The Batshit Insane QAnon Conspiracy Theory

[Pancho 44333]

 

[BrickHorn 18166]

4 minutes ago, Pancho said:

 

At least her intentions were good.

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

The way the President answered the reporter's question combined with the mental health issues of some of the Q faithful is not good, not good. I don't know if there are enough people monitoring this type of extremism. They really are domestic terrorists.

[Kyrie Eleison 9312]

 

God i hope i get this case...

[Lurch 5919]

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/20/904237192/journalist-enters-the-world-of-qanon-it-s-almost-like-a-bad-spy-novel?ft=nprml&f=

 

Good listen on NPR from the Atlantic journo who has done the most digging.

 

How come no one can figure out who this person is? Seems like if the FBI really wanted to they could track them down.

 

It’s been several people over time. It’s currently Jim Watkins.

[High Plains Drifter 10969]

7 hours ago, Pancho said:

 

 

Waco, the Florida of Texas.

 

 

[Bama Chick 28596]

Wherein Jeb! attempts to “both sides” the embracing of QAnon by Trump and the GOP.

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

Have any of the old-time posters succumbed yet? Who will be the first Q-Nut among us? 

(Maybe it's already happened -- haven't been on here much the last few weeks.)

[SydneyCarton 47809]

1 hour ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Have any of the old-time posters succumbed yet? Who will be the first Q-Nut among us? 

(Maybe it's already happened -- haven't been on here much the last few weeks.)

I fucking guarantee you that based in statistics alone there are probably 4-5 surly posters with well known handles that are QAnon dipshits. 

[HenryJames 65865]

Oh, they’re here. Just go look at the old pedophile pizza thread on Shaggy.

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

1 hour ago, SydneyCarton said:

I fucking guarantee you that based in statistics alone there are probably 4-5 surly posters with well known handles that are QAnon dipshits. 

Oh for sure...I just wonder which of those will be the first to snap... And once that trailblazer goes we will have a little contingent on our hands...WWG1WGA and shit. 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

17 minutes ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Oh for sure...I just wonder which of those will be the first to snap... And once that trailblazer goes we will have a little contingent on our hands...WWG1WGA and shit. 

Not to mention the little Q oath a bunch took a month ago and the probable email list they all subscribe to.
I mean if they were being used for grifting it’s bad  enough. If they were the butt of a Piltdown man War of the Worlds Area 51 nationwide phenomena wherein a pimply faced Orson Wells Junior types on 1/1/21: oh hey,  joke is over. New year and I’ve got things to do I could perhaps say what was that again?

But this is a mobilizing of the slightly mentally unhinged and the folks behind it appear to be searching for the one match to trigger the fire. The Protocols tweet by the automated FBI file may have been random  but with so few people educated or trusting people when they say it is a hoax (uh huh) it is going to be bad and that is the intent. All in some misguided form of patriotism.
 

 

 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13391]

A friends wife, who appears to be on the outskirts of Q, was whining yesterday about a Facebook group regarding  “Anti-child trafficking” was closed down by Facebook. I assume it was more of a Q group than a real advocacy group.

she has other posts where other friends (not mine) get very Q heavy in their discussion.

you can tell from the Facebook discussion, intelligence is lacking in some of these people. I know.  Shocking.

[bolverk 29355]

That NYTimes article is really sobering and demonstrates how it's working its way into the mainstream of the GOP - even to the extent that the Republican Party of Texas is borrowing their language in its new slogan. And, just as the Republicans thought they could control Trump, they're going to find that they're going to get taken over by this new batch of nuts and grifters.

The Republican Embrace of QAnon Goes Far Beyond Trump
As the president all but endorses the internet-driven conspiracy theory, it is shifting from the fringes of the internet to become an offline political movement.

Late last month, as the Texas Republican Party was shifting into campaign mode, it unveiled a new slogan, lifting a rallying cry straight from a once-unthinkable source: the internet-driven conspiracy theory known as QAnon.

The new catchphrase, “We Are the Storm,” is an unsubtle cue to a group that the F.B.I. has labeled a potential domestic terrorist threat. It is instantly recognizable among QAnon adherents, signaling what they claim is a coming conflagration between President Trump and what they allege, falsely, is a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile Democrats who seek to dominate America and the world.

The slogan can be found all over social media posts by QAnon followers, and now, too, in emails from the Texas Republican Party and on the T-shirts, hats and sweatshirts that it sells. It has even worked its way into the party’s text message system — a recent email from the party urged readers to “Text STORM2020” for updates.

The Texas Republicans are an unusually visible example of the Republican Party’s dalliance with QAnon, but they are hardly unique. A small but growing number of Republicans — including a heavily favored Republican congressional candidate in Georgia — are donning the QAnon mantle, ushering its adherents in from the troll-infested fringes of the internet and potentially transforming the wild conspiracy theory into an offline political movement, with supporters running for Congress and flexing their political muscle at the state and local levels.

Chief among the party’s QAnon promoters is Mr. Trump himself. Since the theory first emerged three years ago, he has employed a wink-and-nod approach to the conspiracy theory, retweeting its followers but conspicuously ignoring questions about it. Yet with the election drawing ever closer and Mr. Trump’s failure to manage the Covid-19 pandemic harming his re-election prospects, the White House and some Trump allies appear to have taken to openly courting believers.

Spoiler

 

The president, during a White House news conference on Wednesday, described QAnon followers — some of whom have been charged with murder, domestic terrorism and planned kidnapping — as “people that love our country.”

The president has retweeted QAnon followers at least 201 times, according to an analysis by Media Matters. Some of his children have posted social media messages related to the conspiracy theory. A deputy White House chief of staff, Dan Scavino, who has for years combed corners of the internet for memes that the president could promote, has three times in the past year — in November 2019, May and June — posted ticking-clock memes that are used by QAnon believers to signify the coming showdown between the president and his purported enemies.

“We once had Republican leaders that would work to keep extremists from the levers of power. Now they embrace them and their crazy and dangerous ideas,” said Rudy Oeftering, a Texas Republican who formerly chaired the Texas Association of Business and remains one of the state party’s precinct captains.

“The lunatics,” he added, “are truly running the asylum.”

There is hardly universal support inside the party for QAnon. Many of its leaders in Congress and powerful donors are privately horrified at the spread of the movement’s themes. And while some Republican voters are well-versed in QAnon, a majority of them are unfamiliar with the particulars of the movement.

“QAnon is nuts — and real leaders call conspiracy theories conspiracy theories,” said Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, after the president appeared to endorse QAnon this week.

“If Democrats take the Senate,” he added, “This will be a big part of why they won.”

Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican, joined the fray on Thursday, calling QAnon “dangerous lunacy that should have no place in American politics.”

Other Republican elected officials who have tried to push back publicly against QAnon’s spread have found themselves under attack. This month, when Representative Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, posted a tweet that called QAnon a fabrication that has “no place in Congress,” a senior Trump campaign staff member immediately fired back at him, saying he should be focused on “conspiracy theories pushed by Democrats.”

Fearful of inviting similar blowback, few other elected Republicans have been willing to speak out publicly. Mostly, they avoid questions about it, demonstrating the thin line some officials are trying to walk between extreme elements among their base who adore Mr. Trump and the moderate voters they need to win over.

QAnon followers are increasingly taking on the trappings of a discrete political movement, though one with beliefs untethered from reality. There are more than a dozen Republicans running for Congress who have signaled varying degrees of interest in the movement. One candidate has attracted a campaign contribution from the Republican National Committee, and another has raised thousands of dollars from established conservative groups like the House Freedom Fund.

And now they are getting explicit support from the president. Asked during his Wednesday news conference about the QAnon belief that he is saving the world from a cult of pedophiles, Mr. Trump said he did not know much about the movement, before all but endorsing it: “Is that supposed to be a bad thing or good thing?” he said. “If I can help save the world from problems, I am willing to do it. I’m willing to put myself out there. And we are actually.”

The reaction among QAnon followers was swift and predictable — they were elated, and the president’s comments became instant grist of the QAnon meme-making mill.

The president, who in 2016 went on a radio show hosted by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, went on to suggest that the problems QAnon backers wanted him to solve were urban crime and the recent civil rights protests in Portland, Ore., and elsewhere, which the White House has sought to falsely portray as the work of radical leftists intent on undermining the very foundations of American society.

If only QAnon’s beliefs were that straightforward, benign or grounded in reality. The core tenet is that Mr. Trump, backed by the military, ran for office to save Americans from child-abusing devil-worshipers in the government and media. Backing the president’s enemies, the theory falsely claims, are prominent Democrats who extract hormones from children’s blood.

The theory spins off from there. In some versions, John F. Kennedy Jr., who died in a plane crash in 1999, is alive and hiding in rural Pennsylvania, biding his time until he re-emerges to back Mr. Trump’s re-election bid. Other iterations feature celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, Ellen DeGeneres and religious figures, including Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama. U.F.O.s sometime make appearances, as does the 9/11 “truther” movement and anti-vaccine beliefs.

The movement defies easy political labels — there is hardly a straight line connecting traditional, pre-Trump Republican ideas to pedophile Satanists — and its adherents include a smattering of Democrats and independents. But many of its themes play best among those on the fringes of the Republican Party, such as claims that Jews, and especially the financier George Soros, are controlling the political system and vaccines; assertions that the risk from the coronavirus is vastly overstated; or racist theories about former President Barack Obama.

And for all the theory’s disparate parts, what links them is the same kind of extreme anti-establishment bent that Mr. Trump rode to election in 2016, said Joseph Uscinski, a political science professor at the University of Miami who studies fringe beliefs.

“Trump and his surrogates haven’t created this, but they have certainly tried to activate it and use it to their advantage,” he added. “That’s why you have a lot of QAnon people popping up and mimicking Trump and his views, and running for office.”

More unusual is how QAnon adherents often portray Mr. Trump as a god-emperor figure who has been sending them coded messages of support. The QAnon slogan, “We Are the Storm,” grew out of a remark by Mr. Trump, who quipped during a 2017 photo op with generals, “You guys know what this represents? Maybe it’s the calm before the storm.”

The Texas Republicans adopted the slogan in late July after electing a new chairman, Allen West, a former congressman from Florida whose rapid political ascent during the rise of the Tea Party in 2010 was matched only by his fast fall out of Congress two years later. Though Mr. West had not previously indicated any support for QAnon, during his time in Congress he often framed issues as being part of a struggle to save the country, a theme that courses through the conspiracy theory.

Now, eight years later, under his leadership the state party appears intent on bringing the QAnon caucus into the fold in Texas. The new slogan was quickly picked up by local chapters of the state party, as well as some prominent Texas Republicans. Whether they believed it and knew where it came from, or simply saw a play for votes in an election year in which Democrats are expected to make gains in Texas, is an open question, though some disaffected Republicans in Texas said QAnon-inspired beliefs were spreading dangerously inside the party.

“There are several people in the party’s infrastructure whom I would not put it past to actually believe this nonsense,” said Elizabeth Bingham, a former vice chair of the Dallas County Republican Party. “They seem giddy with the idea that they can tell as many people as possible that the Democrats aren’t just opposed to the privatization of social security or soft on Syria — that they’re in favor of child sacrifices. That the Democrats are evil.”

The true believers, she said, were being urged on by opportunists who feared primary challenges and losing elected office. “I think that’s worse,” she added.

A recent congressional primary runoff in Georgia appeared to highlight the pull of QAnon beliefs among Republican voters. The winner was perhaps the most unabashed pro-QAnon candidate in the country, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who in 2017 called the conspiracy theory “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out.”

Her competitor, a neurosurgeon, was just as conservative and pro-Trump as Ms. Greene yet did not share her belief in QAnon, mocking it as an “embarrassment.” He was trounced, losing by nearly 16 points and clearing a path to Congress for Ms. Greene, who is a near lock to win a House seat representing the deeply conservative district.

Few other QAnon candidates are likely to win seats in Congress. But at least two managed to defeat non-QAnon-believing Republicans in competitive primaries: Lauren Boebert, a House candidate in Colorado who made approving comments about QAnon, defeated a five-term Republican incumbent in a primary in June, though she is likely to lose in  a race that polls show is tight. Jo Rae Perkins, a long-shot Republican Senate candidate in Oregon, declared in May, “I stand with Q and the team.” The next month, she posted a video in which she took what has become known as an oath for QAnon digital soldiers.

But far more than any congressional candidate, it is Mr. Trump and his campaign surrogates who are normalizing QAnon inside the Republican Party.

Language, images and ideas drawn from QAnon are now a regular feature of messages from the campaign. No voter, it seems, is too extreme to be ignored, as Eric Trump, the president’s son, demonstrated in June ahead of a rally in Tulsa, Okla.

On Instagram, he posted and then later deleted an image that featured an American flag emblazoned with black text that read, “Who’s ready for the Trump Rally tonight.” Behind the words, fainter but clearly visible, was a large letter “Q.”

And just in case the message was not clear enough, running along the bottom of the flag was a popular QAnon hashtag, #WWG1WGA, which stands for “Where We Go One, We Go All.” The post was later deleted.

 

 

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

4 minutes ago, bolverk said:

 

Definitely agree with you there. Tea Party>Freedom Caucus> QAnon. They tried the Freedom Caucus but it wasn't sticking so now they have grasped that this is their one best chance. Incredibly dangerous. I'm wanting to put a yard sign out, but am a little hesitant because it makes me a target in a largely ultra conservative community that I know has Q people and guns. Yes, they are that crazy I fear.

I watched that segment on John Oliver and I need to go back and rewatch it. They've talked about the  way the conspiracies feed a part of a person's needs, but I think there is a hormonal component to it, rather like gambling or other compulsions and I cannot recall if he had time to address that in his show.

[tx 3 putt 76128]

I’d be curious to hear from a surly poster why they believe in this ?

[Ted Lange 15988]

6 minutes ago, tx 3 putt said:

I’d be curious to hear from a surly poster why they believe in this ?

We’ve tried to bait them into replying before, the Qdorks here are too big of pussies to admit it. 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13391]

3 minutes ago, Ted Lange said:

We’ve tried to bait them into replying before, the Qdorks here are too big of pussies to admit it. 

My guess is that they also believe that hard core QAnon are nuts but that there is a little truth in what QAnon believes. Which is wrong.

[Gatorubet 30051]

I fucking guarantee you that based in statistics alone there are probably 4-5 surly posters with well known handles that are QAnon dipshits. 

I’m sure Swam is intelligent enough - and has enough critical thinking skills to ward that off in his head. Look at the body of his posts.

[Gatorubet 30051]

Willie was just a funny write in protest vote. Although I do still have my Willie For president 2016 shirt and wear it from time to time. Haven’t decided who I will write in this time but i am pretty sure it will not be an elderly white man with mild cognitive impairment. 

Your thinking reveals far greater cognitive impairment. A clear binary choice stumped you.

[Anastasis 23358]

Just now, Gatorubet said:

Your thinking reveals far greater cognitive impairment. A clear binary choice stumped you.

False dichotomy. 

[Nice Guy Eddie 13391]

I once did a write-in, protest vote.  I was stupid. look at the main candidates and decide which one is best for the country or even for you. saying neither is immature. 

[wildcat09 29184]

7 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Have any of the old-time posters succumbed yet? Who will be the first Q-Nut among us? 

(Maybe it's already happened -- haven't been on here much the last few weeks.)

The numbers guy who was real anti-vax seems like an obvious candidate. I don't remember if he made it over to Surly or not, though.

[wildcat09 29184]

I wrote in Lance Berkman in 2012, but at the time one of the choices wasn't a fascist with a growing death cult's fervent support.

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

34 minutes ago, wildcat09 said:

The numbers guy who was real anti-vax seems like an obvious candidate. I don't remember if he made it over to Surly or not, though.

 As I recall, Numbers bailed before the changeover. There one day, gone the next. He was on a fairly short list of posters who I really thought we might be hearing about on the news some day. We joke about that a lot...there's that "which of y'all is this" trope -- but Numbers was straight up psycho. TOR was another on that list. I was on extended hiatus for the Beduin era but it seems like he would fit, too. And then there was TxTow....

[Biff Tannen 45471]

3 hours ago, bolverk said:

signaling what they claim is a coming conflagration between President Trump and what they allege, falsely, is a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile Democrats who seek to dominate America and the world.

Glad they cleared that up. 

[High Plains Drifter 10969]

9 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

Have any of the old-time posters succumbed yet? Who will be the first Q-Nut among us? 

(Maybe it's already happened -- haven't been on here much the last few weeks.)

 

 

I think they all stick to the football board

 

[burntorangebongos 10681]

Ok, did a search on page one of that thread, Numbers, Dr Teeth, Dr BitchinPHD, Emeroid,Epi Quinn, Itsmedan seem to believe or are willing to, with MNlonghorn10 leaning in a bit due to some creepy art. There were 2 socks pushing it mostly, with some assists from DSA, drycreek and Cal88. Earlybird looks like a lean too. I couldnt make up my mind on Trousertrout and maninblack and i got too bored to keep reading. No wonder I did not CR back in the day. I did learn that bad teamate is an old fuck with kids in their 40s. I had a different take on him.

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

B_T has said before he is a Boomer and I figured it was true but it's the internet and I don't know you all in "real life" although some of you folks do know each other. You know how if you don't know someone sometimes you come up with an image? I've always pictured him as a cross between Jeff Bridges in Lebowski and that actor from Road House. Not Swayze but the one that gets killed after helping with the bad guys. I can never come up with that actor's name. B_T probably looks nothing like that, but that's just what I always picture when I read his posts. (yeah, I'm weird like that. I do it with books too).

It suddenly dawned on me that he might be insulted, and it isn't meant that way, so if you read this B_T, apologies in advance.

Edited August 21, 2020 by Mrs Whiggins
Edit

[wildcat09 29184]

2 hours ago, MaybeACoordinator said:

 As I recall, Numbers bailed before the changeover. There one day, gone the next. He was on a fairly short list of posters who I really thought we might be hearing about on the news some day. We joke about that a lot...there's that "which of y'all is this" trope -- but Numbers was straight up psycho. TOR was another on that list. I was on extended hiatus for the Beduin era but it seems like he would fit, too. And then there was TxTow....

Honestly, given how many posters TOS and Surly have had, it's a wonder there's not more of those types. I guess they disproportionately go to aggy.

[MaybeACoordinator 8349]

2 hours ago, burntorangebongos said:

Ok, did a search on page one of that thread, Numbers, Dr Teeth, Dr BitchinPHD, Emeroid,Epi Quinn, Itsmedan seem to believe or are willing to, with MNlonghorn10 leaning in a bit due to some creepy art. There were 2 socks pushing it mostly, with some assists from DSA, drycreek and Cal88. Earlybird looks like a lean too. I couldnt make up my mind on Trousertrout and maninblack and i got too bored to keep reading. No wonder I did not CR back in the day. I did learn that bad teamate is an old fuck with kids in their 40s. I had a different take on him.

No shit about Bad Teammate? Mind: blown. I thought he would be about the age of those kids. 

[Dr. Teeth 5813]

3 hours ago, burntorangebongos said:

Ok, did a search on page one of that thread, Numbers, Dr Teeth, Dr BitchinPHD, Emeroid,Epi Quinn, Itsmedan seem to believe or are willing to, with MNlonghorn10 leaning in a bit due to some creepy art. There were 2 socks pushing it mostly, with some assists from DSA, drycreek and Cal88. Earlybird looks like a lean too. I couldnt make up my mind on Trousertrout and maninblack and i got too bored to keep reading. No wonder I did not CR back in the day. I did learn that bad teamate is an old fuck with kids in their 40s. I had a different take on him.

Might want to do some more research.

[NameAlreadyInUse 5104]

Man I have to say, I'm super fucking disappointed that we moved from TOS and didn't tell Emeroid.  I would've been dunking on his ass daily in PM's about his lack of yelling about the deficit.  Would've also had a betting pool going for how long he'd wait after Trump is gone before he started yelling about it again.  My over/under would've been 5 days after election, and I would've taken the under and would expect it would be the under and blame already shifted to biden for Trump's deficit balloon.  That guy was a special piece of shit.

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

I forgot about him. I actually remember him even though I wasn't a member back on shaggy. That other poster, Swam4Texas, used to have long back and forths with people, too. I still see people refer to him on here but I'd forgotten about Emeryoid (didn't he use a 'y' in his handle somewhere?).

[burntorangebongos 10681]

Yes, I misspelled his handle. Sorry, Dr. Teeth, but I didn't go through the whole thread so that was what it appeared to be on page one. Interestingly, it was sock accounts that was pushing that hard, with one of the socks that just posted on that one thread alone. 

[Ted Lange 15988]

@Johnny Sack is def a closet Q enthusiast. 

Edited August 22, 2020 by Ted Lange

[DigglerontheHoof 21016]

4 hours ago, Ted Lange said:

@Johnny Sack is def a closet Q enthusiast. 

He might be in the closet, but it’s not about Q.  

[Johnny Sack 8397]

6 hours ago, Ted Lange said:

@Johnny Sack is def a closet Q enthusiast. 

Posting about me at 3 in the morning.  Yeah, you’re doing well in life. 

[elfenix 34164]

Lol

[Al Bundy's Napoleon Hand 13537]

On 8/21/2020 at 7:48 AM, bolverk said:

That NYTimes article is really sobering and demonstrates how it's working its way into the mainstream of the GOP - even to the extent that the Republican Party of Texas is borrowing their language in its new slogan. And, just as the Republicans thought they could control Trump, they're going to find that they're going to get taken over by this new batch of nuts and grifters.

The Republican Embrace of QAnon Goes Far Beyond Trump
As the president all but endorses the internet-driven conspiracy theory, it is shifting from the fringes of the internet to become an offline political movement.

Late last month, as the Texas Republican Party was shifting into campaign mode, it unveiled a new slogan, lifting a rallying cry straight from a once-unthinkable source: the internet-driven conspiracy theory known as QAnon.

The new catchphrase, “We Are the Storm,” is an unsubtle cue to a group that the F.B.I. has labeled a potential domestic terrorist threat. It is instantly recognizable among QAnon adherents, signaling what they claim is a coming conflagration between President Trump and what they allege, falsely, is a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile Democrats who seek to dominate America and the world.

The slogan can be found all over social media posts by QAnon followers, and now, too, in emails from the Texas Republican Party and on the T-shirts, hats and sweatshirts that it sells. It has even worked its way into the party’s text message system — a recent email from the party urged readers to “Text STORM2020” for updates.

The Texas Republicans are an unusually visible example of the Republican Party’s dalliance with QAnon, but they are hardly unique. A small but growing number of Republicans — including a heavily favored Republican congressional candidate in Georgia — are donning the QAnon mantle, ushering its adherents in from the troll-infested fringes of the internet and potentially transforming the wild conspiracy theory into an offline political movement, with supporters running for Congress and flexing their political muscle at the state and local levels.

Chief among the party’s QAnon promoters is Mr. Trump himself. Since the theory first emerged three years ago, he has employed a wink-and-nod approach to the conspiracy theory, retweeting its followers but conspicuously ignoring questions about it. Yet with the election drawing ever closer and Mr. Trump’s failure to manage the Covid-19 pandemic harming his re-election prospects, the White House and some Trump allies appear to have taken to openly courting believers.

  Reveal hidden contents

 

The president, during a White House news conference on Wednesday, described QAnon followers — some of whom have been charged with murder, domestic terrorism and planned kidnapping — as “people that love our country.”

The president has retweeted QAnon followers at least 201 times, according to an analysis by Media Matters. Some of his children have posted social media messages related to the conspiracy theory. A deputy White House chief of staff, Dan Scavino, who has for years combed corners of the internet for memes that the president could promote, has three times in the past year — in November 2019, May and June — posted ticking-clock memes that are used by QAnon believers to signify the coming showdown between the president and his purported enemies.

“We once had Republican leaders that would work to keep extremists from the levers of power. Now they embrace them and their crazy and dangerous ideas,” said Rudy Oeftering, a Texas Republican who formerly chaired the Texas Association of Business and remains one of the state party’s precinct captains.

“The lunatics,” he added, “are truly running the asylum.”

There is hardly universal support inside the party for QAnon. Many of its leaders in Congress and powerful donors are privately horrified at the spread of the movement’s themes. And while some Republican voters are well-versed in QAnon, a majority of them are unfamiliar with the particulars of the movement.

“QAnon is nuts — and real leaders call conspiracy theories conspiracy theories,” said Senator Ben Sasse, Republican of Nebraska, after the president appeared to endorse QAnon this week.

“If Democrats take the Senate,” he added, “This will be a big part of why they won.”

Representative Liz Cheney of Wyoming, the No. 3 House Republican, joined the fray on Thursday, calling QAnon “dangerous lunacy that should have no place in American politics.”

Other Republican elected officials who have tried to push back publicly against QAnon’s spread have found themselves under attack. This month, when Representative Adam Kinzinger, an Illinois Republican, posted a tweet that called QAnon a fabrication that has “no place in Congress,” a senior Trump campaign staff member immediately fired back at him, saying he should be focused on “conspiracy theories pushed by Democrats.”

Fearful of inviting similar blowback, few other elected Republicans have been willing to speak out publicly. Mostly, they avoid questions about it, demonstrating the thin line some officials are trying to walk between extreme elements among their base who adore Mr. Trump and the moderate voters they need to win over.

QAnon followers are increasingly taking on the trappings of a discrete political movement, though one with beliefs untethered from reality. There are more than a dozen Republicans running for Congress who have signaled varying degrees of interest in the movement. One candidate has attracted a campaign contribution from the Republican National Committee, and another has raised thousands of dollars from established conservative groups like the House Freedom Fund.

And now they are getting explicit support from the president. Asked during his Wednesday news conference about the QAnon belief that he is saving the world from a cult of pedophiles, Mr. Trump said he did not know much about the movement, before all but endorsing it: “Is that supposed to be a bad thing or good thing?” he said. “If I can help save the world from problems, I am willing to do it. I’m willing to put myself out there. And we are actually.”

The reaction among QAnon followers was swift and predictable — they were elated, and the president’s comments became instant grist of the QAnon meme-making mill.

The president, who in 2016 went on a radio show hosted by the conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, went on to suggest that the problems QAnon backers wanted him to solve were urban crime and the recent civil rights protests in Portland, Ore., and elsewhere, which the White House has sought to falsely portray as the work of radical leftists intent on undermining the very foundations of American society.

If only QAnon’s beliefs were that straightforward, benign or grounded in reality. The core tenet is that Mr. Trump, backed by the military, ran for office to save Americans from child-abusing devil-worshipers in the government and media. Backing the president’s enemies, the theory falsely claims, are prominent Democrats who extract hormones from children’s blood.

The theory spins off from there. In some versions, John F. Kennedy Jr., who died in a plane crash in 1999, is alive and hiding in rural Pennsylvania, biding his time until he re-emerges to back Mr. Trump’s re-election bid. Other iterations feature celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, Ellen DeGeneres and religious figures, including Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama. U.F.O.s sometime make appearances, as does the 9/11 “truther” movement and anti-vaccine beliefs.

The movement defies easy political labels — there is hardly a straight line connecting traditional, pre-Trump Republican ideas to pedophile Satanists — and its adherents include a smattering of Democrats and independents. But many of its themes play best among those on the fringes of the Republican Party, such as claims that Jews, and especially the financier George Soros, are controlling the political system and vaccines; assertions that the risk from the coronavirus is vastly overstated; or racist theories about former President Barack Obama.

And for all the theory’s disparate parts, what links them is the same kind of extreme anti-establishment bent that Mr. Trump rode to election in 2016, said Joseph Uscinski, a political science professor at the University of Miami who studies fringe beliefs.

“Trump and his surrogates haven’t created this, but they have certainly tried to activate it and use it to their advantage,” he added. “That’s why you have a lot of QAnon people popping up and mimicking Trump and his views, and running for office.”

More unusual is how QAnon adherents often portray Mr. Trump as a god-emperor figure who has been sending them coded messages of support. The QAnon slogan, “We Are the Storm,” grew out of a remark by Mr. Trump, who quipped during a 2017 photo op with generals, “You guys know what this represents? Maybe it’s the calm before the storm.”

The Texas Republicans adopted the slogan in late July after electing a new chairman, Allen West, a former congressman from Florida whose rapid political ascent during the rise of the Tea Party in 2010 was matched only by his fast fall out of Congress two years later. Though Mr. West had not previously indicated any support for QAnon, during his time in Congress he often framed issues as being part of a struggle to save the country, a theme that courses through the conspiracy theory.

Now, eight years later, under his leadership the state party appears intent on bringing the QAnon caucus into the fold in Texas. The new slogan was quickly picked up by local chapters of the state party, as well as some prominent Texas Republicans. Whether they believed it and knew where it came from, or simply saw a play for votes in an election year in which Democrats are expected to make gains in Texas, is an open question, though some disaffected Republicans in Texas said QAnon-inspired beliefs were spreading dangerously inside the party.

“There are several people in the party’s infrastructure whom I would not put it past to actually believe this nonsense,” said Elizabeth Bingham, a former vice chair of the Dallas County Republican Party. “They seem giddy with the idea that they can tell as many people as possible that the Democrats aren’t just opposed to the privatization of social security or soft on Syria — that they’re in favor of child sacrifices. That the Democrats are evil.”

The true believers, she said, were being urged on by opportunists who feared primary challenges and losing elected office. “I think that’s worse,” she added.

A recent congressional primary runoff in Georgia appeared to highlight the pull of QAnon beliefs among Republican voters. The winner was perhaps the most unabashed pro-QAnon candidate in the country, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who in 2017 called the conspiracy theory “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out.”

Her competitor, a neurosurgeon, was just as conservative and pro-Trump as Ms. Greene yet did not share her belief in QAnon, mocking it as an “embarrassment.” He was trounced, losing by nearly 16 points and clearing a path to Congress for Ms. Greene, who is a near lock to win a House seat representing the deeply conservative district.

Few other QAnon candidates are likely to win seats in Congress. But at least two managed to defeat non-QAnon-believing Republicans in competitive primaries: Lauren Boebert, a House candidate in Colorado who made approving comments about QAnon, defeated a five-term Republican incumbent in a primary in June, though she is likely to lose in  a race that polls show is tight. Jo Rae Perkins, a long-shot Republican Senate candidate in Oregon, declared in May, “I stand with Q and the team.” The next month, she posted a video in which she took what has become known as an oath for QAnon digital soldiers.

But far more than any congressional candidate, it is Mr. Trump and his campaign surrogates who are normalizing QAnon inside the Republican Party.

Language, images and ideas drawn from QAnon are now a regular feature of messages from the campaign. No voter, it seems, is too extreme to be ignored, as Eric Trump, the president’s son, demonstrated in June ahead of a rally in Tulsa, Okla.

On Instagram, he posted and then later deleted an image that featured an American flag emblazoned with black text that read, “Who’s ready for the Trump Rally tonight.” Behind the words, fainter but clearly visible, was a large letter “Q.”

And just in case the message was not clear enough, running along the bottom of the flag was a popular QAnon hashtag, #WWG1WGA, which stands for “Where We Go One, We Go All.” The post was later deleted.

 

 

We Are The Storm, Pandemic, Plague, Murder Hornets, Sharknado, Bro Country...

[ndawg 1242]

On 8/21/2020 at 8:13 AM, Gatorubet said:

I’m sure Swam is intelligent enough - and has enough critical thinking skills to ward that off in his head. Look at the body of his posts.

The flip side of critical thinking skills is that they are the same as rationalization skills. Smart people with underdeveloped psychologies can sustain a belief in nonsense better than most. Bobby Fisher is a good example.

[Gatorubet 30051]

On 8/21/2020 at 8:22 AM, Anastasis said:

False dichotomy. 

You  defend your choice in politics in a manner that is similar to this choice in religion:  you argue why a particular Christian denomination gives you pause because of its stance on female pastors and whether the Host is real or symbolic - and you refuse to support that denomination even when the other choice is a child sacrificing Baal cult.. 

 

[Ted Lange 15988]

 

[Hugo Stiglitz 23356]

 

[Gatorubet 30051]

The flip side of critical thinking skills is that they are the same as rationalization skills. Smart people with underdeveloped psychologies can sustain a belief in nonsense better than most. Bobby Fisher is a good example.

My post was total sarcasm.

[ndawg 1242]

1 minute ago, Gatorubet said:

My post was total sarcasm.

Oh, right. The stupidity of the last four years of Trump must have broken my sarcasm meter.

[Nice Guy Eddie 13391]

Oregon GOP candidate for Senate is a QAnon adherent.

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/22/politics/jo-rae-perkins-qanon-oregon-senate-race/index.html

I get that any reasonable Republican politician in Oregon does not want to run for a senate seat because they know it aint going to happen. However the national party needs to recruit people to not embarrass the national party. Can a state party prevent someone from running under their umbrella?

Of course, I assume the national GOP office is as disorganized as the WH. Even though I'm normally a Democrat, its bad for the country to have bad, if not dangerous candidates on the GOP side. The pendulum always swings back and you never know what could potentially happen. It also starts to legitimize crackpot theories when they can point to major candidates as backing them.

[Mrs Whiggins 13049]

I think the genie's out of the bottle on that one @Nice Guy Eddie

 

[Biff Tannen 45471]

This country has lost its god damned mind.