Meet QAnon: The Deranged Conspiracy Theory That's Surging Among Trump Supporters
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01 August 2018
Sometimes “deplorable” just isn’t deplorable enough. That’s the case with a core set of Donald Trump supporters who have come together around a new conspiracy theory that’s … not Pizzagate. Because it’s worse. And, as the Washington Post reports, this new conspiracy is already spilling from under the rocks of alt-Reich websites, into living, screaming Trump rallies.
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.”
Who or what is QAnon? It’s the handle for a racist troll who pretends to be “a government agent with top security clearance” working with Donald Trump to take out the “Deep State.” Starting with connections to the original Pizzagate, QAnon has built up followers through mystery appearances in the Trump-loving depths of Reddit. Most of those posts come in the form of “breadcrumbs,” brief, haiku-like statements that can be interpreted as anything from a stock market prediction to an example of an AI attempting to learn human language through random word combinations. In a real sense, it’s wrong to even think of the QAnon story as something coming from the QAnon troll. It’s a collaborative effort; a group of like-minded racist conspiracy nuts riffing on blobs of half-assed beat poetry.
The supposed meaning of the posts are actually generated by thousands of Q followers who sift through this mess and convert the obscure “crumbs” into an elaborate story. There are entire 24/7 streaming channels and multiple Youtube videos dedicated to nothing but attempts to fit together the crumbs into a single narrative. And the story generated by this collaboration between incoherent source and conspiracy-monger fans isn’t just convoluted, self-contradictory, and utterly inane, it’s also deeply racist, anti-Semitic, and woven through with equal parts pedophilia and Christian end-times eschatology. In short, it’s a massively expanded version of Pizzagate in which Hillary Clinton, the Illuminati, and the Rothchilds—who may or may not be interchangeable—are waging holy war against Donald Trump and his supporters … while running child sex rings and satanic murder cults on the side.
If that sounds ridiculous … it is. Unfortunately, the people behind it are not joking.
The full spray of QAnon information includes: How violent criminal John McCain must wear an ankle bracelet and be tracked at all times, the harem of child sex slaves owned by Tom Hanks, and how Trump actually installed Robert Mueller as part of an ongoing plan to capture the Muslim terrorist Barack Obama. At the climax of the consensus narrative, Trump supporters will have to unite for a mighty Good vs Evil fight in which Hillary will team up with George Soros in an attempt to overthrow the government, only to be cast down by Trump, who will then usher in a new age of Christian righteousness. One led by Donald Trump and, you guessed it, Vladimir Putin. Because in QAnon, Putin is one of the few who can see through the Jewish plot to turn the world to Satan. And yes, in QAnon, Jews are satanists. Not surprisingly, many QAnon followers also consider themselves evangelicals.
It’s the kind of conspiracy theory in which anything can be made to fit and any gesture or word has hidden meaning. Before every Trump rally, QAnon boards light up with speculation over which parts of the theory Trump will “confirm” this time. And after every rally, the boards fire up again with conviction that Trump has done exactly that—given them a phrase or a hand-sign that they’re on the right track. One of the QAnon posts mentioned the phrase “tip top.” Weeks later, another told believers to “follow the white rabbit.” So when Donald Trump said “tip top” while at the White House Easter egg roll … hey, who could miss a message that clear? Even when things don’t fit, they’re made to fit, as when promised revelations that failed to appear in the Inspector General report were turned into evidence of more tampering by insidious Deep State Jew Rod Rosenstein.
QAnon is loony and ridiculous, but not at all funny. it’s also a growing force within the ranks of Trump.
Where did Rosanne Barr get the outrageous, racist statements she made in many of her Twitter posts? She was quoting QAnon sites. And, as the Daily Best reports, Curt Schilling is also on board.
Considering that Pizzagate already inspired one Trump supporter to appear in a DC pizza place carrying an AR-15 (and become frustrated by his inability to find a basement, much less the child-sex ring dungeons he had been expecting) there are ample reasons to be concerned about a greatly expanded Pizzagate now with a extra large side of anti-Semitic claims and calls for widespread conflict. QAnon has already become a much bigger factor in Trumpdom than the original Pizzagate. It’s not just websites and handmade signs. Hundreds of QAnon followers marched in DC in January. There’s a QAnon industry turning out T-shirts and trinkets. Rightwing celebrities like Barr and Schilling have helped bring the conspiracy theory to a larger audience, and also helped ease it into larger Trump-centric sites like Breitbart.
Not for the first time, events under Donald Trump make it clear that English just isn’t sufficient. Because it would take way too many adjectives to describe just how deplorable his followers really are.