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"The Storm" is post-Q. Pizzagate was pre-Q.
Last edited Thu Jan 7, 2021, 10:04 PM - Edit history (1)
Background on Pizzagate starts with Edgar Welch. But that stupid was then. Gone. Over with.But not so fast.
Back in August, while we were suffering and dying (still are), Angela Stanton-King—the Republican candidate vying for John Lewis’ old seat in Georgia, who has promoted the QAnon conspiracy multiple times—tweeted in all caps: “THE STORM IS HERE,” a popular QAnon rallying cry, appearing to indicate she felt the president retweeting her was a sign that QAnon’s right-wing conspiracy theory had been validated.
The “storm” that Stanton-King referred to in her tweet refers to the moment “Q” followers believe the deep state will be arrested by Trump.
A new conspiracy theory called “The Storm” has slowly but surely become a top contender for the ever-coveted title of the most upsetting community online. It’s the sort of place where neo-Nazis and people who believe women shouldn’t have basic human rights used to meet before we started verifying them on Twitter and electing them to public office. As of late, it’s expanded its ranks to include fringe members of all shapes and sizes.
According to Q, Trump was never really involved with Russia, and isn’t actually under investigation by Mueller & Co. On the contrary, Q insists that it’s actually Clinton and Obama who were corrupted by Putin (and are now actually under investigation by Mueller) because they’re obviously just evil, money-hungry globalists who’ll do anything for the highest bidder. (Oh, yeah, and they’re also apparently into raping and killing children, though the crowd is split over whether this is because they’re satanists or just part of some weird blackmail scheme involving the CIA.)
Q also claims that Trump, the genius that he is, figured all of this out way back when he was just a measly presidential candidate, and has been pretending to love Putin and/or be involved with Russia ever since as a way to force a third party to investigate these horrors — without drawing the attention of those evil Dems-who-must-not-be-named, of course — because he’s just that selfless of a leader...
Sure, in the wake of Pizzagate’s brief encounter with reality, a lot of changes were made: Reddit shut down the conspiracy’s designated sub, Twitter suspended some of the movement’s most vocal supporters, and the whole thing was debunked time and time again by the press. But it’s more evident now than ever that this was merely a Band-Aid, not a cure.
And now, here we are a year later with the same thing. Sure, it’s a bit bigger and a whole lot less focused, but at its core, it’s the same.
What is there even left to try? We know that stopping the conversation doesn’t work. Neither do the facts.
How can we even begin to argue with hundreds of thousands of people who choose to believe that a top government agent is speaking to them through 4chan, that Trump has been playing a game of 4-D mind chess this whole time, and that the Las Vegas massacre was an inside job? Is the next Edgar Welch already out there, scrolling through the Calm Before the Storm thread, and if so, is it even possible to stop him?
According to Q, Trump was never really involved with Russia, and isn’t actually under investigation by Mueller & Co. On the contrary, Q insists that it’s actually Clinton and Obama who were corrupted by Putin (and are now actually under investigation by Mueller) because they’re obviously just evil, money-hungry globalists who’ll do anything for the highest bidder. (Oh, yeah, and they’re also apparently into raping and killing children, though the crowd is split over whether this is because they’re satanists or just part of some weird blackmail scheme involving the CIA.)
Q also claims that Trump, the genius that he is, figured all of this out way back when he was just a measly presidential candidate, and has been pretending to love Putin and/or be involved with Russia ever since as a way to force a third party to investigate these horrors — without drawing the attention of those evil Dems-who-must-not-be-named, of course — because he’s just that selfless of a leader...
Sure, in the wake of Pizzagate’s brief encounter with reality, a lot of changes were made: Reddit shut down the conspiracy’s designated sub, Twitter suspended some of the movement’s most vocal supporters, and the whole thing was debunked time and time again by the press. But it’s more evident now than ever that this was merely a Band-Aid, not a cure.
And now, here we are a year later with the same thing. Sure, it’s a bit bigger and a whole lot less focused, but at its core, it’s the same.
What is there even left to try? We know that stopping the conversation doesn’t work. Neither do the facts.
How can we even begin to argue with hundreds of thousands of people who choose to believe that a top government agent is speaking to them through 4chan, that Trump has been playing a game of 4-D mind chess this whole time, and that the Las Vegas massacre was an inside job? Is the next Edgar Welch already out there, scrolling through the Calm Before the Storm thread, and if so, is it even possible to stop him?
https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2017/12/qanon-4chan-the-storm-conspiracy-explained.html
There are intellectualists, theorists who examine these ongoings as some "natural" weirdness written into the DNA of America. American conflicts as "cycles." Like the founder of Stratfor.
Q seems to circle the drain of Americans' need for knowledge superior to those who rule them. Politicians like Hawley, Brooks, Trump and sons, and Giuliani are right there to keep them circling into a mental whirlpool that wants to sweep the rest of us away.
Crowdsourced answers
The essence of QAnon lies in its attempts to delineate and explain evil. It’s about theodicy, not secular evidence. QAnon offers its adherents comfort in an uncertain — and unprecedented — age as the movement crowdsources answers to the inexplicable.
QAnon becomes the master narrative capable of simply explaining various complex events. The result is a worldview characterized by a sharp distinction between the realms of good and evil that is non-falsifiable.
No matter how much evidence journalists, academics and civil society offer as a counter to the claims promoted by the movement, belief in QAnon as the source of truth is a matter of faith — specifically in their faith in Trump and “Q,” the anonymous person who began the movement in 2017 by posting a series of wild theories about the Deep State.
Trump validated theories
The year 2020 was also Trump finally gave QAnon what it always wanted: respect. As Travis View, a conspiracy theory researcher and host of the QAnon Anonymous podcast recently wrote: “Over the past few months …Trump has recognized the QAnon community in a way its followers could have only fantasized about when I began tracking the movement’s growth over two years ago.”
Trump, lawyers Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, and QAnon “rising star” Ron Watkins have all been actively inflaming QAnon apocalyptic and anti-establishment desires by promoting voter fraud conspiracy theories.
Doubts about the validity of the election have been circulating in far-right as well as QAnon circles. Last October, I wrote that if there were delays or other complications in the final result of the presidential contest, it would likely feed into a pre-existing belief in the invalidity of the election — and foster a chaotic environment that could lead to violence.
The essence of QAnon lies in its attempts to delineate and explain evil. It’s about theodicy, not secular evidence. QAnon offers its adherents comfort in an uncertain — and unprecedented — age as the movement crowdsources answers to the inexplicable.
QAnon becomes the master narrative capable of simply explaining various complex events. The result is a worldview characterized by a sharp distinction between the realms of good and evil that is non-falsifiable.
No matter how much evidence journalists, academics and civil society offer as a counter to the claims promoted by the movement, belief in QAnon as the source of truth is a matter of faith — specifically in their faith in Trump and “Q,” the anonymous person who began the movement in 2017 by posting a series of wild theories about the Deep State.
Trump validated theories
The year 2020 was also Trump finally gave QAnon what it always wanted: respect. As Travis View, a conspiracy theory researcher and host of the QAnon Anonymous podcast recently wrote: “Over the past few months …Trump has recognized the QAnon community in a way its followers could have only fantasized about when I began tracking the movement’s growth over two years ago.”
Trump, lawyers Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, and QAnon “rising star” Ron Watkins have all been actively inflaming QAnon apocalyptic and anti-establishment desires by promoting voter fraud conspiracy theories.
Doubts about the validity of the election have been circulating in far-right as well as QAnon circles. Last October, I wrote that if there were delays or other complications in the final result of the presidential contest, it would likely feed into a pre-existing belief in the invalidity of the election — and foster a chaotic environment that could lead to violence.
https://theconversation.com/qanon-and-the-storm-of-the-u-s-capitol-the-offline-effect-of-online-conspiracy-theories-152815
Feeling the wildness of uncertainty? Feeling as if things are out of control?
Good. Then you are closer to understanding and feeling the mentality of the movement turned seditious mob of January 6.
Feeling as if a political brand might even become a corporate monopoly that outlasts human lives? Good. Then you might also see how branding corporatists can profit from a demolished democracy.
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I've got a daughter in not quite the same zone as you, but I have experienced the loss of level-headed authority with mine, too.
This has been laid out by the Q thought leaders, Trump and his people, and corporatists, whether it's about Hillary Clinton or COVID.
It's this: We don't have to prove anything about the truth; we only have to make others believe.
"The communists burned down the Reichstad," "Truth is not truth," "Alt-facts," "It is what it is," “Nothing will stop us…. they can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours….dark to light.”
I do think there are many realities in the universe. But for our way of life under rule of law and science and systematic study of logic, we know that our reality has worked better than the new iteration of neonazi fantasies. This is spreading. We will have to stop it in the time ahead of us, or lose our way of life.
And seriously, climate and the biosphere don't care about our ideologies and politics, and we will be fighting through all that while the world starts to burn.
Media are slowly sorting this out tonight. I can hear Hayes and Maddow really framing the security issues, and why the capitol under Biden will be facing other versions of what we saw yesterday.
We're getting there. And we'll win.
When we win, the stormers get to live. When the stormers win, we don't get to live. 