Drew Hernandez is a wingnut activist, conspiracy theorist, sometimes host of Turning Point USA’s daily show Frontlines, and producer of a web show called “Lives Matter” as well as videos for the wingnut Tatum Report website. His videos have often focused on violence he claims is carried out by Antifa and BLM. And since the police, according to Hernandez, “have their hands tied by leftists”, he is a staunch supporter of groups like the Proud Boys, who are willing to employ extrajudicial violence to get anti-fascist “absolutely mopped on the floor”.
Apparently he has some clout in wingnut circles and has, for instance, appeared on Tucker Carlson’s show and on Fox News a substantial number of times. Part of his rise to prominence is due to his ability to insert himself into wingnut coverage of high-profile events. He was, for instance, on the ground in Kenosha, Wisconsin, when the Kyle Rittenhouse affair took place and served as a defense witness for Rittenhouse to claim that the protesters in the area were “antifa”.
Hernandez, who believes that the 2020 election was a massive fraud based on paranoia-fuelled conspiracy theories, was not a fan of the Biden administration. Complaining (falsely) that Biden is unwilling to denounce violence by leftist activists, Hernandez also offered an explanation for what was not the case: Biden was unwilling to denounce leftist violence because it would cause him to lose support from the mythical “deep state”. Biden was also a “communist agent”; said Hernandez: “Every single one of us know that Joe Biden is literally, literally [if you repeat a word twice it means the opposite] in the back pockets of the Chicoms. He is a communist agent and we all know that.” Hernandez isn’t profusively concerned with using evidence to support his claims to knowledge.
Most importantly, however, Hernandez is a significant producer of QAnon content who has suggested e.g. that the US is plagued by a large numbers of Satanists that are seeking to eat human fetuses. Apparently gay people play some important role here, too: No fan of such people, Hernandez has not only referred to Pride Month as “groomer month” and called LGBTQ people “mentally ill”, but, as Hernandez sees it, the LGBTQ movement’s “end game is to sterilize humanity, depopulate, so that the homosexuals can just abduct children” – one of the means they dispose is to ensure that “the economy is not going to be accessible to you if you do not worship homosexuality”, whatever that means. More nefariously, perhaps, he has made several concentrated efforts to encourage violent wingnut groups to show up at various LGBTQ events.
Diagnosis: No, we can’t be bothered to follow the paranoid lunacy and conspiracy nonsense that falls out of his mouth with in any detail; consider the examples mentioned in this entry as a collection of snapshots from Hernandez’s wide-ranging and variegated derangements. But although there are many like him, and hard to keep track, he does seem to be one of the more central one in contemporary boogaloo and fundie-Christian-nationalist-nihilist-‘burn-it-all-down’ movements.
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