One has to believe there's a deliberate intelligence effort signal boosting this a fair bit, meshed within the various layers of accounts/platforms propagating it.
I never really believed the scale at which foreign (or domestic) actors could affect people politically. I thought the idea that ads or social media posts had any significant effect was laughable.
One time, however, I was browsing Twitter, particularly a political thread. It was relatively level-headed (at least as far as social media politics goes) until I saw one reply. Everything about this account was a perfect caricature of what I despised. From the profile pic, to what they retweeted. It was stuff that was genuinely disgusting and most people would be appaled by it.
Their profile said they were a writer at "some website" and I decided to check it out. The site itself was rather boring with multiple articles that really didn't make sense and seemed more like SEO blogspam content, so out of curiosity I did a whois on the domain. The site was originally registered a month prior. The Twitter account was the same age. I realized that this probably wasn't a real person and that I had been successfully baited into being pissed off. Can't say who or what is projecting it, but looking back a lot of accounts I've seen in the replies of Twitter threads are probably the same story.
I had an idea to collect a database of similar accounts, since they seem pretty easy go find, just so I could play around with the data, but ended up not doing anything.
> writer at "some website" and I decided to check it out
Follows, per that campaign doc I linked. It's interesting how complex it's getting!
That threat intel report was dropped, I went to the website to scope out some of the "authors" that were attributed and saw their articles. I went back a day later and the authors' posts and profiles were down.
What also stood out to me was that website direct linked to some more substantial websites like Zerohedge. Zerohedge has long been iffy, but it still gets read by professionals for the financial analysis it includes. It has a good rep in this area per some historical research it produced.
Just in terms of tight network links, Zerohedge leads to Drudge leads to Fox, which. That's fascinating to me. Your description of that website sounds a lot like campaign's base website for its "authors."
I mean, I wouldn't be surprised if 'intelligence' [sic] actors were involved in signal-boosting all sorts of wacky urban legends and conspiracy theories - so why not Pizza gate and Q as well?
If you flood the world with crazy conspiracy theories, when news breaks of an actual crazy conspiracy, nobody will notice. Raise the noise level in the signal, do your clandestine activities in the open.
What makes this an intellectually interesting argument is decently-sourced speculation tha for technical campaigns, IC uses botnets or similar network noise to hide campaigns within. Since technical campaigns seem to pull methodology from pre-technical IC days, that makes these grand conspiracy theories have a weird kernel of truth.
It makes a lot of sense to me in the realm of experimental and classified aircraft. Easier to leak junk designs and call sightings UFOs than keep things secret squirrel. According to the CIA half of the UFO sightings in the 50-60s were U-2s and SR-71s.[1] There's plenty more too, like the tacit Blue, RQ-3 Darkstar, FDL-5, and GD sneaky pete that sure look like "UFOs" to the untrained eye.
I am convinced that Q, if not started, was quickly taken over and turned into a Russian psyop. I expected the Mueller report to validate this (gross online astroturfing campaigns by state actors), but unless it is in the redacted parts, it is not there. But even casually investigating banned Twitter accounts used for Russian propaganda, you see a lot of clear connections with the "totally organic" Christian MAGA Qanon soccer mom accounts.
Leaves me mere speculation: I believe Q was initially conceived in case Trump had lost the election. It was to be a group of useful idiots/unwitting agents protesting about the "rigged" election, maybe even riled up to the point of taking up arms. Then when Trump won it was repurposed to sow disinformation about child sacrifice and child porn rings by the elite democrats. 9/11 saw the same thing: Massive efforts by Russia and Middle Eastern countries to seed inside job conspiracy theories. With the result that many Americans now believe 9/11 was an inside job, and can't really trust their government anymore (social cohesion damaged).
I believe some of these unwitting agents are so impressionable and gullible, that they can be made to act as "manchurian candidates", doing the bidding of foreign intelligence agencies (spreading propaganda, muddying the waters with disinformation and conspiracy, picking up a gun and going out to free children from a basement of a pizza parlor). I believe these intel agencies are able to infiltrate grassroots movements and subvert their ideals to be hostile to their host countries. I believe these agencies are able to create fake online realities, where unwitting agents are made to be believe they are part of something big, and everyone agrees with them, while they are psychologically manipulated.
> I believe these intel agencies are able to infiltrate grassroots movements
Yeah this happened, per Mueller. Very large BLM Facebook group that organized rallies is an example.
I previously thought most of the psyops efforts were lower level IRA trolling, per what was in un-redacted Mueller.
Digging into some of the private sector threat intel reports around semi-attributed campaigns (see the link), there's evidence that more deliberate operations are occurring.
Most of those complex campaigns I read seemed focused on border states between Great Powers, and CONUS campaigns focused on sowing nonsense, chaos and mucking up comms channels. But I guess it's no large feat, beyond boldness, to employ something with more structured narrative inside the CONUS digital sphere of influence.
I mean "of course this is a thing that happens," but it's still a seriously interesting read on paper, it could easily be employed in the US, and it's pretty bold to do.
Before the elections, when Putin thought that Trump would lose, and influence campaigns were designed to promote him as a detractor and divider, calling out the rigged elections and the deep state swamp. With Roger Stone laundering Russian "opposition research", like he did with Wikileaks, at that time a front for Russian intelligence.
4Chan has been very involved with these intelligence ARGs since after Project Chanology. Pedowood morphed into Pizzagate. "Seth Rich murder" was pushed hard on 4Chan, to detract from the fact that the Russians hacked the democrats. And it works: Instead of being insulted and angry that a foreign nation state so polutes the brains of your country and riles up the population to the level of riots and extreme polarization, some like to think that Hillary had Seth Rich assassinated for leaking. With so much smoke, who knows what to think? All the while you see artificial KONY2012-style meme campaigns accusing Mueller of being a deep state fixer, synced on Twitter, Facebook, and 4chan.
It seems like the media is talking about this more than anyone else at this point. There have literally been over 2000 articles written to debunk this. The content has been banned from reddit, twitter and other platforms.
Why is everyone so vigilant to call it "dangerous"? Why not flat earth and chem trails? Why all the attention for this one thing?
There's been a similar amount of shutdown on 5G tower conspiracies after they resulted in vandalization, arson and even a shooting. 17 towers were attacked in New Zeland alone[1] for example, and plenty elsewhere.[2] As a result 5G groups have been banned on Facebook and the like. Things like this that has real impact is for better or worse pretty quickly suppressed on most platforms. If flat earthers started setting tankers on fire or something they'd probably get the same treatment.
New Zealand banned Huawei so probably not them although, as recently as Nov 2019, the second-largest NZ operator Spark was intending to use a mix of Nokia, Samsung, Cisco, Ericsson and Huawei equipment.
Let me tell you why this is dangerous. QAnon evolved from an earlier movement, the spiritual warfare cult. My Father's family was all very deeply entrenched in this movement and while QAnon may be a new movement the spiritual warfare cult has been around a long time and rears its ugly head in many ways. While I was growing up the spiritual warfare cult was being expressed as the satanic daycare abuse scandals and the satanic abuse panics for the mid-80's and 90's. After my mother ran away with me from my father for being a physically abusive dick his entire side of the family came together to attempt to regain custody from my mother by saying that she was a satan worshiper. The case dragged on through the courts for years, I was sent to a church shrink that basically brainwashed me into saying whatever they wanted me to in front of a camera and my grandparents and father ultimately won the custody battle. It took years for me to realize what had happened to me. Needless to say, it ruined my life, my mothers life, my brother's, and my step father's. I have extreme trust issues with romantic partner's to this day.
I first heard about QAnon when I heard about the Cosmos Pizzeria accusations of hosting a basement full of children that were being "sacrificed to satan" and then canabalistically eaten by democrat elites in DC. Don't think that's harmless well what about the guy that shot up the place in an attempt to free those children from the nonexistent basement. Seems pretty dangerous to me.
I think you might because of socio-economic context under-estimate the scale and danger of this. There are government officials, members of the military including special forces, and more, that openly signal their belief in the QAnon conspiracy. Besides, the QAnon conspiracy taunts its followers towards dangerous political behaviours.
"q anon is a conspiracy theory incubator it's not like the other conspiracy theories out there it's not like pizzagate alone it's not like the epstein stuff alone it's an incubator for all these conspiracies so they all feed off of each other so even if you try to knock down one there's others to hold it up if you look at the vast amount of anti-vaxxers who just recently got into q anon around march and april of this year it's like a whole separate movement that was gigantic and huge and dangerous in its own right
basically combined with q anon to form something even more dangerous and you're going to see it with more of these separate conspiracy theory movements down the line and that's really what makes q anon so honestly horrific i mean you have conspiracy theorists who don't even they're not even on the same page percentage of q9 people believe uh uh rapper kennedy jfk is still alive or whatever and then another percentage thinks that's bullshit but it doesn't matter because they all come together for the prime reason that hell this is all stuff that's going to help trump and we believe in the main thing that all these different forces are coming together to stop trump but he's going to take them all down the"
Update: Trump was directly asked if he supports QAnon conspiracies, and he refused to answer[1].
That's why it's dangerous. It has penetrated to the mainstream of the party in control of 2 out of 3 branches of US govt, as well as the entire military.
I feel like this is all meta-commentary: the more we talk about QAnon (or the other things you list), EVEN TO DEBUNK IT WITH FACTS, the more people believe it. That's too surprising to ignore but too meta to discuss directly. So people write articles about QAnon and leave it their readers to wonder (and read more articles and get them more ad revenue).
I see multiple posts a day related to QAnon conspiracy theories on FB. Much of it is just stupid, but it also includes anti-mask and anti-vax, which I think is very obviously more harmful right now than almost any other political topic.
From what I understand, the QAnon Conspiracy theory is dangerous partially due to the volume of believers in political offices or coming into political offices. It is not unlike how scientology can often be more dangerous than other cults because scientology consistently targets culturally significant people to join the cult.
I read through that whole list, and the only thing that involved any actual violence was a mafia killing, which it wasn't clear actually had anything to do with Q.
I don't know anything about this Q stuff (I don't even know what they believe), and I'm certainly not endorsing it, but your link does not support your claim.
The pizzagate shooting can be viewed as an early qanon consequence. Aspects of qanon are basically riffs on pizzagate, and the two factions have essentially merged.
QAnon believers are winning republican primaries and are likely to win a few house seats. I think the idea of a Flat Earth Caucus in the House of Representatives would also be troubling to people.
Media are endlessly debunking QAnon and PizzaGate, yet no media is investigating things like Epstein network (Mr Clinton traveled like 30 times in the famous island - he must really liked the beach).
I'm pretty sure I've heard plenty about the Epstein network from the mainstream media over the past couple of years. Are you really sure there's no media investigating it?
I literally heard about Clinton palling around with Epstein from the mainstream media. The media has never been shy about reporting anti-Clinton stories.
The media barely looks into the Epstein story details and actively omits large chunks of evidence, such as his and Maxwell's ties to Les Wexner or their ties to domestic/foreign intelligence. As Alexa Acosta said: “I was told Epstein ‘belonged to intelligence’ and to leave it alone.” There's so much evidence that he was linked to the CIA/Mossad and Epstein was even known to brag about it.
We now know that Harvey Weinstein, who is just a media exec, was able to kill stories for years about him sexual abusing actresses. Is is crazy to think that a intelligence agencies could kill stories about one of their honeypots?
When people lose faith in the people who are supposed to be telling the truth, they look for other things to fill the gap. The media is unreliable to say the least, government is compromised and corrupt, the academy is both self-serving and "woke." Why wouldn't alternative explanations for things seem appealing at this point?
Especially when those alternative explanations are exciting (Spies everywhere!) and simple ("Oh, so that's why!") instead of boring, vague, complex, and nuanced.
I believe there's also a fair bit of package-deals. If you believe in one thing, you trust people more who also believe in that thing ("they see the world as it really is"). If they also believe in something else, that's a strong vote for that other thing.
It is a controversial issue regarding identity and perception. You can't agree to disagree. One side believes pedophelia is being enabled, the other side believes brainwashing is deploying as a political weapon.
The topic abhors rationality. It's a wedge in political discourse, because it is seemingly immoral to take the middle ground.
"In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among [redacted], who have now demonstrated in the [redacted] movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority."
For discussion, I advance a hypothesis that's occurred to me: at least some of the same people are behind both QAnon and c19study.com. I don't have hard evidence of this, but in looking at the social graphs around the c19study Twitter accounts, I see significant QAnon representation (the account @LynnFynn3 shows prominently in the intersection of the two).
Like QAnon, the people behind c19study are very careful to hide their true identities. I find it plausible that they're marketing the same basic stuff to different audiences, c19 to people who fall for stuff that sounds like science that isn't.
Of course, there's another explanation for the overlap, that people who are susceptible to conspiracy theories promoted by anonymous instigators are likely to buy into both. This hypothesis is consistent with them being completely separate, just using similar tactics.
I have a pretty good idea who the coder is behind the c19 site. If you're a reporter who would find this useful, or somebody who is better than me at tracking this stuff down, feel free to get in touch. (Note: other people, including Brian Krebs, have had a crack at this)
Is this an online version of Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, in which a charismatic (though here anonymous) leader knows how to push the psychological buttons of a lot of disaffected people?
To be clear I think the allegations of wrongdoing are FAR more likely to be correct than the theory that someone in the government is actually doing something to stop it.
It's also notable though that some themes that Q covers, such as Trump being spied on, are showing progression with a significant milestone today with the guilty plea of Kevin Clinesmith.
So it raises a question of why the huge pushback and dedication of resources from the media, when, they could just be reporting on it instead of trying to discredit it. Sounds like whatever is going to happen is going to happen regardless so we'll all just wait and see.
"in the making"? No, in the now. It doesn't matter if half the people pushing all this are just bored teenagers in it for the lulz. Even if that's the case, they're feeding into the genuine delusional and often dangerous behavior of a few who seriously believe in it. They're also feeding enough garbage into public discussions that real content is obscured, much like jamming a radio signal with noise. Especially with an election coming up, QAnon is already a security threat.
As someone with a family member who is falling into this non-sense, I will tell you it is extremely dangerous.
We essentially have some teenager on 4chan trolling an entire audience of probably hundreds of thousands of individuals. They now believe Trump is our savior and the deep state wants to take him down. There are violent undertones to the entire conspiracy and I do worry they are going to turn into terrorists.
>We essentially have some teenager on 4chan trolling an entire audience of probably hundreds of thousands of individuals.
That's the most plausible explanation and I've explained it that way to several people already. Doesn't work though - you'll either be dismissed or discover later on that they've found a way of reconciling it with their already crackpot worldview.
It's funny, I remember seeing the original thread on 4chan for QAnon, not sure if I was actually on the site or just saw a screencap.
Anyways I thought it was kind of dumb and tolling, got a laugh and went on with my day. I think 2-3 days later I see QAnon being talked about on Fox News and CNN. My exact thought was "some guy in his basement must be thrilled that his shitpost on 4Chan landed on national TV".
It's crazy how people have fallen for it. Because if you read the actual conspiracy theory of QAnon it's batshit insane. The world order is being taken over by the Obama's and Democrats and the only guy that can save us is that dude that used to be on The Apprentice.
Like how do people not read that and think that the story is just too perfect to be true. Like seriously: Obamas are bad, Democrats and Hillary wants to take over the world. But WAIT WAIT!!! DONALD J TRUMP of all people is going to save you from the evil Democrats!
>Because if you read the actual conspiracy theory of QAnon it's batshit insane. The world order is being taken over by the Obama's and Democrats and the only guy that can save us is that dude that used to be on The Apprentice.
Minus the part where Donald Trump is the literal Messiah, most of QAnon's beliefs have been mainstream among the American right wing for years. The only real difference in that regard is the shifting of the Overton window, so what used to be the subject of fringe rants on AM talk radio is now more or less accepted in the mainstream.
One of the effects of mass media psychosis is feeling that what you're seeing is a simulation. Biden on TV looks like Biden, but isn't actually physical Biden himself - therefore clones.
This is the result of under funding education, and allowing the boundary between church and state to blur. Those with a religious fairy tale cause and effect understanding of reality, QAnon makes perfect sense. While anyone with a firm foundation in reality sees pure nonsense.
It's important to note that QAnon first appeared on 4chan, not a religious forum. I don't think religiosity is a good explanation for QAnon belief. Religiosity like church attendance is declining in America for instance.
Instead, think of the stereotypical 4chan user. Lonely, asocial, engaged in a meme subculture separate from the mainstream. It's this psychological social distance and lack of identification with the mainstream that is key. This personality type exists throughout American society. My claim is that these people take pure nonsense to heart because they have no firm foundation in reality. They are too plugged in.
It's not so dissimilar to the Tea Party movement in its early days. That was a fringe tax-revolt movement that relied heavily on misconceptions and ignorance about how progressive taxation works and who benefits from social spending; and it really took off when it gained assistance from private capital and public figures.
I think that whole misconception and ignorance of how it works thing was more of the astro turfing rebuttals to delegitimize the movement. In reality you didn’t need any understanding of the tax system to see that the taxes are too high and entitlements are out of control, many of them insolvent.
<tinfoil>
... which is largely KNO3. In the latest development in a conspiracy which has been running since the days of the Emperor Tiberius, it's been proven by five eyes that the crew of the MV Rhosus ordered a lot of takeout from Comet Ping Pong.
</tinfoil>
Throughline podcast had an episode on how the country was founded on conspiracy theories and believing in theories is seemingly fundamental to American life
This is a gross oversimplification, but America was founded by wealthy farmers who believed the conspiracy theories of the day that Great Britain wanted to ruin the colonies, when in reality they just wanted them to pay taxes for the expensive wars that happened there. A healthy distrust of all forms of government is basically required to be an American. It's their greatest attribute, but it's also damned the country in numerous ways.
I like Michael Moors theory of those Settlers coming to this big, strange country and being afraid of everything which then became a kind of fear culture.
I’ve seen quite a few people connect the rise of “main stream” conspiracy theories in the US to the demise of religion here. I suppose I could see that as a plausible explanation. But why is it that Europe seemed able to move on from religion without turning to conspiracies? Is the answer as simple as Europe reaching the secular “tipping point” before the age of social media?
I disagree, look at the origins of the Mormon religion and just their first 50 years of history - this stuff has been happening forever and it usually involves groups of people being killed/raped/tortured for being against it.
You might not agree that Black lives matter, but it's not a conspiracy theory. With BLM, people are opting in to a social movement rooted in observed police violence. QAnon is not tethered to reality in the slightest.
You can imagine someone arriving at a personal philosophy that aligns with BLM, independently and through their own introspection. No one is going to independently arrive at the philosophy of QAnon just by pondering the world, again because it has very little to do with reality.
It sounds like you agree they are not two sides of the same coin?
Some Black Power and Black Israelite proponents do seem to believe that a very literal, criminal conspiracy is involved in oppressing Blacks, going far beyond the mainstream characterization of "racism". To be sure, these views are not exactly widespread or mainstream in the BLM movement - but they're probably at least as common as belief in the Qanon story.
Well, the BLM movement's theory is that the U.S. government - the police especially - are secretly racist, don't believe black lives matter, and are conspiratorially targeting black people just for being black (in spite of mounting evidence to the contrary). That's not too far away from my understanding of the QAnon conspiracy theory that there's some "secret society" of bilderbergers or illuminati that are pulling the strings behind the scenes.
That's really not so different than many previous popular conspiracy theories.
Replace QAnon's pedophile elite with one of:
- The Catholic Church
- Free Masons
- Rosicrutians
- Illuminati
- Jewish Bankers
- Satanist Elites
- Lizard People
- The CIA
- UN Globalists w/ Agenda 21
- And so on...
What makes a conspiracy theory really _stick_ is when it confounds a _kernel of truth_. The more convincing and defensible that kernel of truth is, the easier it is to build conjecture upon.
Ie, the CIA probably isn't directing world affairs, but they do certainly engage in political actions to disrupt the course of nations, and so many extrapolate their influence to extents we don't have evidence for.
QAnon's kernel of truth is the incredibly alluring and defensible idea that politicians cannot be trusted and many are not working in our best interest. From there... The sky's the limit.
I saw that, but I'm not convinced that the breadth of scope is what's interesting. The other targets of interest I mentioned are also often "big tent" or "broad umbrella" conspiracies that pull in many others.
Ie, Lizard people come from the Hollow Earth and are conspiring with Planned Parenhood and UN Agenda 21 to depopulate the planet; this is a believed conspiracy you can find on conspiracy boards.
What makes QAnon different is that it's a movement that exists largely as a result of the sophistication of modern social networks and the ability of small groups of people to wield enormous platforms on them.
The Anti-Vax, Birther and Sandy Hook conspiracies were sort of the early progenitors of this medium: they took the conversations off the aged PHPbb boards and various sub-reddits and on to the social networks. QAnon is often _the same people_ simply continuing to talk with each other.
They've just been learning how to use the tools at their disposal, and have become proficient at it.
> retaining the central belief that a cabal of powerful elites control the world, using their power to covertly abuse children
They're going to need to be more precise about the Pizzagate conspiracy, because the above wording very closely describes the Jeffrey Epstein case, which has been proven to be true.
The article is worded such that it implies that the given scenario is a false conspiracy theory, while in fact the scenario did happen. Conflating the two scenarios both implicitly discredits the Epstein case and also makes no compelling argument that Pizzagate is false.
All misinformation is a risk and threat. But Qanon seems minor when compared to others that are perpetuated by major news organization and undermine democracy: Russia collusion conspiracy theory, fine people on both sides hoax (the belief that the President called neo-nazis fine people).
These have much more public and institutional support than QAnon.
These attempt at spinning the discussion is lame. Russia collusion is not a conspiracy, nor the fact that trump is a neonazi sympathizer. Like father like son.
I’m sure Trump’s love of neo-nazi imagery, slogans, ideas, policies, and people is just a coincidence, like the video he tweets of his supporters yelling ‘white power’. I’m sure it’s all a hoax, like his support of the very fine neo-nazis that killed heather heyer or the trump tower meeting with veselnitskya.
Okay, but why is this theory so different? There are lots and lots of conspiracy theories from every corner of the political sphere. Why is this one a real security threat?
There appears to be a not-insignificant number of people who believe these theories. And unlike flat-earthers, who aren't out to hurt anyone else, some of these people are motivated to take their dangerously misguided ideas of justice into their own hands.
From the abstract of the article, literally the first paragraph:
Abstract: The QAnon conspiracy theory, which emerged in 2017, has
quickly risen to prominence in the United States. A survey of cases
of individuals who have allegedly or apparently been radicalized to
criminal acts with a nexus to violence by QAnon, including one case
that saw a guilty plea on a terrorism charge, makes clear that QAnon
represents a public security threat with the potential in the future
to become a more impactful domestic terror threat.
Yes, but that doesn't explain why it's different from other conspiracy theories. Some people have told me with a straight face that they believe the CIA is hiding something funny in vaccines and so they won't take a COVID-19 shot. Others prattle on and on about the Jews. Some use events long ago (slavery, war, etc) as a justification for vandalism, theft and violence today.
I understand how QAnon is driving some people nuts, but there are lots of theories that are driving people nuts. Many crimes are justified by different theories.
I was thinking about just this the other day -- why and how is QAnon a different sort of conspiracy theory?
One thought that occurred to me is that it is not a post-hoc theory to explain events in the past, like for example, 9/11 trutherism, the Kennedy assassination, COINTELPRO abuses, or Roswell. Those are "classical" conspiracy theories, and they often touch on shady machinations of government and extra-governmental sources of power, but they focus on a major fact, event, or sequence of them in the past.
QAnon is predictive. It is not accurately predictive at all, but it is fundamentally present-and-future-oriented. People buying into it believe that they are in the midst of a vast conspiracy now, and expect things to transpire in the future based on that version of reality.
That could make adherents act differently today and tomorrow from how they would otherwise, expecting certain rewards later or to be regarded in a particular light "when the truth comes out", instead of merely feeling differently about actors from the past and believing they have uncovered some past truth.
Another aspect that I think plays a key role is the wink and nod support from those with power who know it helps maintain their grip on a certain segment of their voter base. The tacit support given by seriously empowered agents in our world is stunning and upsetting, but rarely if ever crosses a line to where they've really committed themselves.
Then, there's the crowd-driven nature of it. It's like someone harnessed the concept of "anonymous" from a few years ago and deftly weaponized it for a specific political purpose. Whatever is said by Q may not have been said by Q. It may have been said to throw someone off of the trail. Anyone could claim to be speaking as Q. No one knows where legitimacy flows from. It's a headless thing, but it can't stop talking -- who knows what it might say? Who might use it to speak?
It has clearly already radicalized a large number of people into rejecting many normal beliefs -- how far could it direct their actions at large, or at least those of individuals?
It is a seriously great con. But these aspects -- future-orientedness, tacit legitimization, and potentially zero control -- make it a seriously scary thing to have built into the political landscape of today's society.
Religious, like having a theology or something more consistent with a civic religion where people display certain convictions they actually do not subscribe to in order to show membership in a specific group?
These people see a powerful satanic child raping cabal of power that run things from the shadows. Their champion is Donald Trump, if he were to lose this election it's not a reach to see an uptick in these sorts of attacks. Because, honestly, if this conspiracy were true, the only moral thing to do would be to oppose it.
Urban legends about a "powerful satanic child raping cabal of power that run things from the shadows" date back to the 1980s at least. Some of the underlying tropes are centuries old or even more - for instance, there's plenty of historical, blatantly biased propaganda about Roman emperors portraying them as vicious, crazy sex predators. So what's new about Pizza and Q exactly?
I believe it was wikileaks that revealed the term "spirit cooking" along with some vague references to "having kids ready in a hottub" for the Chairman of the DNC that started pizzagate. That happened in Oct 2016.
On Thu, Oct 8, 2015 at 9:26 AM, Tamera Luzzatto <tluzzatto@pewtrusts.org> wrote:
With enormous gratitude to Advance Man Extraordinaire Haber, I am popping up again to share our excitement about the Reprise of Our Gang’s visit to the farm in Lovettsville. And I thought I’d share a couple more notes:
We plan to heat the pool, so a swim is a possibility. Bonnie will be Uber Service to transport Ruby, Emerson, and Maeve Luzzatto (11, 9, and almost 7) so you’ll have some further entertainment, and they will be in that pool for sure. And with the forecast showing prospects of some sun, and a cooler temp of lower 60s, I suggest you bring sweaters of whatever attire will enable us to use our outdoor table with a pergola overhead so we dine al fresco (and ideally not al-CHILLo).
I am ccing Trudy to repeat the invite, and sending pining wishes-you-could-come to Rima, John P, and Laurie & Chris.
Con amore, Mrs. Farmer L
This theory scares the heck out of people who currently control media and TV because it is very well structured
it asks people to go to (in a weird sort of way) first principles and start from there
*
Why is bitcoin so scary? Because it completely removes CENTRAL CONTROL
even more so - it removes the need to TRUST a central bank
*
QAnon is similar. If you read the precepts of it, it is written by someone who believes that the entire current mindset is INCULCATED and INDOCTRINATED by people through brainwashing in high school and college
Which is an especially effective way to position yourself because then people have to question
ARe my beliefs based on FIRST PRINCIPLES i.e.
If I start with a blank slate and build on that using non-disputable facts
would it lead to what the mass media is saying?
And then they see - OK, Mass Media is lying
Now, what is the truth
at this point it doesn't even amtter if QAnon is the truth or not
The victory is already won
one brainwashed person suddenly recognizes they are brainwashed
Similar example of practices: https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2020/07/ghostwr...
The above relies on a fair bit of identity building as well, so Q's source/breeding in more anon platforms helps all the better. Intense stuff.