A Sense of Doubt blog post #3048 - QAnon believers are dangerous and criminal
This post has been in the works for a LONG TIME. Probably three years! I do not track original creation and how many postponements a post gets. I believe I started this one during the pandemic, quite likely in 2020.
2999 is a conspiracy loaded number!
Trump again going mask off with the QAnon stuff on TruthSocial today. He "retruthed" a photoshop of himself wearing a Q pin plus a couple of Q catchphrases from a Q account.
— Ben Collins (@oneunderscore__) September 13, 2022
Trump's not flirting with QAnon anymore, he's moving in. pic.twitter.com/I0FFCAZNZp
It's fascism.The insanity of a former (and possibly future) president bear-hugging QAnon cannot be overstated. And this was no one-off, late-in-the-night shitposting from the former guy. He zapped out other posts with QAnon references. Then four days later, at a rally in Ohio, he delivered an apocalyptic speech against the backdrop of music resembling the QAnon theme song. It was here that Trump supporters raised their hands and pointed a finger—possibly signaling “one,” in an allusion to that QAnon slogan.
The supposed purpose of the event was to whip up support for GOP Senate candidate J.D. Vance. But the gathering demonstrated the fusion of MAGA extremism with QAnon and Christian nationalism. The crowd cheered as Trump proclaimed the country had become a hellhole with a crumbling economy, rampant crime, and no freedom of speech. It was all lies. But the fervor of the crowd and the arm waving were reminiscent of a religious revival meeting. Trump’s movement has morphed into QMaga. The irrationality has spread from the evidence-free belief that sinister players (China, Venezuela, the CIA, the media, Democrats, voting machine companies) conspired to steal the election from Trump to the conviction that American politics has become a clash between patriotic Christians and cannibalistic Satan-worshipping pedophiles.
These people LITERALLY believe that Trump is a Messianic-like figure secretly fighting an underground war against a baby-eating Satanic pedophile cabal, "The Dark State or Deep State."
And apparently the Russians were involved. It's not Russians. It's them.
The article includes a note at the beginning with what we can assume is the official Gateway Pundit line on QAnon:
Q first appeared in October 2017 on an anonymous online forum called 4Chan, posting messages that implied top-clearance knowledge of upcoming events. More than 3,000 messages later, Q has created a disturbing, multi-faceted portrait of a global crime syndicate that operates with impunity. Q's followers in the QAnon community faithfully analyze every detail of Q's drops, which are compiled here and here.
The mainstream media has published hundreds of articles attacking Q as an insanerightwingconspiracy, particularly after President Trump seemed to publicly confirm his connection to it. At a North Carolina rally in 2019, Trump made a point of drawing attention to a baby wearing a onesie with a big Q.
Well that is just a boldface lie. We've been attacking Q as an insane rightwing conspiracy for at least two years now, owing to the fact that it is an an insane rightwing conspiracy.
Via Gateway Pundit:
Yaacov Apelbaum provided The Gateway Pundit information on how the Russians are influencing the Q phenomenon. The Russians now dominate a significant part of the QAnon activity in terms of content produced and narrative often publishing dozens of posts a day. The Russians promote Russian propaganda such as Putin's leadership, Russian military superiority, and Russia's position as the leading superpower.
The Russians also inserted really radical and disgusting messages into Q, related to aborted baby parts being added to food, anti-Catholic propaganda, etc.
The Russians released claims that Trump was working with a host of individuals who have long passed, like John Kennedy and his son, Princess Diana and others.
And there's more:
Establishment QAnon influencers trying to fight off the flat-earth Jews-started-World-War-II QAnon influencer who says Joe Biden is being played by James Woods in an
Okay, back to last year, 2022, and tales of Satanic Venom and Demon Clones. Yes. I kid you not.
Get this: Covid-19 was caused by snake venom put into the water by the Vatican as part of an Evil Catholic plot to put Satan's DNA in everyone.
And, even with Trump out of the White House, a building many of us hope he never is allowed to enter again, the QAnon cranks have found a welcome environment on Musk's Twitter as of December of 2022.
These are not obscure beliefs, confined to a group of tin-hat-wearing crazies. Almost 4 out of 10 Americans believe that the death rate from COVID-19 has been “deliberately and greatly exaggerated,” while 27 percent think it’s possible that vaccines for COVID-19 will be used to implant tracking chips in Americans. One in three Republicans (33 percent) says they believe that the QAnon theory about a conspiracy among deep state elites is “mostly true.” Thirty-six percent of registered voters think voter fraud has occurred to a large enough extent to affect the election outcome.
Conspiracy theories such as these are especially dangerous when they’re believed by people who actually have power, who set an example and make policy decisions. As columnist Paul Krugman wrote, “Unlike the crazy conspiracy theories of the left—which do exist, but are supported only by a tiny fringe—the crazy conspiracy theories of the right are supported by important people: powerful politicians, television personalities with large audiences.” The widespread belief on the part of Trump supporters that Biden won the election only because of voter fraud, egged on by Trump himself despite the lack of any significant evidence, may leave a legacy of delegitimating the Biden administration and of delegitimating government and normal political processes themselves. And that, in fact, may be the point.
The Nazis adopted it and even made it into a children's book, required reading in schools. One of its central ideas was the BLOOD LIBEL, in which Jews slaughtered Christian children and drained their blood to mix with matzos on Jewish holidays.
America had its own dark side. Henry Ford echoed Nazi hatred of Jews and had 500,000 copies of the Protocols printed and distributed in the U.S. Father Coughlin preached the Protocols on national radio. The Ku Klux Klan combined its white supremacist racism with hatred of Jews.
QAnon’s conspiracy theory is a rebranded version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
I bet you don't know who Ruby Freeman is, and that would make you a normal person. Here's some background.
In reality, Ruby runs one of those kiosks in the middle of the mall that sells ladies' accessories, purses — that sort of thing. She also helped count ballots in Georgia last month. Her business is called Lady Ruby's Unique Treasures, and I don't recommend you look at the Instagram comments for that store anymore.
That's because, on 4chan and far-right blogs, she is some sort of Sith Lord/Al Capone combo, who personally stole the election by doing…something with briefcases? That part's unclear, but what the QAnon people are certain of is Ruby Freeman — a 60-something election worker who also sells handbags at the mall — is part of the global conspiracy to steal the election.
Marjorie Tayler Green
out of billion of votes, 31 cases of fraud
Alex Jones - INFO WARS
Trump v. McCarthy
Carol Anderson - Emory University
https://newrepublic.com/article/159529/qanon-blood-libel-satanic-panic
https://www.wonkette.com/dont-go-attending-any-save-our-children-marches-they-are-not-what-youd-think
https://cnnpressroom.blogs.cnn.com/2020/07/17/cnns-fareed-zakaria-examines-donald-trumps-conspiracy-theories/
Conspiracy Theorists Who'd First Popularized QAnon Now Accused of Financial Motives (nbcnews.com)
"NBC News has found that the theory can be traced back to three people who sparked some of the first conversation about Qanon and, in doing so, attracted followers who they then asked to help fund Qanon 'research.'"In November 2017, a small-time YouTube video creator and two moderators of the 4chan website, one of the most extreme message boards on the internet, banded together and plucked out of obscurity an anonymous and cryptic post from the many conspiracy theories that populated the website's message board. Over the next several months, they would create videos, a Reddit community, a business and an entire mythology based off the 4chan posts of "Q," the pseudonym of a person claiming to be a high-ranking military officer. The theory they espoused would become Qanon, and it would eventually make its way from those message boards to national media stories and the rallies of President Donald Trump.
Now, the people behind that effort are at the center of a fractious debate among conspiracy enthusiasts, some of whom believe the three people who first popularized the Qanon theory are promoting it in order to make a living. Others suggest that these original followers actually wrote Q's mysterious posts...
Qanon was just another unremarkable part of the "anon" genre until November 2017, when two moderators of the 4chan board where Q posted predictions, who went by the usernames Pamphlet Anon [real name: Coleman Rogers] and BaruchtheScribe, reached out to Tracy Diaz, according to Diaz's blogs and YouTube videos. BaruchtheScribe, in reality a self-identified web programmer from South Africa named Paul Furber, confirmed that account to NBC News. "A bunch of us decided that the message needed to go wider so we contacted Youtubers who had been commenting on the Q drops," Furber said in an email... As Diaz tells it in a blog post detailing her role in the early days of Qanon, she banded together with the two moderators. Their goal, according to Diaz, was to build a following for Qanon — which would mean bigger followings for them as well... Diaz followed with dozens more Q-themed videos, each containing a call for viewers to donate through links to her Patreon and PayPal accounts. Diaz's YouTube channel now boasts more than 90,000 subscribers and her videos have been watched over 8 million times. More than 97,000 people follow her on Twitter.
Diaz, who emerged from bankruptcy in 2009, says in her YouTube videos that she now relies on donations from patrons funding her YouTube "research" as her sole source of income. Diaz declined to comment on this story. "Because I cover Q, I got an audience," Diaz acknowledged in a video that NBC News reviewed last week before she deleted it.
To reach a more mainstream audience (older people and "normies," who on their own would have trouble navigating the fringe message boards), Diaz said in her blog post she recommended they move to the more user-friendly Reddit. Archives listing the three as the original posters and moderators show they created a new Reddit community... Their move to Reddit was key to Qanon's eventual spread. There, they were able to tap into a larger audience of conspiracy theorists, and drive discussion with their analysis of each Q post. From there, Qanon crept to Facebook where it found a new, older audience via dozens of public and private groups...
As Qanon picked up steam, growing skepticism over the motives of Diaz, Rogers, and the other early Qanon supporters led some in the internet's conspiracy circles to turn their paranoia on the group. Recently, some Qanon followers have accused Diaz and Rogers of profiting from the movement by soliciting donations from their followers. Other pro-Trump online groups have questioned the roles that Diaz and Rogers have played in promoting Q, pointing to a series of slip-ups that they say show Rogers and Diaz may have been involved in the theory from the start.
Those accusations have led Diaz and Rogers to both deny that they are Q and say they don't know who Q is.
'Recovering' QAnon Members Seek Help from Therapists, Subreddits, and On Telegram (go.com)
ABC News reports that some QAnon adherents "are turning to therapy and online support groups to talk about the damage done when beliefs collide with reality," including Ceally Smith, a working single mom in Kansas City:"We as a society need to start teaching our kids to ask: Where is this information coming from? Can I trust it?" she said. "Anyone can cut and paste anything." After a year, Smith wanted out, suffocated by dark prophesies that were taking up more and more of her time, leaving her terrified....
Another ex-believer, Jitarth Jadeja, now moderates a Reddit forum called QAnon Casualties to help others like him, as well as the relatives of people still consumed by the theory. Membership has doubled in recent weeks to more than 119,000 members. Three new moderators had to be added just to keep up. "They are our friends and family," said Jadeja, of Sydney, Australia. "It's not about who is right or who is wrong. I'm here to preach empathy, for the normal people, the good people who got brainwashed by this death cult." His advice to those fleeing QAnon? Get off social media, take deep breaths, and pour that energy and internet time into local volunteering.
Michael Frink is a Mississippi computer engineer who helps administer a QAnon recovery channel on the social media platform Telegram. He said that while mocking the group has never been more popular online, it will only further alienate people. Frink said he never believed in the QAnon theory but sympathizes with those who did. "I think after the inauguration a lot of them realized they've been taken for a ride," he said.
The New York Times tells the story of one Bernie Sanders supporter who entered — and then exited — the QAnon movement:Those who do leave are often filled with shame. Sometimes their addiction was so severe that they have become estranged from family and friends... "We felt we were coming from a place of moral superiority. We were part of a special club." Meanwhile, her family was eating takeout all the time since she had stopped cooking and her stress levels had shot up, causing her blood pressure medication to stop working. Her doctor, worried, doubled her dose...
When she first left QAnon, she felt a lot of shame and guilt. It was also humbling: Ms. Perron, who has a master's degree, had looked down on Scientologists as people who believed crazy things. But there she was...
She agreed to speak for this article to help others who are still in the throes of QAnon.
And CNN reporter Anderson Cooper recently interviewed a recovering QAnon supporter, who tells him there were many theories about Cooper, including one that said he was actually a robot. The embarrassed former QAnon supporter admits that he had once believed that the people behind Q "were actually a group of 5th dimensional, intra-dimensional, extraterrestrial bi-pedal bird aliens called blue avians."
During that interview, he also tells Anderson Cooper, "I apologize for thinking that you ate babies."
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The Buffy episode where Joyce forms MOO — 'Mothers Opposed to the Occult'
In case you weren't sufficiently horrified by your fellow Americans, a recent study conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute has found that 15 percent of Americans believe that "[t]he government, media and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation."
Yeah.
That number goes up to 23 percent for Republicans in general, 25 percent for white evangelical Protestants, 26 percent for Hispanic Protestants ... and 40 percent for Americans who most trust far-Right news sources such as Newsmax and OANN. And it's not the only ridiculous QAnon-adjacent conspiracy a fair number of Americans believe in. Twenty percent believe "[t]here is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders" and 15 percent believe that "[b]ecause things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country."
And 28 percent of Republicans believe both of those things.
Though perhaps more concerning, frankly, is the large percentage of people who merely consider themselves "QAnon doubters" versus "QAnon rejectors."
Forty percent of Americans outright reject the QAnonsense, but 46 percent of them merely doubt it. That is an extremely high number given the absurdity of it all.
There are two big problems here. The first one is how did we get to a point where only 40 percent of Americans reject the absolute most batshit thing anyone has ever come up with. The second is how do we stop it.
As far as the first problem goes, the first part of it, obviously, is that people do not trust the government. To a degree, that's a good and healthy thing. The United States government has done some real messed up shit and, quite frankly, is not really worthy of our trust. Tuskeegee, COINTELPRO, Watergate, lying to get us into the Vietnam War, lying to get us into the Iraq War, Iran Contra, support for dictatorships — a whole lot of things that would seem totally crazy if they hadn't really happened.
For most people, things that come under the category of "fucked up things the United States government has done" are things they learned on their own rather than in school, where history classes were primarily focused on "great things the United States has done, because America is the greatest." If you learn about those things — those true things — on your own, it's easy to come to the conclusion that the government has something to hide (which of course it does). It's easy to then think that the other things you learn about by "doing your own research" are also true.
The second factor is religion. Evangelical Christianity teaches people that Satan is real, Satan worshipers are real and a very different thing from the actual Satanism that exists in the real world. It is not surprising that those people then think evil Satanists are out there doing exactly what they've been told Satanists are out there doing.
The third factor, and probably the most compelling, is that when it comes to children being hurt, people shut their brains off.
That doesn't come from a bad instinct — it comes from a good instinct that has been warped, but that doesn't mean it doesn't cause harm. We saw that harm during the Satanic Panic and the daycare sex abuse hysteria, and we're seeing it again now. Except now it's not just people "believing the children," it's people "believing adults" who have made up things they think could hypothetically be happening to children.
A common refrain on social media during the Wayfair affair from people spreading the conspiracy was often "So what if I'm wrong? Who am I hurting by caring about the children? And isn't this bringing awareness to child sex trafficking, a thing we should all care about?"
But they are hurting people. In fact, they're hurting children. The pendulum always swings, and just as people now try to make up for times when we did not treat child abuse seriously, if things go too far the other way, people will make up for that by being even more skeptical. The kindest thing to do for children is to focus efforts on things that are actually happening to actual children. People who feel they have done their part by posting on Facebook about imaginary trafficked mole children are probably not then running out and volunteering at the local teen shelter, or even voting for politicians who support increasing funding for education, subsidized childcare and health care.
It's hard to know precisely what to do about these things, because ignoring them does not make them go away. To some degree, transparency might help — being more open and less shady about the way the United States has fucked up so it's not a thing people find out about on their own; doing a kind of investigative reporting that doesn't just let these people state their weird beliefs, but helps to show them why those beliefs aren't true — or that parades these people out and makes them actually prove that what they say is true.
Hell, I say get a camera and a bunch of believers, give them doses of actual adrenochrome and let them see if they get high. Give them high powered microscopes and demand they find microchips in the vaccine. Take them to Comet Pizza. Demand they produce one actual victim of these supposed Satanic child sex-trafficking cabals. Sunlight can be a great disinfectant, but it doesn't work with just "Hey, look at the crazy shit these people believe, let's let them share those beliefs and not question them at all."
Open thread!
[PRRI]
https://www.wonkette.com/qanon-idiots-marched-on-hollywood-to-demand-celebs-stop-eating-babies
Take a moment and think. In a hypothetical universe were all of us were very stupid and genuinely, truly believed in our heart of hearts that Hollywood celebrities and powerful people all over the world were eating babies, and also molesting trafficked mole children in evil Satanic rites, in order to harvest their pineal glands at just the right moment to obtain a drug that will result in them getting super high/becoming immortal ...
What would we do?
Well, it's unlikely that we would do anything before proving it was actually true. There are so many absolutely provably true things to get outraged about that we very rarely have time to invent them. The only semi-comparable thing I can think of is how I continue generally boycotting Coca-Cola just to be safe because I can't quite figure out if we're still boycotting Coca-Cola over the murders of those union workers in Colombia or not. But when we do believe things are true (and have proof), we organize, we protest, we boycott, etc. etc. It's seemed a little strange, frankly, that the people who believe in a secret Satanic baby harvesting cabal were not doing that. That they spent their time doing "research" that lead nowhere and swarming the Twitter posts of various celebrities.
But now they are! Or on Friday they were! Yes, a roving group of the absolute stupidest people in the nation got together on Friday to March on Hollywood, including to the CNN building, in order to absolutely demand that people stop eating babies.
They even stormed the CNN building, where one might assume they kept a whole room full of mole children for guests in need of an adrenochrome boost, were this a real thing that was happening.
This sign in particular was pretty great. Clearly, these people take child molestation very seriously if they are determining who is and is not a pedophile by whether or not they honk their car horns.
The assumption here — that everyone is a pedophile until proven otherwise — is pretty fucking scary. It suggests that pedophilia is far more "normal" to these people than it actually is in real life.
In many of the comments below these tweets are QAnon people saying crap like "Oh so you think pedophilia is GOOD?" or "This was a Save The Children protest! What? You don't want to save the children?" and it really does give you an idea of why they've chosen to go this route. People, obviously, are horrified by pedophilia. Who can think of anything more horrifying? No one wants to be pro-pedophilia! So it makes sense, if you want people not to question you, it is very clever to frame everything as "Well then, if you don't agree with me, or if you hate Trump, you're a pedophile!" It's also a very good way to rationalize electing or supporting Trump. It's a lot less horrifying to have elected him if he's secretly battling cabals of pedophiles. "Oh, you think people who voted for Trump are racist? Well we think you're all pedophiles! So there!"
One thing to note here. QAnon people and Pizzagate people, unlike Black Lives Matter or antifa activists, have actually killed people. Both here and abroad. They have shot up pizza parlors. They have planned bombings. They have tried to assassinate Joe Biden. They have kidnapped their own family members and lead police on high speed chases across Massachusetts and New Hampshire. They are categorized by the FBI as a violent extremist threat. Unlike Black Lives Matter or antifa activists.
And yet ... not a single cop in riot gear was seen anywhere near that protest. So weird!
Awkwardly, there were also marches across the country on Thursday last week to protest actual child sex trafficking. Though it's hard to know how many of the people getting involved are getting involved because they believe in a weird fantasy about Donald Trump fighting satanic pedophile rings, and it would be very unfortunate for organizations doing actual good work to be infiltrated by those people.
This would all be very funny (and, yeah, it kind of still is), if the QAnon idiots were not being courted by the Trump administration so blatantly. As an article in today's Washington Post on this blossoming love affair tells it:
Outside the Las Vegas Convention Center, Kayleigh McEnany raised a microphone to a mega-fan and asked what it felt like to be acknowledged by President Trump at his February rally in Sin City.Well, that is certainly terrifying! And also the least explicit of the recent overtures the Trump campaign has made to these maniacs:
At the time a spokeswoman for Trump's reelection campaign, McEnany nodded as the supporter said the shout-out was most meaningful because of the words on the shirt he was wearing, which he read aloud: "Where we go one, we go all," the motto of QAnon conspiracy theorists who believe Trump is battling a cabal of deep-state saboteurs who worship Satan and traffic children for sex.
McEnany, who has since become the White House press secretary, continued, asking the supporter, "If you could say one thing to the president, what would you say?"
"Who is Q?" he replied, inquiring about the mysterious online figure behind the baseless theory. McEnany smiled and said, "Okay, well, I will pass all of this along."
As the worldview took shape online, its followers flocked to Trump rallies with QAnon apparel and placards. Recently, as the election has drawn closer, actions by the president and his associates have brought them more directly into the fold.This is definitely not going to end well.
The Trump campaign's director of press communications, for example, went on a QAnon program and urged listeners to "sign up and attend a Trump Victory Leadership Initiative training." QAnon iconography has appeared in official campaign advertisements targeting battleground states. And the White House's director of social media and deputy chief of staff for communications, Dan Scavino, has gone from endorsing praise from QAnon accounts to posting their memes himself.
[Washington Post]
Robyn Pennacchia
https://www.wonkette.com/how-do-you-have-a-satanic-pedophile-cannibal-cabal-with-no-complaining-victims
Joyce goes with Buffy on one of her patrols and ends up finding some murdered kids on the playground with an occult-looking symbol written on them. Naturally, everyone is very horrified, Joyce in particular. Soon, the whole town is hysterical over the poor children having been murdered by witches, and they all get increasingly riled up and outraged and pitchforky and the ghosts of the two children haunt Joyce, telling her she needs to "hurt the bad girls."
Long story short, the Scoobies figure out that not only does no one actually know who these kids are, or who their parents are, but that the exact same kids have been "murdered" in towns across the world for centuries and were the basis for Hansel and Gretel. And each time the same thing happens. Giles (Buffy's watcher/the school librarian) explains that demons often feed off of human ignorance and persecution, and that this is probably what's going on there. Unfortunately, before they can fully communicate this to everyone, Buffy, Willow and Amy get rounded up to be burned at the stake.
Sorry for the spoilers on a show that aired in 1999, but it's just eerily similar to what is going on now with all of this new Satanic Panic crap. Because while there is a hell of a lot of outrage, while people are getting extremely pitchforky, no one can say who the actual victims are.
One of the more horrific aspects of the first Satanic Panic was the fact that organizations and people that were meant to help children managed to convince them that they were sexually molested, that they were victims of Satanic ritual abuse, when they were not. Even adults, mostly women, were convinced by their own trusted psychologists that they had "recovered memories" of Satanic ritual abuse. Maybe we didn't know then, but we know now how unreliable "recovered memories" are, and also how easy it is to implant them.
And yet, as horrific as all of that was, it made a lot more sense that people would believe it. There wasn't a lot of information out there debunking it, and there were actual victims. Victims they could see and hear and read about. It was on the news, it was on Oprah and every other talk show. Which is a thing one might mention the next time people suggest that the media is silent on this only because they are afraid of retribution from these very powerful people or because they are somehow complicit.
There were court cases. People were actually arrested. People — innocent people — were found guilty and sent to prison for decades. Many of them remained there even after their victims recanted and explained how they were manipulated into claiming these things.
It was horrible — but it was understandable that people believed it. Hell, very few people at the time even questioned it. Those who did were told "Of course it's true. Children never lie." (My own mother did not buy this, as she had a daughter who was positively convinced that she was adopted and that her real parents were horses.)
There are no victims now. There are no court cases. There are no arrests, despite the endless mass arrest fantasies described by the QAnon crowd. There's no endless parade of media attention. There is nothing approximating evidence of any kind. The closest thing this movement has to an actual victim is the obviously unwell woman who claims to have been Tom Hanks's sex slave, brainwashed and sold to him by her parents who are supposedly high-ranking members of a sprawling 10,000-year-old cult that controls the world, that no one has ever heard of or mentioned before.
But that's pretty much it! There is literally no one out there claiming to have actually taken adrenochrome (oxidized epinephrine/adrenaline), or seen anyone procure it from a child's pineal gland (or pituitary gland, or, in rare cases, the adrenal glands, which actually produce adrenaline, depending on who you are asking). Someone just tossed the idea out there that celebrities were taking it to get high and/or immortal and some other people said "Oh, for sure, that definitely sounds like a plausible thing that could happen!"
The lack of evidence, the fact that people must "draw their own conclusions" after being led in a very specific direction, is exactly why they get so entrenched. The best way to sell someone on an idea is to make them think they came up with it themselves. If you're just believing stuff you saw on TV, if you're believing actual first person testimony that people are giving, you have an out that doesn't make you feel like a huge idiot. There's no straight story, no official narrative, because every single person involved is pretty much making it up for themselves as they go along.
I should not argue with these people, but I do. Every once in a while, I give in and I feed the trolls. Because I am on an epic quest to figure out what the hell is even going on here, and I cannot know what is actually going on here unless I talk to these people. And the number one thing they always do is ask bizarre questions no one could possibly know the answer to -- a recent favorite was "Think. Why did Ghislaine Maxwell have a license to operate a submarine?" -- or that begin with the word "Imagine."
I call them QAnon people or Pizzagate people, but the truth is, a very large percentage of the people who are repeating these claims have never even heard of QAnon. Hell, half of the people tweeting #WWG1WGA (the QAnon slogan "Where we go one we go all") and #SaveOurChildren have no idea about the totally bizarre theories those slogans are attached to. They get bits and pieces from Facebook and Twitter and Instagram. They hear a few things here and there that seem somewhat plausible. Statistics about the amount of children that go missing every year (with the part where 99 percent of them are found conveniently left out), information about Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell that is true, combined with things about Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell that people made up. Usually there's a grain of truth somewhere, and that's what makes it all seem possible.
It's basically working the way Scientology works. They leave the crazy Xenu shit for the end. By the time people get to "Anthony Weiner had a file on his computer called frazzled.rip that was a video of Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin skinning a child's face and then wearing it like a Halloween mask," they're not going to take the time to look up the fact that .rip files are audio-only. They're just going to believe it. And even when you get them to concede that one thing is obviously wrong, they will still believe in the gist of it all and they will still want to "save the children."
Luckily for Ayanna Pressley, Marjorie seems to have forgotten to put her in the crosshairs as well.
The post has since been taken down by Facebook, because threatening congresswomen with a very large semi-automatic weapon is generally frowned upon.
Initially it read:
Hate America leftists want to take this country down ...And here is the original post, courtesy of Wonkette's Stephen Robinson, who was smart enough to get a screencap before they took it down, unlike some of us (by which I mean me).
Politicians have failed this country. I'm tired of seeing weak, Establishment Republicans play defense.
Our country is on the line. America needs fighters who speak the truth.
We need strong conservative Christians to go on the offense against these socialists who want to rip our country apart.
America must take our country back.
SAVE AMERICA
STOP SOCIALISM.
DEFEAT THE DEMOCRATS!
Rep. Ilhan Omar responded to the post by calling it incitement, which it very obviously seems to be. Greene told her to "relax" because it's just a meme, unlike "BLM/ANTIFA violence, rioting and destruction." Also unlike the many shooting sprees committed by people who share Greene's politics and her taste in weaponry, though she seems to have left that part out.
Greene seems to be very obsessed right now with "socialists who want to rip our country apart" and who also want to bring the "US to its knees through socialism" and who also want to defund the police — an interesting take considering that funding the police through taxes is socialism. Also, if we were to bring America to its knees with all of our evil socialisms, at the very least, America would be able to go to the hospital to get her kneecaps looked at without going bankrupt.
Marjorie Taylor Greene really dislikes having to share a country with the rest of us. She doesn't think it's fair. However, if she wants to be surrounded exclusively by people like her, who believe all the same things she believes, and if she wants to threaten to murder everyone she disagrees with using her big giant assault rifle, there are places for that. They're just not Congress. At least not yet.Now? It's your OPEN THREAD.
Do your Amazon shopping through this link, because reasons.
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| A Trump 2020 Labor Day cruise rally in honor of Patriot Prayer supporter Aaron J. Danielson, who was shot dead in Portland, Oregon, after street clashes between supporters of Trump and counterdemonstrators, in Oregon City, Oregon on Sept. 7. Carlos Barria/Reuters |
https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2020/09/qanon-clint-watts-isis-comparisons-gist-transcript.html
What ISIS Can Tell Us About QAnon
The groups’ similarities and differences reveal lessons about the right-wing conspiracy movement.
SEPT 15, 20205:45 AM
You might expect that Donald Trump's most devoted followers would be devastated or outraged by his forthcoming, still-sealed indictment — and that may be true for some of them — but the QAnon faithful are mostly rejoicing. No, they haven't turned their backs on him (well ... some of them have — a guy who calls himself GhostEzra, in particular, but that is a story for another day), they just think it is part of the "plan" that they have been trusting for the last six years.
On the main QAnon message board, Great Awakening, commenters seem to be in agreement that this is all part of the lead-up to THE STORM. In case you need a refresher, THE STORM is the thing they've all been waiting for all these years. The day when Trump's "White Hats" declare martial law and start arresting all of his political enemies/the cabal/the Satanic child sex trafficking and eating ring/Tom Hanks, conduct their trials on air for 10 days, and then publicly execute them all while the "Anons" sit back with their popcorn and "enjoy" the show while we all freak out and look to them for answers about what is going on, finally realizing that they are beautiful, misunderstood geniuses who have actually been right about everything all along.
The going theory seems to be that this will set a precedent so that when all of the other ex-presidents start getting indicted and arrested, we will all think of it as a normal thing to do.
One said:
Only anons would be happy about this. We know the game and we love watching this movie :)
Now when former presidents are arrested the normies will be conditioned to think it's not a big deal, when they are indicted for SERIOUS crimes against humanity. Meanwhile Trump was indicted for .... now, hear me out, a STORMy Daniels payment!
I LOVE THIS MOVIE.
Another:
This is the event that will unite liberty loving Americans to finally see what we need to do. God is in control. He's driving right now. NCSWIC. It's going to be biblical. I'm ready and I know all of us on this board are.
NCSWIC is not a new crime show on CBS, it is an acronym meaning "Nothing Can Stop What Is Coming," a common QAnon catchphrase.
Another:
This isn't hitting me like I thought it would. I have opined before about how I used to be pretty good at chess. Had I stayed with it, eventually I would have become a grandmaster, although by no means am I comparing myself to the greats - Kasparov, Karlsson, Fischer et alii - I just made it to master. The point being is this...if I ever were to play President Trump, I would be scared shitless. People have no earthly idea what a massive fucking mistake was just made. I get this funny feeling that he's just getting started. I'm excited in a way, but apprehensive as well. I am not going to pray as I don't believe in prayer, but I will remain alert, more so than I have ever been in my sixty years on this planet. Holy cow.
Another:
We are traveling the path of least collateral damage. The future proves past in this case. The arrest of President Trump initiates an important shift in the narrative wherein it is now common place to investigate, indict, and arrest former Presidents.
Had Clinton or Bush been arrested, the normies would have still been under the C.I.A. brainwashing programming and would have undoubtedly fed the Civil War narrative that the Cabal so desperately want. They will all be arrested in time, but the narrative must be put in place before such happenings can commence.
It cannot be understated just how important narrative control is in this situation. The narrative is the battlefield of this 5th Generation War.
Several are citing various Q 'proofs' that they believe may refer to the indictment (because of how Q is a time traveler and can predict the future), specifically one that says "First indictment [unseal] will trigger mass pop awakening. First arrest will verify action and confirm future direction. They will fight you but you are ready."
Others noted that yesterday was "0" on the Q Clock — a website that no longer exists but which had been counting down to "something" for some time now.
On Telegram, QAnon influencer/time traveler/former Ohio Secretary of State candidate ToreSays claimed:
Wait didn't we have CONGRESSIONAL HEARINGS about OBAMAS GAY LOVER who supplied him drugs and sex with? Didn't he pay him HUSH money ? Why wasn't he indicted? Impeached?
That's ok.
Now we can impeach President's no longer in Office.
Now we can indict them too.
#BatterUp
We did not! Largely because that was not a real thing.
Also on Telegram, rightwing conspiracy site X22 posted:
The bait was taken, Trump will watch the board, he will watch the Republican Party on how they react
He now has the key players chanting the same slogan
NOBODY IS ABOVE THE LAW
The Precedent has been set, we now know the path forward
Arrests of Former Presidents has been set
Game Over
Now, sure, you may think that this makes absolutely no sense, because no one ever said that former presidents or current presidents or soon-to-be-presidents were free to do all the crime they want. Well, except for Gerald Ford. Surely if there were actual proof that all of the other living presidents are part of a baby-eating Satanic cabal, no one would have a problem indicting them. The biggest obstacle in their way is that these crimes, much like President Obama's secret lover, are things they made up.
Trump's crimes, however — at least according to a grand jury — are real.
Followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory have had quite a month. On the downside, they've been banned from practically every social media site and also from Etsy. On the upside, Donald Trump has remained resolute in his refusal to condemn them, which has made them feel very empowered and what have you.
There are, of course, only a few more weeks left for all of the things they've been promised to come to fruition. If Trump loses the election, they lose all hope of the martial law, military tribunals and mass arrests of their dreams, and will have to go back to fretting about the martial law, military tribunals and mass arrests of their nightmares. They'll be back to worrying about Jade Helm type things, of being put in FEMA camps, of jack booted thugs banging down their doors, rather than the doors of Hillary Clinton and Tom Hanks.
But today is the day many of them have been looking forward to for a long while now, a day that is supposed to turn things around. October 17, because of how Q is the 17th letter in the alphabet. It is to be the day Donald Trump announces, at a rally in Dallas, the city where John F. Kennedy was assassinated, that he is replacing Mike Pence with a new running mate — the surprisingly not dead John F. Kennedy, Jr.
It's all very poetic.
Also Elvis. Elvis is also coming back today.
JFK Jr. Files: Return of the Princewww.youtube.com
Please to enjoy the comments underneath that video, in which desperate QAnoners talk about how thrilled they will be upon JFK Jr's triumphant resurrection this evening.
This will be the move, supporters say, that saves his campaign. Because obviously everyone will just be so excited about JFK, Jr rising from the dead and running for Vice President alongside Donald Trump. And then, then, we will all eat crow and go "Oh how could we have been so mistaken! Those kooky QAnon people were right all along!"
There are, of course, some major difficulties with all of this — the first of them being that JFK, Jr is in fact dead. The other problem would be that people have already started voting and it would be real tough to make a change to the ballot at this point. Still another problem being that Donald Trump is not scheduled to do a rally in Dallas, Texas or Dallas, Wisconsin, or Dallas, Anywhere Else tonight, but is instead doing one in Ormond Beach, FL. Now, sure. it is possible they got the location wrong, but that still doesn't eliminate the main problem with this plan — the fact that JFK, Jr is in fact dead.
As is Princess Diana. And Elvis.
But hey! All of their other deadlines and predictions have come and gone and they have still managed to continue "trusting the plan," and it is likely that this will be no different.
Anyway — enough of that silliness and time for some other, well, silliness. Because this is your open thread! Enjoy!
Oh! PS! As a special gift, please enjoy this completely batshit Reddit thread I found from someone claiming that Sewickley, Pennsylvania, where they live, is an "illuminati town" where people are just eating babies all the time, like you wouldn't believe. Also this very serious discussion about a shapeshifting demon that is trying to steal someone's baby brother. Takes all kinds!
A woman obsessed with the QAnon conspiracy theory is being held for allegedly shooting and killing a quack legal theorist associated with the sovereign citizen movement, in a story that seems just about as 2020 as you're going to get. It's two dangerous rightwing fringe communities coming together, leading to death and general horror. Will Sommer's capsule description at the Daily Beast is as clear as something this weird can hope to get:
Neely Petrie-Blanchard, a Kentucky resident, had long ago lost custody of her daughters for reasons that are unclear. And to help in the task of getting them back, she turned to Chris Hallett, an amateur legal expert who offered bogus court services through a company called "E-Clause," and who promised Petrie-Blanchard she could win her daughters back through ludicrous courtroom tactics he borrowed from the anti-government sovereign citizen's movement.
Unfortunately, at some point, Petrie-Blanchard's enthusiastic support for Hallett's pseudolegal "expertise" apparently dimmed, and according to a witness to the shooting at Hallett's home in Ocala, Florida, she may have believed Hallett was actually part of a Deep State plot to keep her from getting her twin seven-year-old daughters back.
"It was speculated that the victim was shot by [Petrie-Blanchard], due to her belief that the victim might have been working against her, or working to assist the government, in keeping her children away from her," the police report reads.
Petrie-Blanchard fled, but was later arrested in Georgia and is being held pending extradition back to Florida. And here's a cheery thought: It looks like she was just one of many folks in what Sommer calls "a clandestine network of QAnon believers and fringe legal theorists focused on child custody battles." Have a bunch of folks already distraught that they've lost custody of their kids? Why not scare them further with QAnon's tales of a worldwide "cabal" of pedophile cannibals, and then promise them they can easily get their kids back by using weirdass bogus legal filings that hucksters insist will unlock the "true" power of the real US Constitution?
Back in March, Petrie-Blanchard kidnapped (allegedly — she's still awaiting trial) her twin daughters from their grandmother (Petrie-Blanchard's mother), who has legal custody of them. But that was fine, because she posted a statement on Facebook and delivered copies to local officials in Kentucky, full of the magic words that sovereign citizens believe make them immune to the tyrannical laws that get in the way of what they wanna do:
"I do not consent, I do not contract, I do not acquiesce nor trade, or allow access or enquiry to my nor my children's Cestui que vie trust," Blanchard's strange statement read. "All deemed authorities are now notified & therefore have no legal jurisdiction against me, I am now not 'deemed dead lost at sea.'"
I can only assume that bit about not being "lost at sea" is word magic to make sure she's not beholden to any court with gold fringe on the US flag, which various conspiracy loons think means it's an admiralty court. Beats me.
Buzzfeed News adds that the court order granting custody of the girls to their grandmother described Petrie-Blanchard as "extremely unstable," and that police in Kentucky said she had a "history of mental illness," as well. She was eventually caught and the girls returned to their grandmother; the AP reports that Petrie-Blanchard was finally indicted Tuesday on kidnapping charges in that incident, after initially being charged and released on "two counts of custodial interference and one count of being a persistent felony offender."
After her release in March, Petrie-Blanchard went back to QAnon "research" and moderating a Facebook group promoting E-Clause and Hallett's legal "theories." Our very cursory googling turned up this perfectly clear explanation of ... something. We don't know whether this is Hallett's work or Petrie-Blanchard's, but it definitely looks like similar weirdness from other sovereign citizen and QAnon scholars.
Hallett was a real piece of work, too:
Hallett, 50, had become a key part of the YouTube QAnon network, streaming his fake legal claims with his on-and-off business partner Kirk Pendergrass. While neither man is registered as a lawyer in their home states or appears to have any legitimate legal education, they promoted their services on QAnon YouTube shows to build a following among a community of desperate mothers who had lost their children, and solicited donations for their services.
Hallett's legal services appear to have universally failed when they managed to reach the courts. He claimed that Donald Trump had authorized him to create a separate legal system, a notion that a federal judge found risible in a January opinion, calling Hallett's legal work "rambling."
"The Court declines to entertain Plaintiff's fantasy that he is acting at the behest of the President," the opinion reads.
Well that just proves how deep the plot goes, now doesn't it?
Then on Sunday, it appears Petrie-Blanchard had become dissatisfied with Hallett's legal expertise and his work to regain custody of her kids through specious court documents. The unidentified eyewitness to the shooting, the police report says, was at Hallett's house along with her daughter, and went to the home's kitchen after hearing what they thought was a firecracker. They saw Petrie-Blanchard standing with a pistol, and the daughter told police that Petrie-Blanchard said, "You're hurting my children, you bastard" to Hallett, before she pointed the gun at them.
They ran, and then heard more shots. The witnesses weren't harmed, so there's that. By the time police arrived, Hallett was dead, and Petrie-Blanchard was arrested a few hours later in Georgia.
She has currently only been charged as a fugitive but is expected to be charged with murder when she's extradited to Florida, according to the Marion County Sheriff's Department.
It's all just awful, and a reminder that both QAnon and the sovereign citizen movement attract a lot of people who aren't entirely in touch with reality, either by choice or because of mental illness. It would be really disturbing if adherents of such delusional bullshit started getting elected to Congress, wouldn't it?
Ah, yes, and following Hallett's killing, Sommer notes, his E-Clause partner, Pendergrass, was back on YouTube Monday night, explaining in a live stream, "You know how the deep state doesn't like to be exposed."
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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2306.23 - 10:10
- Days ago = 2912 days ago
- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.
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