NEW AD: Shapiro for Pennsylvania Calls Out Doug Mastriano’s Prominent Role in QAnon Conspiracy Movement in New TV Ad
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 18, 2022
Contact:
SPA Press, Press@joshshapiro.org
NEW AD: Shapiro for Pennsylvania Calls Out Doug Mastriano’s Prominent Role in QAnon Conspiracy Movement in New TV Ad
“The more we learn, the crazier it gets.” New television ad running statewide features video of Mastriano being honored at a QAnon conference in April.
PENNSYLVANIA – Today, the Shapiro for Pennsylvania campaign released a new television ad calling out Doug Mastriano’s prominent role in the QAnon conspiracy movement. The ad highlights three of the QAnon movement’s most absurd and dangerous conspiracy theories, and shows Mastriano being honored at an April 2022 conference hosted by “Francine and Allen Fosdick, self-described prophets who have long promoted QAnon.”
Mastriano spoke at the conference, and as The Philadelphia Inquirer reported at the time:
About 25 minutes into the two-day conference, organizers played a video claiming the world is experiencing a “great awakening” that will expose “ritual child sacrifice” and a “global satanic blood cult.” […]
The video showed Friday featured a kind of greatest hits of conspiracy theories that have circulated for decades. It showed images of the Twin Towers collapsing on 9/11 — with the label “false flags.” It claimed John F. Kennedy was assassinated because he “knew too much” and posed a “high risk of cabal exposure,” that vaccines amount to “genocide therapy,” and that Hitler faked his death. It offered other conspiracy theories about the atomic bomb, the Spanish flu, 5G, the 2008 financial crisis — and, of course, the 2020 election.
At the conclusion of the conference, Mastriano was honored as a hero and awarded a “Sword of David” by the Fosdicks, who run a QAnon conspiracy theory podcast themselves.
The conference was not Mastriano’s first foray into QAnon conspiracy theories, however. Mastriano “promoted QAnon on Twitter over 50 times” and has appeared on a “QAnon-themed” podcast. This past weekend, Jack Posobiec – a far-right activist who spread the “Pizzagate” conspiracy – headlined Mastriano’s rally in Erie, and Mastriano’s self-described “friend” and potential Secretary of State pick has “pushed QAnon-linked conspiracies.”
This coming weekend, less than 20 days before the election, Mastriano is listed as a featured speaker at the “ReAwaken America” conference, which will bring “believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory” together in central Pennsylvania.
In 2019, the FBI “identified fringe conspiracy theories as a domestic terrorist threat,” specifically calling out QAnon.
TRANSCRIPT
QAnon. They believe the September 11th attacks on the World Trade Center never really happened, Adolf Hitler faked his own death, and the COVID vaccine turns people gay.
QAnon, a fringe right-wing group peddling dangerous conspiracy theories.
And who’s an important part of their movement?
Doug Mastriano – honored as a hero.
Mastriano: “Where’s Goliath?”
Mastriano has tweeted QAnon craziness 52 times.
Doug Mastriano. The more we learn, the crazier it gets.
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