[Update April 3: since this is blowing up on Twitter, please read these two Twitter threads from Jennifer Cohn: here and here. There is direct Putinist involvement to a degree that I didn’t anticipate when I wrote this.]
So this is a thing—Tucker Carlson accusing Disney of literal human trafficking, with help from Critical Race Theory propagandist Chris Rufo. Florida governor DeSantis and his associates ready to financially punish Disney and let their constituents eat any damage it does to Florida jobs.
At least progressives are finally taking these crazy circumstances seriously. But I don’t think any of us should be as surprised as we are.
I think most of us are surprised because we’ve overlooked the longstanding role and significance of DeSantis' press sec, Christina P*shaw. (Names of extremely online individuals adjusted to avoid troll storms.)
P*shaw has been very visible these past few weeks—actively calling those opposed to the bill “groomers,” and implied pedophiles, long before DeSantis himself did.
Here's a really good info dump of her activities from back when this started.
But hmm, doesn’t it all sound familiar? As in… Guardians of the Galaxy familiar?
The trick is that from the start, P*shaw has been weaponizing the “Don’t Say Gay” law in the exact way that Michael C*rnovich briefly manipulated Disney into firing GOTG director James Gunn: by defining child abuse down to a point where any LGBTQ creative or ally can be accused of it. When simply showing a same-sex couple to children becomes “grooming.” The moment such a loose definition has the force of the state behind it, then we're suddenly much closer to a QAnon endgame than anyone would have imagined a month ago.
(In effect: if producing/circulating all-ages LGBTQ content can be defined as grooming/abuse on the level of an imprisonable offense, then not only teachers, but anyone connected to a progressive kids' TV producer can be indicted and jailed.)
Anyhow, P*shaw's C*rnovich-like behavior turns out to be no coincidence. Here is P*shaw boosting C*rnovich…
And here is C*rnovich boosting P*shaw.
Here is P*shaw being boosted by Jack P*sobiec, a C*rnovich ally (who is himself connected to neo-Nazis and other incredibly dangerous people).
A little more scratching, and we can find
• P*shaw boosting Putin propaganda in the Ukraine war
• P*shaw posing with 1/6 insurrectionists
• And not least, P*shaw having at least one restraining order against her for relentlessly trying to gin up violence toward a private citizen via various sock-puppet Twitter accounts. (It wouldn't surprise me for even a second if Disney’s Chapek had been receiving similar treatment weeks ago and was completely confused, unaware that P*shaw is engineering it. Of course, that much is just speculation.)
The firestorm as it has evolved today, with Tucker involved and directly accusing Disney of mass child abuse, was foretold weeks ago when P*shaw sent out this press release for DeSantis. Look how the last long graf ("Disney is a...") reads as a veiled threat to Chapek to get along with us or be accused of being a pedo too: it's certainly not the voice of anyone who understands what Disney actually does for Florida. But it's an obvious connection to C*rnovich, and directly anticipated what we see going on right now.
(Extra credit: here’s P*shaw on her own Twitter account soon after sending out the press release, openly bragging of deliberately entrapping Disney/Chapek. This tweet already made clear that she was operating in absolute bad faith.)
In effect—the vast majority of people discussing this, including I'm guessing Chapek and other top-level Disney staffers, think this altercation, at its core, is between Disney/Chapek and DeSantis/FL. When it's actually P*shaw/C*rnovich/P*sobiec and now Carlson vs Disney.
Where do we go next? Maybe to auxiliary “Don't Say Gay” laws aimed not at schools, but at producers of all-ages entertainment in Florida: the idea being to continue Tucker’s accusations with the force of the state behind them—which would, I suspect, create a domino effect within similar Republican states, and then the all-ages media market.
Exactly like similar laws in Putin’s Russia, of course (is anyone really surprised?).
At present, it seems to me that the FL government is, very suddenly, the singular entity closest to realizing the QAnon goal as originally understood by its 4chan creators: being able to use the power of the state to destroy/imprison anyone associated with all-ages LGBTQ entertainment. To hell with jobs; they want blood.
Why was nobody focusing on P*shaw weeks ago?