For the better part of three years, a cabal of self-appointed protectors of children have insisted that virtually anyone who is anyone in the Democratic Party and Hollywood is part and parcel of a sex trafficking ring. The promoters of this conspiracy theory, which began as Pizzagate and morphed into QAnon, are equally insistent that the reason the media is silent about it is because they are actually covering for those sick and evil people.

But when the world learned of a shockingly lenient plea deal crafted in 2008 that allowed financier and pedophile Jeffrey Epstein to escape an all-but-certain life sentence, the “Where we go one, we go all” gang was remarkably silent about it. There was a nationwide chorus of outrage directed at the former U. S. Attorney who crafted that plea deal, Alex Acosta, who was now Secretary of Labor in the Trump White House.

And yet, the Pizzagate and QAnon crowd didn’t join in. Indeed, the high priestess of QAnon, Liz Crokin, somehow concluded that Donald Trump deliberately appointed Acosta in order to force the media to cover Epstein’s arrest. Never mind that Acosta was, by any reasonable standard, covering for a pervert. How else do you describe letting Epstein get a deal that called for him to spend only 13 months in county jail, when there was enough evidence to put him away for life?

This would have been reason enough by itself to wonder if the Pizzagate and QAnon crowd really does care about children. But we got another reason earlier in the week. A prominent computer scientist at MIT is drawing well-deserved heat for appearing to excuse Epstein’s debauchery. And yet, as I write this, with few exceptions this has been the response from the Pizzagate and QAnon gang.

On Wednesday, MIT alumna Selam Jie Gano detonated a bombshell. She’d just received a stomach-churning email in which MIT computer scientist Richard Stallman, one of the pioneers of free software, slut-shamed one of Epstein’s victims.

Specifically, Stallman harrumphed that Virginia Roberts Giuffre was, at best, “entirely willing” when she claimed the Epstein cabal trafficked her to deceased MIT cognitive scientist Marvin Minsky. Giuffre, for those who don’t know, has stated under oath that Epstein and his longtime friend, Ghislaine Maxwell, trafficked her to several prominent celebrities from 1999 to 2002–from the time she was 17 to the time she was 20 or 21.

In another email further down the thread, Stallman claimed that statutory rape wasn’t a big deal. He harrumphed that it was “morally absurd” to deem someone a rapist based on “whether the victim was 18 years old or 17.” Lest you think this is snark, Motherboard reproduced the full thread here.

This alone would be enough to demand Stallman’s ouster. But The Daily Beast did a deep dive into Stallman’s blog posts and discovered that he has openly supported the legalization of pedophilia and child porn.

Over the weekend, there has been an increasingly loud chorus calling for Stallman to be fired from MIT. But one person has been notably silent on this matter–Crokin. She’s spent the last few weeks vacationing in Europe, but has found time to make at least one post about Epstein.

But not a word about Stallman–at least not so far. Why isn’t Crokin joining the chorus against him? After all, he’s covering for a pedophile.

Crokin isn’t the only QAnon kook who is deafeningly silent on Stallman. “@StormIsUponUs,” who has become the loudest QAnon pusher on Twitter since Crokin herself was ixnayed from the platform last year, has spent most of his time tweeting about how James Comey and Andrew McCabe are in deep doo-doo. But this supposed defender of children can’t bring himself to say a word about a guy who openly calls for pedophilia and child porn to be legalized.

So the people warning us about these sick and evil people can’t be bothered to make a peep when a truly sick and evil person comes to the defense of a convicted child molester. At best, their priorities are warped. At worst, you at least have to wonder if these Pizzagate and QAnon kooks are more interested in silencing those who dare attack their dear one than in actually defending children.