Qanon3a

a is for atlantic (see below)

3 error msg ref field code hung

SEE 4

no merri

see Trumpista (melded?)

321 txt bak html newly sluggish

see GOP4 also 5 on civil war

---

:{Donald Trump Jr. calls QAnon supporters "patriotic Americans":(style="background-color:#ffbb16ff"):}:** | Media Matters for America

---

see story 1

an 12 23 no lnx

What Nikki Haley’s gaffe reveals about the GOP

John Stoehr

December 28, 2023

The new Nikki Haley news is that she refused to say that slavery was the cause of the Civil War. During an event in New Hampshire, she said that the bloodiest conflict on US soil was about, well, anything but slavery: “how government was going to run, the freedoms and what people could and couldn’t do,” she said, among other ridiculous things.

Magdi Jacobs, an Editorial Board contributor, said that “the fascinating thing about Haley's response was her discomfort. You could feel her flailing as she reached for the perfect combo of a pre-Donald Trump conservative ‘states’ rights’ answer to appeal to centrist voters, all while knowing that the insurrectionists want more racist red meat.”

“This is a balance no one can strike,” Magdi concluded. “It shows how fundamentally weak the current GOP is, even if our political media doesn't want to admit it. You can't win without Trump. I firmly believe – and I think Haley does, too – that you can't win with him either.”

More precisely (and I think Magdi would agree) is that this balance is impossible to strike because there’s nowhere to put it. There’s no such thing as a moderate position inside today’s Republican Party. There’s no foundation on which to build the broad coalition of voters that’s necessary to winning (ie, candidates need more than a base.) If such a position existed, Haley would have found it. It doesn’t, so all she can do is reach for a reason, any reason, as the true cause of the Civil War.

To her credit, Haley quickly walked back her remarks. Perhaps she sensed something was at risk in sounding so unreasonable. “Of course, the Civil War was about slavery,” she said. “We know that. That’s the easy part of it.” Then she went on to say that it was about “more than that,” citing, among other ridiculous things, “the role of government.”

That she walked back her initial remarks may seem “reasonable,” but it won’t matter. Remember, even if she wanted to strike a balance between “conservative states’ rights” and “racist red meat” – and that’s apparently what she wanted to do – there is no foundation inside the Republican Party on which to put it. There is no moderate position.

To be a moderate, you have to sound reasonable, but according to David Atkins, a frequent contributor to the Washington Monthly, the GOP base “doesn’t want even the perception of a more reasonable candidate. They want a dictator to punish their enemies.”

“Haley has zero chance of winning” the presidential election, David told me. “Even if she did win New Hampshire, it wouldn’t help her any more than it did Bernie Sanders in 2016 and Pete Buttigieg in 2020.”

There’s always makebelieve, though. Fortunately, Haley has a lot of help in that regard. The billionaire Koch brothers gave her their blessing. So did the popular governor of New Hampshire, Chris Sununu. They portray Haley as the champion of “conservative values,” as if “conservative values” was still shorthand for “moderate,” and as if Donald Trump’s gravity has not pulled the entire party to the far right.

While makebelieve is a powerful force in politics, it’s probably not going to be enough for Haley or any of the other GOP candidates. Oh, sure, they did OK while the neutral press was casting them as “legitimate alternatives” to Trump. But once the neutral press gets bored – and the neutral press always gets bored – whatever promise these “legitimate alternatives” once had melts into the air. It happened to Ron DeSantis. It happened to Vivek Ramaswamy. It will probably happen to Haley. Everything begins and ends with Trump. As Magdi said, the GOP can’t win with him and it can’t win without him.

In the following interview with me, David Atkins explains not only why he thinks Haley is doomed, but why, in 2024, the Republicans are, too.

JS: New Hampshire Governor Chris Sununu endorsed Republican candidate Nikki Haley after the Koch network did. Could that be enough for her to win New Hampshire? And will that matter in the long run?

DA: GOP megadonors need to come to terms with the reality that their base cannot be controlled. They let the MAGA flames burn out of control and now they get to reap the whirlwind. Haley has zero chance of winning absent some issue impacting Trump’s health, because the GOP base doesn’t want even the perception of a more reasonable candidate. They want a dictator to punish their enemies.

And let’s be clear: Haley is also a radical rightwing extremist, as her embrace of a six-week abortion ban makes clear. She just doesn’t seem like she wants to destroy the entire federal bureaucracy, send Democrats to gulags, weaponize the Justice Department and the IRS against all their domestic opponents, and institute mass deportation camps of immigrants. So she’s not the candidate of the GOP base, which does want those things and wants Trump to deliver them.

The Republican Party’s base isn’t in the thrall of Trumpism; Trump is the avatar of their desires, which is why he will be the nominee. Also, even if Haley did win New Hampshire, it wouldn’t help her any more than it did Bernie Sanders in 2016 and Pete Buttigieg in 2020.

JS: You said the culture war is over. Taylor Swift won, Elon Musk lost. I have written that obituary, too, only to see myself proven wrong.

DA: The culture war is over in the sense that people under the age of 50 in the areas of the country that make up more than 80 percent of the national GDP despise the theocratic conservatism that animates Republican activists. That isn’t going to change.

This doesn’t mean that Republicans can’t win elections, and institute rearguard policy actions, like restricting abortion and LGBT rights. They can. The threat of hard-right fascist dictatorship is very real.

But most of the culture wars can be explained by the fact that the marketplace responds primarily to 18- to 45-year-old consumers in cities, while the electoral system responds primarily to 65-plus-year-olds in exurbia. The electoral system can produce a fascist takeover, but it will do so by oppressing a majority that wants nothing to do with it. Such tyrannies rarely last for long.

In the meantime, the weight of popular culture is increasingly shifting to treat cultural progressivism as normative, if for no other reason than that’s the population advertisers want to appeal to. The engines of capitalism are working against social conservatives now, which is why you see such a growing rift between the evangelical base and the urbanite business Republican crowd.

JS: You said the GOP will lose 2024. You cited the fact that they have lost every special election. Special elections attract partisans. Presidential election attracts everyone. Am I wrong in noting the difference?

DA: It’s no secret that Trump and Biden at the top of the ticket will make for an interesting dynamic in 2024, since neither are popular, at least at the moment. But in this environment, a generic Democrat is consistently beating a generic Republican. If the public’s concerns about both Trump and Biden as individuals were sidelined, and the voters were to choose a party and its policies, Democrats would be marching into a confident victory in 2024.

The key will be to remind voters of the tremendous legislative accomplishments of the Biden administration, emphasize Trump’s rampant criminality and danger to democracy, and remind people that no matter what they think of the candidates, the policy choices are very real. Republican rule would be a cruel disaster.

JS: I think the GOP is going to impeach Biden. How does that factor into your thinking, if it does, that the Republicans are going to lose 2024?

DA: Republicans want to play tit-for-tat by impeaching Biden to take some of the sting out of Trump’s double impeachments. More generally, if they can make impeachment into a routine partisan clown show, then it minimizes and defangs the one tool in the Constitution that’s designed to stop an authoritarian, criminal unitary executive.

The flip side of doing this is that any impeachment of Biden by Republicans on flimsy pretexts is likely to have as minimal an impact on voters as Trump’s impeachments apparently have.

JS: What if there's a major polling error and Trump isn't really a mile ahead of every other Republican candidate? Most of us just assume he's going to be the nominee. Iowa and New Hampshire might be stunners?

DA: What’s particularly interesting about Trump seizing the GOP nomination is the low-key panic among many Republican activists. While Trump’s indictments have so far not impacted his popularity, we are in uncharted territory. It’s impossible to predict what impact multiple public trials and possible felony convictions of the sitting GOP nominee might have on public polling and electoral outcomes.

One could speculate that the polling might be wrong, and GOP voters in Iowa and New Hampshire might choose a different nominee out of self-preservation. But Trump has developed a cult-like following, and one thing that we know about cults is that they are largely impervious to even their leaders going to jail. If anything, it makes them feel like martyrs. So I find it extremely unlikely that Iowa and New Hampshire will surprise us by selecting a Haley or Ron DeSantis.

---

Oregon state senators use QAnon-affiliated and far-right shows to promote their lawsuit claiming the federal government inflated COVID numbers | Media Matters for America

---

omfg

https://www.alternet.org/2021/09/biden-trump/

A recent Washington demonstration supporting those charged with crimes for the Jan. 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol fizzled, with no more than 200 demonstrators showing up. The organizers had promised 700 people would turn out – or more.

But the threat from far-right insurrectionists is not over.

For months, my colleagues and I at the University of Chicago Project on Security and Threats have been tracking insurrectionist sentiments in U.S. adults, most recently in surveys in June. We have found that 47 million American adults – nearly 1 in 5 – agree with the statement that “the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president." Of those, 21 million also agree that “use of force is justified to restore Donald J. Trump to the presidency."

Our survey found that many of these 21 million people with insurrectionist sentiments have the capacity for violent mobilization. At least 7 million of them already own a gun, and at least 3 million have served in the U.S. military and so have lethal skills. Of those 21 million, 6 million said they supported right-wing militias and extremist groups, and 1 million said they are themselves or personally know a member of such a group, including the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys.

Only a small percentage of people who hold extremist views ever actually commit acts of violence, but our findings reveal how many Americans hold views that could turn them toward insurrection.

A solid survey

[method grfx]

extreme beliefs

This polling found that 9% of American adults say they agree with the statement that “Use of force is justified to restore Donald J. Trump to the presidency." And 25% of adults either strongly or somewhat agree with the statement that “The 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump and Joe Biden is an illegitimate president."

Overall, 8% of the survey participants share both of those views.

The margin of error of this survey was plus or minus 4 percentage points. So when calculating the number of the 258 million adult Americans who hold these views, we looked at the range of between 4% and 12% – which gave us between 10 million and 31 million. The best single figure is the middle of that range, 21 million.

People who said force is justified to restore Trump were consistent in their insurrectionist sentiments: Of them, 90% also see Biden as illegitimate, and 68% also think force may be needed to preserve America's traditional way of life.

The fringe moving into the mainstream

Combined with their military experience, gun ownership and connections to extremist groups and militias, this signals the existence of significant mainstream support in America for a violent insurrection.

This group of 21 million who agree both that force is justified to restore Trump and that Biden is an illegitimate president has two additional views that are also on the fringes of mainstream society:

63% agree with the statement that “African American people or Hispanic people in our country will eventually have more rights than whites" – a belief sometimes called “the **Great Replacement."

54% agree that “A secret group ofSatan-worshipping pedophiles is ruling the US government," which is the key belief in the QAnon movement.

Some people with insurrectionist sentiments hold one of these political views but not the other, suggesting there are multiple ways of thinking that lead a person toward the insurrectionist movement.

Broader support

This latest research reinforces our previous findings, that the Jan. 6 insurrection represents a far more mainstream movement than earlier instances of right-wing extremism across the country. Those events, mostly limited to white supremacist and militia groups, saw more than 100 individuals arrested from 2015 to 2020. But just 14% of those arrested for their actions on Jan. 6 are members of those groups. More than half are business owners or middle-aged white-collar professionals, and only 7% are unemployed.

There is no way to say for sure when – or even whether – these insurrectionists will take action. On Jan. 6, it took clear direction from Donald Trump and other political leaders to turn these dangerous sentiments into a violent reality. But the movement itself is larger and more complex than many people might like to think.

Robert A. Pape, Professor of Political Science, University of Chicago

---

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/qanon-2653524968/

Reporter Laura J. Nelson, in an article published by the Los Angeles Times on June 23, takes a look at Californians who have an unlikely combination of beliefs: they are into new age ideology, but are also QAnon supporters.}:}:

"A world that has long embraced love, light and acceptance is now making room for something else: QAnon," Nelson reports. "More commonly associated with right-wing groups, the conspiracy theory is spreading through yoga, meditation and other wellness circles. Friends and colleagues have watched with alarm as Instagram influencers and their New Age peers — yogis, energy healers, sound bathers, crystal practitioners, psychics, quantum magicians — embraced QAnon's conspiratorial worldview and sprayed it across social media."

QAnon is a far-right movement that promotes bizarre and outlandish conspiracy theories. According to QAnon, the United States' federal government has been taken over by an international cabal of pedophiles, child sex traffickers, Satanists and cannibals — and former President Donald Trump was put in the White House to fight the cabal. Well-known pro-QAnon extremists in the Republican Party include Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Rep. Lauren Boebert of Colorado.

The fact that QAnon has made inroads with far-right Christian fundamentalist evangelicals isn't surprising; the Christian right has long been prone to conspiracy theorists. But the new age community in California seems an unlikely place for QAnon to make inroads.

Nelson, however, reports, "The health, wellness and spirituality world has always been primed for that worldview, followers say. Though largely filled with well-meaning people seeking spiritual or physical comfort, the $1.5-trillion industry can also be a hotbed for conspiracies, magical thinking, dietary supplements with dubious scientific claims and distrust of institutional healthcare, including vaccines."

Julian Walker, a Mar Vista yogi who hosts a podcast called "Conspirituality," told the Times, "It's always been the water we were swimming in. Now, we're seeing what happens when the water rises."

The violent insurrectionists who attacked the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6 included supporters of QAnon as well as members of the Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers and other far-right Trump supporters. And some of those QAnon supporters, Nelson points out, embrace new age beliefs.

Nelson explains, "Several New Age spiritualists in Southern California interviewed by the Times said they knew a total of more than a dozen former friends and colleagues at the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol with ties to yoga, meditation, energy healing and dietary supplements hawked by multilevel marketing companies. Jake Angeli, whose face paint and horned headgear during the Capitol riot earned him the nickname 'the QAnon Shaman,' carried a sign at earlier protests that read, 'Q Sent Me,' and successfully petitioned a federal judge on religious grounds to receive only organic food in jail. One of the best known of the rioters is Alan Hostetter, a ponytailed former police chief, yoga teacher and sound healer from Orange County who spoke at a QAnon conferenceand was indicted by federal officials this month."

Los Angeles-based yoga instructor Seane Corn, who co-founded the group Off the Mat, Into the World, has been warning others in the new age community that QAnon is dangerous.

"Corn was among the wellness leaders who shared a statement in September warning that QAnon's tactics resembled cult psychology and that the ideology would sow confusion, division and paranoia," Nelson reports. "Corn estimates she knows at least ten people who embraced 'hardcore QAnon,' including two people who participated in the attack on the Capitol — and is aware of more than 30 colleagues and peers who subscribe to some forms of the ideology, as well as a 'countless' number of yoga students. Corn said she has watched bots and real-life QAnon devotees try to harness her social media comment sections as a recruiting ground, using 'wellness language and nonviolent communication' in an attempt to lead her followers toward more conspiratorial thinking.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

---

Believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory are enthusiastically circulating a video of a contributor at the Trump-loving One America News calling for the mass execution of the former president's enemies.

Via The Daily Beast's Will Sommer, an OAN contributor this week went off on a rant in which he falsely claimed that "voter fraud" cost former President Donald Trump the 2020 election, and said it was time to think about how to deal with the purported perpetrators.

"Exactly how many people were involved in these efforts to undermine the election?" he asked. "Hundreds? Thousands? Tens of thousands? How many people does it take to carry out a coup against the presidency?"

He then pivoted to the consequences that the purported coup plotters will face once their treachery is exposed.

"In the past, America had a very good solution for dealing with such traitors: Execution," he said.

According to Sommer, the clip has gone viral in QAnon chat rooms.

"I came across the clip because QAnon people are see it as proof that the mass executions are right around the corner," Sommer explains. "Lots of glee in the Q chat rooms, demands for how exactly their imagined executions will be carried out and complaints they had to wait too long."

---

mma621

https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/qanon-influencers-want-their-followers-infiltrate-republican-precinct

---

an 621

fBI warns Congress of more possible QAnon violence targeting Democratic lawmakers

David Badash The New Civil Rights Movement June 15, 2021

The FBI has briefed members of Congress that QAnon "digital soldiers" may become violent and engage in more acts of domestic violent extremism, like the January 6 insurrection. In an unclassified version of the threat assessment delivered to top lawmakers in April the Bureau warns that Democrats may be targeted.

Rather than walking away from the far right wing conspiracy movement that paints some top Democrats as part of a dark cabal of cannibalistic Satan-worshipping pedophiles being fought by Donald Trump, some QAnon cultists think "that individuals need to take greater control of the direction of the movement than before," CNN reports in an exclusive.

The shift is fueled by a belief among some of the conspiracy's more militant followers that they "can no longer 'trust the plan" set forth by its mysterious standard-bearer, known simply as "Q," according an unclassified FBI threat assessment on QAnon sent to lawmakers last week, which was obtained by CNN.

This might lead followers to seek to harm "perceived members of the 'cabal' such as Democrats and other political opposition — instead of continually awaiting Q's promised actions which have not occurred," according to the assessment.

CNN also reports FBI Director Christopher Wray "made clear the bureau is not investigating" the QAnon movement, but only crimes committed by its adherents.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

'An idiocracy based on a digital prophet': QAnon longs for a fascist ... ›

How Fox News is now defending QAnon - Alternet.org ›

This QAnon supporter and Capitol rioter now says he was a 'victim ... ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

QAnon Is More Important Than You Think - The Atlantic ›

What Is QAnon? What We Know About the Conspiracy-Theory ... ›

How three conspiracy theorists took 'Q' and sparked Qanon ›

tom b raw

According to a report from the Guardian's Sam Levine, Republicans who have always dabbled in playing to the red meat crowd are now ramping up their efforts to use that voting bloc to remain in power by disrupting and questioning election results.

Faced with changing demographics and states -- - notably Arizona and Georgia --- that were once reliably Republican but are now sending Democrats to Congress, Republicans are looking for ways to stop the bleeding as their power melts away.

According to Levine, Donald Trump just gave them the roadmap by blatantly saying the election was stolen from him -- which has been well-received by more than just conservative extremists.

As his Guardian report notes, "... fanned repeatedly by Donald Trump throughout 2020, the myth of a stolen American election has shifted from a fringe idea to one being embraced by the Republican party. The so-called big lie – the idea that the election was stolen from Trump - has transformed from a tactical strategy to a guiding ideology."

According to UC Irvine law professor Richard Hasen, Republicans embracing Trump's "Big Lie" is a sign of an emerging trend that doesn't bode well for future elections.

"Voter suppression is not new, the battle lines have been drawn over that for quite some time. But this new concern about election subversion is really worrisome," he explained.

Edward Foley, a law professor at the Ohio State University, concurred, adding, "I do think it's a relatively new phenomenon, unfortunately, and disturbing. We've had disputed elections in the past, but we've never had the denial of the basic mathematical reality of counting votes."

With the Guardian's Levine noting polls show that a majority of Republicans still believe that Trump is the "true president," he spoke with a former GOP operative from Florida who made a very candid admission that Republicans are seeing their position of power wither away and are being forced to embrace Trump's tactics .

"In the past, party elders, party leaders … exploited the crazies in order to win elections and then largely ignored them after the elections," explained Mac Stipanovich. "What has happened since then is that Trump opened Pandora's box and let them out. He not only let them out, he affirmed them and provoked them. And so now they're running wild and they are legitimatizing these delusions."

You can read more here.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

an 621

the second-most revered figure in the QAnon conspiracy firmament called for a military coup in the United States. Again. Retired three-star general and former Trump campaign national security advisor Mike Flynn called for the end of democracy during a question-and-answer session last weekend at a QAnon conference in Dallas.

"I'm a simple Marine," a grizzled audience member said, "I wanna know why what happened in Minamar (sic) can't happen here." The room erupted. Flynn waited for the cheering to subside and said, "No reason. I mean, it should happen here."

Flynn reportedly called the conference organizers to backtrack. He's now denying that he said what we all saw him say, but let's get one thing straight: Mike Flynn is a liar.

Trump fired him for lying to Mike Pence about Russia. He pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI, but he lied in his plea deal, so Trump had to pardon him. Now he's lying about how he called for a military coup in the United States. On video. This is nothing new for Flynn. After the 2020 election, Flynn privately urged then-president Donald Trump to send troops to "re-run" the election, an idea he'd previously floated in the media.

It's nothing new for QAnon either. QAnon supporters have been cheering on the coup in Myanmar since the military overthrew the democratically elected government in February. The junta has killed over 800 people, including more than 40 children, but QAnon supporters don't know anything about Myanmar's internal politics. They just like coups. After Trump's failed coup attempt on January 6, many of them found it comforting to know a military still could overthrow a democracy somewhere.

And why wouldn't they? The beating heart of QAnon's dark theology is The Storm, the military coup that is always right around the corner. The Storm is the day when Donald Trump and the armed forces liquidates QAnon's political enemies: Democrats, Hollywood celebrities, the media, and anyone who stands against them. The former president will retake his rightful place in the White House, democracy be damned.

According to a new poll, nearly a quarter of white evangelicals believe The Storm is coming to restore "rightful leaders." This mythology fits naturally with the Big Lie that Trump won the election. QAnon believers heard Donald Trump's call to come to Washington on January 6 as the coming of the storm. Many of them believed they were being summoned to take part in the long-awaited battle between good and evil.

Most normal people think of QAnon as the "pedo cabal" people. Indeed, QAnon talks a good game about saving the children from pedophiles. As disturbing as they sound, these child-abuse fantasies are good for recruiting unsuspecting converts. After all, everyone wants to prevent child abuse. QAnon has deep roots in evangelical Christianity and its most fervent proponents have thought long and hard—and written with uncharacteristic coherence—about how to best recruit. Attitude change begins with finding common ground. You can get almost anyone to agree that child abuse is a problem. That provides the common ground needed to begin a conversation in which the believer can plant seeds in the prospective convert's mind about other aspects of QAnon. This process is called "red-pilling," a reference to The Matrix, a movie during which the hero swallows the red pill to dissolve illusion and reveal ultimate reality.

The news media's focus on pedophilia obscures the core of QAnon's ideology, which is a longing for glorious, purifying and revelational violence. The pedophiles of QAnon mythology are the alter-egos of powerful Democratic politicians, Hollywood celebrities, journalists and Jewish financiers George Soros and the Rothschilds. These are the villains who will be purged by the military when The Storm is finally upon us.

Unfortunately for QAnon, normal people love democracy as much as they hate pedophilia. So recruiters don't open with talk of a coup. The faithful avoid talking about it to journalists. That's why Flynn is taking pains to walk back his comment. While The Storm is normal in QAnon circles, it's still taboo in the outside world.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

jenna attacked for saying trump can't be re-install in aug b/c you know lAW/REALITY?

621 MAGA heads go berserk over 'incompetent failure' Jenna Ellis after ... ›

https://www.alternet.org/2021/06/trump-reinstated/

NO LNX TWT

On June 1, the New York Times' Maggie Haberman reported, on Twitter, that former President Donald Trump still believes that the 2020 election results will be overturned and that he will be "reinstated" to the White House by August. Haberman discussed her reporting during a June 2 appearance on CNN's "New Day," stressing to hosts John Berman and Brianna Keilar that Trump is "echoing" the false claims he is hearing from attorney Sidney Powell and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

"There is no mechanism by which this can happen," Haberman said of Trump's delusional claim that he will be returning to the Oval Office by August. But Trump's delusions, Haberman added, are being encouraged by Powell and Lindell — and he is "regurgitating" their bogus claims.

Trump has been telling a number of people he’s in contact with that he expects he will get reinstated by August (no… https://t.co/0gUGozPQQR

— Maggie Haberman (@Maggie Haberman) 1622551318.0

Haberman told Berman and Keilar, "What he's doing is echoing things that are being said by Sidney Powell, who was his lawyer — although he distanced himself from her at certain points over the final months of the administration. But she was helping advise him on these efforts to overturn the election last year. This is being said my Michael Lindell, the CEO of MyPillow — who has been pushing this for some time. (Trump) is echoing what they're saying. The difference between them saying it and Donald Trump saying it is that one is the former president — one is a possible future (Republican) Party nominee…. There are people telling him things are possible that are not possible."

Powell and Lindell have been relentless far-right promoters of the Big Lie, falsely claiming that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump — who, Haberman said, has been "so laser-focused" on the recent election "audits" taking place in Arizona and other states because he "thinks they are going to overturn" the 2020 election results.

JUST NOW: "“There is a dangerous component about this conversation that's going on.” @maggieNYT on her reporting t… https://t.co/u3fuzgsHhr

— John Berman (@John Berman) 1622632941.0

Trump, Haberman warned, is trying to use the "conservative media ecosystem" to promote his fantasies of being "reinstated" to the White House this summer.

"People are in their own media ecosystems," Haberman observed.

Berman pointed out that some Trump opponents are upset with Haberman for tweeting about the former president's delusions, and the Times reporter responded that "ignoring" Trump will not make him go away in 2021 any more than it did in 2015 and 2016.

Haberman told Berman and Keilar that Trump "is in control of the Republican Party, to a big extent…. Ignoring him was not the answer in 2015."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

MAGA heads go berserk over 'incompetent failure' Jenna Ellis after ... ›

'A new inauguration date is set': Inside the latest QAnon conspiracy ... ›

Trump tells followers he 'expects to be reinstated' in August as ... ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Trump's Facebook account should never be reinstated because we ... ›

Today Is The Day QAnon Believes Donald Trump Will Be Reinstated ... ›

QAnon Believes Donald Trump Will Be Reinstated As President ... ›

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/qanon-2653126391/

1/3 qnon

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/qanon-evangelicals/

qanon and trumpista pseudo-populism on sterpois/runaway mode? cascade doom hype fear anger soc med

der volk is pseudo-populism?

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/maga-nazi

hnn

William A. **Galston**'s recent essay "The Bitter Heartland" begins, "We are living in an age of resentment .. . [that] shapes today's politics." The more I read of it (and more about it later), the more the great resentments of Hitler's followers came to mind. They resented rich Jews, the victorious Allies who in 1919 had imposed the "unfair" postwar Versailles Treaty [TPP clinton trade deal mex cda] upon them, civilian German politicians who had signed the treaty, communists, who had taken over in Russia and were a rising force in Germany, and the "decadent" godless ways of Berlin, as hinted at in the play and film Cabaret.

The Versailles Treaty forced Germany to give up land to their west and east and also their overseas empire. It also imposed strict limits on its armed forces and weapons. But perhaps most bothersome of all to the average German was the imposition of war reparations, which many Germans believed contributed to their great financial agonies. This was especially true during the great inflation of 1923 – by then a loaf of bread could cost billions of Reichsmarks – and the Great Depression. Historian Peter Fritzsche notes that "between 1929 and 1932, one in three Germans lost their livelihoods. At the same time, young people had no prospect of entering the labor force . . . German farmers suffered terribly as commodity prices slumped."

Fritzsche also relates some of Hitler's early tactics like boycotts that "relied on entrenched resentments against allegedly wealthy, rapacious, or tricky Jews," and he writes that "the Nazi leader appealed to popular fears and resentments and transformed them into final judgments and the promise of direct remedial action." Moreover, Hitler used a we-versus-they approach, "pitting patriotic Germans against subversive Communists, Aryans against Jews, the healthy against the sick, the Third Reich against the rest of the world."

Almost a century after Hitler came to power in 1933, some of Donald Trump's followers remind us of Hitler's crowds. On at least one occasion, after Hitler ranted about the "November criminals" (German politicians who negotiated the war-ending armistice of 1918), the audience cried out, "Hang them up! Bust their ass!" In both the 2016 and 2020 campaigns, Trump crowds (in response to their hero's words about Hillary Clinton) shouted "lock her up."

Already during the 2016 campaigning, writer George Saunders observed some of the resentments of Trump supporters. Many believed "they'd been let down by their government . . . and [were] sensitive to "any infringement whatsoever on their freedom." Many suffered from what Saunders labeled "usurpation anxiety syndrome," which he defined as "the feeling that one is, or is about to be, scooped, overrun, or taken advantage of by some Other with questionable intentions."

In Galston's 2021 essay "The Bitter Heartland" he cites a 2016 poll that indicated that 65 percent of whites without college degrees "believed that America's culture and way of life had changed for the worse since the 1950s." But more than that poll, his essay dissects the continuing Trumpites' resentments much more thoroughly.

Like some before him, he indicates or hints at where the Trump resentful are mostly found: in small towns and rural areas, and among older people, non-college graduates, groups once dependent on manufacturing and mining jobs, and "social conservatives and white Christians." The resentful are more provincial and traditional and many of them "lack access to high-speed broadband."

"They have a sense of displacement in a country they once dominated. Immigrants, minorities, non-Christians, even atheists have taken center stage, forcing them to the margins of American life." They believe that the big-city elites, the professionals, and the government—before Trump came along—all failed to help them achieve their share of the American Dream. They resent professionals and liberals telling them how to live, calling them racists, or limiting their freedoms—e.g. to buy multiple guns or go about maskless during our present pandemic. "President Trump was at his best, they say, when he ignored the experts and went his own way."

Like Saunders earlier, Galston thinks that many of the resentful feel they are "being treated unjustly, unfairly, or disrespectfully." The appearance of Trump and discovery of like-minded people—via the Internet and the person-to-person contacts of smaller towns—help overcome feelings of powerlessness. Feeling more powerful, some "people merely want a remedy for the injustice they have experienced. But others—typically those who experience disrespect—want more than redress; they want revenge."

Galston closes his essay with some suggestions for dealing with Trumpite resentments, but they are less compelling than his analysis of them. Partly this is because, while some are legitimate, others—like the reluctance of many white Christians to grant equal rights to all ethnic and religious minorities—are not. As we learned from examining the supporters of Hitler, understanding the difficulties of people and even sympathizing with their plight (e.g., being jobless) does not mean condoning resentments that lead to hateful behavior like victimizing Jews.

The preceding comparison between two phenomena of group resentment, separated by almost a century, in two different countries and political cultures, omits many contrasts and nuances. In addition, we know how Hitler and German Nazism ended. The ending of the Trumpite culture of resentment is still unknown. Will it gradually decline? Will the Biden administration successfully address many of the Trumpite grievances? Will Republicans continue to stoke them? Will Trump run again in 2024? None of us know for sure. But thanks to the writings of Galston and others--he mentions Katherine Cramer and Arlie Hochschild--we better understand the resentments, and that's a start.

Walter G. Moss is a professor emeritus of history at Eastern Michigan University, a Contributing Editor of HNN, and author of A History of Russia. 2 Vols.For a list of his recent books and online publications click here.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

lawyer shaman short bus ppl

https://www.alternet.org/2021/05/qanon-shaman/

https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/qanon-followers-are-working-arizona-senators-audit-officials-overturn-2020

great pix

As Arizona conducts an audit of ballots in Maricopa County rooted in baseless conspiracy theories about the outcome of the 2020 presidential election, it appears the evidence underpinning that effort and much of the work to generate support for it has come from two QAnon followers, Liz Harris and Bobby Piton.

Both Harris and Piton have frequently bragged about working with Arizona senators and audit officials -- in one case, even livestreaming a supposed meeting with Rep. Andy Biggs (R-AZ) to discuss their findings -- but their support of the election audit is grounded in widely debunked claims of voter fraud, many of which stem from the same “Stop the Steal” allegations that the election was stolen from former President Donald Trump.

Simply put: Arizona’s election audit has a QAnon problem.

Harris and Piton’s role in the Arizona election audit

Harris and Piton have both managed to place themselves in roles of influence as two of the main promoters of the Arizona election fraud conspiracy theory, working behind the scenes with state senators and audit officials. The Arizona Republic recently reported on Harris and Piton as some of the key figures involved in the election audit.

Harris is head of a “non-partisan” “grassroots canvass effort” to prove that rampant voter fraud exists in the state’s most populous county (it doesn't). The group claims, using data tabulated by Piton, to have uncovered mass voter fraud during the 2020 election.

Harris ran for the Arizona House of Representatives’s District 17 seat in 2020 but lost the general election. Much of her time is now dedicated to voter fraud canvassing efforts, while she commonly livestreams multiple videos per day related to the Arizona audit on YouTube and Facebook.

Piton is a managing partner at a financial planning and investment advisory firm in Illinois, whose website claims he “has read well in excess of a million pages over his career and has extensively studied physics, quantum mechanics, mathematics, economics, trading, portfolio construction, model development, asset valuation, and alpha generation to develop and refine his methodology.”

It seems that Harris and Piton have a relationship with Doug Logan, the CEO of Cyber Ninjas, the company conducting the audit. Logan recently came under fire for peddling “Stop the Steal” and other election fraud conspiracy theories on his personal Twitter account before it was deleted.

On April 11, Piton posted on the far-right platform Gab promising to provide his supposed Maricopa election fraud findings“to the person who won the bid to perform the audit,” which would be Logan and Cyber Ninjas. Piton later confirmed to The Daily Beast that Logan “asked him for his assistance” in the election audit, where he was working “in an unofficial capacity.” Piton also prayed a rosary on YouTube for Harris, Logan, and all Arizona “patriots.”

Harris claimed to have met Logan “multiple times,” and there is additional evidence to suggest that Harris and Logan have been in communication about the audit. According to a May 12 newsletter from Arizona Capitol Reports, Logan boosted Harris’ campaign with the hashtag “#PhantomSleeperVoters,” a reference to conspiracy theories about fraudulent ballots cast by nonexistent voters, before the deactivation of his Twitter account.

On February 28, Harris uploaded photos of herself with former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, two of the right-wing, pro-Trump millionaires funding the Arizona election audit, as well as Sidney Powell, the former Trump campaign attorney and conspiracy theorist who attempted to overturn the 2020 presidential election. In the comments under the photos, Harris wrote, “Arizona hold on to your hats… The storm has just begun!” (“The storm” is a key phrase in the QAnon conspiracy theory.) Harris noted that this meeting occurred in Arizona but did not provide other specifics[pix

harris has bragged in an April 25 livestream about sharing her canvassing data with Arizona state Senate President Karen Fann, who has been supportive of the audit. She also said senators were lauding her canvassing efforts and relayed that audit officials were supposedly going to incorporate her work “into this deep-dive forensic audit.”

At one point, Piton livestreamed what appears to be a private Zoom meeting about the election audit between Harris, Rep. Andy Biggs, members of the Arizona Senate, and himself. This means that state Senate members and a sitting U.S. congressman were seemingly consulting with Harris and Piton about the audit and baseless allegations of election fraud. In the same livestream, Piton told his viewers that he had been asked to help with the election audit.

“One of the individuals that may be winning this bid to do the work has contacted me a few weeks back,” Piton said. “I did tell Liz I thought they would be contacting me, or somebody would. And they asked me if I would look at the data and I said that I would definitely be helping in one way, shape, or form.”

Given Piton’s other claims about contact with audit officials, this is most likely another reference to Logan.

On January 19, Piton posted what appears to be a birthday card from Trump and “two Patriots” working in the White House, at least one of whom appears to be from the National Security Council. This is particularly significant given Piton’s unofficial role in the Arizona election audit; the post also claims that Piton has been “communicating some of my findings with” those administration officials. [img]

in an April 2 Facebook post, Piton bragged about signing affidavits for “both Lin Wood and Sidney Powell regarding PA data back in mid December.”

Piton and Harris worked together to attempt to prove potential voter fraud abnormalities. According to Piton, he provided Harris with “a sample size of over 95,000 voter registrations that he forecast would have problems of the approximately 4,300,000 registered voters who are on the voter rolls”; Harris then “randomly selected names on those lists and had volunteers go to work in determining how many of these registered voters had issues.” This formed the basis for their election fraud claims.

Harris’ group started the “Crime of the Century” project, a website dedicated to exposing supposed voter fraud in Arizona. It includes an “Election Integrity Arizona” page that contains Harris’ “initial findings and analysis of the 2020 General Election in Maricopa and Pima counties conducted by a citizens’ non-partisan grassroots project.” The Arizona Republic reported that Harris’ initially claimed her “group was helping with the Senate’s audit, but she couldn’t say on what part because of a nondisclosure agreement. Harris later said she doesn’t know what her involvement may or may not be.”

The Arizona audit isn’t the first brush Harris and Piton have had with promoting misinformation about election integrity. Harris also testified at Rudy Giuliani’s Arizona election fraud “hearing” in November, with Piton appearing as an expert witness to claim “that his opinion, from reviewing Arizona voter data, was that between 120,000 and 306,000 ballots were cast by ‘fake people.’”

Both Harris and Piton appear to follow or support the QAnon conspiracy theory

Both Harris and Piton have posted content and slogans affiliated with the QAnon conspiracy theory. Followers of QAnon led the January 6 insurrection at the U.S. Capitol and believe that Trump will conduct mass arrests and secret military tribunals to prosecute “deep state” elites.

Harris’ social media presence suggests that she subscribes to the QAnon conspiracy theory. Her Facebook account contains QAnon videos, a “WWG1WGA” shirt (an abbreviation of the QAnon slogan “Where we go one, we go all”), and QAnon -affiliated posts.

As for Piton, when The Daily Beast first reported on his unofficial involvement in the Arizona audit in late April, he said that “he didn’t know much about QAnon.” But his social media tells a different story. Posts explicitly supporting the QAnon conspiracy theory, and even a Q “drop” -- the term for messages from the anonymous figure at the center of the conspiracy theory -- are scattered throughout his public Facebook page. [pix]

for example, on August 2020, Piton wrote a post in support of the “#SaveTheChildren” QAnon movement, calling the Democratic Party the “DemoNcrat Party.” “This party is PURE EVIL,” wrote Piton. The image he shared with this post also contained the QAnon slogan “WWG1WGA.[img

in a post following the January 6 insurrection, Piton claimed to have never “been part of any ‘Q movement’” and downplayed his support as merely liking “some of their phrases.”

Less than a month later, Piton posted a photo of former National Security Agency Director Admiral Michael S. Rogers along with references to QAnon. “Admiral Rogers… come on down… you are the lucky number 1… 7 on the Truth is Right!!!” wrote Piton. (Q is the 17th letter in the alphabet and is popularly used to refer to “Q.”)

“Q...uestion for you,” he continued, once again referencing Q.

In November 2019, Piton shared a QAnon primer video on Facebook, writing: “Keep an open mind… even if all of this isn’t 100% accurate, it is something worth thinking about!" [pix]

on April 25, Piton and Harris were both interviewed on the QAnon outlet Patriots’ Soapbox. During the livestream, Josh Barnett, a QAnon House candidate who lost a race to represent Arizona’s 7th Congressional District in 2020 and is running again for the state’s 6th district in 2022, bragged that Arizona senators “saw Liz’s numbers” and “saw Bobby’s data” and “that’s when things started changing” and they began backing the audit.

Harris and Piton’s involvement in the Arizona election audit is more than concerning -- if their claims of working with audit officials and Arizona senators are true, it means that an attempt to overturn Arizona’s election results has been quietly influenced by two QAnon followers working from within.

https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/qanon-followers-are-working-arizona-senators-audit-officials-overturn-2020

wait what/ did he admit he made it up b/c it's appealing/convenient?! "i'm just asking?"

Far right wing cable channel Newsmax TV hosted a QAnon conspiracy theorist Monday night who told viewers Donald Trump is still president and his vice president is John F. Kennedy, Jr., who died in a tragic plane accident in 1999 at the age of 38.

JFK, Jr. being alive is one of the QAnon cult's beliefs.

Newsmax introduced its guest as "a Minnesota business owner who refused to take down a massive, massive Trump 2020 flag that violated his city's ordinance," as Media Matters reports. The cable channel is owned by former President Donald Trump's longtime friend Chris Ruddy.

"Jay Johnson is facing increased fines and says not even jail time can stop him from flying this huge flag over his construction business," Newsmax's Rob Schmitt said. "Just this weekend, he doubled down, put up an even bigger flag. This one is 40 by 60 [feet]. It is 900 square feet bigger than his previous flag. So this thing's like 3,600 square feet. It is huge. The size of the footprint of a house. He's also flying it proudly in the small city of Buffalo, Minnesota, which is, I guess, is technically a blue state which makes it even funnier."

The flag, Schmitt noted, "has the names Trump and JFK Jr. on it, is that right? With the slogan 'where we go one we go all.' Explain this flag."

"Well," Johnson replied, "Trump, to me, is the lone ranger and the lone ranger needs a guy by his side, and that's JFK. And, so, I decided to put it up and leave the people — think about what's going on."

"Well, JFK and Donald Trump were friends," Johnson claims (which is debatable.) "And, I don't know if you know this, but Donald Trump is president and Donald Trump needs a vice president. So when the time was right, I bring him out. And he's your new vice president."

The phrase "where we go one we go all," is a QAnon conspiracy motto, one popularized by former Trump national security advisor Mike Flynn in an oath he took on camera.

Watch

An idiocracy based on a digital prophet': QAnon longs for a fascist ... ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/qanon-2652801544/

By this point, almost everyone has heard of QAnon, the conspiracy spawned by an anonymous online poster of enigmatic prophecies. Starting with an initial promise in 2017 that Hillary Rodham Clinton would be imminently arrested, a broad group of interpreters divined a conspiracy that saw President Donald Trump's Democratic opponents as a global cabal of Satanic pedophiles.

Perhaps the greatest success of the conspiracy is its ability to create a shared alternate reality, a reality that can dismiss everything from a decisive election to a deadly pandemic. The QAnon universe lives on – now largely through involvement in local, not national, Republican politics.

Moving on from contesting the election, the movement's new focus is vaccines. The influence of QAnon on pandemic denialism is significant, though the spread of Q in local politics is a source of conflict in many states.

Tug of war

The conspiracy may have begun on an obscure web forum, but it is now influencing the Republican Party at all levels.

A recent Daily Kos/Civiqs poll found that 55% of Republicans believe some element of the conspiracy is true.

And in many parts of the country, QAnon supporters are winning elections. From local school boards to city councils, QAnon now has dozens of advocates at nearly every level of local government. While many of these positions hold sway far outside Washington, D.C., the breadth of this movement shows its influence is not likely to wane any time soon.

Not all Republicans are happy with this shift. In South Carolina, Indiana, Michigan and other states, Republican politics are fraught with tensions between QAnon supporters and more traditional conservatives.

For instance, in Indiana, local newspaper The Herald Bulletin published a story on March 21, 2021, headlined “Republican tug-o'-war: Factions vie for influence," reporting that “QAnon believers … showed their support at the Indiana Statehouse in January, holding signs bearing the QAnon phrase "#WWG1WGA" for 'Where we go one, we go all.'" Kyle Hupfer, chair of the Indiana GOP, was quoted as saying, “I don't think QAnon is part of the Republican Party. Leaders need to lead in a fact-based, solution-oriented manner and stick to the actual facts that are proven. Not opinions and not conspiracy theories."

State GOP politicians have promoted QAnon in Arizona through social media posts, although one later apologized for doing so, saying, “Now I think half of them are rather nuts." In January 2021, the Twitter account of the Republican Party of Hawaii tweeted a defense of QAnon believers. The account also defended a Holocaust denier. The official who posted the tweets was later forced to resign.

A similar confrontation has played out in Huntington Beach, California, where the appointed mayor pro tem – or vice mayor – inspired a vote of no confidence for supporting QAnon along with conspiracies against mask-wearing and vaccines.

Part of the conversation

Many QAnon proponents post-election have worked to reframe the COVID-19 vaccines not as the solution to a global pandemic but as an attempt by a cabal to control the minds of a hapless world.

Opposing mask mandates, vaccines and lockdowns have been effective campaigns for QAnon as it mobilizes anti-government sentiment common among the conservative base of the Republican Party. These efforts appear to be coalescing around bans on making vaccines mandatory.

Missouri's Republican-led Senate recently voted to ban so-called vaccine passports, and Texas, Florida, Idaho and Utah have all passed similar legislation. Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds is asking for similar legislation. It is unclear to what extent these bans were influenced by QAnon. But they do echo the opposition to masks and vaccines that have shaped the conspiracy.

In California, a recall campaign against Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom has targeted his COVID-19 response. The campaign was initially organized by people affiliated with both right-wing militias and QAnon supporters.

Not going away

Yotam Ophir, a communications scholar at the University at Buffalo, has studied QAnon. He told me that he doesn't “see a reason to believe the conspiracy will go away anytime soon."

Part of this is that QAnon has deep historical roots in a variety of other conspiracies, including a centuries-old anti-Semitic conspiracy of a blood libel. The flexibility of the conspiracy has also proved resilient within a shifting political landscape.

Perhaps the biggest threat posed by QAnon is articulated by Lindsay Schubiner, a program director at the Western States Center in Portland, Oregon, which works to support democracy and challenge white nationalism.

“Bigoted conspiracy theories like QAnon have an enormous influence on the context in which local government operates," Schubiner told me. “Democratic governance is hard to achieve if we don't live in a shared reality, and that's as true on the local level as it is on the national level."

Sophie Bjork-James, Assistant Professor of the Practice in Anthropology, Vanderbilt University

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/qanon-exposed/

Q is exposed. Will he face consequences?

Lindsay Beyerstein April 16, 2021

no lnx

A month before the sacking and looting of the United States Capitol on January 6, Democrats on the Senate Intelligence Committee asked the FBI for an updated assessment of the threat posed by QAnon. At a hearing on Wednesday, FBI Director Christopher Wray assured the committee that the report would be available shortly.

A lot has happened since 2019, when the bureau flagged QAnon as a threat after a number of sensational QAnon-related crimes, including an armed assault on a pizzeria, a blockade of the bridge over the Hoover Dam and the murder of a mob boss.QAnon went on to back Donald Trump's Big Lie of a stolen election. Worse came to worst when insurgents in full Q regalia fought their way into the Capitol in a bid to throw out a free and fair election. Q hasn't been heard from since December 8, but the FBI has plenty of material to incorporate into its new QAnon threat assessment.

Another development in this sordid saga was the March release of Cullen Hoback's documentary Q: Into the Storm, which strongly suggests that the impresario of QAnon is Ron Watkins, the degenerate failson of the owner of the notorious 8kun message board. Which is … more or less what most knowledgeable observers thought all along.

The documentary lays out a strong circumstantial case that Watkins wrested control of QAnon by establishing his board, then known as 8chan, as Q's exclusive online home, booting the original Q, and assuming the old Q's digital identity. Hoback follows Watkins and his father Jim to the Capitol on January 6. The filmmaker shows how Watkins reinvented himself as a bogus "election security" expert and fomented voter fraud conspiracy theories on right-wing media. It was Watkins who seemed to bring down the curtain on Inauguration Day, urging the conspiracy's faithful to go back to their lives and focus on the "friends and happy memories" they'd made along the way.

What sets the documentary apart is that Hoback extracts the closest thing to a confession from Watkins that we're ever likely to get. Watkins tells Hoback that he's been anonymously posting on the QResearch message board for the last three years, teaching ordinary people to do intelligence work—which is exactly what Q did. Watkins hastily adds he never did so as Q. Hoback obviously doesn't believe him.

I leave it to the reader to decide if a "confession" from a professional liar is any more reliable than a denial from a professional liar. Either way, Q: Into the Storm has solidified the conventional wisdom that Ron Watkins is the main architect of Q.

The Watkins' main antagonist in the film, Frederick Brennan, is now calling for the arrest of Ron Watkins and Jim Watkins for their role in the QAnon conspiracy. United States Senator Martin Heinrich, Democrat of New Mexico, may have been inspired by the documentary when he asked Wray whether Watkins and his father could face charges for their role in promoting a conspiracy theory that inspired an insurrection against the United States and numerous acts of violence. To his credit, Wray said the FBI was focused on investigating violent plots, rather than policing speech online.

Even if it could be proven that Watkins is the ringleader of QAnon, he doesn't seem to have broken any laws. LARPing1 is not a crime, except perhaps against good taste.

The central theme of QAnon ideology is the glorification of political violence. The anons are awaiting "The Storm," a cleansing political purge in which the military will liquidate tens of thousands of Q's enemies and seize control of the government. As repellent and toxic as this belief is, it's legally protected speech. The First Amendment protects the right to wish that the military would overthrow the government someday.

A speaker only crosses the line if they're inciting imminent lawless action—i.e., telling people to violently overthrow the government right this minute. QAnon was crucial in popularizing the Big Lie that spurred the insurgency, but Q's writings are far too elliptical and non-directive to count as an concretely inciting. To put it more bluntly, they don't make enough sense. For the most part, Q spits out a bunch of riddles, acronyms and leading questions, and his fans read what they want into them.

A big part of running a site like 8kun is fielding requests from law enforcement to take down illegal content that users have posted, such as child porn and death threats, so Watkins probably has a solid grasp of the boundaries of free expression online.

The Watkins' nemesis, Frederick Brennan, argues that Ron Watkins and Jim Watkins should be arrested for impersonating federal agents. This legal argument seems far-fetched. Q certainly invited the inference that he was a national security big-shot, but Q was as vague about his fictional credentials as he was about everything else.

Moreover, the federal law against impersonating an officer of the United States is designed to be used against impostors who usurp the authority of the federal government to coerce their victims. Classic examples include the kidnapper who flashes a fake FBI badge to convince his victim she's under arrest, or the con artist who poses as an IRS auditor and demands a pensioner's Social Security number. Implying you're a government agent for internet clout probably doesn't cut it, even if said clout helps you raise money or sell ads. That's because the suckers are forking over that cash freely, and not because you ordered them to do so in the name of the state.

As satisfying as it would be to see Ron Watkins and Jim Watkins in handcuffs, it wouldn't solve the underlying problem, namely, that millions of Americans remain in the grip of right-wing conspiracy culture, including most of the GOP. Prosecuting the architects of this pathetic scheme would only validate their sense of persecution.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/04/arizona-gop/

sos qANON

https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/qanon-2651036637/

The QAnon conspiracy theories surrounding former President Donald Trump have repeatedly been disconfirmed reality, but for those who believe in the cult-like cabal, factual reports are actually nothing more than false statements and "fake news." Believers can always find a way to rationalize their failed predictions and concoct new myths in the face of unpleasant truth. To make matters worse, their family members are the ones left reeling over their behavior and bizarre beliefs.

Now, one Buzzfeed writer is sharing his personal experience as he details his struggles with his mother, a devout believer in the far-right movement. In a new piece published on Friday, March 12, Albert Samaha revealed how the disturbing extent of how QAnon has transformed his relationship with his mother due to her mind-boggling beliefs.

From the misinformation campaigns she has gravitated to online to the warnings she levels during their conversations, Samaha worries that her beliefs may be too far gone. The writer, who grew up in a religious environment, revealed his mother told him that she believes "the Holy Spirit" led her to QAnon "to discover the truth which is being suppressed."

"Otherwise, how would I be able to know the truth if the lamestream media suppresses the truth?" she texted her son. Although Samaha is a member of the mainstream press, which his mother describes as "the lamestream media," he admits she has expressed concern about his own reporting as she believes he could become part of the "deep state."

The only stories my mom found credible in what she called "the mainstream media" were the ones reported by her son — and even then, only when the subject matter didn't attack her devotion to the Catholic faith and to Donald Trump. Over the years, she urged me not to write about politics and expressed her concerns that I was falling further into the deep state when I reported on kids repeating Trump's racist rhetoric or the validity of the election results.

Samaha also shared additional text messages he received from his mother as she expressed concern about his reporting. In fact, she even asked if he would resign from his job. "I pray you will not be a journalist for the deep state," Samaha's mother texted. "It's either you are protecting the deep state or Trump. I love you. If you are pressured by BFN to be part of the evil deep state, please resign."

On another occasion, she texted a theory insisting prophets have deemed Trump to be anointed by God to the "evil doings" in the world, another theory commonly circulated by QAnon believers. "The prophets have said Trump is anointed. God is using him to finally end the evil doings of the cabal which has hurt humanity all these centuries. We are in a war between good & evil."

Samaha detailed his tireless efforts to debunk some of the QAnon theories in hopes of his mother finally coming to grips with reality. Although many of the most bizarre claims are obviously false, he has not been successful in getting his point across.

Through the years, I'd battled against conspiracy theories my mom threw at me that were far more formidable than QAnon. I'd been stumped when she asked me to prove that Beyoncé wasn't an Illuminati member, dumbfounded when research studies I sent her weren't enough to reach an agreement on vaccine efficacy, and too worn down to say anything more than "that's not true" when confronted with false allegations of murders committed by prominent politicians.

The theories spun from Q's messages seemed much easier to disprove. Oprah Winfrey couldn't have been detained during a wave of deep state arrests because we could still see her conducting live interviews on television. Trump's 4th of July speech at Mount Rushmore came to an end without John F. Kennedy Jr. revealing he was alive and stepping in as the president's new running mate. The widespread blackouts that her Patriot friend's "source from the Pentagon" had warned about failed to materialize. And I could testify firsthand that the CIA had no control over my newsroom's editorial decisions.

However, he admitted that he realized "what I had dismissed as damaging inconsistencies turned out to be the core strength of the [QAnon] belief system." With all that has transpired over the last several months, Samaha has come to grips with the state of their relationship.

"I no longer inhabit the delusion that our divergence is temporary. Though I once feared our partnership was doomed unless I pulled my mom out of the current, I now understand our debates as marks of the very bond I thought was disintegrating," he wrote.

Samaha added, "No matter how far she believes I've fallen into the deep state, how hard I fight for the forces of evil, how imminent the grand plan's rapture, my mom will be there on the other side of the line putting in a good word for me with the angels and saints, trying to save me from damnation. And those are the two realities we live in."

https://www.alternet.org/2021/03/white-supremacists-qanon/?rs=182

roland Betancourt, University of California, Irvine

, medieval imagery has been repeatedly on show at far-right rallies and riots in recent years.

Displays of Crusader shields and tattoos derived from Norse and Celtic symbols are of little surprise to medieval historians like me who have long documented the appropriation of the Middle Ages by today's far righ

But amid all the expected Viking imagery and nods to the Crusaders has been another dormant “medievalism" that has yet to be fully acknowledged in reporting on both the far right and conspiracy theorist movements: the Byzantine Empire.

Byzantium – or more properly, the medieval Roman Empire – controlled much of the Mediterranean at the height of its territorial rule in the mid-sixth century. Centered in modern-day Istanbul from A.D. 330 to 1453, its capital of Constantinople was a thriving intellectual, political and military power. One of its crowning achievements, the church of Hagia Sophia, is a testament to the empire's architectural and artistic prowess.

But in the Western world, the Byzantine Empire has been largely overlooked and forgotten. High school students in the United States are likely to know little about the empire. And nowadays, the word “byzantine" has simply come to mean complicated, secret and bureaucratic. This lowering of its status isn't entirely a new process. As far back as 1776, English historian Edward Gibbon was disparagingly referring to the empire's inhabitants as “the servile and effeminate Greeks of Byzantium."

A 'New Byzantium'

Despite this modern disdain for Byzantium in the West, it has recently served as an inspiration to various factions of the far right.

In September 2017, Jason Kessler, an American neo-Nazi who helped organize the “Unite the Right" rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, inaugurated a new supremacist group called “The New Byzantium" project.

Described by Kessler as “a premier organization for pro-white advocacy in the 21st century," The New Byzantium is based on the white supremacist leader's misrepresentation of history.

His premise is that when Rome fell, the Byzantine Empire went on to preserve a white-European civilization. This isn't true. In reality the empire was made up of diverse peoples who walked the streets of its capital, coming from as far away as Nubia, Ethiopia, Syria and North Africa. Contemporaneous sources noted – at times with disdain – the racial and ethnic diversity of both Constantinople and the empire's emperors.

But Kessler's “New Byzantium" is intended to preserve white dominance after what he calls “the inevitable collapse of the American Empire." The organization has been operating under the radar since 2017 with little online footprint.

The original 'deep state'

Kessler isn't alone in appropriating the empire. Through my research, I have monitored references of Byzantium in online forums. Mentions of Byzantium are scattered across message boards frequented by both white supremacists and QAnon enthusiasts – who spout conspiracy theories about a deep-state cabal of Satan-worshipping, blood-drinking pedophiles running the world.

Across 8kun and other online platforms I have reviewed, the Byzantine Empire is discussed as either continuing the legacy of Rome after it was, in their understanding, “destroyed by the Jews" or being the only true empire, with Rome being merely a historical myth created to degrade Byzantium's power and importance.

This latter story emerges in a QAnon thread on “Baking" – that is, the connecting and weaving together of drops (messages) by the enigmatic Q. One post states: “It all makes sense when you learn that the books of the bible are plagiarized copies of the chronology of Byzantium, and so is the mythical Roman Empire, that never existed in Italy but was in fact centered in Constantinople."

Other QAnon commentators across message boards and Twitter speak of the “exiled throne of Byzantium," noting, “the Empire never went away, it just went occult." They exclaim “Long live Byzantium" and call for a “return to Byzantium" to save people from the satanists.

Oddly, while some hold up the Byzantine Empire as the vanguard of white supremacy, a smaller group of white supremacists and conspiracy theorists sees it as “the original Deep State."

In some renditions, Byzantium is, by way of some hazy illuminati connections, the origins of the “deep state" – the myth of an underground cabal of elites who run the world in secret. It has persisted in secrecy since Constantinople's fall, either trading in eunuchs on the clandestine market or preserving whiteness and Christianity, depending on the thread's negative or positive outlook on the empire.

Reconquest of Hagia Sophia

For many on the far right, talk of Byzantium is cloaked in Islamophobia – both online and in tragic real-life events.

A white supremacist who killed more than 50 worshippers at mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, in 2019 railed against the Turks and the conquest of Constantinople in a 74-page manifesto.

“We are coming for Constantinople, and we will destroy every mosque and minaret in the city. The Hagia Sophia will be free of minarets and Constantinople will be rightfully Christian owned once more," the shooter wrote. Throughout QAnon message boards, the reconquest of Hagia Sophia is emblematic of the destruction of Islam and the restoration of a mythic white Byzantium. One post stated: “When we free Constantinople and the Hagia Sophia, maybe we can talk."

'Third Rome'

This “reconquest" of Constantinople had even been tied in some online posts to the presidency of Donald Trump, with images circulated online seemingly prophesying that it would happen under his tenure. In one image, Trump is seen congratulating Russian President Vladimir Putin “on the retaking of Constantinople" and shaking hands in front of what is presumably meant to be the Hagia Sophia, though is actually the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, also known as the Blue Mosque.

Putin himself is not averse to drawing on the symbolism of Byzantium. The Russian state has long tried to position itself as the rightful successor to the Byzantine Empire, with Moscow as the “Third Rome." This forms part of a religious and political doctrine tied to Russian territorial expansion that can be traced back as far as the late 15th century.

The far-right appropriation of Byzantium in the U.S. appears to be influenced by this Russian interpretation. Indeed, Russian proponents of the “Third Rome" doctrine have been cited as influences by prominent figures on the American right.

No matter the provenance of the recent interest in Byzantium from America's white supremacists and conspiracy theorists, one thing is clear: It is based on a very warped idea of the Byzantine Empire that has emerged out of the empire's fraught place in our histories, caught between ancient and medieval, spirituality and bureaucracy.... ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB...>Is 'QAnon Shaman' From MAGA Capitol Riot Covered in Neo-Nazi ... >What Is QAnon? What We Know About the Conspiracy-Theory ...... March 1, CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota discussed the conspiracy theories with a panel of several former believers. As the group expressed concern about their friends and family members that continue to believe the conspiracy theories, some noted the most disturbing theory about Biden.Apparently, QAnon believers are convinced that the newly-elected president is not a person, but rather a robot with skin. However, that only scratches the surface. Ashley Vanderbilt, one of the women on the panel, explained:

"The person that I started talking to ... that had initially got me into QAnon, he was like, 'You know, Joe Biden's not even real. That's why he's wearing a mask all the time, because the fake face that he's wearing, the mouth doesn't move correctly when he talks.' Yeah, so they really believe that Joe Biden is not even Joe Biden."

worries about march 4

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/qanon-march-4-2650812195/

an ME 221

QAnon believes are known for circulating misinformation campaigns but now it appears they have been duped by fraudsters on social media.

According to The Daily Beast, impersonators of former President Donald Trump and former First Lady Melania Trump managed to dupe QAnon believes who flocked to the private social media platform Telegram after more than 70,000 QAnon believers were exiled from mainstream social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube.

Due to Telegram's end-to-end encryption capability, users have a better chance of having conversations without them being screenshotted or made public which would likely serve as an advantage of right-wing extremists. In a matter of days, QAnon believers were joined by prominent right-wing conservatives and they thought they'd finally found a platform they could use to get their message across.

The publication reports:

Many of the Telegram newcomers found that some of MAGAworld's biggest stars had joined them. Donald Trump himself was on the app, amassing more than 200,000 followers within a few days. So was Melania Trump, posting herself to Telegram as "Lady Melania Trump." Air Force General John Hyten joined the app and began issuing cryptic, QAnon-style pronouncements that thrilled believers eager to see President Joe Biden arrested and Trump returned to power.

However, things did not work out in QAnon believers' favor. All of the accounts claiming to be top members of Trumpworld were fake.

In addition to the fake Trump family accounts, the publication reports that the top, fake account belonged to a hoaxer impersonating former Air Force general Lt. Gen Tom McInerney, who has emerged as a conspiracy theorist who frequently appears on Alex Jones's InfoWars show. McInerney, a highly influential right-wing voice, also contributed to the birther conspiracy Trump pushed about former President Barack Obama.

Although McInerney confirmed back in January that the fake account was not his, that has not stopped it from garnering more than 158,000 followers on the strength of the real former general's reputation. While the publication notes that the account holder does not appear to have ulterior motives, there are still concerns about the rise of fake accounts on social media platforms. Now, some QAnon believers are also wondering about the reason behind the fake accounts.

"Someone somewhere is trying to mind f**k us," QAnon believer Jordan Sather said in a Telegram post.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

===

an 221

They ruined my family': Women give devastating accounts of losing their parents to QAnon

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/qanon-cult/

kos

As mainstream media digs into the deeply concerning QAnon conspiracy theory—including coverage of the reality that we now have a QAnon congresswoman—we're also seeing more people who formerly identified with the movement come forward. In an interview with CNN, Melissa Rein Lively described how she fell into the conspiracy tunnel, and why she wants to help people experiencing the same thing now. "I really became all consumed in the QAnon conspiracy theories because of a mix of fear, anxiety, depression," she told host Alisyn Camerota on Monday. "You know, uncertainty. Inconsistency about information coming out about the pandemic." She talked about feeling terrified seeing people around her lose their businesses. So what did she do? She went online. And that's when, according to Lively, the algorithm took hold and brought her into an "echo chamber."

Lively says she began looking at a number of wellness, spirituality, and New Age pages, and within a "matter of weeks," the algorithm hooked her into a "terrifying echo chamber" that "completely changed the way that I think and that I process information." Lively notes that the Save the Children messaging, in particular, spoke to her. Lively went on to describe how her husband gave her an ultimatum between her family and the QAnon movement, including even calling the police out of concern for her well-being.

Lively says she ultimately broke the QAnon spell by seeking mental health treatment with a specific focus on PTSD and trauma. "I really believe that it's a cult," she said. "It operates like a cult in every single way. And people don't realize that they're being consumed by QAnon until it's too late."

If Lively sounds familiar to you, it might be because she went viral back in the fall yelling and throwing face masks on the ground in a Target. "I've been looking forward to this," her voice says in one video. "Target … I'm not playing any more of their games."

In a video later filmed at her garage, she is seen describing herself to police (summoned by her husband) as a "QAnon spokesperson" and claiming that she was on the phone with Donald Trump "all the time."

In an interview with The Washington Post, Lively described falling into QAnon as happening "gradually, and you don't realize you're getting more and more deep in it."

And if this language sounds familiar, it's likely because you heard about another former QAnon believer, Ashley Vanderbilt. As Daily Kos covered, Vanderbilt recently gave an interview to CNN talking about her fall into the QAnon rabbit hole. Vanderbilt, the mother to a four-year-old daughter, lifelong Republican, and employee of a construction company, told the network she fell deep down the conspiracy well when she became very "isolated." She also describes trusting Trump-supporting friends who sent her deeper down the conspiracy rabbit hole via conspiracy YouTube videos.

A big similarity to Lively's journey? Algorithms. Vanderbilt described using social media (TikTok, specifically) and "liking" pro-Trump and anti-Biden posts, and then, lo and behold, the algorithm did the rest.

You can watch the full CNN interview with Lively below, courtesy of YouTube.

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/leaving-qanon/

stoehr

// above edit bd

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/leaving-qanon/

I don't believe Ashley Vanderbilt escaped QAnon. Yes, I know that's what she told CNN's Donie O'Sullivan, and that's what Donie O'Sullivan told the rest of us on Wednesday. But trust me when I say there's no way someone indoctrinated into believing up is down, left is right, and wrong is right snaps out of it in a matter of weeks. People like Vanderbilt are primed to believe anything, and will keep being primed to believe anything. O'Sullivan's reporting suggests the danger is fading. The danger is not, and O'Sullivan's reporting goes a way toward obscuring that reality.

Who is Ashley Vanderbilt? She's a married white 27-year-old mother of a young child living in South Carolina. She lost her job last April as a result of the covid pandemic. Though neither she nor O'Sullivan say what kind of Christian she is, the fact she does not say suggests she's with a nondenominational evangelical congregation, I'd guess a megachurch, which would put her squarely among Donald Trump's loyalest of loyal supporters, the people most likely to believe the former president was sent by God. As such, she's probably gotten very adept at envisioning her life not as one she has control over, but one she must suffer through as the price for entering the Kingdom of Heaven.

When she said, "I've always been someone that you just tell me what to do and I do it," I knew she and I come from similar religious backgrounds in which morality is obedience.

O'Sullivan said that after Joe Biden won the election, Vanderbilt "spent days on TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube becoming indoctrinated into the world of QAnon." (That's the conspiracy theory holding that the Democrats are in league with a global—read: Jewish—cabal of satanists who fornicate with children before eating them.) "By inauguration day," O'Sullivan said, Vanderbilt "was convinced that if then President-elect Joe Biden took office the United States would literally turn into a communist country. She was terrified that she would have to go into hiding with her daughter."

Vanderbilt said she was spending a lot of time by herself after losing her job. She was depressed. She was cranky. She too often snapped at her daughter. As a result, she said, she probably lost touch with reality. "I wasn't one hundred percent there like I should have been," she said. Folks, I'm here to tell you someone who believed that the "deep state" was having sex with children before eating them, that the former president would declare martial law, and that the military would round up his enemies before publicly executing them in cold blood is not someone who needs to lose her job, go into a depression or snap at her child to be not quite "one hundred percent there."

She was already there. How do I know? From experience. I've mentioned before I grew up on the margins of a closed protestant sect called the Christians Gathered Unto the Name of the Lord Jesus Christ. (They are better known as the Plymouth Brethren.) Strict obedience to authority, which is to say, strict obedience to the father of the family, which is to say strict obedience to God, was morality.When Vanderbilt said, "I've always been someone that you just tell me what to do and I do it," I knew she and I come from similar backgrounds. We were taught Hell is really real, and God really will send you there if you do not do what He tells you to. We were taught a God who threatens eternal pain and suffering is a lovingGod. We were taught to believe up is down, left is right, wrong is right, but especially don't think just do as you're told.

So I know she was already there. She didn't need TikTok to fall down "the QAnon rabbit hole." If it wasn't TikTok, Facebook or whatever, it would have been something else, most likely ordinary word of mouth. QAnon does not demand of believers any more than Vanderbilt's white evangelical church does. She seems to have sensed the connection between them. O'Sullivan said, "while she was deep in the conspiracy theory, she said Trump was becoming an almost messianic figure for her who could do no wrong. She recalls once asking herself, 'Am I putting even Trump above God?'" She doesn't read, she said, and she doesn't pay attention to the legitimate press. All she needs to do is what she's told to do, which is follow the leader don't ask questions.

Which is why her explanation of how she "escaped" doesn't hold up. "Some QAnon adherents concocted a new conspiracy theory in the hours after inauguration," O'Sullivan said. "Biden's inauguration itself was a key part of the plan, the new theory held, and Trump would return as President in the coming few weeks. Then, certainly, all the deep-state arrests would happen. That was a step too far for Vanderbilt." Wut!

She was convinced Joe Biden's inauguration would transform the country into a Communist state. She believed she'd have to go into hiding with her daughter. She believed the Democrats and the Jews and "the Globalists" are cannibals. And she was disappointed when the military did not publicly execute Der Führer's enemies in cold blood. But wait whoa—a conspiracy theory adapting to reality? That's a step too far!?

Look, I don't understand why Vanderbilt thinks she escaped QAnon. I do know, using my intuition, that she does not understand why either. In not understanding why, she's vulnerable to the influence of a CNN journalist reporting a national story about a QAnon believer who escaped. Vanderbilt, in being someone who always did what was asked of her, continued being someone who did what was asked of her, in this case, giving O'Sullivan a story he was asking for, however tacitly. And in the process of telling that story, he obscured a terrible conclusion about Vanderbilt. That she felt fooled into believing there would be blood does not change the fact she wanted blood.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/qanon-origins/

beyerstein

The cult of QAnon is at a crossroads. Adherents of the conspiracy theory/new religious movement convinced themselves that Donald Trump was poised to purge the cannibal pedophile cabal and its traitorous enablers in a cleansing burst of political violence. But with Joe Biden in the White House, and Capitol rioters facing charges for their insurrection of January 6, prophecy has apparently failed. QAnon has been banished from major social media platforms. You can't even sell Q merch on Etsy anymore. True believers are struggling to make sense of it all. Q himself has fallen silent. It has been over a month since his last dispatch to the faithful.

In just three years, QAnon has exploded from an anonymous post on 4chan to a household word. The FBI has declared QAnon a domestic terrorist threat and the QAnon ideology has been the impetus for numerous terrorist attacks, not even counting the major role played by QAnon adherents in the assault on the US Capitol. QAnon has fractured families and destroyed lives. Astonishingly, we still don't know who Q is.

The enduring mystery of Q's identity has led to speculation about QAnon being an influence operation, (aka a psyop). Which raises the question of who's supposedly running this operation. QAnon's critics typically blame Russia or an alliance of Russia and Trump's inner circle. Disillusioned former QAnon sympathizers including Trump advisor Steve Bannon have also embraced a version of the psyop theory, claiming that QAnon was a deep state hoax designed to fool patriots.

Whatever role Russia may have played in promoting this conspiracy theory, the real problem is that there's a huge market in the United States for conspiracy theories that promise the violent overthrow of democracy.

Influence operations are typically military- or intelligence-led efforts to shape how a population thinks or feels without resorting to physical force.

Russian intelligence operates within the vast QAnon ecosystem but QAnon is a home-grown phenomenon, deeply rooted in American prejudices and preoccupations. QAnon and its forerunner Pizzagate were forged on 4Chan, a crucible of both the Alt-Right and American conspiracy culture. Understanding the racist, ultranationalist, conspiratorial culture of /pol is key to understanding the likely origins of QAnon. It's also important to understand how contemporary conspiracy theorizing incorporates and elaborates on older conspiratorial themes.

Q is old conspiracies made new

Many of the central tenets of QAnon are retreads of the antisemitic hoax tract, "The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion," which purports to be the minutes of a criminal conspiracy of rabbis to take over the world. The Protocols, in turn, recycles the ancient antisemitic superstition known as blood libel, the notion that Jews are harvesting the blood of Christian children.

Q asserts that the Houses of Rothschild and Soros are "puppet masters" covertly manipulating historical events. (Republican Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene notoriously speculated that a space laser from "Rothschild, Inc" might have caused the Camp fire in California. Video of Greene berating a Parkland shooting survivor as a pawn of George Soros resurfaced recently.) Many of the QAnon faithful have their own take on blood libel, with the cannibal pedophiles being said to harvest a molecule known as adrenochrome from the blood of their child victims.

Ironically, the Protocols were commissioned by the head of the Russian secret police in the late 19th or early 20th century. The goal was to set back the cause of liberalism by convincing Czar Nicholas the II that the rise of capitalism in Russia was a conspiracy by Jews and the Freemasons. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was created by Russian conservatives to fool their own ruler, but the impact of the document was much broader. The forgery became the Ur-text of global conspiracy culture. Henry Ford's newspaper published the Protocols in 1920. The Nazis cited the Protocols to justify the Holocaust. The influence of the Protocols can even be seen in Dan Brown's bestselling Da Vinci Code novels.

In 2017, Vladimir Putin's personal confessor was hyping the idea that Czar Nicholas and his family were ritually murdered by Jews. (In fact, the deposed Nicholas and his family were assassinated by Bolsheviks shortly after the Revolution of 1917. The leader of the death squad was commended by Lenin for his work.)

QAnon sprang from the primordial soup of 4chan's Politically Incorrect board, aka /pol. 4chan is an anonymous imageboard where anyone can post almost anything. 4chan is often described as the birthplace of the Alt Right. Users are known as "anons."

"Q" is short for "Q Clearance Patriot." Q purports to be a high-ranking US intelligence official leaking details of Donald Trump's campaign against his enemies in the deep state. Q's revelations began in late October of 2017. The researcher who posts as Q Origins on Twitter has published his findings on the investigative news site Bellingcat.

Some have speculated that various pro-Russian themes in Q's body of work are evidence that the QAnon phenomenon was a Russian influence operation, but this argument ignores the fact that Vladimir Putin's Russia is organically popular in the Alt Right and /pol. Q and his message board disciples may admire Putin's brand of hyper-masculine authoritarianism without being Russian agents.

In order to understand the origins of QAnon, it is necessary to understand the imageboard tradition of LARPing. "In the 4Chan context, a LARP is when you pose as a big insider," explains the anonymous author of the Q Origins Project.

Q isn't a psyops

There's a long history of imageboard anons pretending to be high-ranking national security officials who, for inexplicable reasons, have decided to divulge highly classified information to one of the web's most notorious cesspools.In imageboard culture, LARPing is like spinning ghost stories around the digital campfire. Most people know it's fake, but it's fun to pretend that it might be real.Before Q, posters with names like FBIAnon and MegaAnon acquired followings as LARPers, often exploring themes that would later be featured in Q drops. LARPers will often entertain their followers with puzzles and cryptic predictions--a style that is familiar to anyone who has read Q drops. Followers become invested in decoding the riddles. A LARPer may gain respect if their predictions seem to come true.

The anonymous researcher behind the Q Origins project has painstakingly reconstructed the pre-history of QAnon. He notes that, like other LARPers before him, Q constructs his pronouncements out of conspiracy theories that are already popular on /pol.

"They love them a conspiracy theory and Q built on that. He stitches together the various LARPs and just creates this Frankenstein that very quickly explodes off of /pol."

The first major proselytizers for Q were two /pol moderators and a YouTuber named Tracy Diaz. Within weeks, they started spreading Q content to YouTube and other social media platforms.

There is evidence that trolls from the Kremlin-linked Internet Research Agency helped to disseminate the forerunner conspiracy to QAnon, Pizzagate. The breakout Q drop of 2017 continues the Pizzagate narrative of the year before. We're told that Hillary Clinton is going to be arrested.

If Pizzagate is the Old Testament, QAnon is the New Testament.Pizzagate diagnosed the cannibal pedophile problem and Q framed Donald Trump as the solution. Q is the prophet, the self-proclaimed intelligence insider whoreveals the "truths" the OPs of /pol expected to hear: Donald Trump is the messiah who is going to usher in a golden age through a spasm of apocalyptic violence.

Russia hacked the Democratic National Committee in order to sabotage Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign. One of their prizes was a trove of personal emails by Hillary Clinton's campaign chair, John Podesta.

The basic tenets of the Pizzagate conspiracy gelled on 4Chan's /pol board on or about November 3, 2016, as users combed through Podesta's hacked emails. They fixated on banal emails chronicling Podesta's social life, which included references to DC restaurants like Comet Ping Pong as well as to home cooking. The anons decided that words like "cheese pizza" were actually code for "child porn." This collective world-building exercise eventually decreed that Podesta and Clinton were part of a network of pedophiles enslaving children in the (non-existent) basement of Comet Ping Pong.

The Trump campaign, like the Republican community at large, were enthusiastic consumers and distributors of lurid anti-Clinton conspiracies. Trump campaign luminaries like Gen. Michael Flynn and right-wing media outlets like Breitbart and InfoWars furiously amplified Pizzagate content. This content was discussed by anons on 4chan's /pol, reworked and elaborated into their conspiratorial worldview, including the next round of LARPs.

We know that accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency, the notorious Kremlin-linked troll farm, hyped Pizzagate and QAnon. Russian state-controlled media like Sputnik and RT have also given sympathetic coverage to these narratives, in keeping with Russia's well-known strategy of amplifying existing rifts within the United States. Russian disinformation takes many forms, including amplifying content created by others. It's easier and often more effective to amplify an American voice rather than to try to imitate one.

The researcher behind the Q Origins Project cautions against putting too much weight on the theory that QAnon was created by Russians. We don't know exactly who Q is, but the researcher's investigations have convinced him that Q is primarily a domestic phenomenon. Q's writings show a deep familiarity with U.S. evangelical culture, he notes. The researcher observes that Q has an uncanny knack for distilling only those elements of /pol culture that would be acceptable on Fox News. Unlike his fellow chan anons, who have no compunctions about racial slurs, Q works just clean enough to be mainstream. In the researcher's opinion, navigating the subtleties of U.S. racial politics would be very difficult for someone who wasn't raised in the United States. Q also has a deep familiarity with US pop culture, particularly Hollywood movies. The famous "Where We Go One We Go All" slogan is from a 1996 Jeff Bridges sailing movie called White Squall, not the kind of material you'd expect an IRA troll to be familiar with. The researcher points out that the time stamps on the Q drops suggest that the author is working on West Coast time.

Whatever role Russia may have played in promoting this conspiracy theory, the real problem is that there's a huge market in the United States for conspiracy theories that promise the violent overthrow of democracy.

It's comforting to tell ourselves that QAnon is an exogenous phenomenon foisted upon us by a demonic Other. But that only distracts from the deeper rifts in our society that allow QAnon to flourish and thrive.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/qanon-and-evangelicals-republicans-baptized-in-crazy/

no twt lnx

QAnon and evangelicals: Republicans baptized in crazy

QAnon Shaman is admitting he was 'duped' by Trump — and blaming him for inflaming the Capitol attack

Meaghan Ellis

David Cay Johnston January 29, 2021

Donald Trump is out, but parts of the Republican Party warmly embrace his dark legacy of white supremacy, the crazy QAnon conspiracy and civil war wrapped in faux Christianity.

Like Trump, these fake Christians reject turning the other cheek in favor of threatening or promoting violence.

The problem here isn't partisan politics, but public mental health. DCReport has covered extensively the mental-health debacle thanks to Dr. Bandy X. Lee, Harper West and other experts on how delusions spread like viruses, with Trump being a carrier.

The evidence of craziness seems to be found entirely in the Republican Party. We looked for, but have yet to discover any Democratic Party leaders pushing baseless conspiracy theories or urging civil war.

Readers who have found such material, please send links via our DCReport Tipline.

Here are some of the ways that Republican leaders reveal their affinity for the anti-democratic nature of Trumpism and QAnon, its attendant conspiracy theory:

In California, the Sacramento County Republican Party elected to its Central Committee a Proud Boys member who has advocated violence.

"Illegal immigrants should have their heads smashed into the concrete," a 2018 post by an antifascist group quotes Perrine as saying.

Perrine didn't deny this call to violence, he only insisted that he's not a racist.

He told the newspaper, "They can call me a Nazi all they want, and I know I have plenty of friends of all races that don't always agree with me, but they still love me.

"The Proud Boys that I affiliate with are all working men, all married men, they all have good jobs, they all believe in God."

Only after The Bee reported this did some Republicans in the California capital come to their senses and demand Perrine's ouster.

Oregon's Republican Party this month aligned itself with conspiracy theories as well as denouncing all 10 House Republicans who voted to impeach Trump for inciting the murderous attack on our Capitol.

Texas' GOP uses a QAnon conspiracy phrase—We Are The Storm—in its new logo.

The slogan comes from a poem, not crazies, according to the Texas party chairman, Alan West. He is the former congressman from Florida and retired military officer known for making bizarre statements. In 2011, he wrote, "When I see anyone with an Obama 2012 bumper sticker, I recognize them as a threat to the gene pool."

Arizona GOP for Trump, Still

Texas GOP Twitter Page

Arizona's GOP retweeted messages in December asking if people were ready to die for Trump and his baseless claim that he really won in 2020. The original Stop The Steal tweet was deleted, but the party's official Twitter account still refers to a person who says he's ready to die for Trump. It states: "He is. Are you?"

You might think that the party leadership in the Grand Canyon state, long a bright red jurisdiction, would examine its position after Democrats won both U.S. Senate seats and Joe Biden beat Trump in Arizona.

While the GOP added registered voters in 2020, it lost in ballots cast. Instead of reassessing, however, Arizona's Republican leaders decided to enforce Trumpian purity. On Jan. 23 the Arizona GOP censured three leading Republicans for not embracing Trumpian madness: Gov. Doug Ducey, former U.S. Sen. Jeff Flake and Cindy McCain. The widow of Sen. John McCain said she considers the censure a badge of honor.

Party leaders also re-elected the erratic and autocratic Kelli Ward as the Arizona GOP leader. She said her party suffers from "people who have been namby-pamby, lie down and allow the Democrats to walk all over them."

The party retweeted a menacing message. It is one of many from a Republican who holds himself out as a Christian despite tweets that are aggressively contrary to New Testament teachings about love, doing good to others and turning the other cheek:

"The Arizona Republican Party is still Trump country in all districts. Weak self-righteous sanctimonious Rs are on notice."

"Satan-Worshipping Pedophiles"

Arizona state Sen. David Farnsworth acknowledged last fall to the Arizona Mirror, a news website, that he believes the QAnon conspiracy theory but with a twist.

He said some Republicans have joined the top Democrats who, he imagines, run a global Satan worshipping cabal of pedophiles Trump is singlehandedly trying to bring down. Farnsworth told audiences that Arizona's Department of Child Safety is covering up, or complicit, in child sex trafficking.

Meanwhile, the FBI says QAnon is a domestic terror threat.

Other delusional beliefs so deeply and broadly infect the Arizona GOP that its leaders blame antifascists for joining in when our national Capitol was violently invaded by a murderous mob of Trumpers on Jan. 6.

Mentioned earlier, theOregon Republican Party went further. It adopted a resolution asserting, "The violence at the Capitol was a 'false flag' operation designed to discredit President Trump, his supporters, and all conservative Republicans;this provided the sham motivation to impeach President Trump in order to advance the Democratic goal of seizing total power."

That's as crazy as QAnon.

Rep. Mo Brooks of Alabama, who riled up the Capitol mob, and Rep. Matt Gaetz of Florida also falsely blame the Capitol attack on antifascists.

Antifascist Nonsense

The FBI calls that nonsense, but you don't need law enforcement to know that the idea is ridiculous.

Saying Trumpers and Antifa jointly attacked our Capitol is like saying Trump is in league with Bernie Sanders. Believing, as the Oregon GOP leadership does, that the insurgents were lefties posing as Trumpers moves the party well into the realm of delusion.

In Hawaii, the official Republican Twitter account claims war is being waged against its members' values.And its relentless attacks on news organizations that check facts and correct mistakes include many fabrications.

Witness this Inauguration Day tweet: "Will you be joining PBS in calling for internment and re-education camps also?"

Nothing in the news clips it tweeted came close to substantiating the tweet, nor did the full PBS report.

There is a glimmer of hope that reality plays a role in the Hawaii GOP. On Sunday, Jan. 24, the state party's communications vice-chair, Edwin Boyette, resigned after sane Republicans complained about his tweets supporting QAnon.

Building a Theocracy

It's not just Trump purity that many GOP influencers are pushing. There is also their brand of Christianity, which promotes racial animosity, hatred of Democrats, intolerance and would subvert our Constitution to create a theocracy.

Consider Jenna Ellis, one of Trump's television lawyers who was paid at least $173,900 by his campaign. Ellis has met with GOP leaders in several states making fact-free claims that Trump won in November.

Ellis has a long and well-documented history of just making self-aggrandizing claims. She has a checkered career and her accomplishments are negligible, but Trump got one look at her on television and was enchanted.

Some principled Republicans see no future in a party swaddled in craziness. On Monday Sen. Rob Portman of Ohio, a conservative with a level head, announced that he won't seek a third term in 2022 because of what he called partisan gridlock.

While it's true that compromise is rare on Capitol Hill, intransigence traces back to anti-taxer Grover Norquist declaring, "Bipartisanship is just another name for date rape" and Trump repeatedly retweeting QAnon-supporting craziness.

Like Flake, a Libertarian whose family founded Arizona, Portman would face a primary challenge from the crazy wing of the GOP if he seeks third term.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

How we know the GOP really is the party of QAnon now - Alternet.org ›

===

no lnx

https://www.alternet.org/2021/02/trump-supporters/

salon

the persistent Trump "base" and the Republican members of Congress who maintain fealty to Donald Trump do so for a variety of reasons. They are not a monolithic body but a loosely associated conglomeration of supporters with their own individual or group reasons for remaining loyal to the twice-impeached ex-President.

"Membership" in the Trump base may include entry into one or more of the following categories.

"All-in" isolationists, ultra-nationalists, white supremacists, racists and insurrectionistsArguably all those who marched in Charlottesville in summer 2017 and many of those stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 are openly racist, and have felt liberated by the rhetoric and policies of the Trump era. For them, Trumpism represented an enticing outlet for perceived slights or a platform upon which to boost their identity, sense of meaning or being, and self-importance.

Opportunists and political chameleonsThose who fall into this category recognized that the Trump train presented itself as a vehicle by which one could achieve fame, success, ambition and political or personal gain. Those with political ambition watched Trump's tactics, saw its success and made the decision to be a Trump sycophant and copycat. Matt Gaetz and Marjorie Taylor Greene, mediocre members of society who had the financial means to run for Congress, are noted Trump exampled who will ride this train until it throws them off (and even then will continue to chase it). Fox News talking heads fall into this category as well. Following opportunity often requires suppressing any logic, rational thought or independent notions. This is a key factor behind the flip-flopping of politicians like House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (who has vacillated in his defense and indictment of Trump and his insurrection), Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio (two former Republican rivals to Trump who were mercilessly dragged by him only to become full-throated supporters), and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, for whom every Trump-related decision comes with an eye on the next election cycle. These are the political chameleons who will change as needed to survive.

Narrow-minded, limited information input and vulnerable to cultism This group of followers is either actively or passively limited in the information that they receive through on-air and online media outlets. As a result of their "soda straw" approach to Republicanism, conservatism or Trumpism, they are simply not exposed to the damning evidence that exists to show Trump and the GOP's unethical, immoral and likely criminal behavior. This is the consumer of a steady diet of right-wing sources such as Fox News, OANN and Newsmax. One cannot discuss this group without referring to the concept of shared omnipotence, a cult leader tactic by which followers are repeatedly told that the leader will take them to a "promised land" (e.g., a place of increased wealth, no immigrants or people of color, world superiority or dominance, protection from death) and if they don't follow, the result is certain doom.

Voting with their pocketbook Members of this group are totally focused on individual and family wealth. They voted for Trump twice because of his tax breaks for wealthier Americans. They may be repulsed by Trump the man, but they feel compelled to vote for him because they are profiting from his policies. They are one-issue voters and they will not be deterred by any of Trump's antics, lies or dishonesty.

Hold your nose and vote RepublicanThese group members are cousins of the previous group. This faction is diehard conservative Republicans who are unwavering in their support of the GOP based on years of support and the hope that this period is an aberration that will correct itself soon. Sen. Mitt Romney is one of the remaining stalwarts of this group.

But he and I are Christians! In many ways an outgrowth of the latter group, these followers maintain their identity and faith as evangelical Christians. They have consistently voted Republican for a widely varying set of reasons, the abortion issue first and foremost among them. Now, electing and supporting Donald Trump, who is arguably the embodiment of sin, requires resolution of a huge case of cognitive dissonance. To accept Trump and Trumpism requires that a "true" Christian must fit this obviously square block into a circular halo. Attempts to reconcile this dissonance include pairing Trump with known Christian leaders and evangelicals, citing scripture that appears to validate this choice, or projecting Christian values on to Trump and Trumpists.

Not all Trump supporters are alike. It is inaccurate and wrong to lump them together. It misses the point and undermines any chance for reaching out to supporters in order to reinvent a Republican Party that is reasonable, more moderate and hinged to our American democracy.

Short of convicting and repudiating Trump at his upcoming impeachment trial — which appears highly unlikely — we will be left with the task of disambiguating and understanding his followers and what motivates them, and connecting with as many of them as possible. The future of our two-party democracy, and our entire country, will hang in the balance.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

Fascism expert details the alarming similarities between Trump ... ›

The sheep-like loyalty of Trump supporters is starting to backfire ... ›

Here's what Trump supporters really believe about the election and ... ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Revealed: Brits who fuelled 'vicious' conspiracy theory by Trump ... ›

Election workers weren't surprised by the Capitol riot. Trump's ... ›

Opinion: I've had it with interviewing Trump supporters who go off ... ›

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/qanon-2650138874/

mayor purge mecca

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/deprogram-trump

aha: it's a wicked problem? meme virus has defense mechanism built in?! lack of evidence is evidence

no lnx vid

Global politics expert explains why it’s so hard to ‘deprogram’ Trumpian conspiracy theorists

Supporters of Donald Trump near the U.S. Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, Tyler Merbler

Alex Henderson January 26, 2021

The word "deprogramming" is typically used in connection with extremist religious cults such as the Unification Church, the Tony & Susan Alamo Christian Foundation or Jim Jones' the People's Temple, but cults can be political as well — for example, the QAnon movement. Political science expert Brian Klaas, in a Washington Post op-ed published on January 25, lays out some reasons why it is so difficult to "deprogram" Americans who have embraced far-right political cults and outlandish conspiracy theories.

"For the past four years, the United States was governed by a conspiracy theorist in chief," explains Klaas, who teaches global politics at University College London. "Whether by retweeting QAnon accounts from the Oval Office or painting himself as the victim of shadowy 'deep state' plots at rallies, President Donald Trump injected the toxin of baseless conspiratorial thinking straight into America's political bloodstream. On January 6, America saw how far that venom had spread as a ragtag group of militias, racist extremists and flag-waving disciples of Trumpism stormed the Capitol."

The January 6 "insurrectionists," Klaas adds, had certain things in common: they were "unified by their support for Trump" and were also "conspiracy theorists."

"There is no doubt: the United States has a serious problem with pathological political delusions," Klaas warns. "So, do we have any hope of deprogramming the millions of Americans who are devoted to dangerous lunacy? Don't hold your breath….. Once people have gone far enough down the rabbit hole of conspiratorial thinking, it can be nearly impossible to get them back out."

Klaas goes on to list some reasons why it is so difficult to "deprogram" conspiracy theorists. According to Klaas, "First, conspiracy theorists are far more likely to have a Manichaean worldview, meaning they interpret everything as a battle between good and evil….. Second, those who seek to debunk conspiracy theories are precisely the people that true believers distrust [WICKED PROBLEM?]…. Third, these organized mass delusions are designed to resist debunking."

There's a joke among critics of far-right conspiracy theorist and radio host Alex Jones that goes something like this: what did the Alex Jones listener say when told that there is no New World Order? The listener said, "Yeah, that's what the New World Order wants you to think." It's a joke, but it speaks to one of the important points Klaas makes in his op-ed — that when someone pushes back against conspiracy theorists, they sometimes respond by digging in even more.

A variety of media outlets, from CNN and MSNBC to Mother Jones and The Nation, have been relentless when it comes to debunking the far-right conspiracy theories that came from the Trump Administration and its sycophants. But Klaas notes that "if someone believes the media is controlled by sinister but unseen puppet masters, fact- checks from CNN will never convince them they're wrong."[// CLIMATE SCI, IF EXPERTS SAYS IT IT IS WRONG]

"For the past four years," Klaas notes, "those who have worked hardest to dispel QAnon believers of their fantasies are the very people that 'Anons' trust least: anti-Trump academics like me, news outlets such as the Post and politicians who they believe to be co-opted by the 'deep state.' Political scientists Brendan Nyhan and Jason Reifler have documented the risks of a backfire effect, in which correcting misperceptions actually ends up entrenching them. In the world of conspiratorial thinking, the harder the pushback, the greater the proof that a coverup is afoot."

According to Klaas, the "rise of social media" has made it much easier for far-right conspiracy theorists to live in a bubble.

"Bowling alone has been replaced by tweeting together — a cardboard cutout for real social interaction, but one that has a seductive allure to millions of people," Klaas warns. "Many of the fanatics who stormed the Capitol were neither poor nor social misfits, but rather, had found a digital community to augment or replace their offline one. We can no longer pretend that conspiracy theorists are beneath our attention. They've shown they have tremendous capacity to inflict damage on society."

Klaas discussed his Post op-ed during a January 26 appearance on MSNBC's "Morning Joe." Watch the video below:

'Coalition Of Reality' Needed To Combat Conspiracy Theories, Says Writer | Morning Joe | MSNBC

www.youtube.com

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

'A destructive authoritarian cult': Expert explains how to 'deprogram ... ›

Can the Trump cult be deprogrammed? Here's what this mind ... ›

Yale psychiatrist explains how to deprogram Trump supporters who ... ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

Anthony Scaramucci: The Left Should 'Deprogram' Trump ... ›

AOC proposes funding to deprogram white supremacists ›

Trump's QAnon followers are a dangerous cult. How to save ... ›

===

it's the storm, charlie brown parody cartoon flipbd

----

Q sent me (i have been chosen? to be an insider?) --> we are the storm

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/qanon-2650129695/

no travis view twt

Trump's QAnon fans are not giving up hope that he will be reinstalled in the White House this year, with a new theory that has them planning on celebrating his inauguration on March 4th.

According to a report from Vice, the latest theory being passed around by right-wing extremists is based upon writings from members of the fringe "sovereign citizen" movement and a unique interpretation of American history.

As the Vice report notes, "Sovereign citizens believe that a law enacted in1871 secretly turned the U.S. into a corporation and did away with the American government of the founding fathers. The group also believes that President Franklin D. Roosevelt sold U.S. citizens out in 1933 when he ended the gold standard and replaced it by offering citizens as collateral to a group of shadowy foreign investors."

With that in mind, QAnon supporters are making common cause with the sovereign citizens -- a new development -- and focusing on the 1871 conspiracy theory to reassert their claim that Donald Trump is still president.

"Over the weekend, QAnon groups on Gab and Telegram, where most QAnon supporters have found a home since they were kicked off Twitter and Parler was de-platformed, commenters have been sharing documents describing the 1871 act, claiming it proves that Trump will be sworn in on March 4," the report states. "The source for this date is the fact that 1933 was also the year when inaugurations were changed from March 4 to Jan. 20 — to shorten the lame-duck period of outgoing presidents. QAnon followers believe that Trump will become the president of the original republic, and not the corporation that they believe the 1871 act created."

The belief that Trump might bolster the hopes of the QAnon followers who have been despondent that President Joe Biden wasn't arrested on January 20th.

A deeper explanation of this latest theory -- and its genesis -- can be found below:...

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/qanon-2650040949/

[NOW EX PREZ] Trump departed the White House on Wednesday, but that hasn't deterred many supporters of the thoroughly discredited QAnon conspiracy theory of believing he'll still be president for the next four years.

Media Matters researcher Alex Kaplan has spent the morning combing through assorted QAnon message boards and Telegram channels to see how they're coping -- and he's found that they're furiously moving the goalposts to justify their belief that Trump will soon carry out mass arrests of his political enemies for being in a purported Satanic pedophile ring.

As Kaplan documents, some QAnon believers still think Biden will be arrested before taking the oath of office, while others think that Biden will be sworn in and that Trump and the military will launch a coup against him at an unspecified future date.

The wildest theory, however, comes from three QAnon "influencers" who now believe that incoming President Joe Biden is secretly allied with Trump and will help him bring down Hillary Clinton and other Democratic leaders.

As evidence, one influencer notes that Trump's nickname for Biden was "Sleepy Joe," which they interpret to mean that Biden is a Q sleeper agent.

They also speculate that Trump's letter to Biden contains "instructions" for bringing on the mass arrests that they have been promised for the last four years.

Read the whole thread on QAnon coping with Trump's departure here.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

===

12121

followers of the QAnon conspiracy fiction are facing an inflection point. With President-elect Joe Biden about to be sworn in on Jan. 20, and Donald Trump about to be a former president, their worldview — which imagines Trump as an exalted leader waging a brilliant battle against the deep state and a satanic cult — is about to fall apart.

Many adherents to QAnon may find new ways to rationalize the developments, but Trump's role as president has been so central to the belief system that his leaving could create some genuinely jarring cognitive dissonance for true believers. Travis View, who hosts a podcast about the conspiracy theory called QAnon Anonymous, shared a video of one woman who is struggling to cope with the realization that the whole story behind QAnon is collapsing.

"So, who else is feeling just a little silly?" she asked. "Just a little... went too far down the rabbit hole, and now I'm back out again. And if nothing happens on the 20th, how many of you are going to feel stupid as hell? I can't do it anymore!"

She shifted to talking about Q, the pseudonymous writer behind the cryptic posts that have fueled the QAnon conspiracists. Q's predictions have repeatedly proven false.

"And who the fuck is Q? Who is he? Who is this person?" she asked. "Cause none of it has come true! And I was just thinking — what if this person knows that none of this stuff is true? And they're just messing with people? Like, getting inside their heads? I thought something would happen today, in Trump's speech. Nothing!"

Watch the clip below

watch: QAnon true believers let loose with their ridiculous theories ... ›

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

===

infiltrate nat'l guard inaug

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/qanon/

===

pedophile red pill? helo riot moms

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/right-wingers/

===

insurrection ghost dance? sys fails --> crisis --> fascist

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/trump-mental-health-2649778207/

jim sleeper salon

If nothing else, Wednesday's insurgency-cum-riot on Capitol Hill should serve to sidelines a few insouciant, above-it-all pundits who quietly enjoyed Donald Trump's upstaging of liberals, even as they assured us that ultimately we had little to fear from him.

"He Won't Concede, but He'll Pack His Bags" was the headline on Atlantic writer Graeme Wood's pre-election column of Oct. 15, which informed us that although Trump "has signaled that he's willing to plunge America into chaos in an effort to remain in the White House … we should remember that Trump had a vision of the presidency that began with extreme laziness, and that the end of his presidency could go roughly the same way. … [A]ll evidence suggests that he would run from the responsibility … of overseeing the violent fracture of America."

Well, maybe. And maybe New York Times columnist Ross Douthat was right to assure us, on Oct. 10, that "There Will Be No Trump Coup." Douthat offered us a "final pre-election case for understanding the president as a noisy weakling, not a budding autocrat. Across the last four years, the Trump administration has indeed displayed hallmarks of authoritarianism. … But it's also important to recognize all the elements of authoritarianism he lacks. He lacks popularity and political skill, unlike most of the global strongmen who are supposed to be his peers. … Our weak, ranting, infected-by-Covid chief executive is not plotting a coup, because a term like 'plotting' implies capabilities that he conspicuously lacks."

Well, maybe. But Douthat — whom I've characterized as a casualty of Ideological Displacement Syndrome— worries that "[w]ith American liberalism poised to retake presidential power, it … has become a more dominant force in our society, with a zealous progressive vanguard and a monopoly in the commanding heights of culture. Its return to power in Washington won't be the salvation of American pluralism; it will be the unification of cultural and political power under a single banner."

Again, maybe. But begging Douthat and Wood's pardon, what I think we've witnessed on Capitol Hill is pretty much what I predicted in March of 2016, as Trump was rampaging through that year's Republican presidential primaries, demolishing both that party's and the Democratic Party's establishments:

Armed, racist American goons and drooling fools who are circling liberal democracy's proverbial town meetings in our nightmares … weren't born to do what they're doing now, nor were they all disposed to do it back on the playground. The quiet little stabs of heartbreak and self-doubt that accumulated in tiny increments in their young lives as their parents lost jobs, pensions, homes, mutual respect, and public moral standing have blossomed into open resentment seeking the right target.

How many of us remember that when Trump was inaugurated on Jan. 20, 2017, his transition team had discoveredthat the president has complete command of the National Guard unit of the District of Columbia, and that it informed that unit's commander, Errol Schwartz, that his dismissal would be effective precisely at noon on Inauguration Day, in the middle of the ceremony, so that he wouldn't even be able to welcome back the troops he'd sent out that morning. Two days before the inauguration, that decision was reconsidered, and Schwartz was granted enough time to finish the ceremony and wrap up his affairs. I warned about all this in a long essay entitled, "The Die Is Cast: Why Trump Can't Help but Try Dictatorship."

Well, Trump is indeed unequal to Vladimir Putin in orchestrating tyranny. Yet his impulses resemble what 18th-century historian Edward Gibbon described, in "The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire," as the formation of the Roman emperor Augustus' Praetorian Guard after an enfeebled, terrified Senate granted him "an important privilege. :.. By a dangerous exception to the ancient maxims, he was authorized to preserve his military command, supported by a numerous body of guards, even in time of peace, and in the heart of the capital."

So far, what I and many of us feared years ago hasn't quite happened. But Trump's inaugural denunciations in 2017 of "politicians who prospered as jobs left and factories closed" — coupled with his vow that the "American carnage" caused by the hiring and buying of foreign people and products and deepened by crime, gangs and drugs "stops right here, stops right now" — left him no choice but to humble or destroy all "politicians" who resist him.

Just look now at the Republicans, as well as Democrats, whom he's thrown under the bus. Let's hope we can look at this moment as a historic one in which, once again, most Americans told Trump and the tens of millions of their fellow citizens who have indulged his armed goons and drooling fools that, as President-elect Biden said during the upheaval: "Enough is enough."

===

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/factcheck/2021/01/07/fact-check-capitol-trespasser-in-horns-misrepresented-as-antifa/6581755002/

no lnx pix

Fact Check: Face-painted Capitol Building trespasser in horns is a known QAnon supporter

USA TODAY

Claim: The shirtless man pictured in Capitol Building breach is with antifa and BLM

After a mob stormed the nation's Capitol on Wednesday, marking an unprecedented day in American history, the world is left wondering who to blame. Amid the upset and confusion, conservative social media users are falsely identifying one trespasser as a liberal actor.

“AZ BLM rally in June, DC Capital in January,” Cari Kelemen tweeted on Jan. 6 alongside two photos of a shirtless man wearing face paint and horns.

Twitter flagged Kelemen’s post as “Manipulated media” and directed users to information that the claims that suggest the man is associated with antifa, rather than far-right movements are false.

Kelemen continued to share tweets, claiming the man was a paid actorand the Capitol Building breach was staged....

Antifa, short for anti-fascist, is an unofficial movement of left-leaning political actors with no unified leadership. The movement has a long history of opposing neo-Nazi groups in the U.S. and Europe. In recent months, President Donald Trump and his followers have widely blamed antifa for violence at anti-racism protests.

Jake Angeli, from Phoenix, yells along with protesters in Washington, DC as the U.S. Congress meets to formally ratify Joe Biden as the winner of the 2020 Presidential election on Jan. 6, 2021.

Social media users, politicians and members of the media corrected Kelemen’s false accusation, but it still garnered more than 35,000 retweets, 7,000 quote tweets and 46,000 likes.

Kelemen, who pledges her support for Trump in her Twitter bio, also has a YouTube channel.

“Who are my sources? You are! Real news, real views from real people from all over the world through connections made on Twitter,” Kelemen describes her channel.

More:Fact check: Images falsely claim to show this week's pro-Trump demonstrations

A Facebook user posted a screenshot of Kelemen's tweet to his timeline.

Neither Kelemen nor the Facebook user that shared her tweet have responded to USA TODAY’s request for comment.

While some lawmakers were evacuated, others locked themselves in their offices as rioters broke into the U.S. Capitol.

The Arizona Republic identifies man as QAnon and Trump supporter

The Arizona Republic identified the man as Jake Angeli after social media posts showed him in the Capitol Building when crowds turned violent and breached security on Jan. 6.

One such photo showed Angeli seated on the dais of the Senate chamber from which Vice President Mike Pence had been presiding before security was breached.

The Republic described Angeli as a known “QAnon supporter who has been a fixture at Arizona right-wing political rallies over the past year.”

QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory that promotes the belief that Trump is the country’s savior sent to put a stop to a “cabal” of elite pedophiles and corrupt government. Followers decode secret online messages from an anonymous whistleblower known as “Q” to prepare for an imminent awakening.

The Arizona Republic reported that since 2019 Angeli has appeared many times at demonstrations outside the Arizona Capitol, pushing baseless conspiracy theories, many of which are tied to QAnon. His frequent demonstrations earned him the nickname “QAnon Shaman.”

More:Fact check: Joe Biden has condemned protest-related violence from the left and the right

In February, Angeli led a crowd at a Phoenix rally for Trump.

In one article, he told The Republic he demonstrated wearing a fur hat, face paint and shirtless to draw attention.

Jake Angeli, who supports QAnon, shouts about reopening schools in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic at the state Capitol on Aug. 12, 2020.

Angeli was featured in a October article about QAnon, in which he was photographed holding a sign that read “Q SENT ME”.

According to The Arizona Republic, Angeli developed his beliefs about deep corruption and an imminent reckoning through his own online research.

More:Fact check: Social media falsely claims Vice President Mike Pence was arrested

Larger photo shows Angeli holding QAnon sign

Brett Lewis, a Twitter user who claims to have taken the original photo of Angeli in June, posted a larger version of the same image on Twitter early Jan. 7 and said the image had been cropped to blame BLM and antifa for the Capitol Building breach.

"The right wing hysteria machine decided to crop it and distribute it to try to blame BLM and Anti Fascists for today’s events," read the tweet.

The larger photo shows Angeli is holding a QAnon-related sign and does not appear to be engaged in anti-racism protests. A crowd holding anti-police signs stood several yards behind him.

Lewis told USA TODAY that Angeli had not been part of the June, 11 anti-racism protest at Tempe Beach Park in Tempe, AZ but "came to disrupt the march and promote q anon".

More:Fact check: Changes in vote totals for Perdue were due to reporting errors, not vote deletion

Reporters identify Angeli on Twitter

BrieAnna J. Frank, a reporter for The Arizona Republic who has interviewed Angeli in the past, took to Twitter to rebuke false claims about his ties to antifa on Jan. 6.

“Here’s part of my interview with Jake Angeli, the 32-year old man I previously posted about, who thanked the president @realDonaldTrump and Q,” she wrote in a May 5 tweet in which she attached a video of Angeli’s interview.

Elijah Schaffer, a reporter for conservative news outlet The Blaze, rejected Kelemen’s accusation on Twitter in the early hours of Jan. 7, saying he also recognized the man as Angeli.

“People keep saying this guy is Antifa or BLM, he is not … Please stop spreading disinfo… I’ve spoken to him in depth on camera in Arizona … He’s a huge supporter of Qanon & regularly walks around w/ a sign saying ‘Q sent me’,” tweeted Schaffer.

Angeli denied The Arizona Republic's request for an interview on Jan. 6, but the Globe and Mail of Toronto reported via Twitter that they spoke with Angeli that evening.

“He said police eventually gave up trying to stop him and other Trump supporters, and let them in. After a while, he said police politely asked him to leave and let him go without arrest,” tweeted reporter Adrian Morrow.

Our rating: False

We rate the claim that the shirtless, face-painted man who was pictured in social media images of the Jan. 6 Capitol Building breach was affiliated with anti-facist or anti-racism movements FALSE because it is not supported by our research. The man, identified as Jake Angeli, has a long, public affiliation with far-right, pro-Trump and QAnon movements.

Our fact-check sources:

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/trump-antifa/

Critics of President Donald Trump has long feared that violence would occur in Washington, D.C. on January 6, and an article by journalist Jeffrey Goldberg describes some of the comments he heard from Trump supporters before a mob invaded the Capitol Building to delay Congress' certification of President-elect Joe Biden's victory in the 2020 presidential election.

In his article, published by The Atlantic, Goldberg recalls, "Insurrection Day, 12:40 p.m. A group of about 80 lumpen Trumpists were gathered outside the Commerce Department, near the White House. They organized themselves in a large circle, and stared at a boombox rigged to a megaphone. Their leader and, for some, savior — a number of them would profess to me their belief that the 45th president is an agent of God and his son, Jesus Christ — was rehearsing his pitiful list of grievances."

Trump told the crowd, "A year from now, we're gonna start working on Congress. We gotta get rid of the weak congresspeople, the ones that aren't any good — the Liz Cheneys of the world. We gotta get rid of them."

In response, Trump supporters standing near Goldberg shouted, "Fuck Liz Cheney." And one of them, a woman in a cat costume, was holding a sign that showed the letter "Q" — as in the QAnon conspiracy cult. She told Goldberg, "We're going to stop the steal. If (Vice President Mike) Pence isn't going to stop it, we have to."

*From ⁦@JeffreyGoldberg⁩: “Mass Delusion in America; What I heard from insurrectionists on their march to the Capito… https://t.co/f1iGvEuBy2*

— Jake Tapper (@Jake Tapper)1609991550.0

Goldberg remembered that the woman in the cat costume and other far-right Trumpistas asked him to remove his protective face mask, but he refused. And when he mentioned that the U.S. was in the middle of a pandemic, he responded, "Yeah, right."

"We will find out shortly if today's insurrection was also a superspreader event," Goldberg explains. "What I do know, after spending hours sponging up Trumpist paranoia, conspiracism and cultishness, is that this gathering was not merely an attempted coup, but also, a mass-delusion event — not something that can be explained adequately through the prism of politics. Its chaos was rooted in psychological and theological phenomena."

Another far-right Trump supporter told Goldberg, "It's all in the Bible. Everything is predicted. Donald Trump is in the Bible. Get yourself ready."

Goldberg recalls, "It did not strike me, even then, that this mob would actually storm the Capitol. I assumed, in a non-insurrectionary failure of imagination, that they would gather on the Capitol's sloping lawn, sing Lee Greenwood anthems, and curse Mitt Romney. There were Proud Boys — or at least Proud Boy-adjacent boys — in this group; they would not speak to me but were also not overtly hostile."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

===

https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/georgia-secretary-of-state-2649747234

alexh

During an hour-long phone conversation on Saturday, January 2, President Donald Trump unsuccessfully tried to bully and coerce Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger into overturning the 2020 presidential election results in the Peach State. But Raffensperger, a conservative Republican, wouldn't budge — maintaining that President-elect Joe Biden won Georgia's electoral votes fairly and that the debunked voter fraud conspiracy theories Trump was promoting had no basis in reality. NBC News reporters Ben Collins, Brandy Zadrozny and Jane C. Timmpinpoint the far-right sources of those theories in an article published on January 4, and they include QAnon and the extremist 4Chan forum.

"While Trump has embraced conspiracy theories for much of his tenure as president," the NBC News reporters explains, "Saturday's call offered a look at just how much he is now relying on some of the most outlandish theories from obscure corners of the internet to make his case for election fraud."

4chan is a favorite source among fans of far-right conspiracy theorists like radio host Alex Jones. And QAnon, a bizarre conspiracy cult, believes that the United States' federal government has been infiltrated by an international cabal of Satanists, cannibals, pedophiles and child sex traffickers and that Trump was put in the White House to fight the cabal.

Joan Donovan, research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at the Harvard Kennedy School, told NBC News, "Trump manages to distill down to a 10-minute monologue what would take the average person years to pull together…. Everything from fakes, forgeries and machine hacking to collusion across parties — it's all laid out in detail with rapid fluidity."

Trump, according to Donovan, "pulled together all the major talking points" of "right-wing media like Parler and Newsmax" during his January 2 conversationwith Raffensperger. Collins, Zadrozny and Timm note that although Trump's "claims were wide-ranging" during that conversation, he "focused in particular on a conspiracy theory that alleges that Georgia election worker Ruby Freeman, working in the State Farm Arena in Downtown Atlanta, produced thousands of fake ballots from a suitcase that somehow swung the vote to President-elect Joe Biden. The theory was debunked weeks ago by state election officials, who called the baseless claims 'ridiculous.'"...

[twt]

qAnon extremists, the NBC News reporters point out, have "harassed Freeman and her daughter."

"Last month, a false rumor was pushed by QAnon accounts that Freeman had been arrested," Collins, Zadrozny and Timm recall. "Though nothing of the kind happened, the rumor spread quickly through far-right fringe communities, and Trump brought it up in the call with Raffensperger."

The reporters add that during his conversation with Raffensperger, Trump also "falsely claimed that Fulton County, (Georgia) had destroyed ballots and inaccurately characterized a consent decree between the state and national Democrats that standardized the process of verifying a voter's identity through signature matching…. There's no evidence of ballots being shredded or burned in Fulton County."

Another debunked claim that Trump promoted while speaking to Raffensperger involves Democratic activist Stacey Abrams, who narrowly lost to Republican Brian Kemp in Georgia's 2018 gubernatorial race. Kemp, now governor of Georgia, has rejected Trump's voter fraud claims and acknowledged that Biden won the Peach State.

"Trump also falsely claimed that Georgia officials had signed a 'totally unconstitutional agreement' with Democrat Stacey Abrams that barred election officials from checking signature matches and allowed people who aren't election officials to collect ballots," the NBC News reporters observe. "This is inaccurate on all fronts: Georgia, in a settlement agreement with the state and national Democrats, agreed to standardize signature matching across the state ahead of the 2020 election. Signatures are still checked twice: first on absentee ballot applications when voters request a ballot, and then again on the envelope of received ballots."

Former Virginia Rep. Denver Riggleman, a Republican who has libertarian leanings and has been warning about QAnon's dangerous influence in the GOP, said of Trump's conversation with Raffensperger, "The ideas are all very specific to QAnon and other conspiracy theories. This sounded like an argument between a teenager caught on 8Chan and the parent who finds him in the basement. You can hear a lot of silence and sighs from the Georgia team."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

===

an 1220

Wednesday, pro-Trump attorney Lin Wood took to Twitter to attack Chief Justice John Roberts, suggesting a wild conspiracy theory that he may have been involved in, or had advance warning of, Justice Antonin Scalia's death in 2016.

"You are recorded discussing Justice Scalia's successor before date of his sudden death," said Wood. "How did you know Scalia was going to die?"

For good measure, Wood also threw in allegations based on the QAnon hoax: "Are you a member of any club or cabal requiring minor children as initiation fee?"

[twt]

this is not the first time Wood has directed his ire at Roberts, who has repeatedly refused to intervene in the ballot counting process in states. Last week, he tweeted a demand for Roberts to resign.

Wood, who has represented a number of high-profile right wing clients and has been involved in unsuccessful lawsuits alleging voter fraud in the 2020 election, has increasingly aggravated even members of President Donald Trump's campaign with his behavior — particularly his suggestion that Republicans should boycott the Georgia Senate runoffs to ensure the incumbents' loyalty to Trump.

"You are recorded discussing Justice Scalia's successor before date of his sudden death," said Wood. "How did you know Scalia was going to die?"

For good measure, Wood also threw in allegations based on the QAnon hoax: "Are you a member of any club or cabal requiring minor children as initiation fee?"

[twt]

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/conspiracy-theories-2649659627/

Far-right conspiracy theorists are not a new phenomenon. The late conservative National Review founder William F. Buckley famously railed against the John Birch Society during the 1960s, denouncing them as extremists who he believed were bad for the conservative movement. But during the Trump era, far-right conspiracy theorists have become increasingly prominent — and experts on domestic terrorism and national security, according to National Public Radio's Hannah Allam, fear that the number of violent attacks could escalate.

"Domestic terrorism analysts are raising concern about the security implications of millions of conservatives buying into baseless right-wing claims," Allam reports. "They say the line between mainstream and fringe is vanishing, with conspiracy-minded Republicans now marching alongside armed extremists at rallies across the country."

Allam notes that during a recent online conference for the group Millions of Conversations, Mary McCord — a former federal prosecutor who now teaches law at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. — warned, "This tent that used to be sort of 'far-right extremists' has gotten a lot broader. To me, a former counterterrorism official, that's a radicalization process."

[twt]

another person who spoke at that online conference was Elizabeth Neumann, a former U.S. Department of Homeland Security official. Although Neumann is conservative, she has become a vehement critic of President Donald Trump and supported former Vice President Joe Biden in the United States' 2020 presidential election. Neumann warned, "Breaking through that echo chamber is critical — or else, we'll see more violence."

Although President-elect Biden enjoyed a decisive victory — winning 306 electoral votes and defeating Trump by over 7 million in the popular vote — the president received 74 million votes. And Allam notes that counterterrorism experts are wondering how many of those 74 million Trump voters are buying into far-right conspiracy theories.

Allam explains, "Political conspiracies drew thousands to last weekend's pro-Trump rally, after which the Proud Boys and other violent extremist groups wreaked havoc in Downtown Washington, D.C…. While it's impossible to pin down the scope of such beliefs, analysts say, the numbers are staggering if even a fraction of President Trump's more than 74 million voters support bogus claims that say, for example, the election was rigged, the coronavirus is a hoax, and liberals are hatching a socialist takeover."

Kori Schake, formerly a senior adviser for the U.S. Department of Defense and the National Security Council, told those attending Millions of Conversations' online event, "It really matters that the president of the United States is an arsonist of radicalization. And it will really help when that is no longer the case."

Arie Kruglanski, who teaches at the University of Maryland and has written a lot about radicalization, is worried as well. Allam quotes Kruglanski as saying, "We don't trust the government. We don't trust the Congress. We don't trust the Supreme Court. We don't trust now the science. We don't trust medicine. We don't trust the media for sure. So, who do we trust? Well, we trust our tribe. We trust conspiracy theories that tell us what we want to hear."

Kruglanski warned, "Every large political movement started at one point as a small fringe minority. And when it catches on, it can engulf the whole society. So, you know, the danger is there."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/qanon-2649643344/

alexh

reporter Ben Collins, in an article published by NBC News' website on December 22, takes a disturbing look at QAnon supporters who are yearning for President Donald Trump to impose a fascist military dictatorship and end liberal democracy in the United States.

President-elect Joe Biden enjoyed a decisive victory in the 2020 presidential election, winning 306 electoral votes and defeating Trump by over 7 million in the popular vote. But QAnon supporters view Democrats as their enemy and have been promoting the hashtag @CrossTheRubicon — which, in QAnon terminology, means imposing a military dictatorship. And QAnon supporters, Collins reports, are urging Trump to "cross the Rubicon" and become a full-fledged dictator.

"With Trump's days in office dwindling," Collins explains, "QAnon influencers have become increasingly restless and militant — urging him to #CrossTheRubicon, a reference to Julius Caesar's crossing the Rubicon River after the Roman Senate explicitly told him not to, effectively kickstarting the Roman Civil War and Caesar's dictatorship."

To understand why QAnon believes that Trump deserves to be a full-fledged dictator, one needs to know about their bizarre and outlandish conspiracy theories. QAnon believes that the United States' federal government, especially the Democratic Party, has been infiltrated by an international cabal of Satanists, child sex traffickers, pedophiles and cannibals and that Trump has been put in the White House to fight the cabal. "Q," according to QAnon, is an anonymous figure who is providing updates about Trump's battle.

Claiming, without evidence, that the election was stolen from Trump because of widespread voter fraud, some far-right Trump supporters have been urging the president to declare martial law in order to prevent Biden from being inaugurated on January 20, 2021 —including former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, Atlanta-based attorney Lin Wood and MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell.

"Flynn, a hero in the mythology of the QAnon conspiracy theory who once took a QAnon 'oath' on video, has said in appearances on the conservative media channel Newsmax that Trump should use the military to'rerun' the election," Collins observes.

QAnon terminology, Collins points out, is being used by some prominent Republicans. For example, Kelli Ward, who chairs the Arizona Republican Party, has used the #CrossTheRubicon hashtag. And attorney Sidney Powell, who has been working with Wood on election-related lawsuits, has used the QAnon hashtag #TheStormIsComing, which, Collins notes, is "a QAnon phrase that refers to the extrajudicial roundup of Democrats at the heart of the theory."

*Mr. President @realDonaldTrump - we are with you in #Arizona. We are working every avenue to stop this coup & to st… https://t.co/CP7RNETBdk*

— Dr. Kelli Ward (@Dr. Kelli Ward )1608429214.0

*Michael Flynn's new attorney, Sidney Powell, has repeatedly retweeted major QAnon accounts, including one of the 3… https://t.co/0DGjSw3Wf0*

— Alex Kaplan (@Alex Kaplan)1560371762.0

*Sidney Powell was probably the most powerful person to have ever believed in deep, mystic, devout QAnonism. Her Twi… https://t.co/9KWYwHGxt1*

— Ben Collins (@Ben Collins)1606090386.0

According to Collins, "Some QAnon followers believe Trump is left with no choice but to declare martial law — a belief based in part on a series of wildly false news articles that have claimed that Trump is in a secret, ongoing land war with China in parts of the U.S. A series of fake news articles, YouTube videos and tweets that went viral among QAnon acolytes last week led followers to believe Trump was conducting clandestine military operations on U.S. soil."

Ron Watkins, who formerly ran the QAnon hub 8kun, recently tweeted:

Will @realDonaldTrump #CrossTheRubicon? Spread the hashtag and show POTUS how you feel about it.

— Ron (@Ron)1608307687.0

Rep. Denver Riggleman, a Republican with libertarian leanings, has been warning about how dangerous QAnon is. The outgoing Virginia congressman, who will be replaced by far-right wingnut Rep.-elect Bob Goodin January, told NBC News, "I'm losing friends and family over a straight-up cult based on anti-Semitism, fantasy and just bizarre made-up tripe. It's an idiocracy based on a digital prophet."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

===

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/the-qanon-general-tracing-the-rise-fall-and-rebirth-of-michael-flynn/

no lnx vid twt

The QAnon General: Tracing the Rise, Fall, and Rebirth of Michael Flynn

By Karim Zidan | December 18, 2020

RETIRED ARMY GEN. Michael Flynn was speaking to a crowd of unmasked Trump loyalists on the steps of the Supreme Court when Marine One flew overhead, soliciting cheers from the delighted audience. Flynn—a special guest speaker at the Dec. 12 rally—stopped mid-sentence and stood in awe of the helicopter while the crowd attempted to sing the national anthem.

“That’s pretty cool,” said Flynn, who served as President Donald Trump’s national security adviser for 22 days before resigning and eventually pleading guilty to lying to the FBI about his contacts with Russia’s ambassador. “Imagine just being able to jump in a helicopter and just go for a joy ride around Washington.”

The retired Army lieutenant general continued where he left off, echoing unfounded allegations that Trump lost the 2020 presidential election to Joe Biden because of widespread voter fraud. He called for “fair, transparent counts,” demanded that Americans get the “truth,” and called out the “media” for its supposed censorship of that truth.

“We’re waging a battle,” Flynn told the raucous crowd.

Flynn’s remarks came a day after the Supreme Court rejected a lawsuit from Texas that sought to overturn Biden’s wins in Wisconsin, Michigan, Georgia, and Pennsylvania. Despite the judicial decision, Flynn encouraged the crowd to have faith in their president and to seek out “avenues” to challenge the results of the election, insisting that the “courts aren’t going to decide who the next president of the United States is going to be. We the people decide.”

“In this crucible moment of our time, we have to pray that truth triumphs over lies, justice triumphs over abuse and fraud, honesty triumphs over corruption,” Flynn said. “Our sacred honor triumphs over infamy.”

After concluding his speech, the disgraced general, who has since been pardoned by Trump, stopped to enjoy his growing fandom among Trump loyalists. He smiled as the crowd chanted “Fight like Flynn” and was even chased by ravenous fans who screamed “We love you, general!” before being stopped by his bodyguards.

Despite Flynn’s unceremonious exit from Trump’s administration in 2017, the retired general remained popular with fringe corners of Trump’s loyal fanbase, including adherents of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory. For years, Flynn has been an important component of the QAnon community, a portion of whom believe he holds pivotal secrets about the so-called “deep state.” His recent presidential pardon reinvigorated their conspiracy theories and validated his status as a hero to their cause—a cause that the general appears to have embraced himself.

“Flynn Facts”

IN JULY 2016, Michael Flynn delivered a fiery speech at the Republican National Convention targeting Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton over her handling of top secret information. After calling Clinton “weak,” “spineless,” and “reckless,” Flynn led chants of “Lock her up” with the crowd in attendance.

“Yeah, that’s right; lock her up,” Flynn said while clapping into the microphone.

Less than seven months later, Flynn was dismissed from his post as Trump’s national security adviser shortly after The Washington Post revealed that the general had spoken to the Russian ambassador to the United States, Sergey Kislyak, about sanctions between the two nations, and had later lied to the FBI about the conversation with Kislyak. Flynn continued to deny the accusations in the days leading up to his firing on Feb. 13, 2017.

Two months later, acting Attorney General Sally Yates testified to a Senate Judiciary panel that she believed “Gen. Flynn was compromised with respect to the Russians.”

“To state the obvious, you don’t want your national security adviser compromised by the Russians,” Yates, who was later fired for refusing to defend Trump’s travel ban, added.

By Nov. 30, 2017, Flynn had signed a plea agreement with special counsel and former FBI Director Robert Mueller, in which he acknowledged lying to the FBI about his sanctions conversation with Kislyak. Then, on Dec. 1, Flynn pleaded guilty and began cooperating with the special counsel’s investigation into the Kremlin’s interference in the 2016 election.

“I recognize that the actions I acknowledged in court today were wrong, and, through my faith in God, I am working to set things right,” Flynn said in a statement that day. “My guilty plea and agreement to cooperate with the Special Counsel’s Office reflect a decision I made in the best interests of my family and of our country. I accept full responsibility for my actions.”

Flynn’s plea agreement was a significant development in the Russia probe at the time. The retired lieutenant general was one of Trump’s top advisers during the 2016 presidential campaign. Though a registered Democrat, Flynn campaigned for Trump and attacked Clinton, even going so far as to accuse her and her aides of child-sex trafficking. Ironically, his son, Michael Flynn Jr., lost his job as one of Trump’s aides after posting similar tweets involving the Pizzagate conspiracy theory.

Flynn’s political tenure began long before Trump was campaigning for the U.S. presidency. In 2012, President Barack Obama promoted Flynn to director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, elevating him to one of the most powerful positions in U.S. military intelligence. During his time as head of the DIA, U.S. intelligence officials became concerned by Flynn’s contacts in Moscow. According to the New York Times, Flynn also made baseless assertions about Islam—he once incorrectly claimed that Islamic law, known as Shariah, is spreading in the United States—which his subordinates have labeled “Flynn Facts.” He was dismissed by Obama in 2014 and retired from the U.S. Army after 33 years of service later that year.

Michael Flynn seated two seats down from Vladimir Putin at RT gala in Moscow, Russia (Credit: Wikicommons)]

Following his retirement, Flynn founded the Flynn Intel Group Inc, a consulting agency that provided intelligence services for governments. In 2015, he attended a gala for the Russian state-owned RT media company in Moscow, Russia, where he was seated two seats down from Russian President Vladimir Putin and was paid $45,000 to give a talk during the event. Then, during the 2016 presidential campaign, it was revealed that Flynn was paid more than $500,000 to represent the interests of the Turkish government. While he did not work directly for the Turkish government, the firm that hired him is owned by a Turkish-American businessman with ties to Erdogan’s government. Flynn also failed to file paperwork registering as a foreign agent.

Despite his past role as a foreign agent and lobbyist for foreign interest in the U.S., when QAnon—a far-right, pro-Trump conspiracy theory that claims a cabal of elite pedophiles consisting of Hollywood actors, Democrats, and high-ranking officials are behind a global child sex-trafficking ring—was born was internet message boards in 2017, the retired general was seen as an ally to the cause. When he was being investigated by the FBI, many QAnon adherents expected him to be exonerated of all alleged crimes in the Russia probe. His delayed sentencing on several occasions only helped fuel the conspiracy theories regarding his innocence.

By July 2019, Flynn fired the attorneys who helped negotiate his plea agreement and hired Sidney Powell, a QAnon supporter who would later become known for filing the infamous “Kraken” lawsuit alleging widespread election fraud in the 2020 election. (Read Right Wing Watch’s in-depth reporting on Sidney Powell here). At Powell’s urging, Flynn moved to withdraw his guilty plea, citing a breach in the plea agreement, and further proclaiming his innocence. Then, following pressure from Trump who called for the charges against Flynn to be dropped, the Department of Justice filed motions to dismiss the case. The motion was then put on hold by the federal judge overseeing the case as he reviewed the request.

Despite the snag, Flynn would soon be a free man, ready to assume his figurative role as the QAnon general.

The Digital Soldiers [interesting grafix]

“IT IS MY Great Honor to announce that General Michael T. Flynn has been granted a Full Pardon,” Trump tweeted on Nov. 25, 2020. “I know you will now have a truly fantastic Thanksgiving!”

The move had been expected. Trump had hinted back in March that he was “strongly considering” pardoning Flynn, despite the fact that the retired general had not yet been sentenced. The pardon was met with criticism from Democrats—Speaker Nancy Pelosi called it “an act of grave corruption and a brazen abuse of power” in her official statement—while Trump loyalists celebrated the decision to save a man they viewed as a political casualty. Even the White House described Flynn as an “innocent man” and the “victim of partisan government officials engaged in a coordinated attempt to subvert the election of 2016.”

In the weeks that followed, Flynn underwent a strategic public relations campaign, which included appearances on Fox News and the right-wing Epoch Times,public speeches (as seen at the Jericho March on Dec. 12), and even a few radio hits on “The Dan Bongino Show,” among others. His aim was not only to rehabilitate his own public image, but to stand in vehement opposition to Biden’s imminent presidency.

During media appearances, Flynn repeated baseless conspiracy theories about election fraud and Dominion Voting Systems, citing his lawyer Sidney Powell’s “Kraken” lawsuits. He alleged that “thousands” of Americans have come forward with grievances and proof regarding voter fraud and that transparency is required to ensure the sanctity of the election process. During a recent appearance on Fox News (his third since being pardoned), Flynn suggested that Americans will “not allow” Biden’s inauguration to go ahead in January 2021.

Flynn also encouraged Americans to boycott the upcoming Georgia Senate runoffs, despite the fact that the winners will help determine which party will control the Senate. “We have to get the last election right before we start talking about any other runoff election like they are down in Georgia. That’s a falsehood that people shouldn’t even be considering right now,” he said.

While much of Flynn’s arguments are rooted in references to QAnon-linked conspiracy theories, the former three-star general has also pandered to the group by appearing on podcasts hosted by QAnon influencers. During a Dec. 4 appearance on “The Matrixxx Groove Show,” a podcast that claims to have the “most red-pilled audience” and is popular within the QAnon community, Flynn revealed that the show’s “listeners have inspired us and allowed us to fight the deep, deep corruption that we face in our government.”

“The digital army that we have is unstoppable,” Flynn continued. “The digital soldiers that we have are committed, dedicated servants of our country.”

This is not the first time that Flynn has referenced the term “digital soldiers.” The general first used the term during a November 2016 speech to the Young America’s Foundation, where he bragged about being the general of an “army of digital soldiers” that waged an “insurgency” to “take over” information and the media. The term has since been adopted by QAnon adherents, many of whom view themselves as digital soldiers fighting against the forces of the so-called deep state.

Flynn has continued to reference digital soldiers during media appearances and on social media—it is one of the main hashtags on his Twitter bio, along with #TakeTheOath, which is also a reference to QAnon. During his interview with “The Matrixxx Groove Show,” he referred to digital soldiers as the “largest law firm in the world” because they would “enlighten the people of this country and also the tactical legal team that we have, eventually led by America’s guardian angel of justice, Sidney Powell.”

To close out his appearance on the show, Flynn hinted that he is on the run from the deep state, “I’m on the move. I gotta make sure I’m a moving target because these son-of-a-guns, they’re after me, in a literal and a figurative sense at some time.”

The general’s deepening ties to QAnon have been apparent for several months now, well before he was pardoned in November. On Independence Day, Flynn posted a video of himself alongside members of his family reciting the QAnon slogan “Where we go one we go all,” making Flynn the most prominent former U.S. official to publicly stoke QAnon.

Michael Flynn taking QAnon oath with family members (Credit: screenshot)]

Flynn’s overt show of support to the QAnon movement has only helped energize a community that has been struggling to stay on message in the wake of Trump’s election loss and Q’s limited drops. While QAnon adherents would have preferred to see Flynn exonerated instead of pardoned, as the latter suggests guilt, they have used the pardon as a sign that thing are going according to plan.

“Any anons apart from myself getting goosebumps now that Flynn is free?” an admin of a QAnon channel with thousands of subscribers asked on Nov. 28. (Anon refers to anonymous users.)“My whole body is in goosebumps.”

“I am anxious to see Gen. Flynn in action,” another replied.

The lionization of Flynn within the QAnon movement emphasizes his importance to the movement. For QAnon adherents, the idea that a three-star lieutenant general and former high-ranking U.S. official supporting their community validates their efforts and proves that the deep state exists. When he refers to them as digital soldiers, he is exciting the countless QAnon followers who feel compelled to take matters into their own hands and legitimizing their undertaking.

QAnon meme referencing digital soldiers (Credit: Telegram) band of bros]

The QAnon community was further electrified on Dec. 1 when Flynn retweeted a call for Trump to temporarily suspend constitutional order and declare martial law to have the U.S. military oversee a new presidential election—a topic that had been popular within QAnon circles in the weeks following the Nov. 3 election. One QAnon follower in a private QAnon channel called for martial law after stating that Americans have “no Supreme Court, no DOJ, no FBI to protect us from the Government,” while another suggested that worldwide martial law would “fix” the “fucking fake Media.”

Not only is Flynn an important figure within the QAnon conspiracy theory, he is also a key proponent of the movement. His willingness to pander to the dangerous far-right conspiracy theory, encourage its adherents to continue tumbling down their rabbit holes, and promote totalitarian militaristic policies such as martial law raises concerns about his potential to further radicalize Trump loyalists ahead of Biden’s inauguration.

After spending 33 years as a decorated combat veteran who retired from the military with three stars, Flynn has now assumed the role he seems to have long dreamed of: the star general leading a digital army in service to Q.

Tags: Barack Obama Donald Trump Hillary Clinton Lin Wood Michael Flynn Robert Muller Sidney Powell conspiracy theories Deep State Pizzagate QAnon

===

A truly wild story: A former police captain was arrested and charged with assaulting an air conditioner repairman who he falsely thought was carrying 750,000 fraudulent ballots in his truck. The organization allegedly paying the former cop to prove supposed election fraud is led by a QAnon conspiracy theorist, and its Facebook page is filled with conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric.
A viral 4chan hoax about Chief Justice John Roberts tricked a presidential elector and pro-Trump media.
Right-wing media personality and major Fox News advertiser Mike Lindell, of MyPillow, called for Trump to impose martial law.
Invoking the infamous Dred Scott decision, Mark Levin screamed at the Supreme Court over Trump's election loss.
Laura Ingraham encouraged viewers to gather for the holidays. She is still lying about how lethal COVID-19 is, and also claimed this weekthat vaccinations may not be necessary in the Dakotas because of how many people have already been infected.
Tucker Carlson claimed vaccine distribution is “eugenics” against white people.
Fox News villainized Rep. Eric Swalwell (D-CA) for the massive hack (allegedly by Russia) that happened on Trump's watch.

----

ref

https://www.mediamatters.org/voter-fraud-and-suppression/texas-organization-connected-alleged-assault-over-imaginary-voter-fraud

no lnx graphics are amazing

The Texas organization connected to an alleged assault over imaginary voter fraud posts violent and conspiratorial rhetoric

An ex-cop was arrested for assault while bogusly trying to prove voter fraud. The Liberty Center for God and Country bankrolled him and has a Facebook page full of violent and conspiratorial rhetoric -- and even called for Democrats to be put to death.

WRITTEN BY ERIC HANANOKI

PUBLISHED 12/16/20

Liberty Center for God and Country's logo

From Liberty Center for God & Country's Facebook page.

A former police captain was arrested and charged with assaulting an air conditioner repairman who he falsely thought was carrying 750,000 fraudulent ballots in his truck. The organization allegedly paying the former cop to prove supposed election fraud is led by a QAnon conspiracy theorist, and its Facebook page is filled with conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric.

The Harris County District Attorney’s Office stated on December 15 that former Houston Police Capt. Mark Anthony Aguirre was arrested by police and charged “with Aggravated Assault with a Deadly Weapon, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison.” The office stated:

According to Aguirre, he had been conducting surveillance on the victim for four days under a theory the victim was the mastermind of a giant fraud, and there were 750,000 fraudulent ballots in a truck he was driving. Instead, the victim turned out to be an innocent and ordinary air conditioner repairman.

Aguirre ran his SUV into the back of the truck to get the technician to stop and get out, according to the document. When the technician got out of the truck, Aguirre, pointed a handgun at the technician, forced him to the ground and put his knee on the man’s back – an image captured on the body-worn camera of a police officer.

Aguirre directed police to a parking lot nearby where another suspect, who has not been identified, took the truck. There were no ballots in the truck. It was filled with air conditioning parts and tools.

According to the district attorney’s office, Aguirre was working for the Liberty Center for God and Country and “never told police that he had been paid a total of $266,400 … with $211,400 of that amount being deposited into his account the day after the incident.”

Right-wing commentator and Republican donor Steven Hotze is the CEO of The Liberty Center for God and Country. The Texas Tribune reported that “Jared Woodfill, a spokesperson and attorney for Hotze, confirmed that the Liberty Center hired a company led by Aguirre to investigate voter fraud ahead of the 2020 election.”

Hotze is a QAnon and coronavirus conspiracy theorist who has claimed that COVID-19 is “much ado about nothing” and speculated that the “deep state could have been the ones that orchestrated this whole viral problem with the virus.” He is also an anti-LGBTQ bigot and a grifter. Additionally, Hotze helped lead an unsuccessful effort to throw out ballots cast in drive-thru voting in Harris County, Texas. (Since the election, Trump and his right-wing media allies have been on a desperate quest to overturn the election results by hyping false, evidence-free claims of voter fraud.)

In June, Hotze left a voice message for Gov. Greg Abbott (R-TX) saying that he should order the National Guard “to shoot to kill if any of these son-of-a-bitch people start rioting like they have in Dallas, start tearing down businesses — shoot to kill the son of a bitches. That’s the only way you restore order. Kill 'em. Thank you.”

The Liberty Center for God and Country’s Facebook page is a cesspool of conspiracy theories and violent rhetoric. (The organization's Facebook page often mirrors or reposts content from Hotze’s Facebook page.) Facebook has had numerous problems over the years with such toxic content on its platform.

Liberty Center for God and Country stated that Democrats have committed “treason,” which “is punishable by the death penalty.”

Liberty Center for God and Country pushes death penalty for Democrats

https://www.facebook.com/libertycgc/photos/147829083733171

Liberty Center for God and Country: “We are fighting pure evil.”

https://www.facebook.com/libertycgc/photos/147992410383505

Liberty Center for God and Country: “Patriots will stand and fight before we let these Communist Democrats steal the election and destroy America’s Constitutional Republic.”

Liberty Center for God and Country: “Patriots will stand and fight before we let these Communist Democrats steal the election and destroy America’s Constitutional Republic”

https://www.facebook.com/libertycgc/posts/141935467655866

Liberty Center for God and Country: “The US Supreme Court will decide in Trump’s favor. Then the civil war will begin in earnest. Get prepared.”

https://www.facebook.com/libertycgc/posts/141796694336410

Liberty Center for God and Country: Marxists are behind the coronavirus.

Liberty Center for God and Country: Marxists are behind the coronavirus

https://www.facebook.com/libertycgc/photos/148041003711979

Liberty Center for God and Country: “COVID is a global ritual, a social experiment orchestrated by elite Globalists for population control and the rollout of the poisonous VACCINES ... to alter our DNA.”

https://www.facebook.com/libertycgc/photos/138364038013009

Liberty Center for God and Country: “The Covid scamdemic was devised by the Deep State … to create massive election fraud.”

Liberty Center for God and Country: “The Covid scamdemic was devised by the Deep State … to create massive election fraud"

https://www.facebook.com/libertycgc/photos/113405650508848

Liberty Center for God and Country posted a coronavirus “road map” that is full of conspiracy theories.

Liberty Center for God and Country posted a coronavirus "road map" that is full of conspiracy theories

https://www.facebook.com/libertycgc/posts/141935467655866

THE LATEST

Fox News contributor dismisses report of Trump floating martial law when meeting with conspiracy theorists in the Oval Office

12/20/20 12:00 PM EST

Fox News villainizes Rep. Eric Swalwell for massive hack that happened on Trump's watch

12/18/20 9:06 PM EST

Chris Hayes: Murdoch owned media has “waged a war against public health” during pandemic

12/18/20 8:57 PM EST

Tucker Carlson claims vaccine distribution is “eugenics” against white people

12/18/20 8:30 PM EST

Newsmax host: “I have a very strong conviction, still, that somehow, in some way, Donald Trump will ultimately prevail”

12/18/20 7:46 PM EST

IN THIS ARTICLE

Voter Fraud and Suppression

Voter Suppression

187 COMMENTS

Sean Hannity on presidential election: “There's no doubt this was stolen”

12/18/20 6:14 PM EST

On War Room: Pandemic, Steve Cortes compares mail-in voting to Jim Crow-era poll taxes and literacy tests

12/18/20 4:48 PM EST

Sean Hannity calls for the end of mail-in voting

12/17/20 6:39 PM EST

Media Matters for America

===

interesting that 2 movies back in nexflix?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/qanon-2649564683

[foto interesting signs and t whirts, q army, we are Q , qmania?!]

if you haven't heard of the far-right conspiracy theory QAnon by now, perhaps it's irresponsible of me to tell you about it. Essentially, a member of a sketchy Internet forum alleged that he is a high level government official with secret information about a satanic cult run by Democrat pedophilesand their sex-trafficking associates. It's the same old antisemitic dogwhistle all over again, but with a fun new twist: President Donald Trump has surreptitiously dedicated his career, not to shady business practices, but to taking them down. And you can help him, if you can find and figure out the unspecified clues, such as the "strategic" spelling errors in the President's tweets (covfefe!). Despite being widely regarded by experts and intelligence officials as at best baseless and at worst a source of domestic terror, the QAnon movement continues to accrue members at an alarming rate. A recent article stated that roughly one-third of Republicans who had heard of QAnon believe it has merit.

How can so many disregard the clear and obvious facts printed in mainstream media in order to believe in an improbably vast conspiracy? For the same reasons that theyfell in love with "The Da Vinci Code" 17 years ago. A palace intrigue of epic proportions. Codes and puzzles hidden in plain sight, with a a mysterious man acting as the augur. A shadowy organization involved in dark rituals with global stakes. And you, reader, are breathlessly tasked with solving the riddle in real time, using the clues, your natural intuition, and perhaps your internet search engine of choice.

When "The Da Vinci Code" was published in 2003, it f**king blew my 13-year-old mind. I was dazzled by Dan Brown's ability to create elaborate, heart-racing puzzles that were self-contained and yet felt like they reframed the world around me. Dan Brown also pioneered short chapters and constant cliffhangers, analogous to the techniques later used by social media companies to hopelessly addict us all (endless scrolling, intentionally delayed notifications, etc.). [I LOVE BEES?]

Beyond that, Dan Brown asked plausible questions about familiar aspects of Western culture. Take, for instance, the lady on the iconic cover: I dare you to name a more renowned painting than the Mona Lisa. With a few pieces of obscure trivia or alleged historical interpretations, he could make compelling arguments that "things aren't always what they seem," especially when it comes to Catholicism. This struck me hard: a teenage boy trying to reconcile my own lack of faith within a pervasively theistic culture, as well as a burgeoning alienation from a power structure that seemed so self-serving. As my fiancée put it, "I think . . . I think Dan Brown taught me critical thinking."

And Dan Brown was successful by any given metric. "The Da Vinci Code" received a glowing review in the New York Times, sold 80 million copies worldwide (outsold that year only by "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix"), and launched an immensely lucrative film franchise. Dan Brown himself earned spots in the Times 100 Most Influential People and Forbes Celebrity 100. The book exceeded traditional notions of literary success in a way that few do. You can probably find a copy of an "unauthorized guide" to "The Da Vinci Code" on all of your parents' bookshelves, with a title along the lines of "Decoding Da Vinci" or "Secrets of the Code" (I found two!). In fact, it's hard to think of a book that necessitates a compulsory explainer companion book outside of Ulysses, widely lauded as the best book of the century. "The Da Vinci Code" was an Important Book....

aha CNP is everywhere in trump/ crazytown slide into polarization in this case dobson; satan usage getting pretty common/casual, it's manichean light/dark tribalism, you're with us or THEM; they are so evil/irrational only settle/cure with war; they hate america and freedom; armageddon is the final orgasmic punishment /vanquishing of coastal elite who looked down on us and called us crazy (ghost dance)

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-evangelicals-2649541067/

alexh

Christian Right is in mourning over President Donald Trump being voted out of office. Pat Robertson, the far-right evangelical who founded the Christian Broadcasting Network, has declared that the inauguration of President-elect Joe Biden on January 20, 2021 must be prevented, saying, "We will not give up this great country. And Satan, you cannot have it." But the irony is that the incoming president is much more religious than Trump, who has demonstrated how little he knows about Christianity and the Bible.

Although Trump was raised Presbyterian, religion was never a high priority in his life. But when he ran for president in 2016, Trump realized that the Christian Right was a prominent voting bloc in the GOP and went out of his way to pander to the far-right White evangelicals he had no connection to in the past. The Trump of the 1980s, 1990s and 2000s was more of a Blue Dog Democrat than a GOP culture warrior, and he spent a lot more time in casinos than in churches.

Journalist Ed Kilgore, in an article published by New York Magazine on December 17, notes Trump's history of butchering Biblical references during his speeches.

Kilgore explains, "Before Donald Trump became the very favorite politician of White conservative evangelicals, he was regularly a figure of sport for displaying exceptional ignorance in all matters religious. A particularly rich example of his clumsiness occurred when he was campaigning at evangelical stronghold Liberty University early in 2016 and tried to quote a Bible verse that was very familiar to the audience, since it's etched on several buildings there."

Kilgore adds that there were many other "religious gaffes Trump committed while stumping for votes" in 2016.

"On another occasion along the campaign trail," Kilgore recalls, "Trump was asked about his favorite line of scripture. He delivered a word salad for a while and finally tried to recall 'an eye for an eye,' not the sort of thing Christians of any variety consider normative for the faith of the Prince of Peace…... Just prior to the Iowa caucuses, Trump was in a Council Bluffs church when a plate came down the pews with communion bread on it. The billionaire misidentified it as a collection plate and put a couple of bills on it."

Kilgore also notes that in 2017, Trump met with two Presbyterian minsters and was surprised to learn that they didn't consider themselves evangelicals but rather, described themselves as "Mainline Protestants."

Of course, anyone with even a basic knowledge of Christianity realizes that Presbyterians aren't evangelicals any more than Episcopalians or Lutherans — two other examples of Mainline Protestants — are evangelicals. And there's no way that either Biden, a devout Catholic, or former President Barack Obama, a Mainline Protestant, would have made that mistake or confused a communion plate with a collection plate. Unlike Trump, Biden and Obama both have a long history of being churchgoing Christians and obviously have an extensive knowledge of the Bible.

[twt]

if Pat Robertson were to sit down with Biden or Obama, they could have an in-depth conversation about scripture. Yet Robertson, like much of the Christian Right, adores Trump while hating Biden and Obama — which underscores the deeply tribalist nature of the Christian Right.

The Christian Right has long been a hate movement, and it is as much about White nationalism and far-right identity politics as it is about Protestant fundamentalism. The late Rev. Jerry Falwell, Sr., founder of Liberty University and co-founder of the Moral Majority, was a notorious segregationist during the 1950s and 1960s, when he vigorously defended Jim Crow laws in the pulpit and argued that the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. was a not a true Christian because of his anti-segregation views. During the 1980s, Falwell defended the racist apartheid regime in South African and encouraged Christians to buy krugerrands to support it.

The late Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater, known for being an arch-conservative in his day, was vehemently critical of Falwell and the Christian Right during the 1980s — describing them as dangerous fanatics and warning that the GOP was making a huge mistake by allying itself with that movement. But many Republicans ignored Goldwater, much to the GOP's detriment.

To the Christian Right and far-right White evangelicals, the fact that Biden and Obama are more religious than Trump is irrelevant. Robertson, the Family Research Council's Tony Perkins, James Dobson (founder of Focus on the Family) and other evangelical Trump supporters are extreme tribalists, and they view Trump as part of their tribe — which is why Trump got a pass when, according to his former personal attorney Michael Cohen, he had extramarital affairs with a porn star (Stormy Daniels) and a Playboy model (Karen McDougal) and paid them hush money to keep quiet.

Trump repeatedly attacked Biden as anti-Christian during his 2020 presidential campaign. But in 2017, Trump didn't even know the difference between Presbyterians and evangelicals.

The Christian Right will miss Trump dearly when he leaves off on January 20, 2021. And no matter how much Biden goes to church or accurately quotes the Bible, it won't matter to the far-right evangelical extremists who value White identity politics above all else.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/trump-qanon

pvt praise q and greene, does not know what it is?

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/12/qanon-believes-have-a-new-bizarre-claim-this-time-its-about-bidens-broken-2649093101/

an alexh 1120

although President Donald Trump's efforts to challenge the 2020 presidential election results have suffered defeat after defeat in the lower federal courts, that hasn't stopped Republican attorneys like Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis and Sidney Powell from continuing to pursue election-related lawsuits and claiming, without evidence, that the president has been the victim of widespread voter fraud. Attorney Mike Dunford offers legal analysis of some of those lawsuits in an article for the conservative website The Bulwark, arguing that the lawsuits aren't as "dumb" as you think — they're worse.

"Every time you think you have a grasp of how preposterous the Trump team's election lawsuits are, another one comes out, dumber and more conspiracy-filled than the last," Dunford explains. "The Pennsylvania monstrosity that was submitted by Rudy Giuliani, Jenna Ellis, and the Four Seasons Total Litigation supporting cast was terrible. It made, according to a federal appeals court ruling, 'vague and conclusory' allegations about alleged misconduct, tried to get the court to do things that would violate the U.S. Constitution, and had, in the court's words, 'no merit.' Their case was such complete nonsense that two courts and four judges decided it was too dumb to fix.

powell, in one of her lawsuits, claims that the software used by Dominion Voting Systems was used to help President-elect Joe Biden steal the election in key battleground states — and Dunford notes that one of Powell's witnesses is a QAnon conspiracy theorist.

"As specious as the legal arguments are and as incomprehensible as the copy is, the craziest thing about the case is the substance," Dunford observes. "This complaint reads like it was drafted at the afterparty for a three-day QAnon convention. And it might have been, given that one of Powell's more absurd 'witnesses' is Ronald Watkins, who, alongside his father, runs the imageboard where 'Q' drops his messages.Hmmmm. The reason Watkins is part of this case is unclear. Powell is claiming him as an expert in Dominion's voting software, but you would hope that she could find someone better — like, I don't know, someone who has worked with it maybe?"

The QAnon cult claims that that United States' federal government has been infiltrated by an international cabal of pedophiles, Satanists and cannibals and that Trump was put in the White House to fight the cabal. "Q," according to the group, is an anonymous figure who is providing updates about Trump's battle. And QAnon also claims that R&B superstar Beyoncé is really an Italian woman named Ann Marie Lastrassi and is only pretending to be Black — and that Beyoncé is acting on orders from billionaire Democrat George Soros....

===

death threats dominion

===

1120 rww stop the steal dc march

greene:

Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon-supporting Republican from Georgia who will be walking the halls of Congress come January, closed out the rally at Freedom Plaza with a torrent of falsehoods, offering a sense of what kind of colleague she’ll be on Capitol Hill.

“This is only the beginning,” she said. “The Democrat Party is the party of socialism, the party of riots, the party that wants to murder babies up until birth and make taxpayers pay for it, they’re the party that wants to take away your guns.”

With that, the rally blasted the song “YMCA” unironically, and the march to the Supreme Court began. ...

...The far-right QAnon conspiracy theory also made a showing, with the QAnon slogan, “Where we go one, we go all,” abbreviated to “WWG1WGA,” on T-shirts, “Q” pins on hats, and posters about child-sex-trafficking. One man wore a sweatshirt that read, “Investigate Pizzagate,” referring to the debunked Pizzagate conspiracy theory that preceded QAnon and ended with a gunman showing up to a Washington, D.C., pizzeria.

*:{:{

}:}:*

Meanwhile, Alex Jones, who pushed that theory, was given the microphone on the same stage at which recent electeds Lauren Boebert and Madison Cawthorn, who both have dabbled in QAnon, would later speak.

*:{:{

}:}:*

After claiming that “globalists are making their move against us,” Jones led the crowd in a prayer. “We absolutely commit to you on your holy altar to never submit to Satan and these globalist pedophiles, and we will defeat their new world order. Amen!” he yelled before starting the crowd on a “U-S-A!” chant.

...

===

dakota nurse (highest death rate in world 11/20) yelled at till intubated, hoax must be something else killing me

----

pro-Trump coronavirus truthers try to invade Utah hospital overrun with COVID-19 patients: report

Alex Henderson

November 18, 2020

When President Donald Trump was voted out of office in the 2020 election, one of the top reasons why millions of U.S. residents voted to replace him with former Vice President Joe Biden was his woefully inadequate response to the coronavirus pandemic.

===

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/is-the-qanon-fantasy-unravelling/

no twt pix

nestled in the heart of Southlake, Texas, is a 130-acre town square filled with more than a hundred lifestyle shops and dozens of fine dining restaurants. The shopping district—one of the finest in the Dallas-Fort Worth area—is home to quaint boutiques, fine jewelry stores, and even a selection of parks and green spaces equipped with water fountains. And on Friday, Nov. 6, the family-friendly space was overrun with demonstrators protesting against any declaration of President Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election.

The protest, organized on social media by a pair of young women who call themselves the Patriot Sisters, attracted a reported 75 people, many of whom brandished “Thin Blue Line” American flags and signs emblazoned with the words “TRUMP 2020.” One woman strummed a guitar and sang religious songs, while other protesters prayed and declared that “voter fraud should be stopped in the name of Jesus.”

The group also attracted supporters of the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory, including one man carrying a cellphone on a selfie stick, which he used to record the protest while chanting religious declarations interspersed with statements about child-trafficking and pedophilia—dog whistles used by QAnon adherents.

“We will not lose this nation and allow human trafficking to continue,”the man carrying a selfie stick said in a titled “Prayer Rally for TRUMP! #Trump2020 #PrayForTrump #TheGreatAwakening.”

“We will not lose this nation and allow pedophilia to continue…we declare that no darkness will triumph in these last days. Praise you, Jesus,” he said. (The Great Awakening is a term associated with QAnon, as well as with religious-right activists who believe God is using Trump to bring spiritual revival to the U.S.)

The Patriot Sisters run popular Instagram and TikTok accounts, which they have used to promote the anti-mask movement, anti-Black Lives Matter rhetoric, and pro-Trump propaganda and misinformation. They have even made a post using the #SaveOurChildren hashtag, which was hijacked by QAnon followers to push falsehoods about the purported exploitation of children by liberal elites.

While they may not necessarily be ardent supporters of QAnon, the Patriot Sisters’ attraction of some of the conspiracy theory’s impassioned followers not only emphasizes the recently formed overlap between evangelical Christians and QAnon, but also highlights the current state of despair festering within the movement – a despair centered around a single question:

What now?

A Crisis of Faith

Election night was supposed to signal a key moment in Q’s long-touted reckoning.

The anonymous prophet fueling the QAnon movement spent years flooding the internet with unfounded conspiracies, proclamations about the so-called deep state’s cabalistic control of the United States, and Trump’s role as the anointed savior fighting off the forces of evil. The posts began on the infamous discussion board 4chan in Oct. 2017, where an anonymous poster claimed to have “Q clearance” granting him access to classified information at the Department of Energy, including nuclear secrets. Q quickly amassed a large following through his posts (known as “Q drops”), and the movement grew among right-wing circles.

QAnon eventually morphed into a virtual cultwhere supporters claim that a cabal of elite pedophiles made up of Hollywood actors, Democrats, and other high-ranking officials is behind a global child sex-trafficking ring. The unfounded conspiracy theory also alleges that Trump is planning a day of reckoning known as “The Storm,” during which thousands of these deep state actors will be arrested.Many believed that the supposed reckoning and the eventual defeat of the deep state would begin with Trump’s victory in the 2020 election.

Joe Biden’s victory served as a body-blow to the movement’s ardent followers.

Q’s final drop before the election was on the morning of Nov. 3, and featured an Abraham Lincoln quote from 1863, in which the former president declared “that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom.” The drop also bore the image of an American flag and a YouTube link to the theme song of the 1992 film “The Last of the Mohicans.” The was viewed more than 35 million times and features more than 28,000 comments, mainly from loyal followers of the QAnon movement.

“This is the Q message board today,” read one comment. “A genius way to get past the sensors. Seeing all the recent comments makes me proud win or lose. WWG1WGA.” (The code denotes QAnon’s best-known slogan, “Where we go one, we go all.”)

While Q’s followers gathered in earnest to witness a reckoning that never came, Q himself was mysteriously silent. Even the operators of the website Q Alerts, which keeps track of the Q drops, attempted to reassure followers regarding their prophet’s suspicious absence. “Q has been dark for 9 days. At times Q strategically goes dark for days, weeks or in some cases months. Be sure you have some type of Q Alerts in place so you are notified when Q drops again. If your browser shows a red bell icon at the bottom/right, that is a great place to start."

[txt]

Q’s disappearance (which lasted for nine days until the anonymous figure resurfaced again on Nov. 12) coupled with Trump’s defeat in the presidential elections, led to a range of responses from his followers. Some stood their ground and doubled down on the conspiracies, while others began to question whether they themselves had been fooled. Followers (known as Anons) flooded forums, Telegram chats, and Q-friendly spaces to discuss the events, share their despair, and seek comfort from others.

“We Have (sic) been told time & again Trump wins in the end!! Don’t give up so easily, if you believe don’t give up,” one poster told a QAnon group of several hundred members on Telegram. Another responded that “giving up is NOT an option for me!!”

This is not the first time that QAnon believers have faced disappointment. One of the initial claims of the conspiracy theory was that Hillary Clinton would be arrested and imprisoned in 2017. When that did not happen, QAnon followers recalibrated and decided that Clinton had been placed under house arrest and was wearing an ankle bracelet. Even her appearances in public only emboldened them to raise the stakes and claim that the deep state had replaced her with a clone.

Then in 2018, Q claimed that Republicans would dominate the midterm elections and reclaim the U.S. House of Representatives. This, of course, did not come to pass, and while this likely impacted some of Q’s followers, the movement only continued to grow over the next couple of years.

Q’s nine days of silence during a critical time in the supposed reckoning left a power vacuum within the cesspool of conspiracies on 8kun, the message board formerly known as 8chan that has been linked to white supremacy, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, various other hate crimes, and multiple mass shootings. Following three mass shootings in 2019 (Christchurch, New Zealand, in March; Poway, California, in April; El Paso, Texas, in August) where each of the assailants used 8chan as a platform to post their manifestos, 8chan went offline in August 2019 and rebranded in Nov. 2019 as 8kun.

While 8kun quickly became a home for Q’s posts, the site saw a surprising shift on Election Day. Shortly following Q’s Nov. 3 drop, Ron Watkins—son of 8kun owner Jim Watkins—revealed that he was “resigning as the admin of 8kun effective immediately.” According to the Washington Post, Watkins resigned to focus on his “health and marriage” and that he had “no thoughts or insight” into why Q had not posted in over a week.

Given that Watkins was one of a handful of people who could verify Q’s drops, several fake Q posts appeared over the following days which caused mass confusion among Anons before being discredited. Others spammed the forums with biblical passages comparing Moses’ miraculous parting of the Red Sea to QAnon’s ongoing fight against the deep state. The posts served the purpose of preying on vulnerable believers who were seeking answers for Q’s temporary disappearance.

[lots of text]

for some Anons, their determined and whole-hearted support for the baseless conspiracy theory cost them their marriages and destroyed their families. Those who have gambled on Q being a harbinger of light against the forces of evil cannot afford to turn back now, lest they realize they had sacrificed their loved ones to follow an anonymous internet troll. Faced with little alternative, many have doubled down on their beliefs and converged onto their last resort: unfounded conspiracy theories alleging widespread voter fraud in the 2020 election.

“There is a plan. It is a good plan”

Major Patriot—a popular twitter account belonging to a QAnon supporter—was among the first to tweet out words of encouragement to his 168,000+ following, claiming that everything was going according to plan for the Trump administration despite the election results:

I want to encourage any of you who may be alarmed about what is happening in our nation…Have Faith in God, our President and THE PLAN. Rejoice now in VICTORY. Do not worry. Do not be afraid. THERE IS A PLAN. IT IS A GOOD PLAN. IT IS BEING EXECUTED — and it will not fail.

Many Anons followed suit, including some of the most prominent QAnon-related accounts on social media. They began to share disinformation surrounding the 2020 presidential election. Some pushed doctored videos and fake stories about ballot stuffing, while others propagated hashtags such as Stop the Steal, as well as the alleged ballot “watermarks” conspiracy theory.

[twt acb: nice win joe, sure wd be terrble if something happened to it]

QAnon accounts pushing Trump’s disinformation campaign were not limited to the United States. Amazing Polly, arguably the most outspoken QAnon supporter in Canada, has been actively pushing the election fraud narrative on Twitter. Polly, who appears to live in Ontario, is also a vehement anti-vaxxer and believes that COVID-19 was a planned event that helped enable a globalist coup—a claim she admits she inherited from far-right conspiracy-monger Alex Jones.

There was also a significant amount of Q-related activity from European followers of the movement, primarily in Germany, Italy, and France, as well as the United Kingdom. It has primarily been embraced by conservatives and the far-right, many of whom view Trump as a potential savior from leaders such as Germany’s Chancellor Angela Merkel and France’s President Emmanuel Macron.

As Anons continued toamplify unfounded claims of widespread election fraud, some viewed the election aftermath as a renewed call to action. Philadelphia police arrested two armed men on Thursday Nov. 5, who were targeting the Convention Center where vote-counting was taking place. The two men were found in a Hummer with a decal on the rear window bearing the QAnon slogan WWG1WGA.

The arrest is a stark reminder that the FBI has labeled QAnon as a potential domestic terrorism threat. QAnon supporters have been charged with terrorism for driving an armored truck to the Hoover Dam and blocking traffic for several hours, faced murder charges for the March 2019 slaying of Gambino crime family underboss Frank Cali, and kidnapping charges after a QAnon supporter attempted to kidnap one of her children who have been removed from her custody.

The potential for violence has not stopped influential Q-adjacent accounts from pushing the election fraud conspiracies on social media. Midnight Rider, another prominent QAnon account with more than half-million followers, has been activelyamplifying messages from Trump, Rudy Giuliani, as well as Michael Flynn, who served as national security advisor for the first three weeks of Trump’s presidency before resigning.

Emboldened by Trump’s defiance and his administration’s refusal to concede the election, the account tweetedon Nov. 11, “Losing never felt so good!”

[pix flag]

what’s Next?

While the QAnon movement has been fueled by despair and denialism in the aftermath of the election, the movement is not without its small victories.

Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene was declared the winner in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, becoming the first QAnon supporter to win a U.S. House seat. She was followed shortly thereafter by mixed martial arts fighter Tito Ortiz, a fellow QAnon supporter who was elected to Huntington Beach City Council. (Author note: Right Wing Watch covered Ortiz’s campaign, including his support for the QAnon movement, here.)

“Q is a patriot, we know that for sure,” Greene said in a 2017 video, which has since been deleted. “There’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, and I think we have the President to do it.”

The congresswoman-elect has spent the last week propagating voter fraud claims and falsely asserting that Trump won the election. She even designed a petition titled “Stop the Biden Steal,” which she hosted on her campaign website. Now the most visible and influential QAnon supporter in American politics, Greene has targeted everyone from President-Elect Biden to Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, while also asserting that her husband’s experience at the ballot box reflects an ongoing “absentee ballot scam."[twt greene grassley]

these prominent accounts are merely a handful of the accounts linked to QAnon that have been flooding hashtags and posts on social media. According to the non-profit research group Advance Democracy, QAnon-related accounts were responsible for approximately 10 percent of the tweets amplifying hashtags such as #StopTheSteal.

QAnon followers have also been spotted at several pro-Trump Stop the Steal rallies, and have joined forces with other far-right groups in promoting the upcoming Million MAGA March in Washington, D.C., on Saturday (aka the March for Trump, Stop the Steal DC). Q followers will be joined by other MAGA loyalists, including the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, and white nationalist “groypers,” as well as professional conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones.

By Nov. 12, Anon’s rejoiced at their fabled leader’s return to 8kun. At 9:32 p.m. Eastern Time, Q posted an American flag along with a short message aimed at rallying his digital troops. “Nothing can stop what is coming. Nothing!” Q wrote.

Q followed up with a pair of cryptic posts, which amounted to a series of open-ended questions followed by a link to the National Council of Statewide Interoperability Coordinators. While Q’s posts may distract his followers, many of whom are simply relieved that their leader has returned, it remains unclear whether the QAnon fantasy will able to sustain itself over the coming months as the disappointments continue to pile on.

Tags: Angela Merkel Donald J. Trump Emmanuel Macron Jim Watkins Major Patriot Marjorie Taylor Greene Michael Flynn Patriot Sisters Ron Watkins Rudy Giuliani Tito Ortiz Disinformation Election 2020 QAnon Stop the Steal The Great Awakening The Storm 8Chan 8kun

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/11/qanons-biggest-prediction-has-failed--but-dont-expect-the-conspiracy-fueled-cult-to-go-away

If conspiracist authoritarian cults like QAnon were based on anything remotely resembling a rational or evidence-based worldview, the events of the past week would have destroyed it utterly. After all, not only was the intrepid, all-controlling/all-seeing hero of their meta-theory—Donald Trump—roundly defeated at the polls, but the anonymous persona at the center of the cult has dropped from sight.

And indeed, a number of believers have had their world shaken, as a Washington Post report on the state of QAnon makes clear: "My faith is shaken" is becoming a common refrain on Q message boards. But QAnon is not going away anytime soon—although it may morph into an even more radical cult now, especially as it drifts farther away from the already-faint tethers of reality.

Certainly, in a cult revolving around an omnipotent, all-seeing hero who in their mythology is reliably ten steps ahead of the nefarious liberal criminals overseeing a global pedophilia ring about to be brought to ground, the notion of a legitimate defeat at the polls is inconceivable. And predictably, many Q believers are so far choosing to believe Trump's claims that he'll prove he won the election in the courts, and that the media are lying.

The silence from the anonymous figure known as "Q," who posts his cryptic messages at the anything-goes message board 8kun, for the entire week since the election has some followers shaken. His last post, early in the morning of Election Day, featured a massive American flag with a quote from Abraham Lincoln, and a vow: "together we win."

Even though Q's silence is not atypical—he has gone silent for several weeks at a time previously—it nonetheless has some followers in a frantic state: "HOW CAN I SPEAK TO Q????" one wrote. "MY FAITH IS SHAKEN. I FOLLOWED THE PLAN. TRUMP LOST!!!!!!!!!!! WHAT NOW?????? WHERE IS THE PLAN???"

"Have we all been conned?" another user asked Saturday on 8kun.

Those concerns, however, are being assuaged by other leading influencers within the cult. The QAnon account Praying Medic, which has more than 400,000 Twitter followers, soothingly explained that Trump's strategy was still in motion to the many supporters who "had to be talked off the ledge" in the past. Praying Medic tweeted: "He's going to stick the knife in and twist it. He has no plans to leave office. Ever."

"Some QAnon followers are bewildered, but most are still trusting the plan," Travis View, a conspiracy theory researcher, told David Gilbert at Vice. "Honestly, QAnon is so Trump-centric that there's little hope of followers accepting defeat until Trump does. And even then it's not a guarantee."

The evidence-free theme around which QAnon platforms have coalesced is one that is built to survive well into a Biden administration and beyond: Namely, that Biden is attempting to illegally steal the election, and is doing to with the assistance of the "deep state" and the "liberal media." It's an idea that's been promoted on Twitter by Trump himself, by leading Republican politicians, and multiple other prominent right-wing figures.

After Trump had settled on this narrative, the QAnon world focused on building up an accompanying rationale. One of the biggest QAnon accounts, under the moniker JoeM (aka @StormIsUponUs), posted his own theory about the meaning of it all:

*Think again of the constants:

1) Biden will never be president.

2) The Left are celebrating his victory.

3) We have a 2 month hard deadline.

Now, extrapolate. This means turbulent and destabilizing times are imminent. It will require the kind of smoking gun that leaves no room for interpretation. It means habbenings like we haven't yet experienced. There is no other way, shit's about to get real.*

Eric Carmen, the onetime rock star who now amplifies QAnon accounts, posted his own speculation:

Thinking a few chess moves ahead, how angry will the Left be when it turns out Biden didn't win? I think this is their way of "priming the pump" for rioting, looting and violence that will make the last few months look like a Sunday school picnic.

For many major QAnon figures, Inauguration Day—January 20, 2021—looms as a bright red line for the movement. Many are predicting the event won't even take place.

"A lot of the influencers are really establishing that as the final deadline, this is something we haven't really seen before," Frederick Brennan, the founder of 8kun, told Vice. Much of the movement's success at eluding accountability for its long record of failed predictions, he says, involved the main players in the movement hedging their bets with some kind of out if a prediction didn't come about.

"They were wrong a lot before but were always able to fall back on the complexity of the plan," Brennan said. However, "they're really marrying themselves to no inauguration. Certainly after Biden is inaugurated the Q landscape will change dramatically."

Some believers, however, are already fatalistic, saying the results are just more evidence that Q was right all along, and that the nefarious globalist Democrats and the "deep state" secretly control society at all levels. Not that this deters them or persuades them to rethink their life choices.

Rather, as Gilbert reports, "there are dozens of reports from family members of QAnon supporters showcasing how the election result has not diminished their beliefs, but has in fact reinforced them."

"We knew the left was going to do everything they could to delay this," wrote a major QAnon Instagram influencer, as The Atlantic's Kaitlyn Tiffany reported. "Trump won & they're trying to rely on fraudulent mail in ballots. it's not going to work. Trump knew they were going to do this, too. he is prepared."

"This is the part of the movie where voter fraud and the media's role in perpetuating that fraud, which has been going on for decades, now becomes crystal clear to everyone who is paying attention," another QAnon supporter posted on Instagram. "PATRIOTS ARE IN CONTROL," reminded other major Instagram accounts, who also urged followers to "trust the plan [and enjoy] the show."

On Twitter, Tiffany noted, there was a similar shift in sentiment: "Trust Trump. He knew this was coming. He said so for months," one supporter tweeted. "In the coming days the REAL Patriots will be identified," wrote another. "Fight and win or die fighting."

Another sure sign that QAnon will continue to spread well after the election regardless of its outcome: A QAnon candidate is on the verge of winning an election to the New York Assembly from Brooklyn, of all places. Republican candidate Mark Szuszkiewicz, who unapologetically promotes QAnon ideas, leads the Democratic incumbent by 2,822 votes.

Rita Katz, the executive director of SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors online extremism, told the Post that she expects the QAnon following will continue to grow and metastasize online.

"It's a dangerous network. It's a dangerous movement that truly believes that Biden and other Democrats are killing kids," Katz said. "And now, with Biden's projected victory, the QAnon movement believes with the same zealous certainty that the whole thing is a sham. And that's a major problem, because … these aren't a bunch of harmless keyboard warriors—they're adherents of a movement that has resulted in real-life violence."

A video posted by View on Twitter shows how resilient QAnoners can be, with one well-known influencer holding forth in a video:

For those of you who are worried about Joe Biden being your president, do not fear, he is not and will not. Trump went golfing today. He went golfing yesterday. He's not worried. Have you ever known Trump not to fight back? This will not stand. Trust the plan. Where we go one, we go all.

"Most Q followers are still deep in denial," observes View. "And they're probably going to stay there until Trump concedes and/or on inauguration day. Maybe even beyond then honestly. Soon we're going to discover the resilience of the QAnon milieu in the face of powerful disconfirmation."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

===

mma

:{QAnon election conspiracy theory about ballot fraud is going viral on TikTok:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

11/05/20 2:14 PM EST

===

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/qanon-supporters-win-seats-in-congress-city-council/

several politicians with ties to the far-right QAnon conspiracy theory have been elected to positions of power.

Republican Marjorie Taylor Greene [pix w/ uzi ar15] was declared the winner in Georgia’s 14th Congressional District, becoming the first QAnon supporter to win a U.S. House seat.She wasfollowed shortly thereafter by mixed martial arts fighter Tito Ortiz, a fellow QAnon supporter who was elected to Huntington Beach City Council.

Greene made headlines for her anti-Muslim, anti-Semitic, and bigoted statements, reported on back in June. Videos :{acquired by Politico:(style="box-sizing:border-box;transition-duration:0.2s;transition-property:background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform;transition-timing-function:linear"):}: appeared to show her comparing Black Lives Matter to the Klu Klux Klan, claiming that Muslims should be banned from serving in the U.S. government, and propagating anti-Semitic statements about billionaire George Soros.

The Georgia Republican also faced scrutiny for her support for QAnon, a :{far-right conspiracy theory:(style="box-sizing:border-box;transition-duration:0.2s;transition-property:background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform;transition-timing-function:linear"):}: turned virtual cult that claims a cabal of elite pedophiles made up of Hollywood actors, Democrats, and other high-ranking officials, is behind a global child sex-trafficking ring. The Federal Bureau of Investigation has labeled the movement a “:{potential domestic terror threat:(style="box-sizing:border-box;transition-duration:0.2s;transition-property:background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform;transition-timing-function:linear"):}:.”

“Q is a patriot, we know that for sure,” Greene :{said:(style="box-sizing:border-box;transition-duration:0.2s;transition-property:background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform;transition-timing-function:linear"):}: in a 2017 video, which has since been deleted. “There’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, and I think we have the President to do it.”

Despite her controversial statements and tinfoil hat conspiracies, Greene received support from influential GOP donors, as well as from groups :{associated with White House chief of staff Mark Meadows:(style="box-sizing:border-box;transition-duration:0.2s;transition-property:background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform;transition-timing-function:linear"):}:.

As for Ortiz, the MMA fighter :{finished first among 15 candidates:(style="box-sizing:border-box;transition-duration:0.2s;transition-property:background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform;transition-timing-function:linear"):}: in the Huntington Beach city council race, receiving 14.3 percent of the overall total (34,901 votes). He will serve a four-year term once he is sworn in.

Ortiz, known as the “Huntington Beach Bad Boy” during his MMA career, was elected without any previous political experience. A fierce Trump loyalist, the fighter used his platform to amplify the president, associate with far-right groups, and propagate dangerous conspiracy theories such as QAnon, all while campaigning with the Trumpian slogan of “Making Huntington Beach Safe Again.”

For a while, Ortiz sold apparel :{marked with QAnon slogans:(style="box-sizing:border-box;transition-duration:0.2s;transition-property:background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform;transition-timing-function:linear"):}: such as WWG1WGA (short for Where We Go One We Go All) through his Punishment Athletics clothing line. (It appears that Ortiz has since removed the QAnon apparel from his site.) He also claimed that the coronavirus was “man-made” and a political scam devised to suppress protests around the world. “Once again, it’s population control by the left. They’re trying to get rid of all the older people who are getting Social Security,” Ortiz:{ }:{ }:during a podcast appearance.:{ }:

Ortiz, who ran as a conservative, was endorsed by the Huntington Beach Police Officers Association, the Republican Party of Orange County, former Huntington Beach mayor and convicted felon Dave Garofalo, as well as Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes.

(Author note: Right Wing Watch covered Ortiz’s campaign, including his support for the QAnon movement, :{here:(style="box-sizing:border-box;transition-duration:0.2s;transition-property:background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform;transition-timing-function:linear"):}:.)

It should also be noted that Lauren Boebert, the Colorado Republican who was criticized for supporting QAnon, won the race for Colorado’s 3rd Congressional District on Wednesday. Back in May, Boebert joined QAnon conspiracy theorist Ann Vandersteel on her “Steel Truth” program, where she said she believed the conspiracy theory was “only motivating and encouraging and bringing people together, stronger—and if this is real, then it can be really great for our country.” Boebert was :{endorsed:(style="box-sizing:border-box;transition-duration:0.2s;transition-property:background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform;transition-timing-function:linear"):}: by the American Conservative Union, which hosts the annual The Conservative Political Action Conference.

According to The New York Times, Boebert has since “:{disavowed:(style="box-sizing:border-box;transition-duration:0.2s;transition-property:background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform;transition-timing-function:linear"):}:” the baseless conspiracy theory.

Republican Madison Cawthorn will also be heading to Congress as the youngest member elected in modern U.S. history. The 25 year old defeated Democrat Moe Davis for North Carolina’s 11th Congressional District. He came under scrutiny earlier this year for Instagram photos that show him :{visiting Adolf Hitler’s vacation house in Germany in 2017:(style="box-sizing:border-box;transition-duration:0.2s;transition-property:background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform;transition-timing-function:linear"):}:. And while he reportedly disavowed QAnon, he repeated some of the child sex trafficking claims promoted by the far-right conspiracy theory.

“But what’s really going on is we are having a large group of cartels coming into our country, kidnapping our American children and then taking them to sell them on a slave market, on the sex slave market,” Cawthorn said in a :{campaign video posted on Instagram:(style="box-sizing:border-box;transition-duration:0.2s;transition-property:background-color, border-color, box-shadow, color, opacity, text-shadow, transform;transition-timing-function:linear"):}:.

Tags: Lauren Boebert Madison Cawthorn Marjorie Taylor Greene Tito Ortiz QAnon

===

1120 mma

EMILY CHANG (HOST): Now, President Trump has retweeted QAnon content on multiple occasions, but continues to claim he hasn't heard of them. What's your take on that?

ANGELO CARUSONE: I think it's the same thing that we saw back in 2016, during -- in the lead-up to the 2016 election, Trump repeatedly retweeted the "white genocide" hashtag and prominent members of the white genocide community, which is essentially a racist organization, it's an idea that's pretty racist, then he would sort of claim he didn't know anything about it.

But constantly they interpreted it as a wink and a nod, and as a result of that, that community grew, and it wasn't that long after he was in office that we saw Charlottesville. It's a similar pattern here, which is that most of the retweets of QAnon and promotion of QAnon from Trump has actually taken place since April, more than half of those two -- over 250 have happened in the last few months.

So, it's obviously an intentional electoral strategy, the same thing that those candidates saw in sort of becoming QAnon adherents in order to break through their primaries and win them, as I think what you're seeing Donald Trump do at a national level.

===

Militias?!

mma1120

Oath Keepers militia, which is comprised of “former law enforcement officials and military veterans,” is described by the Southern Poverty Law Center as “one of the largest radical anti-government groups in the U.S. today.” This week, Oath Keepers militia leader Steward Rhodes told conspiracy theorist Alex Jones that members of his militia will be at polling locations on Election Day to “protect” Trump voters.

Rhodes went on to make many other unhinged statements on the program, including that the militia would follow directives from President Donald Trump totake members of the “deep state” into custody and “do what we have to do,”and that Oath Keepers will “be in range” of Washington D.C., to stop a “Benghazi-style” attack on the White House on election night, among other statements. Rhodes also hyped the possibility of a second civil war where his “battle-hardened” supporters kill the “street soldiers” and “command and control” of “the radical left.”

Media Matters’ Timothy Johnson explained the danger Rhodes and other militia members could pose: “Ahead of Election Day, there is mounting concern that firearms will be brought to voting locations and used to intimidate voters. On October 27, a Republican-appointed Michigan judge struck down a directive that prohibited firearms from being openly carried at polling sites in that state after several pro-gun groups filed a lawsuit. Just six states and Washington, D.C., have total bans of firearms at voting locations.”

Also: Media Matters president Angelo Carusone spoke to Politicoabout how militias are organizing around right-wing predictions of left-wing violence: "There is a high possibility, researchers have noted, that militia posturing around the election will not result in actual demonstrations or violence. But as long as conservative rhetoric focuses on playing up left-wing violence, warned Media Matters’ Carusone, it will help perpetuate militia culture. 'Hyping warnings about potential left-wing violence is significant because that's what we're seeing militia groups planning around,' he said. 'We are seeing a similar theme in militia/extremist activity — that they're hyper focused on potential for left-wing groups to become violent on or after the election.'"

===

*some hist https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/trump-is-proving-himself-to-be-conspiracist-in-chief-the-culture-of-folk-devils-and-fear-is-of-our-own-making/*

the conv?

Using conspiracy theories that include child sex traffickers and restaurants serving human flesh, QAnon has unleashed a modern-day moral panic.

It is now more than 30 years since sociologists proposed moral panic as a way to understand the incitement of fear around a perceived enemy. In the opening paragraph of his canonical study of popular media from 1972, Folk Devils and Moral Panics, sociologist Stanley Cohen outlined his basic thesis:

Societies appear to be subject, every now and then, to periods of moral panic. A condition, episode, person or group of persons emerges to become defined as a threat to societal values and interests.

In President Donald Trump's America, those people are queers, racial minorities and Jews.

At the time Cohen was writing, his focus was on popular media and the manipulation of mods and rockers as moral degenerates. He argued that those in positions of authority used sensationalized headlines to enforce what they saw as threats to social order.

We find ourselves in a similar place today. The media in question is social, but the targets are as old as journalism itself.

Rights and recognition

When Trump refused to call out QAnon in his Oct. 15 town hall, preferring to show sympathy for its purported fight against pedophilia, he tapped into a moral panic with deep historical roots. The danger that QAnon poses is not that it's endorsed by the president. It's the way it speaks to long-festering hatreds that transcend political affiliation.[vid the lojke me very much]

during a news conference on Aug. 20, 2020, Trump responds to a journalist asking him to comment on QAnon.

QAnon was born digital in the age of “platformed antagonism," where social media breathes new life into racist stereotypes. But its appeal owes to a longer history of animosity towards sexual and racial minorities at critical points in their quest for rights and recognition. It does this through the use of the modern-day blood libel accusation.

Murder, matzo and mayhem

Charges of ritual murder were frequently waged against Europe's Jewish populations as an effort to reinforce the exclusionary logic of ethnic nationalism. Jews were accused of kidnapping and murdering gentile children so as to boil their blood and make matzo. Ritual murder accusations could result in mob violence, as it was in 1901 in the case of a local Jewish butcher in the West Prussian town of Koenitz.

Jews were also slandered for their role in the so-called white slave trade, the luring of young white women into prostitution. This mix of sexual excess and ritualistic fervour went hand-in-hand with Jewish emancipation, visibility and new-found claims to equal citizenship.

Both the Pizzagate and Cannibal Club conspiracies in QAnon share roots with the blood libel accusation.

Suggestions that Hillary Clinton and financier George Soros were part of a global sex ring have long permeated social media networks. In 2018, these claims morphed in a new direction: children were not just being lured into a sexual underground, they were considered sources of adrenochrome, a chemical with hallucinogenic qualities harvested for satanic rituals. A cabal of elites didn't just harvest children's blood, they consumed the flesh itself: as proof, conspiracy theorists pointed to a website that falsely claimed that Raven Chan — Mark Zuckerberg's sister-in-law — was involved with a fake restaurant called the Cannibal Club.

Although the story has since been debunked, it's alive and well on social media, surfacing most recently in the hashtags used by Twitterers in the wake of the Trump town hall, linking Hollywood to human sacrifice, secret societies and pedophilia.

Panic at the movements

Similar moral panics accompanied the pursuit of equality by gays and lesbians, with fears around the seduction of minors frequently used as an argument against criminal justice reform. The new-found visibility of the Gay Liberation Front and lesbian, feminist and Black power movements unleashed a preoccupation with adolescence, childhood sexuality and age of consent.

While the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders — used to define and classify mental disorders — removed homosexuality from its list of paraphilias in 1973, conservatives lamented the legalization of same-sex sexuality for what they saw as a sea change in societal values. Anti-gay rights activist Anita Bryant's “Protect America's Children" campaign gave this moral panic a celebrity face.

The AIDS epidemic, scandals within the Catholic Church, trans rights and, most recently, the Jeffrey Epstein assaults have all cast renewed attention on the history of changing social and sexual mores brought about by the sexual revolution.

At its core, the preoccupation with pedophilia and childhood sexuality is an attempt to protect the heterosexual family as the bedrock of society, a salve against degeneration and excess. There are too many examples to list, from Pope Benedict blaming homosexual “cliques" for the general collapse of morality in the late 20th century to opponents of the 2015 Obergefell decision legalizing gay marriage, a cause célèbre in the conservative media linking gay, lesbian, and trans rights with pedophilia as a leftist plot against the family.

Even Dr. Anthony Fauci — a member of the White House Coronavirus Task Force — was not immune from conspiracy theorists who falsely linked his wife to Epstein handler Ghislaine Maxwell.

*@Bdell_1014 Please stop spreading false rumors. Christine Grady (Dr. Fauci's wife) is NOT Christine Maxwell. Some… https://t.co/c4yXSfYBXR*

— Saurav (@Saurav)1599225067.0

The QAnon conspiracy theory draws together anti-Semitism, sexual excess, homophobia and race-baiting in a modern-day moral panic. They resonate because they have a place in the contemporary zeitgeist as products of long-standing animosity against change.

De-platforming QAnon is not enough. For while Trump is proving himself to be conspiracist-in-chief, the culture of folk devils and fear is of our own making.

Jennifer Evans, Professor of Modern European History, Carleton University

===

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/meet-the-twitter-verified-maga-influencers-spreading-the-qanon-gospel/

no lnx twt pix

Meet the Twitter-verified MAGA Influencers Spreading the QAnon Gospel

By Adele M. Stan | October 26, 2020

In July, Twitter—after years of unheeded warnings—removed from its platform more than 7,000 accounts that were tweeting conspiracy theories from the QAnon universe, a move estimated to have affected more than 150,000 accounts related to those that were purged. National Public Radio called it “the most wide-reaching and aggressive response to the pro-Trump conspiracy theory that any social media platform has ever undertaken.”

And yet, QAnon’s presence remains robust, thanks in part to the work of Trump-enabling hard-right “Twitter verified” influencers who advance QAnon talking points, often minus overt QAnon branding.

To you, James Woods may just be that actor who’s played a bunch of creepy roles. But to people on the hard right, Woods is a digital warrior, and maybe even a friend of Q,the mysterious entity whose cryptic messages on far-right message-board channels form the core of the central QAnon conspiracy theory—the false claim that top Democrats and Hollywood figures are running a Satanic child-sex-trafficking ring, and that President Donald Trump is working behind the scenes to “save the children.” Woods has 2.6 million followers on Twitter, to whom he has tweeted messages remarkably similar to those of QAnon adherents. Consequently, his is the favorite among Twitter-verified accounts of those posting from QAnon-related accounts. The non-profit research group, Advance Democracy, Inc., found that more than 50,000 QAnon-related Twitter accounts either mentioned or retweeted Woods approximately 1.6 million times between Jan. 1 – Aug. 2020. The research organization says that, as of September, all of those 50,000 accounts remained active.

And Woods is not the only Twitter presence with more than a million followers who plays this game. ADI identified five key players in Twitter’s million+ club who are involved in the propulsion of false claims embraced by the QAnon community.Each account bears a blue checkmark badge next to the tweeter’s name—Twitter’s signal to its users that the account is somehow significant. Twitter executives define the blue checkmark in a more understated manner: “The blue verified badge on Twitter lets people know that an account of public interest is authentic.” Twitter users tend to view it a sign of prestige and credibility. After all, by Twitter’s own criteria, the blue-checkmark account is “of public interest.”

In addition to Woods’, the accounts of Donald Trump Jr., Turning Point USA Executive Director Charlie Kirk, radio personality Dan Bongino, Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton and BLEXIT Foundation principal officer Candace Owens are all Twitter-verified, have more than 1 million followers and advance QAnon messaging. With the exception of Trump Jr., each has been mentioned or referenced in a “Q drop,” one of the messages left by the enigmatic Q on the 8kun internet message board, a haven for those who wish to post anonymously. (Hence the “Anon” part of the movement’s name.)

Here are some of the public-interest bon mots offered by Woods:

Funny thing about that tweet: It’s a lot like a tweet linked to in a Q drop, and Woods’ tweet was made only an hour after the Q post appeared.

The Twitter link in that Q drop goes to this:

Then there’s Bill Mitchell, the Trump superfan with an online video show who got permanently booted from Twitter for creating a new Twitter identity in order to evade a previous Twitter suspension. He may not have had a million followers, but he had more than half that many, according to The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer, and he regularly regaled them with QAnon conspiracy theories—and, unlike others, freely bandied about the QAnon name. The QAnon community returned the favor, ADI found, yielding Mitchell thousands of retweets from QAnon-related accounts. One tweet featuring disinformation about the coronavirus—which Mitchell dismisses as a hoax—garnered more than 3,100 retweets from accounts in the QAnon community. Another favorite topic of Mitchell’s among QAnon adherents is the billionaire philanthropist George Soros, whom Mitchell tars with the usual tacit anti-Semitic smears one finds elsewhere on the right-wing internet. In a June 20 tweet no longer available on the internet, Mitchell wrote:

Arrest Soros, seize his records and freeze

his assets and 99% of this chaos you see on

our streets ends tomorrow.

Retweet if you agree.

That one got 1563 retweets from QAnon-related accounts. Until Twitter threw him out, Mitchell was a blue-checkmark tweeter. In July 2019, he was invited to Trump’s White House “social media summit,” which The New York Times’ Kevin Roose described as a gathering of “right-wing trolls.”

QAnon claims are so easily dismissed as too crazy to be believed that the danger posed by the movement, designated by the FBI as a potential domestic terrorism threat, is often overlooked. To understand the threat, one needs to focus on the second part of the narrative—the part that promises that all of these Democratic and Jewish leaders smeared by Q and Q’s followers will meet with bloody vengeance on the day that the hero Trump rounds them all up in mass arrests and executes them. Consider the impulses of some of the most unhinged of the conspiracy-minded. Remember Pizzagate? That was the internet conspiracy theory that posited a child-sex-trafficking ring involving top Democratic leaders that was ostensibly run out of the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizzeria. A man drove up to the nation’s capital from North Carolina to rescue the non-existent victims, having armed himself with an AR-15 assault rifle and a pistol. He shot a round into an interior door as the families who had been eating inside fled for the exits.

And those are just QAnon’s central claims. The QAnon network is a transmitter of all manner of conspiracy theories, many of them part of right-wing lore for years or even decades: The purported war of the “deep state” against Donald Trump, the anti-Semitic trope of Soros as a puppet-master, and of “spygate,” a fantasy about a “deep state” that had it in for Donald Trump during the 2016 campaign, the evidence for which is the fact that the FBI was keeping tabs on conversations between agents of the Russian state and Americans; some of those Americans, it turned out, were working with Trump campaign.Another common theme is that America is headed for civil war because of the savagery of the left.

Woods also advanced a phantasmagoric QAnon claim that the liberal Twitter influencer Chrissy Tiegen is linked to Jeffrey Epstein, and is a pedophile. The online assaults consequently endured by Tiegen made her “worried for my family,” she wrote on Twitter, so she deleted 60,000 of her own tweets, she said, and blocked some 1 million accounts from engaging with hers. (The QAnon spreaders had gone into her Twitter archives and pulled out tweets in which Tiegen stated her disgust with such exploitive television programs as TLC’s “Toddlers and Tiaras” in a sarcastic manner, promoting them as to be taken literally.)

With 2.4 million Twitter followers of his own,Dan Bongino is the fourth-most popular verified Twitteraccount within the QAnon community, according to ADI. (He also claims more than 3 million followers of his public Facebook page.) On Feb. 14, a tweet with a link to his show appeared in a “Q drop.” The research group found that between Jan. 1 – Aug. 1, some 4,700 QAnon-related accounts either mentioned or retweeted (or both) tweets from Bongino’s account.

Bongino, radio personality and coauthor of “Spygate: The Attempted Sabotage of Donald J. Trump,” is a favorite commentator of the president’s, who gifted Bongino with a blurb for his book:

‘Spygate: The Attempted Sabotage of Donald J. Trump,’ is terrific. He’s tough, he’s smart, and he really gets it. His book is on sale now. I highly recommend!

—President of the United States, Donald J. Trump

In 2016, the president took to Twitter to declare his appreciation of Bongino, as chronicled by The Daily Beast’s Maxwell Tani, Asawin Suesbsaeng and Lachlan Markay.

With 1.1 million Twitter followers, Judicial Watch president Tom Fitton is a top influencer in the hard-right realm. Dating back to 2016, Fitton, who helms a non-profit organization that takes in tens of millions in donations each year, has been flogging the main claim of “Spygate,” with allegations that the Obama administration spied on the Trump campaign on behalf of Trump’s opponent, Hillary Clinton, who is the top target of QAnon adherents. They want to see her executed.

Fitton has a knack for advancing exactly the kind of narrative that QAnon enthusiasts build upon. As far back as November 22, 2016, Fitton was calling on Trump to arrest the candidate who won more of the popular vote than he did. In fact, he claimed on Fox News that the Justice Department was “broken” for not having done so already.

In February 2017, Fitton took to the CPAC stage to claim that Michael Flynn—the retired general and Trump national security adviser who was fired after being accused of lying to Vice President Mike Pence regarding Flynn’s communications during the presidential transition phase with Sergey Kislyak, who was then Russia’s ambassador to the United States—had been done wrong. Flynn, it was learned, had been coaxing Kislyak not to respond to sanctions imposed on Russia by the Obama administration in response to the federation’s intervention in the 2016 U.S. presidential race—with the inference that the Trump administration would lift them once Trump was inaugurated.

Flynn himself is a QAnon buff,even recording a video of Flynn family members and the retired general himself reciting the QAnon slogan, “Where We Go One, We Go All.” (Julian Feeld of the investigative QAnon Anonymous podcast tweeted it here; CNN has the full video and some backstory here.)

Travis View, who hosts the QAnon Anonymous podcast, noticed this tweet from Fitton, who accused Facebook of “censoring QAnon” in its purges of QAnon-related accounts.

In the time period studied by ADI (Jan. 1 – Aug. 1, 2020), more than 39,000 QAnon-related accounts either mentioned or retweeted Fitton some 721,000 times. Those accounts, the research group says, remain active (as of September).

The president himself retweets Fitton or @JudicialWatch with some regularity. Tweets by Fitton have also been linked in at least three Q drops.

Charlie Kirk is another favorite of the president’s;Trump gave him a shout-out during a rambling speech he delivered at the 2019 Conservative Political Action Conference at National Harbor, Md. Kirk is said to be close to Donald Trump Jr., and a 2018 fundraiser Kirk held at Mar-a-Lago, the president’s Florida resort, is reported to have reaped $5 million in a single night with the help of Trump Jr., according to ProPublica’s Mike Spies and Jack Pearson. “Over the last year, the president has delivered remarks at the organization’s conferences three separate times,” they write, also noting that Kirk’s book, “The MAGA Doctrine,” was promoted by both the president and Trump Jr.

Conceived as a right-wing presence on college campuses, Kirk’s Turning Point USA has become a full-on Trump-boosting organization. It is also a tax-exempt non-profit. For Kirk, the Trump train has proven to be a gravy train. At TPUSA’s 2012 founding, his annual salary was $27,000; he’s now paid $300,000, according to ProPublica. Kirk is 27 years old.

Among Twitter accounts that are part of the QAnon infrastructure, Kirk’s is the third most popular Twitter account, according to ADI. And, as of August, his account was following some 557 QAnon-related Twitter accounts. Kirk’s name and image appeared on a flyer for Q Con Live!, a QAnon conference that was to have taken place in Fresno, Calif., this month, but appears to have been canceled.

rww

> Twitter-verified MAGA Influencers Spreading the QAnon Gospel

October 26, 2020

j> ohnny Enlow Says QAnon 'Is Going to Be Proven so Thoroughly, It's Just Going to Be Indisputable'

October 26, 2020

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/report/qanon-the-dangerous-movement-making-waves-in-2020-election/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/the-q-movement-is-a-pro-terrorist-trumpian-cult/

hunter kos meh

Well, we seem to be getting closer to the national realization that this thing that calls itself "QAnon" is, at heart, just another partisan iteration of the same far-right conspiracy theories that have plagued conservatives since forever ago. The New York Times has another look at the growth of "Q" nonsense in the Republican mainstream, and while it doesn't contain anything new, it does more forcibly connect the batshit conspiracy theorizing of gullible, gullible supporters to the cowardice—and complicity—of Republican leaders.

The most plausible explanation for the Q hokum, in which an anonymous supposed member of the Deep State drools out accusations against anyone deemed to be enemies of Donald Trump in comically performed pseudo-riddles, remains the obvious one: It is the work of chan-style trolls, part of that internet corner's grand tradition of crafting gaudily improbable hoaxes to distribute for no other purpose than to see who they can draw in. It may turn out to be the first domestic terrorism group founded for funsies—though at this point, those connected to the movement have focused their claims and targets enough to make it clear that stoking incidents of real-world terrorism is, in fact, the current goal.

Like the 2016 proliferation of European "fake news" sites aiming to generate advertising traffic by inventing hoax political stories, Q conspiracies have been tailored to American conservative tastes because American conservatives are the richest (read: most gullible) targets. Fox News conservatives have been fed decades of tawdry but false information, all packaged with advertising pitches to buy gold, or "survival" equipment, or hyper-expensive pills sold through conservative mailing lists and on conservative programs relentlessly. It is an audience of laboratory-grown suckers, people who have been whittled down over the years to a base of the most credulous, and therefore profitable, marks.

But—and this is a big but—there's an undercurrent here that's getting more and more ... let's say blatant, as actual news events slap Q claims back and forth and sideways month after month after month.

The QAnon claim is that most or all of the world's most famous powerbrokers, including politicians, actors, nonpartisan government figures and so on, are secret ultra-pedophiles and child traffickers. But the revelation of Trump ally Jeffrey Epstein as precisely that did not make a ripple. Instead, the "real" traffickers are unanimously people who oppose Donald Trump, and most especially those who report what looks to be criminal behavior by Trump.

The QAnon claims burst into Republican popularity after Donald J. Trump was accused of sexual assault by two dozen women, after his taped bragging about committing sexual assaults, and after a long public history of being an eager pervert—whether it be the purchase of a top beauty pageant as apparent ticket to ogle nude teenagers or the mysterious and Epsteinesque "Trump modeling company." Instead, the movement holds Trump up as the mockingly dubious "hero" fighting against society's sex predators. He is alleged to be doing this secretly, with Good Genes and near-godlike powers, and the movement remains absolutely immune to news cycle after news cycle in which their own predictions prove to be fan-fiction bunk.

This week, Trump ally Rudy Giuliani was revealed to have been secretly filmed (as part of a new Borat movie, of all things) fondling himself in front of a youthful female "interviewer." Without getting too far into a description of that particular chunk of nightmare fuel, it continues the pattern of 1) Republican 2) conservative 3) Trump-allied 4) powerbrokers revealed as tawdry often-sexual-assaulting ultrapervs. From Wynn to Epstein to Broidy to Falwell to Rudy, there is a very robust claim to be made that the QAnon suspicions of an enormously powerful cabal of sex freaks are indeed well-founded—and that they radiate from the Republican National Committee's finance offices, from Mar-a-Lago, or both.

All these real-world crimes and bizarre improprieties, however, are dismissed by the QAnon faithful. Nope: They are convinced that the True Pedophiles are "Democrats" and "globalists," and that four years of the nation's top Republican figures getting caught with their pants around their ankles are the fictional part.

It should be obvious from that history, then, that isn't a conspiracy base that gives a damn about pedophilia and child sex trafficking, and if anything the "movement" has sabotaged law enforcement's attempts to pursue sex traffickers by flooding lines with false claims pointing to everyone but the true culprits.

This is a group born to defend criminal acts by the powerful, not combat them. It does so using the precise playbook Trump himself uses when caught committing apparent tax fraud, foreign extortion, or embezzlement: The projection defense. It's not me, it was that other guy. It has always been that other guy. No matter how much the evidence proves it was me, the evidence is mere conspiracy and the truth is its opposite.

As Trump's charity foundation was revealed to be little more than a passthrough for the Trump family's personal spending—resulting in the family being barred from future charity boards—an organized effort to portray the Clinton's own family foundation as corrupt erupted from longtime conservative hoax-peddlers. As Trump personally profited off the presidency with the aid of his sons and favorite daughter, a new hoax emerged claiming that Actually it was the Biden family that was doing that thing. It is the far-right response to revealed Republican wrongdoing. Even Benghazi!, a far-right led claim that four American deaths in a terrorist attack were the result of something-something Hillary Clinton (it was never, even at the end, consistent in what the something-something was supposed to be) was a cheap version of the inquiries held after 9/11, probing what the Republican-led government knew in advance and why that information was not processed into action.

In that context, QAnon's relentlessly partisan far-right claim that a Republican Party visibly awash in corruption—with a series of Trump lieutenants and allies being led off in handcuffs for everything from sex trafficking to foreign influence-peddling to election crimes—is "actually" a group of heroes working to expose the corruption of their enemies looks less like a coincidence than a pattern.

Isn't this just a more spittle-flecked version of what Fox News personalities have been peddling for years? That the news as it is reported by your eyes and ears is false, promoted by "elites" in order to deceive you, and that the real news is how ingenious conservative figures are despite policies that have caused clear ruin, and how malevolent non-conservative figures are for opposing them? Is that not the very definition of Sean Hannity's evening broadcast? The theme of every conservative book?

There's not a lot of daylight between the QAnon version of reality and that promoted by Glenn Beck's now-famous chalkboards, or Tucker Carlson's parade of "alt-right" fascist-adjacent guests. The online versions of each conspiracy are always more vigorous than the versions the Fox hosts themselves provide, but they each grow from similar stock. They intertwine more often than not.

Then there is the other, deeper origin of QAnon claims. The movement's guides insist not only that there is a secret global cabal of child sex traffickers, but that the ultimate purpose of the plot, run by "globalist" figures, is to harvest those children's fluids for consumption.

There's not an educated person alive who doesn't recognize that theory. It is the blood libel conspiracy theory that has been promulgated by anti-Semites for literally hundreds of years, but made most famous in Nazi Germany for a variation very close to the Q version.

The QAnon claim does not bother to go too far afield from the versions peddled in the 1920s and 30s. "Globalists" is used to mean "Jewish," as it is by most modern neo-Nazi adherents; rather than "blood" of children, a specific compound is named this time around in near-comical pseudoscientific gibberish. The premise of a secret group of global "elites" running the world from the shadows is the claim from the Henry Ford-peddled hoax Protocols of the Elders of Zion; the omnipresent inclusions of George Soros and "Hollywood" as alleged conspirators are lifted directly from neo-Nazi fever dreams, anti-Semitic tropes that were willingly taken in as staples of Republican Party rhetoric long before Q-anything arrived on scene.

So it's clear that the originators of QAnon are well-versed in neo-Nazi and anti-Semitic propaganda, and are particularly interested in repopularizing it for a modern audience. Why those messages reverberate so very strongly among the Fox News-watching Republican base, and the merging of these conspiracies to become inextricably linked to Trumpism, is not hard to imagine. That it would achieve true cult status, with some adherents willing to commit terrorist acts in deluded efforts to prove conspiracies invented in someone else's head, may only be evidence of the omnipresent undercurrent of good violence that has burrowed itself into the American psyche in a hundred other forms.

If anything, the rise of Q belief as increasingly mainstream Republican phenomenon, complete with its own candidates and in-movement codes, appears to be the natural culmination of multiple conservative trends, all balled together in one malevolent, hyper-cynical lump:

Fox News and conservative talk radio provided a large Republican base already trained to disbelieve news uncomfortable to the party, a base literally willing to deny reality in favor of pleasing fictions. A set of gullibles that could easily be transformed into deplorables.

The white supremacist and white nationalist movement provided the conspiracy itself, a bog-standard edition of "evil global cabal that has secretly undermined world governments" that has been a staple of neo-Nazi movements in this country and in others.

American militia movements are providing, in a literal sense, the ammunition: A far-right collection of malcontents who insist that violence against nonright citizens is essential, glorious, and nigh.

The Republican Party's own widespread embrace of corruption, nearly all of it centered around Trump, has all but required more and more outrageous conspiracy theories as official party defense.

That all of this would combine into kleptocratic fascism is not surprising. That its enablers did not, at any point along the way, reflect on the likely outcome of the combination is damning.

It remains vitally important to see QAnon for what it is, and no more. It is an amateur-led trolling effort based primarily on the same ambiguous nonsense-spewing used by fortune-telling hucksters, but one led by amateurs steeped in anti-Semitic claims and rhetoric popular among neo-Nazi and "alt-right" subcommunities. It is Alex Jones by way of fortune cookie, or Jim Jones by way of sudoku. It is a scam intended for the most gullible. Its adherents should be pitied. It is the fascist version of the hula hoop or the pet rock, a hip new trend that will someday be confined to your parents' attic, mysterious artifacts of pop culture tremors since vanished.

And mocked. As racism-embracing nitwits incapable of discerning truth from fiction despite having access to nearly all of human history tucked in the space before a single wandering thumb, its adherents should be mocked. There is not enough mocking of willful, self-absorbed, self-interested gullibility these days, which is why it spreads so prolifically. If you willingly listen to Fox News hosts lie to you night after night and become irate at contrary information, you are a self-built fool and should be treated as such. If you believe that Donald Trump, serial sex abuser, pedophile-adjacent thug is the good Christian hero who will secretly reveal that everyone aside from him is the dribbling pervert he appears to be, however, you are something closer to a half-sentient wart. You should be pilloried as one of the true suckers of the planet.

Congratulations, all those willing to fall for transparent anti-Semitic gobbledegook rather than admit you got played by a skeevy lifelong con man. You certainly have revealed yourselves.

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/qanon-satanic/

In front of a TV audience on Oct. 15, President Donald Trump declared that he knew “nothing about" QAnon, before correcting himself to say: “I do know they are very much against pedophilia."

What he didn't do was disavow what has been referred to as a “collective delusion." Part of that could be down to QAnon followers holding up Trump as some sort of savior – someone playing four-dimensional chess against shadowy political insiders and power players known as the “Deep State."

But that is only part of what Anons – followers of QAnon – believe. What Trump didn't mention is the atrocious claims that underlie this supposed chess match, and the demonic imagery and language that are used in the course of the conspiracy.

As a professor of religion who teaches courses on the cultural significance of monsters, I see many similarities between Anon claims and prior rumor panics that employed satanic rhetoric. Moreover, given the growing popularity of the QAnon conspiracy – and its encroachment into mainstream politics – I believe that ignoring this rhetoric risks harm to those targeted by the conspiracy.

Accusations of evil

The QAnon conspiracy theory started with an anonymous 4chan post in October 2017. The author, who later signed his or her posts as “Q", remains unknown. Since then Q has posted anonymous messages, known as Qdrops, on 8chan and now 8kun – on both online message and image boards.

The conspiracy claims that deep-state politicians and the “Hollywood elite" are involved in a large child abduction network that harvests the chemical compound adrenochrome — which is obtained from the oxidation of adrenaline — from sexually abused children subjected to satanic rituals.

Anons say that adrenochrome is consumed by some Democratic politicians and Hollywood elites for its psychedelic and anti-aging effects and is more potent when harvested from a frightened victim. Trump, they believe, is planning a day of reckoning that will see the arrest, conviction and even execution of dozens of current and former government officials for their involvement in child sex trafficking.

In analyzing the Qdrops, I have noted a discourse of evil woven throughout Q's nearly 5,000 messages. Peppering the Qdrops are claims like “many in our government worship Satan." According to Anons, Trump is engaged in a battle of cosmic significance between the “children of light" and the “children of darkness" and is working to dismantle pedophile networks that are abducting children for satanic rites.

Protesters at a rally in Minnesota. QAnon supporters believe the chemical compound adrenochrome is being harvested from abused children.[]

In using such language and imagery, Q does not portray perceived political adversaries as merely having a difference of opinion, but as being downright evil.

For example, in an Aug. 10, 2018, Qdrop titled “Many in Power Worship the Devil," Q states: “PURE EVIL. HOW MANY IN WASHINGTON AND THOSE AROUND THEWORLD (IN POWER) WORSHIP THE DEVIL?"

On Aug. 26, 2020, Q posted an image suggesting that the 2020 Democratic National Convention logo resembled a Satanic Baphomet pentagram, which incorporates a goat's head and a five-pointed star.Accompanying text asserts that one party – Republicans – discusses God while the other party – Democrats – discusses darkness.

Such dialogue rises beyond the level of us versus them. Instead, for Q and Anons it elevates the conspiracy to a matter of cosmic good versus monstrous evil.

This, I believe, is of grave concern. Presenting opponents as monstrously evil dehumanizes them. Through that process, Anons may see themselves as would-be monster-killers ready to use violence to remove the evil.

Remembering the past

This process of using the language of evil to dehumanize a perceived enemy is nothing new. It was seen in conspiracies such as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion. The Protocols, a fictional document first published in Russia in the early 1900s, link a satanic Jewish cabal to the Antichrist.

Examining past rhetoric targeting Jews reveals how such a discourse lubricates the machinery of violence – Hitler called the Protocols “immensely instructive."

Jewish communities faced the blood libel — the idea that Jews kidnapped children for blood sacrifices — for centuries before it resurfaced in the Protocols. In the Middle Ages this was driven by afear of Jewish magicians kidnapping and stabbing children for evil rituals. The blood produced from these rites was rumored to be ritually consumed as drink or mixed into matzo. It was a demonic fantasy not based in any reality.

It is noteworthy that Anon claims about child abduction and blood consumption are linked to prominent Jewish figures such as billionaire philanthropist George Soros and the Rothschild family.

Joel Finkelstein, of the anti-hate watchdog the Network Contagion Research Institute has noted that the QAnon conspiracy is becoming increasingly anti-Semitic. Indeed, renowned genocide scholar Gregory Stanton warned in an article in September that QAnon's demonic fantasy was “a rebranded version of the Protocols" and noted that the conspiracy was gaining traction in neo-Nazi circles.

'Satanic Panic'

For those who remember the “satanic panic" of the 1980s, these Anon narratives will sound hauntingly familiar. The satanic panic was based on a series of rumors spread by concerned parents and authority figures, ranging from therapists to law enforcement agencies, convinced that a demonic cabal had infiltrated society to its highest levels. Organizations set up to counter this perceived threat, like Believe the Children, argued that children were most at risk in day care centers run by secret satanists. Prosecutors accepted, with apparent earnest seriousness, the claims being made about child sexual abuse, secret tunnels, and satanic rituals at theMcMartin Preschool in Manhattan Beach,California. Similar sensational charges were brought against the Fells Acres Day School and the Wee Care Nursery School. Charges were eventually dropped or reversed in many of these cases.

As the unjust prosecutions demonstrate, the satanic panic damaged the reputations and livelihoods of innocent people.

QAnon is poised to cause similar disruptions in the lives of innocent people. Already there have been incidents including the apparent QAnon-inspired shooting of a mob boss and a live-streamed effort to “take out" Joe Biden. Anons are beginning to show a willingness to take matters into their own hands.

Why it matters now

It is tempting to dismiss QAnon as too small and fringe to lead to the violence associated with prior satanic panics. However, the emerging influence of Q is evident. It is seen not only in the growing number of supporters – QAnon Facebook pages alone boast 3 million followers – but also in Washington with a president who declines to disavow the conspiracy and a Republican QAnon supporter, Marjorie Taylor Greene, looking set to head to Congress in November.

The size of the QAnon community is difficult to estimate. It is, by no means, mainstream. But past experience has shown us that when a minority drapes its cause in a cosmic discourse of good versus evil, atrocities can follow.

Paul Thomas, Chair and Professor of Religious Studies, Radford University

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

===

===

2x?

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/trump-qanon

meaghan ellis

no twt

President Donald Trump is scrambling to maintain the hold on his support base with just two weeks left until Election Day and it looks like he's going a step further to ensure QAnon believers have a voice.

On Tuesday, the White House issued a press release praising the president's actions taken to combat human trafficking.

"President Donald J. Trump has prioritized fighting for the voiceless and ending the scourge of human trafficking across the Nation," the White House said in its statement, later adding, "Since taking office, the President has signed nine pieces of bipartisan legislation to combat human trafficking, both domestically and internationally."

While the Trump administration has vowed to take a "whole-of-government approach" to combatting the issue of human trafficking, it is not as cut-and-dry as it seems.

With so many QAnon followers believing there is a secret pedophilia ring run by high-ranking Democrats, Trump's latest actions may serve as yet another signal for QAnon followers to continue their plight to combat a non-existent pedophilia ring instead of focusing on the real issues of human trafficking.

According to This Week, QAnon's disturbing beliefs and the president's subliminal acknowledgement of their beliefs could be problematic. The publication explains:

QAnon's founding myth holds that our society has long been in thrall of a "deep state" cabal of Satan-worshipping, cannibalistic, Democratic pedophiles with whom Trump is locked in secret battle — and Trump is closing out his re-election campaign with near-confirmation of exactly that. He's treating QAnon as a significant part of his base and sending a hearty dog whistle in their direction[twt WH ltr?]

ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, weighed in with his concerns about the Trump campaign treading dangerously close to the QAnon conspiracy theories.

"We're seeing the Trump campaign tack closely to an almost explicitly QAnon narrative," Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, told *The Washington Post in an August report. "I don't expect to hear the president talking about pedophilia or Satanism, but I expect to hear almost everything else."*

The White House's statement came just days after Trump claimed to have no knowledge of QAnon and what they believe.

"I know nothing about QAnon," Trump told NBC moderator Savannah Guthrie during his town all special on October 15. "What I do hear about it is they are very strongly against pedophilia... I do agree with that, and I agree with it very strongly."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/trumpworld-is-going-full-qanon-with-the-election-less-than-2-weeks-away-report/

Whenever President Donald Trump is asked about QAnon extremists, he will say a few nice things about them while insisting that he knows very little about the movement. But journalist Will Sommer, in an article published by the Daily Beast on October 22, reports that Trump's allies are trying to use the QAnon conspiracy theory to get him reelected.

To say that QAnon's beliefs are absurd would be an understatement. According to the QAnon conspiracy theory, the U.S. government has been infiltrated by an international cabal of child sex traffickers, pedophiles, Satanists and cannibals — and Trump was put in the White House to combat them. An anonymous figure named Q, according to the theory, is giving them updates on Trump's battle. QAnon also believe that R&B superstar Beyoncé is really an Italian woman named Ann Marie Lastrassi and is working with billionaire George Soros as part of the conspiracy.

But as ridiculous as QAnon's beliefs are, Trump's allies are willing to promote the cult if it will help his reelection campaign. One of those allies, Sommer notes, is former Breitbart News Chairman Steve Bannon, who has been using QAnon-like rhetoric and claiming that at least some of their beliefs are true. Bannon said of QAnon, "How are they not at least — at least an aspect of their argument — at least appears, directionally to be correct?"

Sommer explains, "With less than two weeks before Election Day and Trump lagging in the polls, some of the president's most prominent allies are going all in on QAnon, while Trump and other top supporters refuse to denounce the conspiracy theory. It is, at its most innocent, a crass political calculation designed to keep a relatively modest, though loud and influential, chunk of the party's base engaged. At its worst, critics warn, it's a green light of acceptance to dangerous conspiracy theorists and a normalization of their beliefs."

The Beast reporter goes on to say that Trump has "refused to disavow QAnon, which the FBI considers a potential source of domestic terrorism." And in Georgia, Sommer notes, "Two Republican candidates are competing for their own QAnon endorsements. Sen. Kelly Loeffler (R-GA) touted the backing of Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican and outspoken QAnon supporter who's set to win a House seat in Congress in November. Loeffler's challenger, Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), meanwhile, rushed out his endorsement from former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, a hero to QAnon believers who recently took the QAnon oath with members of his family."

Flynn, CNN's Marshall Cohen reported on July 7, posted a video using QAnon rhetoric. In the video, Flynn declared, "Where we go one, we go all" — which is a QAnon slogan. [also lemmings]

Another QAnon slogan is, "The storm is here." And Sommer notes that Bannon has been using "storm" references when promoting conspiracy theories involving former Vice President Joe Biden's son, Hunter Biden.

Bannon recently declared, "It's gonna be a storm. The storm clouds are around the Biden camp. The storm clouds are around the Biden camp — a gathering storm."

===

aha qanon is apoc in minature, trump = messiah , wicked will be vanquished

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/the-extremist-qanon-movement-is-growing-and-being-weaponized-to-boost-trumps-reelection-campaign-report/

Whenever President Donald Trump is asked about QAnon, he will say a few nice things about the far-right conspiracy theorists while insisting that he doesn't know much about them. It isn't hard to understand why Trump is taking that approach: he wants the votes of QAnon supporters, while keeping some distance from them. In an article published in Axios on October 21, journalists Stef W. Kight and Sara Fischer report that the movement is still "growing" — and thatQAnon is being "weaponized to boost President Trump ahead of the election."

Kight and Fischer explain, "What began as a single conspiracy theory linking Hillary Clinton to child trafficking four years ago is now part of a convoluted web of falsehoods being spread to undermine Joe Biden…. In a year of unrest and expected election turmoil, experts are concerned that belief in QAnon could be another instigator of violence in some communities if Trump loses in November."

According to the QAnon conspiracy theory, the federal government of the United States has been infiltrated by an international cabal of child sex traffickers, Satanists and cannibals — and Trump was put in the White House to fight against them. An anonymous figure named Q, members of the cult believe, is providing updates on the president's battle. QAnon members believe that everyone from billionaire Democrat George Soros to R&B superstar Beyoncé is part of the conspiracy, insisting that Beyoncé isn't really African-American but rather, is really an Italian woman and Soros ally named Ann Marie Lastrassi.

But as absurd as QAnon's beliefs are, FBI agents have warned that the movement is dangerous. Kight and Fischer note that security experts are worried about how QAnon will respond if Biden wins the election — and Bryce Webster-Jacobsen, who specializes in cyber-security for GroupSense, says that QAnon's possible response to a Biden victory on November 3 "keeps me up at night."

"Recent reports about what was purported to be Hunter Biden's computer hard drive have sparked renewed activity from Q, with more concrete ideas to latch onto," Kight and Fischer explain. "On the day the New York Post reported on the alleged hard drive, Q posted 16 times, per GroupSense."

President Trump's son Donald Trump, Jr., the Axios reporters point out, has been encouraging QAnon.

"Earlier this year, Donald Trump, Jr.jokingly insinuated that Biden was a pedophile — a nod to QAnon lore that many Democrats use their political power to hide widespread pedophilia," Kight and Fischer note. "Some Republican politicians' adoption of aspects of the theory has helped bring it more mainstream, Webster-Jacobsen said."

Some tech companies have been taking a stand against QAnon.

Kight and Fischer report, "On Monday, Spotify removed QAnon podcasts, and TikTok officially banned all QAnon content. YouTube and Peloton announced QAnon crackdowns last week. Facebook and Triller both banned QAnon earlier this month. Etsy banned QAnon products two weeks ago, and Twitter shut down QAnon accounts in July."

However, the Axios reporters add that "despite these bans, QAnon followers still find other places online to congregate, like Parler, a far-right social media app."

===

an 1020

CNN reporter Donie O'Sullivan shed light on the disturbing QAnon movement hijacking the name of a respected humanitarian charity in order to spread disturbing, baseless conspiracies about Hollywood celebrities and prominent Democratic leaders, including presidential nominee Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

Last week, O'Sullivan opted for a firsthand experience when he attended two QAnon events that recently took place —a protest in Los Angeles, Calif., and an indoor event that was held inside a conference room at a Scottsdale, Ariz., resort. On Tuesday morning, a clip of O'Sullivan's interviews aired on CNN. Despite having no evidence to support their claims, the QAnon supporters offered bizarre remarks about the non-existent pedophilia ring they believe Democratic leaders are involved in.

In reality, QAnon is a right-wing fiction that carries on the legacy of many darkly conspiratorial view over the years. It began with internet postings by someone known as Q dubiously claiming to be a Trump administration insider, but it has ballooned far beyond those origins. It has roots in anti-Semitic bigotry and accusations of blood libel, and it feeds off distrust in the media and mainstream sources, a skepticism that Republicans have been stoking for decades.

Apparently, QAnon followers are hijacking the "Save the Children" movement because they fully believe Democrats are using children for a pedophilia ring. O'Sullivan spoke with an individual who explained the moment as he admitted that most QAnon followers believe almost every high-ranking Democrat is a pedophile or supports pedophilia in some way.

Although President Donald Trump made countless promises to his supporters when he campaigned in 2016, QAnon followers are refusing to believe many of his promises were merely verbal commitments just to secure his presidency. In addition to the pedophilia claims, QAnon believes have also come up with a theory to justify Trump's failure to deliver on his campaign promises.

In the video clip, one QAnon believer baselessly claimed Trump could not lock up Clinton or remove all of the immigrants residing in the United States because the government is secretly controlled by the "deep state." However, the truth is that Trump's investigation into Clinton fell short and he never had the power to remove all immigrants.

*NEW: We spoke to QAnon believers in Los Angeles at a march through Hollywood that portrayed itself as an anti-pedop… https://t.co/hCpbuEG7lL*

— Donie O'Sullivan (@Donie O'Sullivan)1603106574.0

Many of the QAnon protesters at the Los Angeles rally also expressed frustration with those who oppose their views as they insisted no one wants to "save the children." But, despite their uproar and outcry, the movement has faced heightened criticism because there is absolutely no evidence to back their conspiracies.The latest news comes just days after Trump was asked about QAnon during his NBC town hall with moderator Savannah Guthrie.

At the time, Trump insisted he knew very little about the conspiracy but also refused to condemn their theories. Despite QAnon believing children need to be "saved" from some pedophilia ring orchestrated by Democrats, the Save the Children charity is in no way connected to QAnon and its dangerous impact which serves as merely a distraction from real child protection organizations fighting for true causes.

===

aha see when i called it party of trump; now qanon // darwin herd immunity, death cult?

10/20/20 an rats from ship, ram thru dereg]

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/half-of-trump-supporters-believe-qanons-unhinged-conspiracy-theories-poll/

alex h

As outlandish as QAnon's beliefs are, the conspiracy cult has been gaining ground in the Republican Party. A Yahoo News/YouGov poll finds that roughly 50% of President Donald Trump's supporters now embrace at least some of QAnon's claims.

QAnon believes that the United States' federal government has been infiltrated by an international cabal of pedophiles, Satanists and cannibals and that Trump was put in the White House to lead the fight against the cabal. According to the fictional belief set, an anonymous figure named Q is providing updates on Trump's battle. And one of QAnon's beliefs is that R&B superstar Beyoncé isn't really African-American but rather, is really an Italian woman named Ann Marie Latrassi who is passing herself off as Black as part of the conspiracy.

The Yahoo/YouGov poll, conducted October 16-18, asked participants, "Do you believe that top Democrats are involved in elite child sex trafficking rings?" — and 50% of Trump supporters said "yes" compared to only 5% of former Vice President Joe Biden's supporters.

The poll also asked, "Do you believe that President Trump is working to dismantle an elite child sex trafficking ring involving top Democrats?" — to which 52% of Trump supporters responded "yes," while only 4% of Biden supporters said "yes."

Yahoo News reporters Andrew Romano and Caitlin Dickson note that only 16% of Trump supporters who were familiar were QAnon were willing to dismiss the entire movement as conspiracy nonsense that has no basis in fact.

The inroads that QAnon has made in the GOP were evident when, in August, QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene won a Republican congressional primary in Georgia. Because her district is overwhelmingly Republican, Greene will likely win the general election on November 3 and be sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2021.

Well-known Republicans who have made donations to Green's campaign include Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. And after her primary win, Trump congratulated Greene on Twitter and exalted her as a "future Republican star."

Nina Jankowicz of the nonpartisan Wilson Center told Yahoo News that it's "really crazy" that "such a high number" of Trump supporters embrace QAnon's conspiracy theory.

Jankowicz explained, "It seems, increasingly, like we're dealing with two different sets of facts in this country, sometimes more. The fact is that QAnon is a movement, a conspiracy that has been cited by the FBI as potentially inciting terrorist and other violent extremist acts in this country. It shouldn't be something that we're this split (on) along partisan lines."

During a recent town hall event hosted by NBC News, moderator Savannah Guthrie grilled Trump about QAnon — and he maintained, "I know nothing about QAnon." But Trump added that from what he has heard, "They are very strongly against pedophilia, and I agree with that."

Jankowicz told Yahoo News, "The fact that we have so many political candidates who are public adherents of QAnon and a president who himself has refused to disavow the theory (amounts to) a tacit endorsement of a different set of facts. That's what's really worrisome about it."

===

trifecta bad trinity: led to 50%?!

https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/tucker-carlson-hosted-qanon-conspiracy-theorist-noor-bin-ladin-talk-about trump

===

wackjob, note same rhet as wolverine. pence luciferian traitor, proto-Qanon?

https://timothycharlesholmseth.com/must-view-by-what-authority-are-they-acting-on-murdering-their-own-people-ammon-bundy/

MUST VIEW! By What Authority are they Acting On? (murdering their own people)- Ammon Bundy

August 3, 2020 Timothy Holmseth FRAUD, GOVERNMENT, HEALTH 1

by Timothy Charles Holmseth on August 3, 2020 at 2:05 P.M.

Ammon Bundy, the third son of Cliven Bundy, articulates how the Unites States has been taken over by criminals.

Bundy explains and shows, for instance, that the federal government has no constitutional authority to involve itself with "education" or "health".

"These agencies have found a way to create their own laws, without the people's elected representatives. Over the past several decades they have been organizing their own law enforcement regiments, building their own prison systems, and appointing their own judges," Ammon Bundy said.

Timothy Holmseth

https://timothycharlesholmseth.com

Timothy Charles Holmseth is an award winning news reporter and investigative journalist. He is an FBI witness in a national profile kidnapping case. He captured rogue CIA and FBI child traffickers on tape discussing their operations. He has been targeted for a decade. In 2019 Timothy Charles Holmseth became part of thePentagon Pedophile Task Force. Timothy Holmseth is the only reporter authorized to report original content for the PPTF. There is ONE MAN between Timothy Holmseth and President Trump.

See author's posts

===

Trump's fierce supporters are offering bizarre and baseless explanations to defend his refusal to condemn QAnon conspiracy theories during his town hall with NBC News moderator Savannah Guthrie.

Despite being repeatedly grilled about the disturbing conspiracy theories which Guthrie explained, Trump continued to claim he had very little knowledge about the extremist group. Ahead of the president's campaign rally in Macon, Ga., on Friday, CNN national correspondent Gary Tuchman had an opportunity to speak with a number of Trump supporters who weighed in on the president's failure to condemn QAnon.

Tuchman spoke with CNN's Anderson Cooper with details about his observations and experience speaking with several of the president's supporters.

"Like we have seen before, most people are not wearing masks and not social distancing," Tuchman said of Trump's rally in Sanford, Fla., earlier this week. "It looks like a concert. He's been talking about locking up Hillary Clinton and no mention of QAnon. He had a chance to condemn QAnon last night but he did not do it. We talked to supporters in strong favor of QAnon and others know little about it but none we talked to want to condemn it."

Many of them believe the president's refusal to condemn the group is a subtle form of support for it. The first rallygoer Tuchman spoke with wore a white T-shirt that read, "QAnon: WWG1WGA" to show her support for the conspiracy group. Then, while speaking with two women, Tuchman asked, "Do you think he [Trump] has your back by not criticizing it?"

"Yeah," the woman responded as she nodded her head. "I really do."

[twt]

the next rallygoer was asked should Trump denounce the QAnon conspiracy. He flatly responded, "No." When Tuchman described the conspiracy theories as "crazy stuff," the woman standing next to the man interjected saying, "No, that's what you guys try to make us believe, crazy stuff."

Not deterred, Tuchman pressed further: "But do you believe that there are Democrats and celebrities that are in a pedophile ring?"

"Yes, I do," she said.

When Tuchman asked the woman to explain the origin of the conspiracy theory, she struggled to come up with a solid answer.

"Where does that come from?" the woman repeated. "Why don't you ask the little kids?"

As Tuchman noted that there is no evidence to support the QAnon claims, the woman pivoted and asked what news outlet he works for. After learning he works for CNN, she quickly retreated with no further defense of the conspiracy. Despite no evidence, Trump's supporters have made it clear that they support him by any means. Tuchman also revealed how rare it is to ever find an undecided voter in attendance at a Trump rally.

Most rallygoers attend the event maskless while disregarding social distancing practices.

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/is-qanon-created-by-the-republican-party/

alex h

when NBC News' Savannah Guthrie was grilling President Donald Trump during a town hall event on Thursday night, October 15, she gave the president every opportunity to criticize QAnon — and he wouldn't say a word against the far-right cult/movement. But Trump isn't alone in that regard. Journalist Tina Nguyen, in an article for Politico, stresses that the Republican Party of 2020 has formed an "uneasy relationship with the QAnon conspiracy theory." And Nguyen describes some of the inroads QAnon has been making with the GOP.

"The QAnon world is no longer simply a social media community trafficking in conspiracy theories," Nguyen explains. "It's increasingly a new constituency for the GOP — one that's fired up like the rest of the MAGA movement, warring with tech giants and ready to battle through Election Day on behalf of a struggling president."

Trump, Nguyen observes, has "retweeted and highlighted several (social media) accounts with a history of posting QAnon content" and has "stoked conspiracy theories that originated in the QAnon world." And Trump, according to Nguyen, has "increasingly allowed into the arms of his MAGA movement a group that had been dismissed as fringe nonsense."

QAnon believes that the federal government of the united states has been infiltrated by an international cabal of pedophiles, Satanists and cannibals and that Trump was put in the White House to combat them. According to QAnon extremists, an anonymous figure named Q is giving QAnon members updates on Trump's battle. The FBI has warned that QAnon is capable of domestic terrorist attacks.

Guthrie, during the October 15 townhall, described some of QAnon's unhinged beliefs. And Trump responded, "I know nothing about QAnon. I know very little. I do know they are very much against pedophilia. They fight it very hard."

The U.S. House of Representatives recently passed a resolution condemning QAnon as an unhinged and dangerous hate group. The "vast majority" of House Republicans, Nguyen notes, voted in favor of the resolution — and yet, 17 House Republicans didn't.

QAnon enjoyed a victory in August when QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene — who was supported by well-known Republicans like Rep. Jim Jordan and White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows — won a GOP congressional primary in Georgia. Given how overwhelmingly Republican Greene's district is, she will likely win the general election on November 3 and be sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2021. Trump has praised Greene as a "rising star" in the GOP.

Nguyen notes that that a recent Morning Consult poll found that 38% of Republicans believe at least some parts of the QAnon conspiracy theory, and a Pew Research poll found that 41% of Republicans believe that QAnon is "somewhat" or "very good" for the United States.

"In effect, QAnon has become a voter bloc within the MAGAfied version of the Republican Party," Nguyen reports. "As the official networks housing Q theories get taken down — platforms shutting down groups, Twitter cracking down on hashtags — the QAnon movement has found a home inside the MAGA movement."

FROM YOUR SITE ARTICLES

RELATED ARTICLES AROUND THE WEB

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/usps-special-agents-find-massive-amount-of-undelivered-mail-in-raid-of-qanon-mail-carriers-home/

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/qanon-conspiracy-theorists-scramble-to-explain-trump-taking-a-developed-from-fetal-tissue-report/

alex h

the far-right QAnon conspiracy cult not only opposes abortion — it also opposes the use of any type of fetal tissue for medical research. But in Vice, journalist Anna Merlan notes a major contradiction: President Donald Trump, who QAnon idolizes, was recently treated with a drug that was "developed using a stem cell linemade from aborted fetal tissue."

When Trump was hospitalized at Walter Reed Military Medical Center in Bethesda, Maryland after testing positive for COVID-19, he was treated with an antibody cocktail from the company Regeneron — and that cocktail, Merlan notes, "was developed using a fetal tissue cell line from the 1980s."

QAnon aren't the only anti-abortion extremists on the far right who oppose the use of fetal tissue in medical research. But QAnon carries it much further, claiming that an international cabal of pedophiles and Satanists are making use of fetal tissue.QAnon believes that the cabal/Satanic child sex ring has infiltrated the federal government in the United States and that Trump was placed in the White House to combat the cabal. According to QAnon, an anonymous figure named "Q" is giving members updates on Trump's battle.

The antibody cocktail that Trump received, Merlan points out, "manages to slot with almost painful neatness into an ongoing storyline in the right-wing conspiracyverse: that powerful Democratic elites extract the lifeblood or some other vital force from children and feed on it. It's a trope withroots in the anti-Semitic medieval blood libel, and has recurred in various forms for hundreds of years."

"Among QAnon fans," Merlan notes, "that substance is commonly claimed to be'adrenochrome,'and the claim, more or less, is that the Satanic Democrat Illuminati elites extract it from children being tortured and killed and then inject it to maintain their youthful vigor. Adrenochrome is a chemical compound that's used mainly to slow blood clotting; its mythology as a supposed intoxicating drug is almost completely derived from fiction. It's not, in any circumstances, necessary or possible to harvest it from tortured children."

Merlan observes that there is a major "irony" in the fact that Trump, QAnon's idol, was treated with that antibody cocktail when the cult opposes using any type of fetal tissue for scientific research. And she points out that Trump's supporters, including QAnon extremists, have been looking for ways to rationalize the use of that antibody cocktail when he was hospitalized.

"It's virtually certain that in the coming days, the sentiments around Trump's antibody cocktail will coalesce, and these divergent, competing points of view will be absorbed into a more dominant narrative — most likely, one that urges trust in Trump and in what his followers so fondly call 'the Plan,'" Merlan writes. "By Tuesday, in fact, there were signs that the controversy, such as it was, was simply being allowed to die away, and that the details of how Trump was 'cured' were less relevant than the fact that he'd returned to public life…. The future of QAnon, after all — a movement based on lionizing one man, putting him into the role of savior, leader of mankind, and, of course, tireless, extremely healthy strongman — depends on believing that to the bitter end."

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/10/house-passes-resolution-condemning-qanon-as-a-psychotic-cult-that-has-deluded-and-brain-poisoned-its-followers

if far-right GOP congressional candidate Marjorie Taylor Greene is elected in November — which is likely given how overwhelmingly Republican her district in Georgia is — a full-fledged supporter of the QAnon cult will be sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives in January. But QAnon has many opponents in the House, which has passed a resolution, 371-18, condemning the cult.

House Rules Chairman Jim McGovern, a Massachusetts Democrat, described QAnon as a "collective delusion," saying, "We all must call it what it is: a sick cult."

The QAnon cult believes that the U.S. government has been infiltrated by a global ring of pedophiles and Satanists and that Donald Trump was elected president to fight the ring. According to the conspiracy theory, an anonymous figure named "Q" is providing updates about Trump's battle. Trump has refused to condemn QAnon, claiming that he doesn't know much about it but saying that from what he knows, they seem to be people who "love our country." And he congratulated Greene after she won the nomination in a GOP congressional primary in her Georgia district.

But House Resolution 1154, which was sponsored by Rep. Tom Malinowski of New Jersey, condemned QAnon in no uncertain terms. Malinowski told BuzzFeed he has received death threats from the cult.

Another Democratic New Jersey congressman who voted for the resolution, Rep. Bill Pascrell, said of QAnon, "Human civilization is built on trust in knowledge and charity towards our neighbors. This psychotic cult, rooted in fantasies of violence and anti-Semitism, is an enemy of that civilization. Its adherents have been deluded and brain-poisoned."

Pascrell continued, "The FBI has warned of ties to domestic terror, and the real threats against my colleague, Congressman Malinowski, by miscreant cult members for sponsoring this common-sense measure makes clear the depravity of its so-called world view. Dangerous misinformation of this kind must be opposed by every American.

Pascrell also called out the Republicans who have embraced QAnon, saying, "It is shameful that the Republican Party has given its imprimatur to several cult followers as candidates for Congress. Enabling this mass delusion is a rejection of humanity."

Not all Republicans agree with passing the resolution. CNN's Jake Tapper listed those who voted no or abstained:

Jake Tapper

@jaketapper

21h

A telling vote just now in the House.

H. Res. 1154 from

@Malinowski

and

@RepRiggleman

"Condemning QAnon and rejecting the conspiracy theories it promotes."

Yea: 371

Nay: 18

Present: 1

Not Voting: 40

52 Republicans either voted AGAINST it, abstained, or voted present

thr/

Jake Tapper

@jaketapper

21h

2) Voting NO:

Amash

Arrington

Babin

Bishop (UT)

Brooks (AL)

Burgess

Carter (GA)

Davidson (OH)

Duncan

Ferguson

Flores

Gosar

Kelly (PA)

King (IA)

Norman

Perry

Tiffany

Webster (FL)

All GOP except Amash, an independent

Jake Tapper

@jaketapper

21h

3) Voting PRESENT: Harris of Maryland, GOP

NOT VOTING, GOP:

Biggs

Bilirakis

Cloud

Collins (GA)

DesJarlais

Dunn

Estes

Fulcher

Gaetz

Gallagher

Gianforte

Gohmert

Graves (GA)

Hice (GA)

Huizenga

Jordan

Lamborn

Loudermilk

Marchant

Massie

Mitchell

Jake Tapper

@jaketapper

21h

4) NOT VOTING, GOP (cont'd)

Mullin

Newhouse

Pence

Roe, David P.

Rooney (FL)

Smucker

Spano

Walker

Waltz

Wright

Yoho

Young

NOT VOTING, DEM

Cohen

Deutch

Higgins

Maloney

Peterson

Suozzi

Some are out of town, but others didn't vote as a statement.

===

https://www.rightwingwatch.org/post/gop-house-judiciary-members-call-qanon-supporter/

no twt

republicans on the House Judiciary Committee, led by ranking member Rep. Jim Jordan of Ohio, are scheduled to host recording artist and QAnon supporter Joy Villa for Thursday’s hearing on diversity in media.

QAnon is a dangerous conspiracy theory movement built on beliefs that a shadowy network of satanic pedophiles is controlling the world and that President Donald Trump is working behind the scenes to combat the network. Followers believe that an anonymous user on an online image board is posting clues to them in the form of riddles and that one day the clues will be proven true when Trump unleashes a wave of mass arrests and executions.

Villa has used posted about QAnon on social media and appeared at the 2020 Conservative Political Action Conference wearing QAnon-styled earrings. Last year, Villa was scheduled to speak at a QAnon conference alongside leading proponents of the conspiracy theory.

Thursday’s hearing is scheduled to begin at 2:30 p.m. villa’s scheduled appearance before the House Judiciary is just the latest intersection between QAnon and high-ranking Republicans. QAnon believer Marjorie Taylor Greene is highly likely to win her election in Georgia this November, which would make her the first member of the U.S. House of Representatives to have explicitly supported the conspiracy theory.

Right Wing Watch attempted to reach Villa for clarification on her views regarding QAnon via Twitter direct message Thursday but did not immediately receive a response. We will update this article if we hear back.

===

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/inside-qanons-toxic-spread-among-police-officers/

The problem with police officers being white supremacists is an obvious one: The public cannot have confidence that laws will be enforced equitably when even one such officer employed is racially bigoted or generally unhinged. The problem is somewhat less obvious when cops succumb to conspiracy theories, especially considering their spread into the mainstream in recent years—but it can be every bit as big a problem, especially when it involves an authoritarian political cult like QAnon.

And QAnon is indeed spreading among the ranks of American police officers, as Ali Breland recently explored at *Mother Jones.Breland explains that this spread is particularly worrisome because of the peculiar nature of the QAnon theories themselves. "The logic of the conspiracy theory almost requires its adherents to carry out acts of violence: If you actually believe that elites are harboring scores of children in underground tunnels to rape and steal blood from, taking action to liberate them would be a moral imperative," he writes.QAnon seems to have taken root withinNew York City's police department in particular: *

The head of the department's second-biggest union gave a televised interview with a QAnon coffee cup in full view on the shelf behind him, and offered no clarification or apology afterward. The Harlem NYPD precinct's social media account retweeted a number of QAnon-related posts (including one accusing the mail-order business Wayfair of "sex trafficking young girls"), along with a number of Donald Trump tweets that spread misinformation about the COVID-19 pandemic and mail-in voting.

However, the conspiracist cult has spread to police precincts all around the nation. By far the most public and prolific of the officers adopting the conspiracy theories is Jason Bandy, who was formerly employed by the New Haven, Connecticut, police department.

Bandy has produced nearly 30 episodes of a podcast devoted to QAnon conspiracy theories, where he holds forth at length about a variety of dubious claims, gullibly relaying them all to his audience.

"Theseelites are torturing these kids," Bandy said in a March 22 podcast. "Yes, there's sex involved. They're trafficking these children and all these other rituals that they do. They are Satanic worshipers. They are Illuminati. Deep state, all this."

Bandy believes the ultimate proof of QAnon's substance is the fact that Donald Trump—around whom the theories revolve as the chief heroic figure—has refused to disavow them:

But my thing is look, Donald Trump calls fake everything out. If this stuff is fake, he'd be the first one to say, "Hey, this is fake." That's not what he said. When they asked him, "Do you know what Q is?" he said, "I'm not gonna say, but I'm just gonna tell you I think you'd be really surprised."

Bandy retired from the New Haven department in September after Police Chief Otoniel Reyes said there would be an internal affairs investigation into his posts, which remains ongoing.

Police in Bellevue, Washington, also suspended an officer—Nico Roche, who only recently joined the city's police department—after his frequent QAnon-related social-media posts became known. (A spokesperson told Daily Kos that the internal investigation, announced in June, will be completed soon.) His chief, Steve Mylett, told KIRO-TV in Seattle that the investigation would try to balance the officer's rights with the public's.

"The employee has constitutional rights, as everybody else, officers do. He's got freedom of speech, freedom of expression. We carry a burden and our standard is very high because of the work that we do and what we represent," said Mylett.

Not all jurisdictions take it seriously. In Joliet, Illinois, two officers who wore "Q" vests while participating in an anti-COVID-19 rally in Springfield were defended by the city's mayor, Jeff Grove, who told the local newspaper that he intended to judge the officers solely on the basis of their daily work, adding that in his view, "what you do on your own time is your choice, and that's your right." If any issues arise, he said, "we'll definitely be addressing them."

The officers—Matthew Kunkel and Mark Manicki—were even more aggressive in defending their associations with the conspiracy cult. "I, like millions of other people on this planet, enjoy the challenge of attempting to decode the information contained within the Q drops. It's called 'Q Research' for a reason, it requires research to obtain the information encoded within the posts," Manicki explained to the Times. "I'm merely someone who sits on my couch late at night with my dog on my lap, iPhone in hand, while seeking the truth. Last time I checked, there was nothing wrong with that!"

In reality, the FBI has previously identified the QAnon cult as one of the leading sectors for the kind of conspiracism that, as the agency put it in a bulletin that was issued to law enforcement officers, is "very likely motivate some domestic extremists, wholly or in part, to commit criminal and sometimes violent activity. The FBI further assesses in some cases these conspiracy theories very likely encourage the targeting of specific people, places, and organizations, thereby increasing the likelihood of violence against these targets."

And it warned that this is indeed a threat to public safety: "Anti-government, identity based, and fringe political conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace over the near term, fostering anti-government sentiment, promoting racial and religious prejudice, increasing political tensions, and occasionally driving both groups and individuals to commit criminal or violent acts," the bulletin read.

It lists several domestic terrorism cases as examples of conspiracy-fueled crimes, including a widely reported incident in July 2018 when a fervent believer in the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theories blocked traffic across Hoover Dam in Nevada, as well as a 2013 attack on security officers at Los Angeles International Airport.

The bulletin also mentions two incidents that had not been previously reported in the media:

The December 2018 arrest of a California man found in possession of bomb-making materials, who allegedly "planned to travel to Springfield, Illinois and blow up a satanic temple monument at the Illinois Capitol rotunda in order to 'make Americans aware of 'Pizzagate' and the New World Order (NWO), who were dismantling society.' "
The October 2016 arrests of two Georgia men, originally for drugs, who were discovered to be stockpiling guns, ammo, and tactical gear as preparation for an attack on a government radar-research station in Alaska they believe is manipulating the weather—a conspiracy theory long promoted by the Militia of Montana.

The memo is also remarkably astute in its assessment of the mechanics of conspiracist radicalization. Its definition of "conspiracy theory" may lack an esoteric component, but it is pragmatic and to the point: "an attempt to explain events or circumstances as the result of a group of actors working in secret to benefit themselves at the expense of others." It explains how they "typically allege wrongdoing by powerful others (for example, public officials, business executives, scientists) or societally marginalized groups (for example, Muslims, Jews), and are most prevalent among individuals with extreme political views."

It points directly to the aspect of conspiracism that gives it an unusual power to unhinge its believers: namely, the estrangement from factual reality.

Conspiracy theories typically "ignore stronger evidence that would refute their claims. Consequently, they are usually at odds with official or prevailing explanations of events."

"Relying on the premises that nothing happens by accident, nothing is as it seems, and everything is connected, conspiracy theorists tend to view every bad outcome as the result of an intentional decision by an evil actor, dismiss disconfirming evidence as 'fabricated' by the conspirators, and connect a wide range of seemingly unrelated occurrences to suggest a larger plot," the memo explains.

"The danger," QAnon Anonymous podcast host Jake Rockatansky told Mother Jones, "is that you've got law enforcement who have a tremendous amount of responsibility who are showing complete disconnect from reality. They carry weapons. What happens if a police officer thinks that they've uncovered a pedophile ring?

===

mma 920

August, Facebook promised to remove QAnon groups on its platform that “discuss potential violence”. However, many QAnon groups are still explicitly violating Facebook’s apparent policy and are as active as ever. Using CrowdTangle, an analytics tool owned by Facebook, Media Matters identified 19 large QAnon groups using violent rhetoric that seemingly violate Facebook’s new policy.

Facebook has said that QAnon groups have been able to “evade” enforcement mechanisms and the company is working with “external experts on ways to disrupt” this activity. While some groups have made changes to their names, such as “changing ‘Q’ to ‘Cue,’” the substance of these public posts remains easily identifiable and obviously violent.

Media Matters Olivia Little explained, “QAnon content continues to widely proliferate on the website, indicating Facebook was either unprepared to actually follow through with the promise to remove groups that discuss violence, or had no intention of actually doing so after receiving initial praise. Either way, Facebook’s public promise to remove QAnon groups promoting violence garnered positive PR even while the online community continued to expand.”

===

If you were an adherent, no one would be able to tell. You would look like any other American. You could be a mother, picking leftovers off your toddler’s plate. You could be the young man in headphones across the street. You could be a bookkeeper, a dentist, a grandmother icing cupcakes in her kitchen. You may well have an affiliation with an evangelical church. But you are hard to identify just from the way you look—which is good, because someday soon dark forces may try to track you down. You understand this sounds crazy, but you don’t care. You know that a small group of manipulators, operating in the shadows, pull the planet’s strings. You know that they are powerful enough to abuse children without fear of retribution. You know that the mainstream media are their handmaidens, in partnership with Hillary Clinton and the secretive denizens of the deep state. You know that only Donald Trump stands between you and a damned and ravaged world. You see plague and pestilence sweeping the planet, and understand that they are part of the plan. You know that a clash between good and evil cannot be avoided, and you yearn for the Great Awakening that is coming. And so you must be on guard at all times. You must shield your ears from the scorn of the ignorant. You must find those who are like you. And you must be prepared to fight.

You know all this because you believe in Q.

:{

the origins of QAnon are recent, but even so, separating myth from reality can be hard. One place to begin is with Edgar Maddison Welch, a deeply religious father of two, who until Sunday, December 4, 2016, had lived an unremarkable life in the small town of Salisbury, North Carolina. That morning, Welch grabbed his cellphone, a box of shotgun shells, and three loaded guns—a 9-mm AR-15 rifle, a six-shot .38‑caliber Colt revolver, and a shotgun—and hopped into his Toyota Prius. He drove 360 miles to a well-to-do neighborhood in Northwest Washington, D.C.; parked his car; put the revolver in a holster at his hip; held the AR-15 rifle across his chest; and walked through the front door of a pizzeria called Comet Ping Pong.}:

I. GENESIS

Comet happens to be the place where, on a Sunday afternoon two years earlier, my then-baby daughter tried her first-ever sip of water. Kids gather there with their parents and teammates after soccer games on Saturdays, and local bands perform on the weekends. In the back, children challenge their grandparents to Ping-Pong matches as they wait for their pizzas to come out of the big clay oven in the middle of the restaurant. Comet Ping Pong is a beloved spot in Washington.

That day, people noticed Welch right away. An AR-15 rifle makes for a conspicuous sash in most social settings, but especially at a place like Comet. As parents, children, and employees rushed outside, many still chewing, Welch began to move through the restaurant, at one point attempting to use a butter knife to pry open a locked door, before giving up and firing several rounds from his rifle into the lock. Behind the door was a small computer-storage closet. This was not what he was expecting.

Welch had traveled to Washington because of a conspiracy theory known, now famously, as Pizzagate, which claimed that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex ring out of Comet Ping Pong. The idea originated in October 2016, when WikiLeaks made public a trove of emails stolen from the account of John Podesta, a former White House chief of staff and then the chair of Clinton’s presidential campaign; Comet was mentioned repeatedly in exchanges Podesta had with the restaurant’s owner, James Alefantis, and others. The emails were mainly about fundraising events, but high-profile pro–Donald Trump figures such as Mike Cernovich and Alex Jonesbegan advancing the claim—which originated in trollish corners of the internet (such as 4chan) and then spread to more accessible precincts (Twitter, YouTube)—that the emails were proof of ritualistic child abuse. Some conspiracy theorists asserted that it was taking place in the basement at Comet, where there is no basement. References in the emails to “pizza” and “pasta” were interpreted as code words for “girls” and “little boys.”

Shortly after Trump’s election, as Pizzagate roared across the internet, Welch started binge-watching conspiracy-theory videos on YouTube. He tried to recruit help from at least two people to carry out a vigilante raid, texting them about his desire to sacrifice “the lives of a few for the lives of many” and to fight “a corrupt system that kidnaps, tortures and rapes babies and children in our own backyard.” When Welch finally found himself inside the restaurant and understood that Comet Ping Pong was just a pizza shop, he set down his firearms, walked out the door, and surrendered to police, who had by then secured the perimeter. “The intel on this wasn’t 100 percent,” Welch told *The New York Times*after his arrest.

Welch seems to have sincerely believed that children were being held at Comet Ping Pong. His family and friends wrote letters to the judge on his behalf, describing him as a dedicated father, a devout Christian, and a man who went out of his way to care for others. Welch had trained as a volunteer firefighter. He had gone on an earthquake-response mission to Haiti with the local Baptist Men’s Association. A friend from his church wrote, “He exhibits the actions of a person who strives to learn biblical truth and apply it.” Welch himself expressed what seemed like genuine remorse, saying in a handwritten note submitted to the judge by his lawyers: “It was never my intention to harm or frighten innocent lives, but I realize now just how foolish and reckless my decision was.” He was sentenced to four years in prison.

Pizzagate seemed to fade. Some of its most visible proponents, such as for the pro-Trump cable-news channel One America News Network,backed away. *Facing the specter of legal action by Alefantis, Alex Jones, who runs the conspiracy-theory website Infowars and hosts an affiliated radio show, apologized for promoting Pizzagate.

[Read: The lasting trauma of Alex Jones’s lies]

While Welch may have expressed regret, he gave no indication that he had stopped believing the underlying Pizzagate message: that a cabal of powerful elites was abusing children and getting away with it. Judging from a surge of activity on the internet, many others had found ways to move beyond the Comet Ping Pong episode and remain focused on what they saw as the larger truth. If you paid attention to the right voices on the right websites, you could see in real time how the core premises of Pizzagate were being recycled, revised, and reinterpreted. The millions of people paying attention to sites like 4chan and Reddit could continue to learn about that secretive and untouchable cabal; about its malign actions and intentions; about its ties to the left wing and specifically to Democrats and especially to Clinton; about its bloodlust and its moral degeneracy. You could also—and this would prove essential—read about a small but swelling band of underground American patriots fighting back.

All of this, taken together, defined a worldview that would soon have a name: QAnon, derived from a mysterious figure, “Q,” posting anonymously on 4chan. QAnon does not possess a physical location, but it has an infrastructure, a literature, a growing body of adherents, and a great deal of merchandising. It also displays other key qualities that Pizzagate lacked. In the face of inconvenient facts, it has the ambiguity and adaptability to sustain a movement of this kind over time. For QAnon, every contradiction can be explained away; no form of argument can prevail against it.

conspiracy theories are a constant in American history, and it is tempting to dismiss them as inconsequential. But as the 21st century has progressed, such a dismissal has begun to require willful blindness. I was a city-hall reporter for a local investigative-news site called Honolulu Civil Beat in 2011 when Donald Trump was laying the groundwork for a presidential run by publicly questioning whether Barack Obama had been born in Hawaii, as all facts and documents showed. Trump maintained that Obama had really been born in Africa, and therefore wasn’t a natural-born American—making him ineligible for the highest office. I remember the debate in our Honolulu newsroom: Should we even cover this “birther” madness? As it turned out, the allegations, based entirely on lies, captivated enough people to give Trump a launching pad.

Nine years later, as reports of a fearsome new virus suddenly emerged, and with Trump now president, a series of ideas began burbling in the QAnon community: that the coronavirus might not be real; that if it was, it had been created by the “deep state,” the star chamber of government officials and other elite figures who secretly run the world; that the hysteria surrounding the pandemic was part of a plot to hurt Trump’s reelection chances; and that media elites were cheering the death toll. Some of these ideas would make their way onto Fox News and into the president’s public utterances. As of late last year, according to The New York Times, Trump had retweeted accounts often focused on conspiracy theories, including those of QAnon, on at least 145 occasions.

[Read: The coronavirus conspiracy boom]

The power of the internet was understood early on, but the full nature of that power—its ability to shatter any semblance of shared reality, undermining civil society and democratic governance in the process—was not. The internet also enabled unknown individuals to reach masses of people, at a scale Marshall McLuhan never dreamed of. The warping of shared reality leads a man with an AR-15 rifle to invade a pizza shop. It brings online forums into being where people colorfully imagine the assassination of a former secretary of state. It offers the promise of a Great Awakening, in which the elites will be routed and the truth will be revealed. It causes chat sites to come alive with commentary speculating that the coronavirus pandemic may be the moment QAnon has been waiting for. None of this could have been imagined as recently as the turn of the century.

QAnon is emblematic of modern America’s susceptibility to conspiracy theories, and its enthusiasm for them.But it is also already much more than a loose collection of conspiracy-minded chat-room inhabitants. It is a movement united in mass rejection of reason, objectivity, and other Enlightenment values.And we are likely closer to the beginning of its story than the end. The group harnesses paranoia to fervent hope and a deep sense of belonging. The way it breathes life into an ancient preoccupation with end-times is also radically new. To look at QAnon is to see not just a conspiracy theory but the birth of a new religion.

Many people were reluctant to speak with me about QAnon as I reported this story. The movement’s adherents have sometimes proved willing to take matters into their own hands. Last year, the FBI classified QAnon as a domestic-terror threat in an internal memo. The memo took note of a California man arrested in 2018 with bomb-making materials. According to the FBI, he had planned to attack the Illinois capitol to “make Americans aware of ‘Pizzagate’ and the New World Order (NWO) who were dismantling society.” The memo also took note of a QAnon follower in Nevada who was arrested in 2018 after blocking traffic on the Hoover Dam in an armored truck. The man, heavily armed, was demanding the release of the inspector general’s report on Hillary Clinton’s emails. The FBI memo warned that conspiracy theories stoke the threat of extremist violence, especially when individuals “claiming to act as ‘researchers’ or ‘investigators’ single out people, businesses, or groups which they falsely accuse of being involved in the imagined scheme.”

[Read: Instagram is full of conspiracy theories and extremism]

QAnon adherents are feared for ferociously attacking skeptics online and for inciting physical violence. On a now-defunct Reddit board dedicated to QAnon, commenters took delight in describing Clinton’s potential fate. One person wrote: “I’m surprised no one has assassinated her yet honestly.” Another: “The buzzards rip her rotting corpse to shreds.” A third: “I want to see her blood pouring down the gutters!" [grafix]

When I spoke with Clinton recently about QAnon, she said, “I just get under their skin unlike anybody else … If I didn’t have Secret Service protection going through my mail, finding weird stuff, tracking the threats against me—which are still very high—I would be worried.” She has come to realize that the invented reality in which conspiracy theorists place her is not some bizarre parallel universe but actually one that shapes our own. Referring to internet trolling operations, Clinton said, “I don’t think until relatively recently most people understood how well organized they were, and how many different components of their strategy they have put in place.”[vast RW c which is ans was true and the roots of this BS btw]

on october 28, 2017, the anonymous user now widely referred to as “Q” appeared for the first time on 4chan, a so-called image board that is known for its grotesque memes, sickening photographs, and brutal teardown culture. Q predicted the imminent arrest of Hillary Clinton and a violent uprising nationwide, posting this:

II. REVELATION

HRC extradition already in motion effective yesterday with several countries in case of cross border run. Passport approved to be flagged effective 10/30 @ 12:01am. Expect massive riots organized in defiance and others fleeing the US to occur. US M’s will conduct the operation while NG activated. Proof check: Locate a NG member and ask if activated for duty 10/30 across most major cities.

And then this:

Mockingbird HRC detained, not arrested (yet). Where is Huma? Follow Huma. This has nothing to do w/ Russia (yet). Why does Potus surround himself w/ generals? What is military intelligence? Why go around the 3 letter agencies? What Supreme Court case allows for the use of MI v Congressional assembled and approved agencies? Who has ultimate authority over our branches of military w/o approval conditions unless 90+ in wartime conditions? What is the military code? Where is AW being held? Why? POTUS will not go on tv to address nation. POTUS must isolate himself to prevent negative optics. POTUS knew removing criminal rogue elements as a first step was essential to free and pass legislation. Who has access to everything classified? Do you believe HRC, Soros, Obama etc have more power than Trump? Fantasy. Whoever controls the office of the Presidency controls this great land. They never believed for a moment they (Democrats and Republicans) would lose control. This is not a R v D battle. Why did Soros donate all his money recently? Why would he place all his funds in a RC? Mockingbird 10.30.17 God bless fellow Patriots.

Clinton was not arrested on October 30, but that didn’t deter Q, who continued posting ominous predictions and cryptic riddles—with prompts like “Find the reflection inside the castle”—often written in the form of tantalizing fragments and rhetorical questions. Q made it clear that he wanted people to believe he was an intelligence officer or military official with Q clearance, a level of access to classified information that includes nuclear-weapons design and other highly sensitive material. (I’m using he because many Q followers do, though Q remains anonymous—hence “QAnon.”) Q’s tone is conspiratorial to the point of cliché: “I’ve said too much,” and “Follow the money,” and “Some things must remain classified to the very end.”

{The destruction of the global cabal is imminent, Q prophesies. One of his favorite rallying cries is “Enjoy the show”—a reference to a coming apocalypse.}

What might have languished as a lonely screed on a single image board instead incited fervor. Its profile was enhanced, according to Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins of NBC News, by several conspiracy theorists whose promotion of Q in turn helped build up their own online profiles. [LOIO?] By now, nearly three years since Q’s original messages appeared, there have been thousands of what his followers call “Q drops”—messages posted to image boards by Q. He uses a password-protected “tripcode,” a series of letters and numbers visible to other image-board users to signal the continuity of his identity over time. (Q’s tripcode has changed on occasion, prompting flurries of speculation.) As Q has moved from one image board to the next—from 4chan to 8chan to 8kun, seeking a safe harbor—QAnon adherents have only become more devoted. If the internet is one big rabbit hole containing infinitely recursive rabbit holes, QAnon has somehow found its way down all of them, gulping up lesser conspiracy theories as it goes.

[From the September 2017 issue: How America lost its mind]

In its broadest contours, the QAnon belief system looks something like this: Q is an intelligence or military insider with proof that corrupt world leaders are secretly torturing children all over the world;the malefactors are embedded in the deep state; Donald Trump is working tirelessly to thwart them. (“These people need to ALL be ELIMINATED,” Q wrote in one post.) The eventual destruction of the global cabal is imminent, Q prophesies, but can be accomplished only with the support of patriots who search for meaning in Q’s clues. To believe Q requires rejecting mainstream institutions, ignoring government officials, battling apostates, and despising the press. One of Q’s favorite rallying cries is “You are the news now.” Another is “Enjoy the show,” a phrase that his disciples regard as a reference to a coming apocalypse: When the world as we know it comes to an end, everyone’s a spectator.

People who have taken Q to heart like to say they’ve been paying attention from the very beginning, the way someone might brag about having listened to Radiohead before The Bends. A promise of foreknowledge is part of Q’s appeal, as is the feeling of being part of a secret community, which is reinforced through the use of acronyms and ritual phrases such as “Nothing can stop what is coming” and “Trust the plan.”[IE HAVE FAITH SOMEONE KNOWS MORE/BETTER THAN YOU DO]

One phrase that serves as a special touchstone among QAnon adherents is “the calm before the storm.” Q first used it a few days after his initial post, and it arrived with a specific history.On the evening of October 5, 2017—not long before Q first made himself known on 4chan—President Trump stood beside the first lady in a loose semicircle with 20 or so senior military leaders and their spouses for a photo in the State Dining Room at the White House. Reporters had been invited to watch as Trump’s guests posed and smiled. Trump couldn’t seem to stop talking. ” he asked at one point,tracing an incomplete circle in the airwith his right index finger. “Tell us, sir,” one onlooker replied. The president’s response was self-satisfied, bordering on a drawl: “Maybe it’s the calm before the storm.”

“What’s the storm?” one of the journalists asked.

“Could be the calm—the calm before the storm,” Trump said again. His repetition seemed to be for dramatic effect. The whir of camera shutters grew louder.

The reporters became insistent: “What storm, Mr. President?”

A curt response from Trump: “You’ll find out.”

Those 37 seconds of presidential ambiguity made headlines right away—relations with Iran had been tense in recent days—but they would also become foundational lore for eventual followers of Q. The president’s circular hand gesture is of particular interest to them. You may think he was motioning to the semicircle gathered around him, they say, but he was really drawing the letter Q in the air. Was Trump playing the role of John the Baptist, proclaiming what was to come? Was he himself the anointed one?

[Read: Covfefe and the real meaning of a Trump typo turned meme]

It’s impossible to know the number of QAnon adherents with any precision, but the ranks are growing. At least 35 current or former congressional candidates have embraced Q, according to an online tally by the progressive nonprofit Media Matters for America. Those candidates have either directly praised QAnon in public or approvingly referenced QAnon slogans. (One Republican candidate for Congress, Matthew Lusk of Florida, includes QAnon under the “issues” section of his campaign website, posing the question: “Who is Q?”) QAnon has by now made its way onto every major social and commercial platform and any number of fringe sites.

Tracy Diaz, a QAnon evangelist, known online by the name TracyBeanz, has 185,000 followers on Twitter and more than 100,000 YouTube subscribers. She helped lift QAnon from obscurity, facilitating its transition to mainstream social media. (A publicist described Diaz as “really private”and declined requests for an interview.) On TikTok, videos with the hashtag #QAnon have garnered millions of views. There are too many QAnon Facebook groups, plenty of them ghost towns, to do a proper count, but the most active ones publish thousands of items each day. (In 2018, Reddit banned QAnon groups from its platform for inciting violence.)

Adherents are ever looking out for signs from on high, plumbing for portents when guidance from Q himself is absent. The coronavirus, for instance—what does it signify? In several of the big Facebook groups, people erupted in a frenzy of speculation, circulating a theory that Trump’s decision to wear a yellow tie to a White House briefing about the virus was a sign that the outbreak wasn’t real: “He is telling us there is no virus threat because it is the exact same color as the maritime flag that represents the vessel has no infected people on board,” someone wrote in a post that was widely shared and remixed across social media. Three days before the World Health Organization officially declared the coronavirus a pandemic, Trump was retweeting a QAnon-themed meme. “Who knows what this means, but it sounds good to me!” the president wrote on March 8, sharing a Photoshopped image of himself playing a violin overlaid with the words “Nothing can stop what is coming.”[NERO?!]

[From the March 2020 issue: The billion-dollar disinformation campaign to reelect the president]

On March 9, Q himself issued a triptych of ominous posts that seemed definitive: The coronavirus is real, but welcome, and followers should not be afraid. The first post shared Trump’s tweet from the night before and repeated, “Nothing Can Stop What Is Coming.” The second said: “The Great Awakening is Worldwide.” The third was simple: “GOD WINS.”

A month later, on April 8, Q went on a posting spree, dropping nine posts over the span of six hours and touching on several of his favorite topics—God, Pizzagate, and the wickedness of the elites. “They will stop at nothing to regain power,” he wrote in one scathing post that alleged a coordinated propaganda effort by Democrats, Hollywood, and the media.Another accused Democrats of promoting “mass hysteria” about the coronavirus for political gain: “What is the primary benefit to keep public in mass-hysteria re: COVID‑19? Think voting. Are you awake yet? Q.”And he shared these verses from Ephesians: “Finally, be strong in the Lord and in the strength of His might. Put on the full armor of God so that you will be able to stand firm against the schemes of the devil.”

Anthony Fauci, the longtime director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, has become an object of scorn among QAnon supporters who don’t like the bad news he delivers or the way he has contradicted Trump publicly. In one March press conference, Trump referred to the State Department as the “Deep State Department,” and Fauci could be seen over the president’s shoulder, suppressing a laugh and covering his face.

By then, QAnon had already declared Fauci irredeemably compromised, because WikiLeaks had unearthed a pair of emails he sent praising Hillary Clinton in 2012 and 2013. Sentiment about Fauci among QAnon supporters on social-media platforms ranges from “Fauci is a Deep State puppet” to “FAUCI is a BLACKHAT!!!”—the term QAnon uses for people who support the evil cabal that Q warns about. One person, using the hashtags #DeepStateCabal and #Qanon, tweeted this: “Watch Fauci’s hand signals and body language at the press conferences. What is he communicating?” Another shared an image of Fauci standing in a lab with Barack Obama, with the caption “Obama and ‘Dr.’ Fauci in the lab creating coronovirus [sic]. #DeepstateDoctor.” The Justice Department recently approved heightened security measures for Fauci because of the mounting volume of threats against him.

[Read: If someone shares the ‘Plandemic’ video, how should you respond?]

In the final days before Congress passed a $2 trillion economic-relief package in late March, Democrats insisted on provisions that would make it easier for people to vote by mail, prompting Q himself to weigh in with dismay: “These people are sick! Nothing can stop what is coming. Nothing.”

[animated grapfix jarring]

III. BELIEVERS

on a bone-cold thursday in early January, a crowd was swelling in downtown Toledo, Ohio. By lunchtime, seven hours before the start of Trump’s first campaign rally of the new year, the line to get into the Huntington Center had already snaked around two city blocks. The air was electric with possibility, and the whole scene possessed a Jimmy Buffett–meets–Michigan Militia atmosphere: lots of white people, a good deal of vaping, red-white-and-blue everything. Down the street, someone had affixed a two-story banner across the top of a burned-out brick building. It read: president trump, welcome to toledo, ohio: who is q … military intelligence? q+? (“Q+” is QAnon shorthand for Trump himself.) Vendors at the event were selling Q buttons and T-shirts. QAnon merchandise comes in a great variety; online, you can buy Great Awakening coffee ($14.99) and QAnon bracelets with tiny silver pizza charms ($20.17).

I worked my way toward the back of the line, making small talk and asking who, if anyone, knew anything about QAnon. One woman’s eyes lit up, and in a single fluid motion she unzipped and removed her jacket, then did a little jump so that her back was to me. I could see a Q made out of duct tape, which she’d pressed onto her red T-shirt. Her name was Lorrie Shock, and the first thing she wanted me to know was this: “We’re not a domestic-terror group.”

Shock was born in Ohio and never left, “a lifer,” as she put it. She had worked at a Bridgestone factory, making car parts, for most of her adult life. “Real hot and dirty work, but good money,” she told me. “I got three kids through school.” Today, in what she calls her preretirement job, she cares for adults with special needs, spending her days in a tender routine of playing games with them and helping them in and out of a swimming pool. Shock came to the Trump rally with her friend Pat Harger, who had retired after 32 years at Whirlpool. Harger’s wife runs a catering business, which is what had kept her from attending the rally that day. Harger and Shock are old friends. “Since the fourth grade,” Harger told me, “and we’re 57 years old.”

Now that Shock’s girls are grown and she’s not working a factory job, she has more time for herself. That used to mean reading novels in the evening—she doesn’t own a television—but now it means researching Q, who first came to her notice when someone she knew mentioned him on Facebook in 2017: “What caught my attention was ‘research.’ Do your own research. Don’t take anything for granted. I don’t care who says it, even President Trump. Do your own research, make up your own mind.”

Read: Trump needs conspiracy theories]

The QAnon universe is sprawling and deep, with layer upon layer of context, acronyms, characters, and shorthand to learn. The “castle” is the White House. “Crumbs” are clues. CBTS stands for “calm before the storm,” and WWG1WGA stands for “Where we go one, we go all,” which has become an expression of solidarity among Q followers. (Both of these phrases, oddly, are used in the trailer for the 1996 Ridley Scott filmWhite Squall, and you’ll see that the comments section is flooded with pro-Q sentiment.) There is also a “Q clock,” which refers to a calendar some factions of Q supporters use to try to decode supposed clues based on time stamps of Q drops and Trump tweets.

At the height of her devotion, Shock was spending four to six hours a day reading and rereading Q drops, scouring documents online, taking notes. Now, she says, she spends closer to an hour or two a day. “When I first started, everybody thought I was crazy,” Shock said. That included her daughters, who are “very liberal Hillary and Bernie supporters,” Shock said. “I still love them. They think I’m crazy, but that’s all right.”

Harger, too, once thought Shock had lost it. “I was doubting her,” he told me. “I would send her texts saying, Lorrie.”

“He was like, ‘What the hell?’ ” Shock said, laughing. “So my comment to him would be ‘Do your own research.’ ”

“And I did,” Harger said. “And it’s like, Wow.”

Taking a page from Trump’s playbook, Q frequently rails against legitimate sources of information as fake. Shock and Harger rely on information they encounter on Facebook rather than news outlets run by journalists.They don’t read the local paper or watch any of the major television networks. “You can’t watch the news,” Shock said. “Your news channel ain’t gonna tell us shit.” Harger says he likes One America News Network. Not so long ago, he used to watch CNN, and couldn’t get enough of Wolf Blitzer. “We were glued to that; we always have been,” he said. “Until this man, Trump, really opened our eyes to what’s happening. And Q. Q is telling us beforehand the stuff that’s going to happen.”

I asked Harger and Shock for examples of predictions that had come true. They could not provide specifics and instead encouraged me to do the research myself. When I asked them how they explained the events Q had predicted that never happened, such as Clinton’s arrest, they said that deception is part of Q’s plan. Shock added, “I think there were more things that were predicted that did happen.” Her tone was gentle rather than indignant.

{“I feel God led me to Q. I really feel like God pushed me in this direction.”}

Harger wanted me to know that he’d voted for Obama the first time around. He grew up in a family of Democrats. His dad was a union guy. But that was before Trump appeared and convinced Harger that he shouldn’t trust the institutions he always thought he could. Shock nodded alongside him.“The reason I feel like I can trust Trump more is, he’s not part of the establishment,”she said. At one point, Harger told me I should look into what happened to John F. Kennedy Jr.—who died in 1999, when his airplane crashed into the Atlantic Ocean off Martha’s Vineyard—suggesting that Hillary Clinton had had him assassinated. (Alternatively, a contingent of QAnon believers say that JFK Jr. faked his death and that he’s a behind-the-scenes Trump supporter, and possibly even Q himself.

Some anticipate his dramatic public return so that he can serve as Trump’s running mate in 2020.) When I asked Harger whether there’s any evidence to support the assassination claim, he flipped my question around: “Is there any evidence not to?”

[Peter Beinart: Trump’s fantasy world got him into this

Reading Shock’s Facebook page is an exercise in contradictions, a toggling between banality and hostility. There she is in a yellow kayak in her profile photo, bright-red hair spilling out of a ski hat, a giant smile on her face. There are the photos of her daughters, and of a granddaughter with Shirley Temple curls. Yet Q is never far away. On Christmas Eve, Shock shared one post that seemed to come straight out of the QAnon universe but also pulled in an older, classic conspiracy: “X marks the spot over Roswell NM. X17 Fifth Force Particle. X + Q Coincidence?”

That same day, she shared a separate post suggesting that Michelle Obama is secretly a man. Someone responded with skepticism: “I am still not convinced. She shows and acts evil, but a man?” Shock’s reply: “Research it.” There was a post claiming that Representative Adam Schiff had raped the body of a dead boy at the Chateau Marmont, in Los Angeles—Harger shows up here, with a “huh??” in the comments—and a warning that George Soros was going after Christian evangelicals.In other posts, Shock playfully taunted “libs” and her “Trump-hating friends,” and also shared a video of her daughter singing Christmas carols.

In Toledo, I asked Shock if she had any theories about Q’s identity. She answered immediately: “I think it’s Trump.” I asked if she thinks Trump even knows how to use 4chan. The message board is notoriously confusing for the uninitiated, nothing like Facebook and other social platforms designed to make it easy to publish quickly and often. “I think he knows way more than what we think,” she said. But she also wanted me to know that her obsession with Q wasn’t about Trump. This had been something she was reluctant to speak about at first. Now, she said, “I feel God led me to Q. I really feel like God pushed me in this direction. I feel like if it was deceitful, in my spirit, God would be telling me, ‘Enough’s enough.’ But I don’t feel that. I pray about it. I’ve said, ‘Father, should I be wasting my time on this?’ … And I don’t feel that feeling ofI should stop.”

Arthur Jones, the director of the documentary film*Feels Good Man*, which tells the story of how internet memes infiltrated politics in the 2016 presidential election, told me that QAnon reminds him of his childhood growing up in an evangelical-Christian family in the Ozarks. He said that many people he knew then, and many people he meets now in the most devout parts of the country, are deeply interested in the Book of Revelation, and in trying to unpack “all of its pretty-hard-to-decipher prophecies.”

Jones went on: “I think the same kind of person would all of a sudden start pulling at the threads of Q and start feeling like everything is starting to fall into place and make sense. If you are an evangelical and you look at Donald Trump on face value, he lies, he steals, he cheats, he’s been married multiple times, he’s clearly a sinner. But you are trying to find a way that he is somehow part of God’s plan.”

You can’t always tell what kind of Q follower you’re encountering. Anyone using a Q hashtag could be a true believer, like Shock, or simply someone cruising a site and playing along for a vicarious thrill. Surely there are people who know that Q is a fantasy but participate because there’s an element of QAnon that converges with a live-action role-playing game.In the sprawling constellation of Q supporters, Shock and Harger seem prototypical. They happened upon Q and something clicked. The fable plugged neatly into their existing worldview.

q may be anonymous, but leaders of the QAnon movement have emerged in public and built their own large audiences. David Hayes is better known by his online handle: PrayingMedic. In his YouTube videos, he exudes the even-keeled authoritarian energy of a middle-school principal. PrayingMedic is one of the best-known QAnon evangelists on the planet. He has more than 300,000 Twitter followers and a similar number of YouTube subscribers. Hayes, a former paramedic, lives in a terra-cotta-roofed subdivision in Gilbert, Arizona, with his wife, Denise, an artist whom he met on the dating site Christian Mingle in 2007. Both describe themselves as former atheists who came to their faith in God, and to each other, late in life, after previous marriages. Hayes has been following Q since the beginning, or close to it. “Q Anon is pretty darn interesting,” he wrote on his Facebook page on December 12, 2017, six weeks after Q’s first post on 4chan. That same day, he wrote about a sudden calling he felt:

IV. PROFESSIONALS

My dreams have suggested that God wants me to keep my attention focused on politics and current events. After some prayer, I’ve decided to do a regular news and current events show on Periscope. I’m trying to do one broadcast a day. (The videos are also being posted to my Youtube channel.) That is all.

Hayes is a superstar in the Q universe. His video “Q for Beginners Part 1” has been viewed more than 1 million times. “Some of the people who follow Q would consider themselves to be conspiracy theorists,” Hayes says in the video. “I do not consider myself to be a conspiracy theorist. I consider myself to be a Q researcher. I don’t have anything against people who like to follow conspiracies. That’s their thing. It’s not my thing.”

Read: The reason conspiracy videos work so well on YouTube]

Hayes has developed a following in part because of his sheer ubiquity but also because he skillfully wears the mantle of a skeptic—I’m not one of those crazies. Hayes is not a QAnon hobbyist, though. He’s a professional. There are income streams to be tapped, modest but expanding. On Amazon, Hayes’s book Calm Before the Storm, the first in what he says could easily be a 10-book series of “Q Chronicles,” sells for $15.29.

Hayes writes in the introduction that he and Denise have devoted their attention full-time to QAnon since 2017. “Denise and I have been blessed by those who have helped support us while we set aside our usual work to research Q’s messages,” he wrote. He has published several other books, which offer a glimpse into an earlier life. The titles includeHearing God’s Voice Made Simple,Defeating Your Adversary in the Court of Heaven, andAmerican Sniper: Lessons in Spiritual Warfare. Hayes registered Praying Medic as a religious nonprofit in Washington State in 2018.

Hayes tells his followers that he thinks Q is an open-source intelligence operation, made possible by the internet and designed by patriots fighting corruption inside the intelligence community. His interpretation of Q is ultimately religious in nature, and centers on the idea of a Great Awakening. “I believe The Great Awakeninghas a double application,” Hayes wrote in a blog post in November 2019.

It speaks of an intellectual awakening—the awareness by the public to the truth that we’ve been enslaved in a corrupt political system. But the exposure of the unimaginable depravity of the elites will lead to an increased awareness of our own depravity. Self-awareness of sin is fertile ground for spiritual revival. I believe the long-prophesied spiritual awakening lies on the other side of the storm.

Q followers agree that a Great Awakening lies ahead, and will bring salvation. They differ in their personal preoccupations with respect to the here and now. Some in the QAnon world are highly focused on what they perceive as degeneracy in the mainstream media, a perception fueled in equal measure by Q and by Trump. Others obsess over the intelligence community and the notion of a deep state. An active subsection of Q followers probes the Jeffrey Epstein case.

There are those who claim knowledge of a 16-year plan by Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama to destroy the United States by means of mass drought, weaponized disease, food shortages, and nuclear war. During the investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election, some Q followers promoted the idea that Trump was secretly working with Robert Mueller, and that the special counsel’s report would both exonerate Trump and lead to mass arrests of members of the corrupt cabal. (The eventual Mueller report, released in April 2019, neither exonerated Trump nor led to mass arrests.)

These divergent byways are elemental to QAnon’s staying power—this is a very welcoming belief system, warm in its tolerance for contradiction—and are also what makes it possible for a practical man like Hayes to play the role that he does. QAnon is complex and confusing. People from all over the internet seek guidance from someone who seems levelheaded. (Hayes was quick to respond to my emails but declined requests for an interview. He complained to me that journalists refuse to see QAnon for what it really is, and therefore cannot be trusted.)

The most prominent QAnon figures have a presence beyond the biggest social-media platforms and image boards. The Q universe encompasses numerous blogs, proprietary websites, and types of chat software, as well as alternative social-media platforms such as Gab, the site known for anti-Semitism and white nationalism, where many people banned from Twitter have congregated.

Vloggers and bloggers promote their Patreon accounts, where people can pay them in monthly sums. There’s also money to be made from ads on YouTube. That seems to be the primary focus for Hayes, whose videos have been viewed more than 33 million times altogether.His “Q for Beginners” video includes ads from companies such as the vacation-rental site Vrbo and from The Epoch Times, an international pro-Trump newspaper. Q evangelists have taken a “publish everywhere” approach that is half outreach, half redundancy. If one platform cracks down on QAnon, as Reddit did, they won’t have to start from scratch somewhere else. Already embroiled in the battle between good and evil, QAnon has involved itself in another battle—between the notion of an open web for the people and a gated internet controlled by a powerful few.

WHO IS Q?

any new belief system runs into opposition. In December 2018, Matt Patten, a veteran SWAT-team sergeant in the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, in Florida, was photographed with Vice President Mike Pence on an airport tarmac. Patten wore a patch on his tactical vest that bore the letter *Q*. The photograph was tweeted by the vice president’s office and then went viral in the QAnon community.The tweet was quickly taken down. Patten was demoted.When I knocked on his door on a gloomy day in August, no one answered. But as I turned to leave, I noticed two large bumper stickers on the white mailbox out front. One said trump, and the other said #qanon: patriots fight.

Late last summer, Q himself lost his platform. He had migrated from 4chan (fearing that the site had been “infiltrated”) to the image board 8chan, and then 8chan went dark. Three days before I stood on Patten’s doorstep, 22 people had been killed in a mass shooting at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and police revealed that the alleged killer had posted a manifesto on 8chan just before carrying out the attack. The episode had eerie similarities to two other shootings. Four months earlier, in April 2019, the suspected shooter in a murderous rampage at a synagogue in Poway, California, had posted an anti-Semitic letter on 8chan. Weeks before that, the man who killed 51 worshippers at two New Zealand mosques had posted a white-supremacist manifesto on 8chan.

After El Paso, 8chan’s owner, Jim Watkins, was ordered to testify before the House Committee on Homeland Security. Watkins had bought the site four years earlier from its founder, Fredrick Brennan, now 26, who eventually cut all ties to 8chan. “Regrettably, this is at least the third act of white supremacist extremist violence linked to your website this year,” wrote Representatives Bennie Thompson, a Democrat from Mississippi, and Mike Rogers, a Republican from Alabama, when they summoned Watkins to Capitol Hill. “Americans deserve to know what, if anything, you, as the owner and operator, are doing to address the proliferation of extremist content on 8chan.”

8chan had already lost crucial services, which had forced it to shut down.The CEO of Cloudflare, which had helped protect the site from cyberattacks, explained his decision to drop 8chan in an open letter after the El Paso shooting: “The rationale is simple: They have proven themselves to be lawless and that lawlessness has caused multiple tragic deaths.” Watkins promised to keep the site off the internet until after his congressional appearance. He is a former U.S. Army helicopter repairman who got into the business of websites while he was still in the military.

Among other things, in 1997, he launched a successful porn site called Asian Bikini Bar. On his YouTube channel, where he posts under the username Watkins Xerxes, he frequently sings hymns, reads verses from the Bible, praises Trump, and touches on themes underlying QAnon—warning against the deep state and reminding his audience members that they are now “the actual reporting mechanism of the news.” He also shows off his fountain-pen collection and practices yoga.

When he arrived on Capitol Hill, in September 2019, Watkins wore a bulbous silver Q pinned to his collar. His testimony was behind closed doors. In November, 8chan flickered back to life as 8kun.It was sporadically accessible, limping along through a series of cyberattacks. It received assistance from a Russian hosting service that is typically associated with spreading malware. When Q reappeared on 8kun, he used the same tripcode that he had used on 8chan. He posted other hints meant to verify the continuity of his identity, including an image of a notebook and a pen that had appeared in earlier posts.

Renée DiResta: The conspiracies are coming from inside the house]

Fredrick Brennan’s theory is that Jim and his son Ron, who is the site’s administrator, knew 8kun needed Q to attract users.“I definitely, definitely, 100 percent believe that Q either knows Jim or Ron Watkins, or was hired by Jim or Ron Watkins,” Brennan told me. Jim and Ron have both denied knowing Q’s identity. “I don’t know who Q is,” Ron told me in a direct message on Twitter. Jim told an interviewer on One America News Network in September 2019: “I don’t know who QAnon is. Really, we run an anonymous website.”Both insist that they care about maintaining 8kun only because it is a platform for unfettered free speech. “8kun is like a piece of paper, and the users decide what is written on it,” Ron told me. “There are many different topics and users from many different backgrounds.” But their interest in Q is well documented. In February, Jim started a super PAC called Disarm the Deep State, which echoes Q’s messages and which is running paid ads on 8kun.

Brennan has long been feuding with the Watkinses. Jim is suing Brennan for libel in the Philippines, where they both lived until recently, and Brennan is actively fighting Jim’s attempts to become a naturalized citizen there. “They kept Q alive,” Brennan told me. “We wouldn’t be talking about this right now if Q didn’t go on the new 8kun. The entire reason we’re talking about this is they’re directly related to Q. And, you know, I worry constantly that there is going to be, as early as November 2020, some kind of shooting or something related to Q if Trump loses. Or parents killing their children to save them from the hell-world that is to come because the deep state has won. These are real possibilities. I just feel like what they have done is totally irresponsible to keep Q going.”

The story of Q is premised on the need for Q to remain anonymous. It’s why Q originally picked 4chan, one of the last places built for anonymity on the social web. “I’ve often related Q to previous figures like John Titor or Satoshi Nakamoto,” Brennan told me, referring to two legends of internet anonymity. Satoshi Nakamoto is the name used by the unknown creator of bitcoin. John Titor is the name used on several message boards in 2000 and 2001 by someone claiming to be a military time traveler from the year 2036.

QAnon adherents see Q’s anonymity as proof of Q’s credibility—despite their deep mistrust of unnamed sources in the media. Every faction of QAnon has its own hunches, alliances, and interpersonal dramas related to the question of Q’s identity. The theories fit into three broad groups. In the first group are theories that assume Q is a single individual who has been posting all alone this entire time. This is where you’ll find the people who say that Trump himself is Q, or even that PrayingMedic is Q. (This category also includes the possibility, raised by people outside of QAnon, that Q is a lone Trump supporter who started posting as a form of fan fiction, not realizing it would take off; and the idea that Q began posting in order to parody Trump and his supporters, not anticipating that people would take him seriously.)

The second group of theories holds that the original Q posted continuously for a while, but then something changed. This second category includes Brennan’s idea that the Watkinses are now paying Q, or are paying someone to carry on as Q, or are even acting as Q themselves. The third group of theories holds that Q is a collective, with a small number of people sharing access to the account. This third category includes the notion that Q is a new kind of open-source military-intelligence agency.

Read: I was a teenage conspiracy theorist]

Many QAnon adherents see significance in Trump tweets containing words that begin with the letter Q. Recent world events have rewarded them amply. “I am a great friend and admirer of the Queen & the United Kingdom,” Trump began one tweet on March 29. The day before, he had tweeted this: “I am giving consideration to a QUARANTINE.” The Q crowd seized on both tweets, arguing that if you ignore most of the letters in the messages, you’ll find a confession from Trump: “I am … Q.”

:{

in a miami coffee shop last year, I met with a man who has gotten a flurry of attention in recent years for his research on conspiracy theories—a political-science professor at the University of Miami named Joseph Uscinski. I have known Uscinski for years, and his views are nuanced, deeply informed, and far from anything you would consider knee-jerk partisanship. Many people assume, he told me, that a propensity for conspiracy thinking is predictable along ideological lines. That’s wrong, he explained. It’s better to think of conspiracy thinking as independent of party politics. It’s a particular form of mind-wiring. And it’s generally characterized by acceptance of the following propositions: Our lives are controlled by plots hatched in secret places. Although we ostensibly live in a democracy, a small group of people run everything, but we don’t know who they are. When big events occur—pandemics, recessions, wars, terrorist attacks—it is because that secretive group is working against the rest of us.}:

VI. REASON VERSUS FAITH

QAnon isn’t a far-right conspiracy, the way it’s often described, Uscinski went on, despite its obviously pro-Trump narrative. And that’s because Trump isn’t a typical far-right politician. Q appeals to people with the greatest attraction to conspiracy thinking of any kind, and that appeal crosses ideological lines.

{QAnon carries on a tradition of apocalyptic thinking that has spanned thousands of years. It offers a polemic to empower those who feel adrift.

Many of the people most prone to believing conspiracy theories see themselves as victim-warriors fighting against corrupt and powerful forces. They share a hatred of mainstream elites. That helps explain why cycles of populism and conspiracy thinking seem to rise and fall together.Conspiracy thinking is at once a cause and a consequence of what**Richard Hofstadter in 1964 famously described**as “the paranoid style” in American politics.

But do not make the mistake of thinking that conspiracy theories are scribbled only in the marginalia of American history. They color every major news event: the assassination of John F. Kennedy, the moon landing, 9/11. They have helped sustain consequential eruptions, such as McCarthyism in the 1950s and anti-Semitism at any moment you choose. But QAnon is different. It may be propelled by paranoia and populism, but it is also propelled by religious faith. The language of evangelical Christianity has come to define the Q movement. QAnon marries an appetite for the conspiratorial with positive beliefs about a radically different and better future, one that is preordained.

Read: The paranoid style in American entertainment

That was part of the reason Uscinski’s mother, Shelly, 62, was attracted to QAnon. Shelly, who lives in New Hampshire, was tooling around on YouTubea couple of years ago, looking for how-to videos—she can’t remember for what, exactly, maybe a tutorial on how to get her car windows sparkling-clean—and the algorithm served up QAnon. She remembers a feeling of magnetic attraction. “Like, Wow, what is this?” she recalled when I spoke with her by phone.

“For me, it was revealing some things that maybe I was hoping would come to pass.” She sensed that Q knew her anxieties—as if someone was taking her train of thought and “actually verbalizing it.” Shelly’s frustrations are broad, and directed primarily at the institutions she sees as broken. She’s fed up with the education system, the financial system, the media. “Even our churches are out of whack,” she said. One of the things that resonated most with her about Q was his disgust with “the fake news.” She gets her information mostly from Fox News, Twitter, and the New Hampshire Union Leader. “In my lifetime, I guess, things have gotten progressively worse,” Shelly said. She added a little later: “Q gives us hope. And it’s a good thing, to be hopeful.”

Shelly likes that Q occasionally quotes from scripture, and she likes that he encourages people to pray. In the end, she said, QAnon is about something so much bigger than Trump or anyone else. “There are QAnon followers out there,” Shelly said, “who suggest that what we’re going through now, in this crazy political realm we’re in now, with all of the things that are happening worldwide, is very biblical, and that this is Armageddon.”

I asked her if she thinks the end of the world is upon us. “It wouldn’t surprise me,” she said.

[Read: The normalization of conspiracy culture]

Joseph Uscinski is disturbed by his mother’s belief in QAnon. He’s not comfortable talking about it. And Shelly doesn’t quite appreciate the irony of the family’s situation, because she doesn’t believe QAnon is a form of conspiracy thinking in the first place. At one point in our conversation, when I referred to QAnon as a conspiracy theory, she quickly interrupted: “It’s not a theory. It’s the foretelling of things to come.” She laughed hard when I asked if she had ever tried to get Joseph to believe in QAnon. The answer was an unequivocal no: “I’m his mom, so I love him.”

:{

watchkeepers for the End of Days can easily find signs of impending doom—in comets and earthquakes, in wars and pandemics. It has always been this way. In 1831, a Baptist preacher in rural New York named William Miller began to publicly share his prediction that the Second Coming of Jesus was imminent. Eventually he settled on a date: October 22, 1844. When the sun came up on October 23, his followers, known as the Millerites, were crushed. The episode would come to be known as the Great Disappointment. But they did not give up. The Millerites became the Adventists, who in turn became the Seventh-day Adventists, who now have a worldwide membership of more than 20 million. “These people in the QAnon community—I feel like they are as deeply delusional, as deeply invested in their beliefs, as the Millerites were,” Travis View, one of the hosts of a podcast called *QAnon Anonymous*, which subjects QAnon to acerbic analysis, told me. “That makes me pretty confident that this is not something that is going to go away with the end of the Trump presidency.”}:

VII. APOCALYPSE

QAnon carries on a tradition of apocalyptic thinking that has spanned thousands of years. It offers a polemic to empower those who feel adrift. In his classic 1957 book, The Pursuit of the Millennium, the historian Norman Cohn examined the emergence of apocalyptic thinking over many centuries. He found one common condition: This way of thinking consistently emerged in regions whererapid social and economic change was taking place—and at periods of time when displays of spectacular wealth were highly visible but unavailable to most people. This was true in Europe during the Crusades in the 11th century, and during the Black Death in the 14th century, and in the Rhine Valley in the 16th century, and in William Miller’s New York in the 19th century. It is true in America in the 21st century.

The Seventh-day Adventists and the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints are thriving religious movements indigenous to America. Do not be surprised if QAnon becomes another. It already has more adherents by far than either of those two denominations had in the first decades of their existence. People are expressing their faith through devoted study of Q drops as installments of a foundational text, through the development of Q-worshipping groups, and through sweeping expressions of gratitude for what Q has brought to their lives.

Does it matter that we do not know who Q is? The divine is always a mystery. Does it matter that basic aspects of Q’s teachings cannot be confirmed? The basic tenets of Christianity cannot be confirmed. Among the people of QAnon, faith remains absolute. True believers describe a feeling of rebirth, an irreversible arousal to existential knowledge. They are certain that a Great Awakening is coming. They’ll wait as long as they must for deliverance.

Trust the plan. Enjoy the show. Nothing can stop what is coming.

This article appears in the June 2020 print edition with the headline “Nothing Can Stop What Is Coming.”

ADRIENNE LAFRANCE is the executive editor of The Atlantic. She was previously a senior editor and staff writer at The Atlantic, and the editor of TheAtlantic.com.

===

Amanda B. Rekondwith:

. As the Queen in Lewis Carroll’s “Through the Looking Glass” astutely observed, the trick in learning to believing impossible things is simply practice.

https://www.alternet.org/2020/09/expert-on-genocide-and-anti-semitism-lays-out-the-frightening-parallels-between-qanon-and-hitlers-nazis/

he QAnon conspiracy cult enjoyed a major victory when, on August 11, far-right extremist Marjorie Taylor Greene won a GOP congressional primary in Georgia — and given how overwhelmingly Republican her district is, Greene is likely to win the general election in November and be sworn into the U.S. House of Representatives in January 2021. QAnon, known for their outrageous conspiracy theories, believe that the U.S. government has been infiltrated by an international ring of pedophiles and Satanists and that President Donald Trump was put in power to battle them. And Gregory Stanton, president of Genocide Watch and an expert on the history of anti-Semitism, believes that there are parallels between QAnon’s outrageous views and the views that Nazis promoted in Germany during the 1930s.

Describing QAnon’s views in an article published by Just Security on September 9, Stanton writes, “A secret cabal is taking over the world. They kidnap children, slaughter and eat them to gain power from their blood. They control high positions in government, banks, international finance, the news media and the church. They want to disarm the police. They promote homosexuality and pedophilia. They plan to mongrelize the white race so it will lose its essential power. Does this conspiracy theory sound familiar? It is. The same narrative has been repackaged by QAnon.”

According to Stanton, there are countless parallels between QAnon’s conspiracy theories and the anti-Semitism that Adolf Hitler and his Nazis promoted in Germany before and during World War II.

“The Nazis worshiped Adolf Hitler as the leader who would rescue the white race from this secret Jewish plot,” Stanton explains. “Nazi ‘stormtroopers’ — storm detachment, Sturmabteilung — helped bring Hitler to power. Nazi Germany went on to conquer Europe and murder 6 million Jews and millions of Roma, Slavs, LGBTQ and other people."

central to Nazi ideology, Stanton notes, was the anti-Semitic 1902 pamphlet, “The Protocols of the Elders of Zion,” and Stanton stresses that QAnon’s ideology is a “rebranded version” of that pamphlet.

“QAnon purveys the fantasy that a secret Satan-worshiping cabal is taking over the world,” Stanton observes. “Its members kidnap white children, keep them in secret prisons run by pedophiles, slaughter and eat them to gain power from the essence in their blood. The cabal held the American presidency under the Clintons and (former President Barack) Obama, nearly took power again in 2016, and lurks in a ‘Deep State’ financed by Jews, including George Soros — and in Jews who control the media. They want to disarm citizens and defund the police. They promote abortion, transgender rights and homosexuality. They want open borders so brown illegal aliens can invade America and mongrelize the white race.”

Stanton continues, “QAnon true believers think Donald Trump will rescue America from this Satanic cabal. At the time of ‘The Storm,’ supporters of the cabal will be rounded up and executed. The QAnon conspiracy theory has now spread to neo-Nazis in Germany, where over 200,000 German QAnon accounts infest the internet.”

Stanton goes on to write that QAnon’s critics “are perplexed at how any rational person could fall for such an irrational conspiracy theory.” But when people are suffering hardships, Stanton explains, they “respond to fear and terror” and “blame their misfortunes on scapegoats” — which is what happened in Germany during the 1930s.

“In the 1930s,” Stanton recalls, “millions of Europeans were unemployed. Violent battles between Nazis and communists raged in city streets. Democratic governments were powerless. Fascist dictators ruled Spain and Italy. Hitler took power in Germany and conquered Western Europe. Stalin’s communists conquered the East. The Hitler-Stalin Pact sealed totalitarian rule over most of Europe. It took World War II and the deaths of millions to defeat the Nazis’ genocidal tyranny, and another 50 years to free the gulags of the Soviet Union.”

Stanton adds that in 2020, it is obvious that QAnon’s influence is growing when a QAnon supporter like Greene is “likely” on her way to Congress and President Donald Trump praises her as a “future Republican star.”

“The world has seen QAnon before,” Stanton warns. “It was called Nazism. In QAnon, Nazism wants a comeback.”

https://www.desmogblog.com/2020/08/27/qanon-conspiracy-naomi-seibt-climate-science-deniers

mojo

Trump’s former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, posted a video on Independence Day in which he recites an oath for QAnon conspiracy theorists along with five others[vid]

flynn had been circling the QAnon world for months, but this takes his flirtation with the group a step further. As the QAnon conspiracy theory goes, powerful liberal politicos are running an underground child sex trafficking operation but will ultimately be exposed and charged for their crimes after “The Storm.” There is, of course, no evidence that such a scheme exists. The oath, which includes the QAnon slogan “Where we go one, we go all,” refers to “an oath to become ‘digital soldiers’ to defend the Constitution,” explains the Daily Beast‘s Will Sommer. In the last month, following other cryptic messages of support for the QAnon conspiracy, Flynn added #TakeTheOath to his Twitter bio. As Sommer reports:

Flynn plays a large role in QAnon mythos, where his guilty plea for lying to the FBI about his discussions with Russian officials has been spun to make him a persecuted victim of the deep state—or even, in some cases, as the mysterious “Q” himself. Many QAnon fans have added three star-emojis to their Twitter handles, in a nod to Flynn’s status as a retired three-star general. Pictures of books supposedly signed by Flynn with the QAnon slogan “Where we go one, we go all” are seen in the QAnon community as powerful “proof” that QAnon is real, although their authenticity hasn’t been proven.

Through it all, Flynn had publicly stayed silent on QAnon and his role in the conspiracy theory, while his son told QAnon believers to stop claiming his father was involved in their worldview.But sometime in the last month, Flynn edited his Twitter bio to add a QAnon hashtag: #TakeTheOath.

…Flynn himself actually coined the term “digital soldiers” years ago, in reference to United States cyberwar capabilities. But QAnon believers have recently become fixated on it, convincing themselves that Flynn was actually referring to them. The oath craze has gone so far that, on Saturday, QAnon believer and Republican Senate nominee Jo Rae Perkins posted a video of herself taking the oath to become a “digital soldier.”

Flynn’s message, though alarming, falls into a larger trend: QAnon online activity has been on the rise since the start of the pandemic. As my colleagues Ali Breland and Sinduja Rangarajan reported last month, Google Trends shows that QAnon search terms like“WWG1WGA” (where we go one, we go all) spiked in March as US businesses started to close.Wikipedia’s QAnon page saw a surge in pageviews in March and April. Mentions of QAnon on Twitter have also increased:

A Mother Jones analysis of nearly 500,000 tweets posted across one week in April found that the average number of tweets per day using the hashtag #QAnon increased by 160 percent as compared to the averages compiled over six months of 2019 by the Twitter user @conspirator0 (Twitter later limited searches of posts on its platform, making other comparisons difficult.) The highest daily number of QAnon tweets documented by the account in 2019 was 75,349. After the onset of the US’s coronavirus crisis, that figure nearly doubled, reaching a high of 147, 748 tweets on April 4, 2020.

Anecdotal examples bolster what the data shows. Internet communities that hadn’t previously done so are now associating with far-right conspiracies like QAnon, impending mass arrests of elites for running pedophile rings, and liberal megadonor George Soros’s supposed plots. Across Instagram, pseudoscience wellness influencers, lifestyle influencers, anti-vaxxers, at least one contributor to Gwyneth Paltrow’s Goopsite, and other seemingly unrelated groups have all pivoted to spreading versions of these conspiracies that emerged on the far right.

ref

https://www.dailydot.com/debug/who-is-qanon-jim-watkins-rumors/

Did an IP address accidentally reveal QAnon’s identity?

It's more complex than it sounds.

Aug 31, 2020

Tech

Mike Rothschild

Over the weekend, a rumor started to make the rounds on Twitter and among QAnon watchers, which seemed to blow a lid on a long-simmering mystery.

It said that the mysterious poster who makes the Q drops, the cryptic messages posted on message board 8kun that give the movement its direction, had been unmasked and revealed to all. And the poster was none other than 8kun’s owner, Jim Watkins. Previously the owner of 8kun forerunner 8chan, Watkins had already given congressional testimony wearing a QAnon pin and started a political SuperPAC devoted to boosting QAnon-friendly candidates.

There was already speculation that Q and Watkins were linked, as when 8chan went down in August 2019, the Q poster didn’t make their drops somewhere else, instead waiting around for months while 8chan found a new service provider and rebranded as 8kun.

We need for it to be verified by reputable sources, but there is compelling evidence it there that Jim Watkins, the owner of 8chan, is #qanon.

Which would mean, functionally, the man that runs the Gamergate birthplace has a cult of millions.

I hope media will investigate.

— Brianna Wu (@BriannaWu)August 25, 2020

But while it would make sense for Watkins to be responsible for Q’s posts, there’s been no conclusive proof of it, and both Jim Watkins and his son Ron, who writes the code for 8kun, deny having any link or knowledge of who Q is, even as speculation has persisted for years they were behind it.

So what was it that changed to spark this newest rumor?

Anti-Q activists discovered that 8kun.top has the same IP address as QMap.pub, the most popular aggregator of QAnon’s drops, along with the home of the “QAnon Prayer Wall.”The term “QMap” dates to an early Q drop from November 2017 that states “QMAP 1/2 confirmed. This is the key.” Q drop aggregators are critical in the movement, since Q promoters generally don’t want followers navigating a racist and difficult-to-read site like 8chan for Q content. So these sites serve as a way to let followers know that a Q drop was made and confirm that it’s real by linking back to the drop on 8kun.

And with tens of thousands of people using it at any given moment, QMap is the most popular of the aggregator sites. It was originally hosted by Amazon Web Services, but for whatever reason, at some point in the last few months (it’s not clear when), it switched to internet security firm VanwaTech. If this name is familiar to Q watchers, it’s because it’s the same firm that was revealed in October to be the new security provider for 8kun.

Apparently the transfer from Amazon Web Services to OrcaTech (VanwaNet, Jim Watkins' ISP) happened 30 days ago.@travis_view @nezumi_ningen

Jim Watkins owns QMAP_PUB. He bought it. His crony is the one hosting it. He has a complete lock over QAnon now.https://t.co/tquDuNwzjC https://t.co/kaCEFnm39a pic.twitter.com/wWVJNFpST6

— Fredrick Brennan (@HW_BEAT_THAT)August 23, 2020

While Q has never explicitly endorsed one of the aggregator sites, he did link to a tweet where someone is holding up a sign with QMap’s name on it. So essentially, both the only place that Q drops are made and the most popular place where Q drops are disseminated and confirmed as have the same internet service provider.

But why does it matter? And how does it prove or not prove that Jim Watkins (who blocked the writer of this story on Twitter) runs both sites, and has been making Q drops?

The short answer is it doesn’t prove Jim Watkins is Q, despite people shouting that online all week.

saw fr*derick br*nnan's tweet and tried it myself and yeah, jim watkins is definitely Q which means that Qanon is verifiably led by a dude running a site that was originally made as a haven for child pornographers. pic.twitter.com/3nNMRJ9ax2

— # ℍ (@lumpenfreude)August 25, 2020

And nobody still knows for sure who Q is other than the actual Q poster. But getting to the bottom of what the link between 8kun and QMap actually means for the Q movement touches on so many of the most salient points about the QAnon phenomenon: mystery, blind belief, complex technical facets, and grift.

At heart is the connection between the QAnon conspiracy itself and the aggregator sites like QMap.pub that get the word out to the faithful.

#HuntingtonBeach#ReOpenAmerica #ReOpenCalifornia #Qanon #WWG1WGA

@PatriotDancing @pappyG45 pic.twitter.com/SUSX6dodxL

— Will Winagain (@WWinagain)May 9, 2020

Leading the charge in pointing out the connection between 8kun and QMap is former 8chan founder turned Watkins foe, Fredrick Brennan. Since selling the site to Watkins in 2016, Brennan has been embroiled in a bitter feud with Watkins, culminating in Watkins attempting to use “cyberlibel” laws in the Philippines (where both were based) to put Brennan in prison for insulting him on Twitter. Since then, Brennan was forced to return to the U.S. to avoid prosecution.

Speaking with the Daily Dot, Brennan claims that the importance behind the QMap and 8kun link is not that it proves Watkins is Q, but that Watkins “could become Q whenever he wants.” Therefore, Q isn’t quite the military intelligence team it’s claimed to be.

Playing on what Brennan deems confusion among less tech-inclined members of the public, Watkins having a link to QMap muddies the waters of verifying if a Q post is real. “How does a Q person know a post is from Q,” he asked, without the check of an aggregator site proving it’s from the “real” QAnon, the one that uses Q’s unique tripcode on 8kun.

QMap, and the many other Q post aggregator sites, work by being coded to upload the text of drops made by Q on 8kun’s qresearch forum. Because Q created that forum, Q is the only person who can post on that board, confirming that the drop is genuine.

Essentially, Brennan claims Watkins could hack the tripcode and use it to make new Q posts on 8kun, while affirming their veracity on the trusted aggregator QMap, “and nobody will know.”

But another explanation of the ties is just as plausible. Because 8kun is so intrinsically tied to Q (it gets little traffic otherwise), it’s not out of the question that Watkins might try to enhance his involvement by getting involved with the most popular site that helps legitimize the posts that make his board famous.

For his part, Brennan believes that while Watkins has been making the Q posts for quite some time, this revelation isn’t the end of the movement. “I never claimed that Q has been doxed,” he said, throwing at least a little cold water on the idea that Jim Watkins has been definitely proven to be Q. The shared IP address merely establishes a solid link between where the Q poster makes drops and a site that disseminates them.

That shared IP address belongs to VanwaTech, a Vancouver-based content delivery and security firm that Brennan believes was established a few months after 8chan went down, specifically to provide a cheaper and more ideologically agreeable host for 8kun than the Chinese and Russian ISPs Watkins was attempting to use. Moreover, Brennan claims, but can’t prove, that Watkins had a hand in founding the firm and might own it through a shell company.

Q may have just been doxxed…

Jim Watkins – current owner of 8chan

A man with a shopping list enabling white nationalists propagate hate speech and possible pedophilia pic.twitter.com/dOy02SjW8H

— The Serfs (@theserfstv)August 25, 2020

It’s a claim that VanwaTech’s founder, Nick Lim, denies. Reached over email by the Daily Dot, Lim said that “we don’t own or host QMap.pub in any way,” though he does “provide them with a CDN (content delivery network) and cybersecurity service that protects them from [denial of service] attacks.”

Further, Lim told Daily Dot that VanwaTech “is owned by me only” and that all of its customers use the same IP address—including 8kun.

So who does own QMap?

QMap is a hugely popular site in the QAnon sphere, as evidenced by it routinely drawing over one hundred thousand visitors in a 24-hour period, and tens of thousands at any one moment. There’s no indication on the site of who started it or currently owns it, and a search on who.is for the site’s data brings back only that it’s unavailable. But the QMap site has also strayed into QAnon-related app development, with a QMap app that Google removed from its service.

That app then relaunched on Amazon, only to be banned from there as well. A Twitter account that shares the name of the QMap app blocked this reporter after an inquiry, and neither Amazon Web Services or the developer of another app touted on QMap’s Patreon page, called Armor of God, responded to a request for comment.

And what about that Patreon page? It’s collecting over $2,100 a month to pay for web hosting, but has no identifying information denoting who started the page or who is getting the money, and no way to contact the owner. Patreon didn’t respond to questions about who started the page and who is profiting from it.

Ultimately, the link between 8kun and QMap comes down to what people claim, not what can be conclusively proven. And through it all, there’s still no conclusive proof that Jim Watkins is making the Q drops, or that he’s taken control of QMap—only the possibility that both are true, and the equal possibility that both are false.

So the answer to the question of who is making the Q drops has the same answer that it’s had since Q’s first posts in 2017: only Q knows. And they aren’t talking.

Update 4:51pm CT:In a statement to Daily Dot, the Twitter account listed on QMap’s Patreon page confirms they established the QMap site, claims they are “not associated with Watkins” and that they moved to VanwaTech because “Qmap suffers denial of service attacks regularly, hence the need for a content delivery network that could stop it.

Qanon3a

A solid survey

The fringe moving into the mainstream

Broader support

Harris and Piton’s role in the Arizona election audit

Both Harris and Piton appear to follow or support the QAnon conspiracy theory

Tug of war

Part of the conversation

Not going away

A 'New Byzantium'

The original 'deep state'

Reconquest of Hagia Sophia

'Third Rome'

When she said, "I've always been someone that you just tell me what to do and I do it," I knew she and I come from similar religious backgrounds in which morality is obedience.

Whatever role Russia may have played in promoting this conspiracy theory, the real problem is that there's a huge market in the United States for conspiracy theories that promise the violent overthrow of democracy.

Q is old conspiracies made new

Q isn't a psyops

pro-Trump coronavirus truthers try to invade Utah hospital overrun with COVID-19 patients: report

:{QAnon election conspiracy theory about ballot fraud is going viral on TikTok:(style="box-sizing:border-box"):}:

Rights and recognition

Murder, matzo and mayhem

Panic at the movements

Accusations of evil

Remembering the past

'Satanic Panic'

Why it matters now

:{

I. GENESIS

II. REVELATION

III. BELIEVERS

IV. PROFESSIONALS

WHO IS Q?

:{

VI. REASON VERSUS FAITH

:{

VII. APOCALYPSE

It's more complex than it sounds.

Read more about QAnon