The Q

[_Maksutov]

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/mor ... 9295cefa4d

On Tuesday evening, the dark recesses of the Internet lit up with talk of politics.

“Tampa rally, live coverage,” wrote “Dan,” posting a link to President Trump’s Tampa speech in a thread on 8chan, an anonymous image board also known as Infinitechan or Infinitychan, which might be best described as the unglued twin of better-known 4chan, a message board already untethered from reality.

The thread invited “requests to Q,” an anonymous user claiming to be a government agent with top security clearance, waging war against the so-called deep state in service to the 45th president. “Q” feeds disciples, or “bakers,” scraps of intelligence, or “bread crumbs,” that they scramble to bake into an understanding of the “storm” — the community’s term, drawn from Trump’s cryptic reference last year to “the calm before the storm” — for the president’s final conquest over elites, globalists and deep-state saboteurs.

What Tuesday’s rally in Tampa made apparent is that devotees of these falsehoods — some of which are specific to faith in the president, others garden-variety nonsense with racist and anti-Semitic undertones — don’t just exist in the far reaches of the Web.

Believers in “QAnon,” as the conspiracy theory is known, were front and center at the Florida State Fairgrounds Expo Hall, where Trump came to stump for Republican candidates. As the president spoke, a sign rose from the audience. “We are Q,” it read. Another poster displayed text arranged in a “Q” pattern: “Where we go one we go all.”

[_DarkHelmet]

I did some googling to try to find out exactly what they believe. I'm still not sure. Something about protecting Trump from the Deep State, and exposing pedophiles. Trump's word salad style of speaking makes him a perfect prophet because they can make his cryptic messages mean anything.

[_DarkHelmet]

I saw a post from a guy who has this group figured out. The people holding up "Q" signs are simply Trump supporters trying to spell "IQ".

[_Jersey Girl]

I saw a post from a guy who has this group figured out. The people holding up "Q" signs are simply Trump supporters trying to spell "IQ".

[_Nomomo]

Q is a hoaxer. He's laughing his ass off at the ridiculous moron Trump supporters he has fooled with his nonsense. Trumpster morons eat it up.

[_subgenius]

Q is a hoaxer. He's laughing his ass off at the ridiculous moron Trump supporters he has fooled with his nonsense. Trumpster morons eat it up.

Q decides to anonymously mock Trump supporters by inspiring them to increase their numbers and to motivate them to vote?...and this was for Q's amusement?

[_DarkHelmet]

Q is a hoaxer. He's laughing his ass off at the ridiculous moron Trump supporters he has fooled with his nonsense. Trumpster morons eat it up.

Q decides to anonymously mock Trump supporters by inspiring them to increase their numbers and to motivate them to vote?...and this was for Q's amusement?

Can you explain to us, in plain English, what this conspiracy theory is all about and why we should believe it? From what I've been able to figure out, it's something about the deep state and Tom Hanks is a pedophile.

[_Chap]

One account begins as follows:

#QAnon, the scarily popular pro-Trump conspiracy theory, explained

The Russia investigation is a sham. It’s actually a cover story for special counsel Robert Mueller and Donald Trump working together to expose thousands of pedophiles hidden in plain sight — including Hillary Clinton (and Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama), who will soon be under arrest. (Or perhaps already have been and are on their way to Guantanamo Bay.)

The GOP lost the Alabama special election for Jeff Sessions’s Senate seat on purpose — a plan devised years ago to reveal the use of fraudulent voting machines and, ultimately, take down none other than George Soros. Or the Rothschilds. Or the Illuminati.

And there’s no White House chaos at all; in fact, despite legal scandals and special counsel investigations and bile-laden tweets, everything, absolutely everything, is going just as Donald Trump intended it.

Welcome to QAnon, sometimes referred to as “the Storm.” It’s a conspiracy theory that’s swept social media and is starting to break into the mainstream, with Trump rally attendees in Florida on July 31 holding signs and wearing T-shirts emblazoned with “We are Q” and the conspiracy theory’s main catchphrase, “Where we go one, we go all.”


Roseanne Barr, formerly the star of the No. 1 show on network television, is just one of Q’s biggest supporters. And the conspiracy theory is being pushed by some of the far right’s biggest voices, including Alex Jones and Sean Hannity. Still others are winking and nodding at it, retweeting #QAnon references while pretending to be none the wiser.

And it has one overarching — and, if you’re a Trump supporter, hopeful — message: Donald Trump is in complete control. Of everything.

Conspiracy theories create order out of chaos, attempting to make sense of events that don’t make sense. And researchers have found that fact-based arguments against them only serve to reinforce them in the minds of believers. That’s what makes QAnon or Sandy Hook trutherism or any other conspiracy theory so difficult to combat: Because conspiracy theories aren’t based on facts, conspiracy theorists aren’t receptive to them either.

So if the first year and a half of the Trump administration has been enmeshed in confusion and chaos, QAnon is the conspiratorial response: Everything is fine. As a popular saying among Q adherents proclaims, believers must only “trust the plan.”

See?

Trump is not just a weird guy who tweets whatever comes into his head.

It's all a wonderful genius-created plan!

[_DarkHelmet]

One account begins as follows:

#QAnon, the scarily popular pro-Trump conspiracy theory, explained

The Russia investigation is a sham. It’s actually a cover story for special counsel Robert Mueller and Donald Trump working together to expose thousands of pedophiles hidden in plain sight — including Hillary Clinton (and Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama), who will soon be under arrest. (Or perhaps already have been and are on their way to Guantanamo Bay.)

The GOP lost the Alabama special election for Jeff Sessions’s Senate seat on purpose — a plan devised years ago to reveal the use of fraudulent voting machines and, ultimately, take down none other than George Soros. Or the Rothschilds. Or the Illuminati.

And there’s no White House chaos at all; in fact, despite legal scandals and special counsel investigations and bile-laden tweets, everything, absolutely everything, is going just as Donald Trump intended it.

See?

Trump is not just a weird guy who tweets whatever comes into his head.

It's all a wonderful genius-created plan!

What makes this such a great conspiracy theory is none of the claims in those first 3 paragraphs can be tested. You just have to believe.

[_Some Schmo]

If you believe anything Drumpf says, you'll believe anything, so long as it doesn't resemble reality.

Drumpf would never have won the election if average human intelligence was just a little higher, but most humans are damned dumb, and we all suffer at the hands of the lowest common denominator.