experience in intelligence. \u201cThere weren\u2019t many people who gave a damn what your expertise was,\u201d Mr. Mitchell said. \u201cIt was inconsequential compared to the talking points.\u201dImageBob Good defeated Mr. Riggleman in a state Republican Party convention in June.Credit\u2026Amy Friedenberger\/The Roanoke Times, via Associated Press<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Riggleman\u2019s loss last summer in a closely held party convention allowed him to be more outspoken. The winner, Representative Bob Good, is a former associate athletic director at Liberty University who took issue with Mr. Riggleman\u2019s officiation at the gay wedding and called him \u201cout of step\u201d with the party\u2019s base.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

And as Mr. Riggleman kept it up and spoke out more aggressively against Mr. Trump after the election, his fight got lonelier.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI had a colleague of mine pat me on the shoulder and say: \u2018Denver, you\u2019re just too paranoid. You\u2019re killing yourself for the rest of your life politically by going after the big man like this,\u2019\u201d Mr. Riggleman recalled.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

When he returned to Virginia for good in January, he said he sometimes felt just as isolated. Family members, former constituents and patrons at the distillery insisted that the election had been stolen from Mr. Trump. And they couldn\u2019t be talked out of it, no matter how hard he tried.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He recalled a recent conversation with one couple he is friends with that he said was especially exasperating.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI go over stats,\u201d he said. \u201cI go over figures. I go over the 50 states, how that actually works. How machines that aren\u2019t connected are very hard to hack. How you\u2019d have to pay off hundreds of thousands of people to do this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cDid not convince them,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Other friends of his, some of whom are also members of the growing group of former Republican lawmakers now publicly criticizing Mr. Trump, said that many conservative politicians saw no incentive in trying to dispel disinformation even when they know it\u2019s false.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWhat some of these guys have told me privately is it\u2019s still kind of self-preservation,\u201d said Joe Walsh, a former congressman from Illinois who ran a short-lived primary campaign<\/a> against Mr. Trump last year. \u201c\u2018I want to hang onto the gig. And this is a fever, it will break.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That is mistaken, Mr. Walsh said, because he sees no breaking the spell Mr. Trump has over Republican voters anytime soon. \u201cIt\u2019s done, and it was done a few years ago,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Riggleman, who is contemplating a run for governor in Virginia and is writing a book about his experience with the dark side of Republican politics, sees a way forward in his experience with Bigfoot. The sasquatch was how many people first learned about him as a politician, after an opponent accused him of harboring a fascination with \u201cBigfoot erotica,\u201d in 2018.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI do not dabble in monster porn,\u201d he retorts in his book, \u201cBigfoot \u2026 It\u2019s Complicated,\u201d which he based in part on a trip he took in 2004 on a Bigfoot expedition.ImageMr. Riggleman paid $2,000 to go on a Bigfoot expedition with his wife in 2004.Credit\u2026Matt Eich for The New York Times<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The book is full of passages that, if pulled out and scrubbed of references to the mythical creature, could be describing politics in 2021.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Mr. Riggleman quotes one true believer explaining why he is absolutely convinced Bigfoot is real, even though he has never seen it. In an answer that could have come straight from the lips of someone defending the myth that Mr. Trump actually won the 2020 election, the man says matter-of-factly: \u201cEvidence is overwhelming. Check out the internet. All kinds of sightings and facts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At another point, Mr. Riggleman describes a conversation he had with someone who asked if he really thought that all the people claiming to have seen Bigfoot over the years were liars. \u201cI don\u2019t think that,\u201d Mr. Riggleman responds. \u201cI do believe that people see what they want to see.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He did find one way to crack the Bigfoot false belief system: telling true believers that they were being ripped off to the tune of hundreds or thousands of dollars to go on expeditions where they would never actually see the creature.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThey got very angry,\u201d he said. But eventually, some started to come around.<\/p>\n\n\n\n