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NYMAG: Who is QAnon? The Storm Conspiracy, Explained

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Califan007 The Constipated

Califan007 The Constipated

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28 minutes ago, Cooked Crack said:

Also, Nipsey Hustle who was featured on a song called **** Donald Trump. Playing the long game from the afterlife.

 

11 minutes ago, skinsmarydu said:

Let's Go Crazy ? :silly:

 

 

I just remembered Prince wrote a song for The Time called "Donald Trump - Black Version" lol...maybe they're on to something...

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China

China

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QAnon Almost Destroyed My Relationship. Then My Relationship Saved Me From QAnon.

 

I was radicalized overnight. I went to bed as a liberal, a die-hard Bernie Sanders supporter, social activist and a feminist. The next morning, I left the bed viewing Donald Trump — a man whom I had utterly despised — as a hero fighting a war against the Deep State. In the ensuing days my fiancé Dave would hardly recognize me, and our relationship would nearly be destroyed.

 

My conversion happened last June, soon after California expanded the stay-at-home order to control the Covid-19 pandemic. As an extrovert, I did not take the lockdown well. The inability to go out with my friends, work with people and interact with strangers left me feeling trapped and suffocated. At the same time, I was struggling to adjust to sharing the house with Dave after being single for most of my adult life. There were times when I desperately needed to get away for a couple of nights to reconnect with my energy … but where do you go during a deadly pandemic?

 

Dave wasn’t handling the stay-at-home order well either: Without the ability to take extended weekends away to unwind from his demanding job, he became depressed and increasingly short-tempered. The more he let his anger leak out and at times explode toward me, the more I felt trapped inside the house and desperate for something to change.

 

It was after a day of his angry outbursts when I discovered QAnon. That night, Dave was asleep and I lay awake buzzing with stress. Tired of staring at the ceiling, I decided to watch the “Fall Cabal” YouTube series a friend of mine had told me about. “It’s really weird. I’d love to get your opinion on it,” she messaged me a few days before along with a link. The 10 episodes wove together a narrative about “The Cabal,” supposedly a secret and satanic pedophile ring run by members of the liberal elite, and Trump’s secret fight to overthrow them. I didn’t sleep at all that night. Instead, I found dozens of articles and videos confirming my new political views. By the morning, I was a true believer.

 

I think the fact that I was already a big supporter of Bernie Sanders primed me for the transformation — a process people call being red-pilled. One thing QAnon and Bernie have in common is the belief that there is a group of corrupt elites that makes it hard for everyone else in the country and the world to stay afloat. I hadn’t trusted the government entirely before 2016 — for example, I didn’t find the explanations of 9/11 or the assassination of John F. Kennedy to be satisfactory. But my distrust only strengthened when I started to support Bernie that year. I started to think that the news media, billionaires and the Democratic establishment conspired to keep Bernie from the presidency. This was a significant part of my bridge into QAnon.

 

“Fall Cabal” affirmed my ideas about the system being rigged against Bernie and my general mistrust of the government, and organized all those thoughts under a simple explanation — the world was being run by the Cabal. The documentary congratulated me for being able to recognize it and promised that Trump and others were already working to fix it.

 

Initially, believing in Q felt amazing, like being in some sort of mystical state or euphoria. For about six weeks, my fears about impending doom because of Covid-19, climate change and what I perceived as the threat of fascism were gone. The world felt safe and I felt energized, confident, creative and brimming with love. I’m not religious, but I kept thinking “Thank you, God. Thank you, God. Thank you, God.” I heard “Amazing Grace” playing in my mind. I was so relieved to stop hating Trump, whom I used to see as racist, sexist and a Hitler-wannabe.

 

Dave, however, didn’t take my sudden political flip well. The next morning, it was immediately obvious to him that something had changed in me — I was beaming and cheerful and yet held back on explaining the change. Despite his insistence, it took me a few hours before I was willing to tell him about my new beliefs. He was disgusted. Just a month earlier George Floyd had been murdered, and Dave, who had always considered himself to be a proud American, was so disheartened by the systematic racism and police brutality still present in this country. He was more depressed than I had ever seen him. Hearing me express my new beliefs about the “evil Cabal,” how the pandemic was a hoax designed to control humanity, and how Trump was our only chance at saving humanity was very upsetting to him. He abhorred Trump, he felt vulnerable to the virus and thought I should feel that way too. He was afraid I might have a mental illness.

 

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TheGreatBuzz

TheGreatBuzz

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^^^  I don’t get this.  Not saying it isn’t true or that it isn’t the way she felt.  I’m just saying I don’t “get” it.  
 

I have a large (and I think well warranted) lack of trust and faith in the government.  I guess my feelings are due to the constant ineptitude I see and that is what makes me think these secret cabals aren’t real. 
 

I honestly feel like 95% of elected officials don’t actually give a crap about us unless it serves their own interests.  Just because I don’t want my cab driver to wreck while I’m in the back seat doesn’t mean I care about him.  I don’t want him to wreck because I may get hurt.  That is how I view DC.  
 

But in no way does that lead me to think that there must be a satanic pedophilia running things.  

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PleaseBlitz

PleaseBlitz

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Posted (edited)
8 minutes ago, Cooked Crack said:

 

 

The Deep State is basically, "society."  That said, the folks at Bub and Pops, while making delicious sandwiches, are definitely satanists as evidenced by their corned beef clearly being the product of a sinister deal with the devil and/or a SECRET recipe handed down directly from the Elders of Zion. 

Edited by PleaseBlitz
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China

China

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Russian State Media Outlets Promote QAnon Rhetoric and Beliefs

 

The FBI may have labeled QAnon a domestic terror threat, but Americans aren’t alone among the bad actors pushing the far-right conspiracy theory. A new report by Advance Democracy, Inc., a nonprofit research organization, finds that Russian state media outlets are promoting QAnon rhetoric on their platforms. 

 

Followers of the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory believe that a satanic cabal made up of leaders in the Democratic Party, business, and Hollywood are running a global child sex-trafficking ring, and former President Donald Trump—their hero whom they regard with theological reverence—is waging a behind-the-scenes war against a “deep state” government controlled by the cabal. The conspiracy theory has turned into a movement, with countless long-standing conspiracy theories and tropes falling under the umbrella of QAnon. 

 

Such an opportunity to stir up chaos in the United States appears to have been too good to pass up for Kremlin-supported media.

 

ADI looked at Russian state media articles over a span of two years, from Jan. 1, 2020 to June 1, 2021, and found that the outlets consistently pushed QAnon talking points. In 2020, Russian state media—defined as RT (including its six different language channels), TASS Russian News Agency, Sputnik News, and Ruptly—published approximately 5,970 QAnon-related articles. 

 

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CobraCommander

CobraCommander

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On 8/27/2021 at 3:10 PM, PleaseBlitz said:

 

The Deep State is basically, "society."  That said, the folks at Bub and Pops, while making delicious sandwiches, are definitely satanists as evidenced by their corned beef clearly being the product of a sinister deal with the devil and/or a SECRET recipe handed down directly from the Elders of Zion. 

It's funny until it's not. Like when some nutbag opens fire on a sandwich shop in DC. Comet Pizza came close and those poor people were harrased.

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Fresh8686

Fresh8686

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It’s both sad and ironic how blind distrust of the government leads these people to blindly trust these q-anon traitors. They’re all marks waiting to get played by the next person who can offer them a hit of feeling special, safe, righteous, and protected. 
 

The dope really does sell itself. 
 

Blind distrust is just as dumb as blind trust. It’s a shame so many people don’t realize that. 

Edited by Fresh8686
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China

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'The Storm is Upon Us': Deep dive into the QAnon rabbit hole is essential reading

 

The QAnon phenomenon has grown massively since its early days in 2017 as a fringe meta-conspiracy theory postulating that Donald Trump was leading a secret war against a “Deep State” that abducted and trafficked in children globally. In the past year alone, it has threatened to overwhelm the Republican Party from within with a tide of reality-denying extremism, culminating in its key role in inspiring the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol and the continuing radicalization of the American right subsequently.

 

This is why Mike Rothschild’s new book The Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything (Melville House, May 2021) is such a useful and important text: It is not just an up-to-date survey of the phenomenon as it has morphed and metastasized, but it provides a deeply grounded framework for understanding it as it continues to do so ad infinitum.

 

Rothschild appropriately devotes more of the text to exploring the toxic effects of QAnon’s spread than to debunking its claims or examining its origins, which he nonetheless does concisely and well. Importantly, he directly connects that interpersonal toxicity—the poisoned relationships, the unhinged behavior—arising from the movement to its broader social and political implications, manifested most memorably on Jan. 6.

 

Over the past year and more, we’ve seen QAnon spread during the COVID-19 pandemic to include anti-vaccination/anti-health restriction fanatics, as well as “Patriot” militiamen. We’ve seen the cult spread to law enforcement officers, and even small-town city halls.

 

The Storm is Upon Us is especially concerned with the effects of QAnon’s spread on families and friendships, and more broadly on communities, and ultimately the national electorate. 

 

The fact that QAnon’s spread persists despite the ongoing failures of its predictions, and its originators’ utter disappearance after the November 2020 election, tells us that something more than a simple conspiracy cult is going on here. Rather, it—and the very real storm of authoritarian disinformation that besets democratic nations globally it represents—is a phenomenon with powerful social and political implications.

 

Rothschild boils it down:

QAnon is a cultish movement that’s not quite a cult, a movement with prophetic elements that’s not quite a religion, and a recipient of Russia boosting that’s entirely American. And despite being descended from long-running frauds, it’s not really a scam. …

 

… It’s a political movement that revolves not around patriotism or traditional conservative values, but bloody revenge against diabolical enemies. Its voters demand loyalty, fealty, blood in the streets, and the total overthrow of the political norms of the past.

 

Click on the link for the rest

 

 

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