Last week, Daniel Troy LeBlanc, 44, was indicted for terrorist threats against Texas House Speaker Dade Phelan (R-Beaumont). LeBlanc runs the D.T. Lbc Facebook page, and
made the following post on January 14.
And Ain’t NOBODY been protecting the Kids and GIVING THEM A VOICE…I AM… RIGHT NOW… ONE SHOT… ONE KILL…2500M AWAY…0230… IN YOUR RIGHT TEMPLE… TAKING OUT THAT Al MUSKY GYM SOCK SMELLY CAT SOCK DARK HOLE RA MIND YOU HIDE WITHIN… FATHER KNOWS YOUR NEXT 12 Moves, The CHRIST KEEPING ME 9 AHEAD WITH THIS BREATH… Come at me… let’s get this ASS WHOOPIN over with Baphomet Cowardice, you just act as if like Victoria you convinced… SICKO.
I spent hours on D.T. Lbc reading LeBlanc’s rants. They have obvious ties to QAnon, the Men’s Rights/Incel community, flat earth conspiracy theories, anti-Catholic propaganda, and more. One of the more esoteric posts linked to a two hour “documentary” about the Nephilim.
The Nephilim are a race described in the Hebrew Bible that existed around the time of Noah. They are definitely minor characters, only being mentioned a handful of times and never described in great detail. All we really know about them is that they were tall and liked to mate with human women. Some translations render them as giants, angels, or fallen angels.
Nephilim conspiracies have existed for decades, but they were supercharged after Ancient Aliens launched on the History Channel in 2009. Suddenly, there was a host of slickly produced nonsense based on misrepresented archeology and unscientific speculation that helped weld together many things into one vague conspiracy theory involving visitors from above. The internet took it from there.
Reports of abnormal skeletons found in 1912 Wisconsin turned into a massive coverup of Nephilim thanks to some blog posts in 2013. The skulls of people all over the world who practiced artificial cranial deformation became proof that something alien had been mixed with human DNA.
In 2016, author and blogger L.A. Marzulli claimed he spoke to a man that had encountered Nephilim as part of U.S. military operations in Kandahar, Afghanistan, in 2002. This led to an ongoing belief that the race of Nephilim is waiting to attack our world through dimensional portals. There is an entire popular sub-genre of TikTok videos where people post “proof” of these portals appearing around the world.
The Nephilim are a malleable part of many conspiracy theories. They tie in easily with aliens, angels, or combinations of the two. Obviously, a government capable of covering up proof of giants is capable of covering up anything.
But why does something like Nephilim work its way into the mind of someone like LeBlanc? I believe it’s because of the rise of Christian conspiracism as a mental defense mechanism.
In an increasingly secular and fact checked world, some aspects of Christianity buckle under the pressure. It becomes harder and harder to justify regressive attitudes about science through faith when Biblical literalism continually fails to accurately describe natural phenomenon. Evolution and The Flood are the usual go-to examples here because a lot of Creation explanations would literally melt the Earth if it went the way Young Earth Creationists claim.
Some people simply accept that the Bible is not literal and continue with their faith. Others insist that the secular world is purposefully trying to destroy God’s creation, leading to widespread misery. The latter is the mindset where people start looking up funny shaped skulls to “prove” God is real.
Which leads us back to LeBlanc. His page is a parade of unhappiness framed as defiant devout belief. In the Nephilim post, he references Deuteronomy 28, a chapter that describes all the ways humanity will be punished if they fail to be obedient to God.
A deep reading shows that at some point he lost unsupervised contact with his children and suffered a variety of other setbacks. He lays the blame for these things at a cabal of sinister forces, including Speaker Phelan for setting up a committee to study gun legislation.
LeBlanc’s posts are essentially angry prayers. He invokes hidden tunnels and Satanic pedophile rings while constantly touting himself as an apex believer. Since he is so righteous, his misfortune must be because of evil influences in the world. Disbelief in his chosen indicators of God’s presence are not just a polite disagreement; they are a sin bringing about America’s fall and LeBlanc’s personal troubles.
Nephilim are one of the ways that LeBlanc says, “See? God is real, and if [insert Illuminati-style power structure here] would just stop lying about it, maybe God would stop punishing all of us.” Unfortunately, Nephilim aren’t real, and the only thing LeBlanc’s brand of faith is doing is leading him into a prison cell. Debunking Biblical giants is not why he doesn’t get to see his kids.
