April 2020: So, have you heard of QAnon, the conspiracy theory to trump all conspiracy theories, pun intended? Their basic premise is that leftists/libs/the Deep State are all out to get Trump who is fighting a huge, complex battle of Good vs. Evil, aided by “Q,” a James-Bond-like government operative who, for some reason, leaves coded messages, or “bread-crumbs” for his followers, mostly on 4chan and, later, on 8chan, those sewers of the Internet, and now on their Russian-hosted 8kun site.
This toxic waste dump of a “theory” has been around since October 2017; it has features of a puzzle game as the online community, QAnon, feverishly attempt to decode Q’s mysterious “drops,” salivating over the imminent capture and execution of liberals like Hillary Clinton and Tom Hanks. This never actually happens. And then they develop a new “theory.” They are nuts.
Gentle reader, a trigger warning before we give you an example of Q-theory. QAnon may sound like harmless recreation for over-imaginative shut-ins: a combined decoder-game and spy-thriller-fan-fic. But their beliefs, and their influence, is pretty dark. From an email circulated last year:
“An ‘extreme snuff film’ featuring Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin raping and mutilating a prepubescent girl is circulating on the dark web, according to sources familiar with the material. In the video, they take a little girl and they fillet her face, according to reports, and then they take turns wearing the little girl’s face like a mask. It is believed they were terrorizing the young girl, deliberately causing the child’s body to release Adrenochrome into her bloodstream before bleeding her out and drinking the blood during a Satanic ritual sacrifice.”
It’s the ritual-child-abuse satanic-panic of the eighties combined with a crazed loathing of mildly liberal politicians. Also hatred of Hollywood do-gooders and, of course, government professionals because they are the “Deep State.”
Why concern oneself with these marginal wack-a-loons? Because they have more influence with the president than you do; they attend his rallies and are among his most fervent supporters—
What Happens When QAnon Seeps From the Web to the Offline World
It’s not that we haven’t had Q-levels of crazy before in American political history — it was pretty bad in Andrew Jackson’s time. But historical precedence doesn’t make it okay to have a president, a major political party, and the country’s leading news organization (Fox) referencing, or at least not rejecting, an organization that believes the opposition party is made up of pedophile-cannibals and their dupes. QAnon has wormed its way into the councils of the great because QAnon Is Just the Standard Trump Train Now
In the Age of Trump — the apotheosis of the grifter, the shyster, the conman — any and all lies, half-truths, hints and innuendos are welcome and permissible as long as it harms his enemies and “owns the libs.” Any slander is grist for Trump’s Twitter rumor-mill, no matter how grotesquely surreal, and his base knows it. In the Fox echo chamber, Jesse Waters aimed to be neutral:
Fox News host Jesse Watters interviews political-science professor about QAnon
Watters thinks QAnon is funny, or that there are “very fine people on both sides,” including his good friend who first brought Q to his attention. In general right-wing media are fine with the fact that the barrier between the White House and QAnon is entirely porous and that Trump himself retweets QAnon posts. It seems the QAnon lunatics aren’t quite running the asylum yet but they’ve certainly got a seat on the Board.
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Postscript: So that you, gentle reader, will be fully au courant, let me just mention that the QAnon community is currently all in a lather about the Mole Children.
They believe that COVID-19 is a plot to keep everyone inside while the
U.S. military rescues thousands of children from underground tunnels
where they were bred as sex slaves and to have their adrenal glands
harvested so “elites” can get high on their adrenochrome. Yep.
Post-postscript: Now they have a movie! According to Right-Wing Watch millions of people have viewed “an homage to the founding tenets of the ‘Pizzagate’ and QAnon conspiracy theories” called “Out of Shadows” on YouTube.
Post-post-postscript, July 12 2020: And now they’ve decided that Wayfair, the online home furnishings outlet, is selling child sex slaves sealed up in metal cabinets. Because idiot marketers name products after people (perhaps using this automatic biz-name generator) and also because Wayfair’s crappy algorithm prices everything at $9,999.99 when first posted. Snopes fact-check here, if you needed one, which you really shouldn’t, good lord.
Post-post-post-postscript, August 22 2020: QAnon nutters = the gift that keeps on giving. Today they are planning nationwide rallies to #savethechildren. The Boston rally is happening at Faneuil Hall and is mentioned in my fave local street-news site Universal Hub.
