The brand’s kiddie imagery caused a Fox News firestorm and played into QAnon conspiracy theories.
“I definitely want to be clear: The controversy around this is legitimate,” said Alex Kaplan, a senior researcher at Media Matters for America who studies the spread of QAnon conspiracies. “Balenciaga has admitted as much. That said, I have seen some on the far right — particularly the QAnon world — tie it to the broader conspiracy theory they push that this is part of the supposed cabal of pedophiles and child trafficking rings. That’s still not real.
Yet that’s not the code the audience has to decipher if they don’t want to. “They can choose to either accept these intended codes, or they can choose to reject the intended meaning and instead decode and interpret them in their own way,” said Buckley, citing"QAnon followers choose to reject the obvious messaging simply because the messaging is coming from an elite fashion brand."
“Given that certain people have consumed large amounts of QAnon cult ideology,” Buckley said, “they are predisposed to assume that the brand is pushing pro-child abuse messaging.”
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