QAnon and other far-right conspiracy theorists now believe UFOs are a 'distraction' from voter fraud

Half a year after the 2020 presidential election, former President Donald Trump and many of his supporters continue to claim that the election was stolen from him by widespread voter fraud — a false claim that has been debunked time and time again. And far-right conspiracy theorists, Will Sommer reports in the Daily Beast, are now claiming that talk of UFOs is meant to distract Americans from the election "audit" in Maricopa County, Arizona and the subject of voter fraud.

Pro-Trump Republicans in the Arizona State Senate recently ordered an "audit" of the 2020 vote in Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix, and hired the Florida-based firm Cyber Ninjas — whose CEO, Doug Logan, promoted the Big Lie in 2020 after Trump lost the election. The 2020 election results in Arizona have already been recounted more than once, proving that now-President Joe Biden won Arizona fair and square. But while those recounts were genuinely bipartisan, the Maricopa "audit" is a Trumpian farce — which hasn't prevented far-right pro-Trump media outlets like One America News, Newsmax and Alex Jones' Infowars from promoting it. And Newsmax's Emerald Robinson is among the conspiracy theorists who believes that reports of UFO sightings are meant to draw attention away from the "audit."

Robinson, Sommer notes, tweeted, "They want you talking about aliens because they don't want you talking about Maricopa. They want you talking about UFOs because they don't want you talking about stagflation, the collapse of the dollar, the crisis on the border, and Biden's mental health."

Jordan Sather, a QAnon supporter, visited Telegram on May 19 and posted, "There's no doubt that this mainstream UFO disclosure push is offering a convenient distraction for the Deep State to turn our attention away from important issues like the Scamdemic and the election fraud getting exposed." And Infowars' Greg Reese also believes that mainstream media coverage of UFOs is part of a sinister Deep State plot.

Sommer explains, "Conspiracy theory hub Infowars often posts articles about UFOs. But more recently, Infowars has started to see the prospect of extraterrestrial revelations as a Deep State plot. In an April video, Infowars staffer Greg Reese posited that the UFOs were being faked using technology from inventor Nikola Tesla and the Nazis, with the ultimate goal of faking an alien invasion to enslave humanity in 'the most dire false flag imaginable.' In QAnon-heavy language about a nefarious 'cabal' and a 'great awakening,' Reese claimed that the new UFO videos were meant to convince people, wrongly, that the aliens are real, before vaporizing much of humanity with energy weapons."

Travis View, who co-hosts the podcast "QAnon Anonymous" and monitors the conspiracy movement, believes that QAnon feel threatened by mainstream media coverage of UFOs.

View told the Daily Beast, "QAnon promoters gain an audience by claiming that they have access to information that the mainstream media doesn't. When major outlets report on their pet topic, such as UFOs, it's actually damaging to their brand because their audience has been trained to distrust everything that comes from the mainstream media."