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Now in one in every of his final acts as a Republican congressman from Virginia, Riggleman is asking the identical questions of QAnon supporters and President-elect Joe Biden deniers.
Months after his ouster by Rep.-elect Bob Good (R) in a contentious GOP conference, Riggleman has change into one of many loudest voices in Congress warning of the infiltration of conspiracy theories into political discourse.
And he’s absolutely the one voice to have made the purpose after self-publishing a e-book about Bigfoot beliefs.
To Riggleman, the e-book, “Bigfoot . . . It’s Complicated,” mirrors the way in which pockets of the nation are falling into conspiracy wormholes — every little thing from extremist fringe teams akin to QAnon and the “boogaloo” motion to President Trump’s claims of widespread voter fraud.
Just like the Bigfoot hunters within the Olympic Nationwide Forest, they see what they need to see.
“I at all times say the [Bigfoot] expedition chief and Rudy Giuliani are very related folks,” Riggleman stated of Trump’s conspiracy-theory-spinning lawyer, throughout an interview at his distillery in Afton, Va., final week.
Bigfoot believers have a lot in widespread with political extremists on each the far proper and the far left, Riggleman stated, lambasting a political ecosystem the place, oftentimes, “information don’t matter.”
“They’re all bat—- loopy. Proper?” he stated, probably not joking. “All of them ascribe to a crew mythology that may or may not be true. They usually keep on that crew regardless. And that’s what’s so harmful about politics immediately. That’s what I’ve been attempting to say.”
A ‘lark’ turns right into a e-book
Riggleman’s Bigfoot story begins in 1980, when he was 10. One thing his grandfather described solely as “mighty peculiar” chased them within the West Virginia woods again to his grandfather’s trailer.
Was it Bigfoot? In all probability not, Riggleman now is aware of.
Nevertheless it gave him his personal sense of how a kernel of suspicion may snowball into an unshakable conviction.
Years later, his fascination with perception techniques was cemented midway the world over. After graduating from the College of Virginia with a level in Jap European overseas affairs, Riggleman turned an Air Pressure intelligence officer and ended up stationed on the Serbian-Romanian border in the course of the Kosovo Warfare of the late 1990s.
“There was spiritual violence, ethnic strife. However what actually touched me there was the way in which the Romanians handled the Roma, or the gypsies,” Riggleman stated. “It was subhuman. What I noticed was perception techniques that thought the opposite perception system was mistaken, based mostly on no proof in anyway.”
He completed out his counterterrorism profession as a protection contractor with the Nationwide Safety Company earlier than beginning his personal contracting firm, Analyst Warehouse, and later working as a marketing consultant on the Pentagon.
All of the whereas, he dabbled in Bigfoot beliefs as a private passion. In 2004, he flew to Washington state together with his spouse, Christine, and his greatest buddy, a Michigan state trooper, to go on the Bigfoot-hunting expedition, the primary of a number of he would take through the years for his e-book. On the time it was solely a lark, mainly a prank trip.
He had informed his spouse they have been happening an “unique” climbing journey for his or her anniversary.
“It was not the best factor I’ve ever executed,” he says now.
Within the woods, they listened to Bigfoot-believing ladies sing nursery rhymes, banking on the broadly held idea that ladies’s singing voices would lure the lure the furry, behemoth forest dweller from the shadows. Round a campfire, they humored different group members’ tales of Bigfoot sightings.
Some attendees debated, with nearly religion-like conviction, whether or not Bigfoot had a gluten allergy, or questioned how large his penis was. (Yep, that’s within the e-book. And if it sounds vaguely acquainted, it’s as a result of Riggleman’s Democratic opponent in 2018 accused him of being a “devotee of Bigfoot erotica”; Riggleman had joked on-line about Bigfoot genitalia and “why ladies need” him.)
By the tip of the journey, Riggleman, and particularly his spouse, couldn’t consider he had dropped greater than $5,000 — a lot of which he paid to the expedition chief.
As he recollects the expense immediately, Riggleman stated it doesn’t really feel a lot totally different from Trump’s allies in search of donations from fervent Trump voters to assist his marketing campaign’s authorized problem of the election outcomes.
“For those who take a look at the Giulianis or the Sidney Powells of the world, they’re earning money off the grift as a result of they’re asking for donations to assist in a mythological quest of issues that may’t be confirmed,” he stated, referring to a former member of Trump’s authorized crew. “It noticed it with Bigfoot. I’m seeing it with QAnon. It’s about cash. And generally loopy and cash reside in the identical area.”
‘Ideological purity check’
It’s nightfall on Riggleman’s again porch in Afton, overlooking the Rockfish River on the foot of the Blue Ridge Mountains — the form of night time when Riggleman usually pours a glass of bourbon, has a cigar, sits exterior and feels form of glad to be leaving Washington.
He lives strolling distance from Silverback Distillery, which he and Christine based in 2013 and Christine now runs with their daughter. On a tour of the grounds, he stops at their barrel warehouse and factors to a bench on the prime of a hill.
“That’s the place Stephen Colbert made enjoyable of me,” he stated, referring to Colbert’s 2018 late-night spoof of Riggleman’s “Bigfoot erotica” marketing campaign controversy, which featured Riggleman wanting pensive on his picturesque bench.
Rep. Man Reschenthaler (R-Pa.) stated the controversy largely fizzled after Riggleman started working in Congress, partly as a result of Riggleman “embraced” his uncommon passion. He wore Bigfoot socks. He put Bigfoot collectible figurines in his workplace. And he proved himself a “live-and-let-live Republican” unafraid to talk his thoughts, stated Reschenthaler, who has bought copies of Riggleman’s Bigfoot e-book to offer to associates.
Riggleman’s mentor, Rep. Drew Ferguson (R-Ga.), who’s chief deputy whip, described the one-term lawmaker’s voting file as among the many most conservative in Congress however stated his mind-set was at all times “wrapped in a Libertarian wrapper.”
He stated Riggleman “constructed a fame as an sincere dealer,” somebody he may belief to succeed in out to members throughout the political spectrum to whip votes.
Riggleman labored with Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.) on rural broadband, and with Rep. David Trone (D-Md.) — “my hero,” Riggleman stated — to cross $9 billion opioid addiction legislation, a problem private to every of them after each misplaced a relative to an overdose.
“Denver has empathy,” Trone stated. “However he additionally has this bigger-than-life character and this inquisitive thoughts. And he’s not afraid to problem the established order. . . . Others simply lack the braveness; they’re involved about reelection.”
That trait didn’t at all times go over effectively with factions of the Republican Social gathering in Virginia’s fifth Congressional District, nonetheless — an expertise that has left Riggleman cynical concerning the two-party political system and questioning whether or not he has a house within the GOP.
He landed in hot water with social conservatives after officiating a same-sex wedding between two of his marketing campaign staffers and supporting will increase in overseas employee visas. Through the Republican major marketing campaign, Good, a non secular conservative, lashed Riggleman for voting to sentence the Trump administration’s lawsuit in search of full repeal the Reasonably priced Care Act.
Riggleman stated he didn’t need to “play the sport” — or ascribe to a crew mythology to get reelected. “I believe what you’ve is that this ideological purity check I refuse to fulfill for the GOP in Virginia,” he stated.
Within the months after his loss, he co-led a House resolution condemning QAnon and, later, went after Trump on cable information for promoting a QAnon conspiracy on Twitter about an Osama bin Laden physique double. He brazenly flirted with not voting for Trump’s reelection bid and says he’ll by no means inform who he did vote for.
John Fredericks, chairman of Trump’s Virginia conference delegation, stated Riggleman’s feedback attacking Trump on reside tv amounted to a betrayal of the president’s 2 million Virginia supporters — and Trump’s earlier assist for the congressman. Fredericks stated he won’t ever again Riggleman in politics once more due to it.
Riggleman stated he doesn’t care concerning the political penalties of his feedback.
He has tossed round the opportunity of operating as an impartial for governor — about as convincingly as somebody who will “possibly” attend your Zoom networking occasion subsequent Tuesday night time.
However he has his sights set on different alternatives, too.
His outspokenness on extremism caught the attention of the Community Contagion Analysis Institute, which maps the online spread of disinformation and coded language used by extremist groups, together with antifa, the Proud Boys and extra. Joel Finkelstein, the institute’s founder, stated Riggleman’s background as an intelligence officer and his ardour for rooting out conspiracy theories made him “the man we’ve been ready for.”
A couple of months in the past, Finkelstein met the congressman in Washington. They talked about his e-book on Bigfoot, about QAnon, about his time on the Serbian-Romanian border.
Finkelstein provided him an advisory function and an opportunity to co-author upcoming papers. Riggleman accepted.
“That is what I’ve executed my complete life,” he stated.
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