You probably saw this story last week:
Federal authorities are investigating suspicious letters sent to election offices in five states – Washington, Oregon, California, Nevada and Georgia.
The FBI said that "in at least four instances, preliminary tests ... indicated the presence of fentanyl," according to a bulletin disseminated to state and local law enforcement and obtained by ABC News.
Images of one letter were released. The letter was sent to election officials in Pierce County, Washington. Here's the message:
The letter contained a warning about the vulnerability of "ballot drops" and read: "End elections now. Stop giving power to the right that they don't have. We are in charge now and there is no more need for them."
The letter featured an antifascist symbol, a progress pride flag and a pentagram. While the symbols have sometimes been associated with leftist politics, they also have been used by conservative figures to label and stereotype the left, and the sender's political leanings were unclear.
Actually, no. The sender's political leanings are perfectly clear. This is a right-winger pretending to be a lefty and doing a piss-poor job of it.
Let's start with the symbols. There might be as lefty out there who celebrates anti-fascism, LGBTQ pride, and Satanism -- but I doubt it. To right-wingers, these are all part of the vast left-wing conspiracy. We're all queer Antifa Satan-worshipers -- Joe Biden, George Soros, AOC, all of us. This is what righties sincerely believe. They have no idea how few people live in all three cultures simultaneously.
Now let's look at the message. It isn't lefties who want to END ELECTIONS NOW. It's really not a key demand on the left, even among anarchists.
But the obvious tell is the threat to ballot drops. Who hates voting via dropboxes? No lefty or liberal, as far as I know. But right-wing despise this form of voting.
Another obvious clue? The fact that the only target outside the West (where I assume the culprit lives) is the elections office in Fulton County, Georgia, where Donald Trump and other 2020 truthers believe massive amounts of ballot fraud took place, and where DA Fani Willis has indicted Trump and others who attempted to overturn the results of the election. Why would a queer Satanic anti-fascist pick that target?
One final tell: At least some of the letters contain fentanyl. Police forces across the country regularly insist that their officers have been poisoned by incidental contact with fentanyl, while scientists say that illness caused by brief contact with fentanyl is extremely rare. Most right-wingers are reflexively pro-cop (except perhaps on January 6). Right-wingers also blame America's fentanyl problem on "open borders" -- their greatest obsession -- even though most fentanyl is smuggled into the country by U.S. citizens at legal checkpoints.
So, yes, this is a right-winger doing a bad imitation of a lefty.
Republished with permission from No More Mister Nice Blog.
