Over the past few weeks, major media outlets have attacked the “QAnon” movement. Some journalists called for it to be suppressed, calling it dangerous and potentially violent. This is just a sampling:
·
“Is QAnon the Most Dangerous
Conspiracy Theory of the 21st Century?” by Charlie Warzel, The New York Times, August 4, 2020
·
“The Prophecies of Q: American
conspiracy theories are entering a dangerous new phase,” by
Adrienne LaFrance, The Atlantic, June 2020
·
“How the Trump campaign came to
court QAnon, the online conspiracy movement identified by the FBI as a violent
threat,” by Isaac Stanley-Becker,” The Washington Post, August 2, 2020
·
“QAnon Is Running Amok, and the
Time Has Come for Interventions,” by Daniel Zuidijk, Bloomberg Quint, August 10, 2020
·
“A baseless US conspiracy theory
found a foothold in Europe. New research shows how,” by Tara
John, CNN, July 30, 2020
·
“Down the rabbit hole: how QAnon
conspiracies thrive on Facebook,” by Julia Carrie Wong, The Guardian, June 25, 2020
Twitter has removed thousands
of QAnon posts. Facebook is banning QAnon groups.
TikTok and YouTube are trying to
squash it, too. Google is blocking searches
for it because it is a “terror threat.”
What is QAnon? This question is harder to answer than you might think. There are several books about
QAnon, including QAnon and The Great
Awakening by Michael Knight, QAnon: An Invitation to The
Great Awakening by “WWG1WGA,” and Revolution Q by
“Neon Revolt.” After reading these and other books and websites, I’d identify
three main points.
·
“Q,” an anonymous, highly placed government official, knows that
President Trump is planning a series of dramatic events that will expose crimes
and even treason implicating many Democrats and government bureaucrats. Q
communicates what’s coming by posting on various forums, including 4chan and
8kun (formerly 8chan). He says there’s a fierce battle over this at the highest
levels of the government.
·
President Trump himself communicates with followers of the
movement through code phrases, gestures, and imagery. He and his family also
occasionally retweet accounts linked to QAnon.
·
“The Storm,” the righteous day of justice that President Trump
is bringing, is opposed by a cabal of financial and media elites who want to
keep people from learning the truth. Thus, people must do their own research
and not trust what the mainstream media tell them.
The initial post that spawned
“Q” could have been made by anyone. Further “drops” by “Q” or people in the
movement could also be made by anyone. There is no way to verify any of their
claims, except through vague references to key phrases that will supposedly be
uttered in the days following the posts. For example, before President’s rally
in Tulsa, Eric Trump posted an American-flag QAnon meme with the #WWG1WGA (this
is supposed to stand for “Where We Go One, We Go All”) at the bottom to
Instagram. Does this mean anything, or was Eric Trump simply passing along an
image he liked?
QAnon is so popular it has
spawned its own “watchdog” groups. NPR’s Michael Martin interviewed Travis
View, the co-host of the QAnon Anonymous podcast. Mr. Martin prepped
the audience by calling QAnon “a group of people who adhere to some far-right
conspiracies and believe a number of absurd things.” Mr. View obliged by saying
that according to QAnon, “The world is controlled by a Satanic cabal of
pedophiles that they believe control everything like the media, politics and
entertainment.” He adds that QAnon also thinks President Trump knows all about
this and will “defeat this global cabal once and for all and free all of us.”
“QAnon Anonymous” host Travis View added that it is a “domestic extremist
movement” and said President Trump had “tweeted or retweeted QAnon accounts
over 160 times.” However, he also admitted “no one in the current
administration has ever done anything to endorse QAnon.”
Nevertheless, it seems that at
least some of President Trump’s advisors know about the movement and are
playing to it. President Trump has directly retweeted memes
from accounts linked to QAnon. Republican congressional candidate Angela
Stanton-King tweeted, “THE STORM IS HERE.”
Tess Owen, Vice’s reporter on the “far right” beat, wrote,
“Welp, the GOP Now Has 15 QAnon-Linked Candidates on the November Ballot.”
NBC news says, “There
is no evidence to these claims” about a “cabal of criminals run by politicians
like Hillary Clinton and the Hollywood elite.” However, after Jeffrey Epstein’s
alleged “suicide” and news that powerful figures such as former President Bill
Clinton and Prince Andrew were part of Epstein’s strange network, it’s hardly
absurd to claim there could be sick stuff going on among the political and
cultural elite.
Jimmy Saville was a well-known
British media personality, knighted, and honored by many institutions including
the Vatican and the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. After his death, it
emerged that he had sexually abused children;
some suggested hundreds of them. Most honors were rescinded posthumously.
A jury recently convicted Harvey
Weinstein, once the most powerful producer in Hollywood, of sexual crimes.
Several actresses including Allison Mack were alleged to
be part of a bizarre sexual cult called NXIVM, and she pleaded guilty to racketeering. During the 2016
election, Wikileaks released email tying John
Podesta’s brother to “artist” Marina Abramovic and her bizarre, occult
performance piece “Spirit Cooking.”
Trump supporters displaying QAnon posters. (Credit Image: © Thomas
O’Neill / NurPhoto via ZUMA Press)
If a crazy man approached you
in the street raving about these plots, you’d run, but these things happened.
Non-whites sexually abused thousands
of young women in Rotherham, England. Police and local government officials
did nothing because
they didn’t want to be called racists. This is a sick world, and evildoers
often get away with evil. It’s not absurd to think powerful men and women are
no better than middling Labour politicians who looked the other way instead of
stopping rape and sex slavery.
Is there a “Deep State”
opposing President Trump? In 2019, the New York Times ran an editorial called “The ‘Deep State’ Exists to
Battle People Like Trump.” In 2018, an anonymous official wrote,
“I Am Part of the Resistance
Inside the Trump Administration.” Recent evidence suggests that
the FBI bullied General Michael Flynn, President Trump’s former national
security advisor, and made him confess he had lied to agents after they
threatened his son. The Department of Justice recently concluded that
the interview of General Flynn was not “conducted with a legitimate
investigative basis.”
This doesn’t mean there’s a
Satanic cabal running the government. It does mean some bureaucrats opposed or
even sabotaged President Trump’s agenda. They investigated his subordinates or
leaked information to the press. If we substitute “the permanent bureaucracy”
for the more ominous sounding term “Deep State,” this “conspiracy theory”
becomes plausible. Incidentally, General Flynn recently posted a
video that uses QAnon slogans.
What is truly implausible about
QAnon is the idea that President Trump knows about everything and will destroy
this vast conspiracy. The proof for such assertions lies in gestures, vague
statements, or even the background of where he is speaking. For example,
in QAnon
and the Great Awakening, the author says that President Trump’s phrases “this is the calm
before the storm” and “tippy top,” his supposed circular motions with his
hands, and occasional pointing towards supposed Q supporters are proof that he
is on to it. “Q offers hundreds of data points that demonstrate Q is indeed
linked to the Trump Administration,” the book says.
One of several people holding up signs reading ”Qanon.pub” at the
‘Make America Great Again’ on August 4, 2018, just outside Columbus, Ohio.
(Credit Image: © James D. DeCamp / ZUMA Wire)
If you desperately want to
believe something, you’ll find evidence for it.
This is confirmation bias at best, schizophrenia at worst. If President Trump
truly is about to reveal a vast Satanic conspiracy, he’s taking his time.
What is especially dangerous
about QAnon is not that it promotes dangerous extremism, but that it urges
complacency. Its
core message is that Donald Trumpknows all about the
secret conspiracy running the world and has the power to crush it; after all,
he’s President. All we have to do is wait. “Nothing can stop what is coming,”
says one popular slogan. If this were true, President Trump and his followers
have already won, and there’s no reason to do anything but scour the internet
for clues about what’s coming next.
After almost four years of
Trump’s presidency, QAnon is an attempt to explain the President’s failure to
“Make America Great Again.” It’s true that he’s hobbled by powerful elites.
However, President Trump’s biggest personnel problems, from John Bolton to
Anthony Scaramucci, were people he appointed himself. No one forced him to make
Reince Priebus his chief of staff, expel Steve Bannon, or pick a fight with
Attorney General Jeff Sessions. Indeed, according to QAnon, Attorney General
Sessions was the one who was
supposed to rout the evildoers.
QAnon assures Trump supporters
that he has everything well in hand and that justice is coming. It’s far more
terrifying to realize that he doesn’t. He is politically isolated, surrounded
by foes, and losing the presidential campaign to a confused and combative man
who occasionally forgets what office he’s running for or where he is. President Trump’s
not mustering his legions. Instead, his own defense secretary publicly opposed his
plans to use soldiers to suppress riots. The brass overruled his
wishes to leave bases named after Confederate heroes alone. Unless President
Trump has a Praetorian Guard we don’t know about (perhaps the Space Force?),
there’s nothing he can use against domestic opponents.
The real question is why
reporters fear QAnon. Some of its supporters have allegedly committed crimes.
One alleged QAnon believer killed a
Gambino mob boss. In February, another blocked a
bridge with an armored vehicle. Two others had family
troubles, which may or may not be related to their QAnon beliefs. If these
people did those things, they are criminals, but this is hardly a wave of
violence. All together, this would be a peaceful weekend in Chicago.
QAnon-believer Matthew Wright’s armored truck blocking a bridge
going over the Hoover Dam.
QAnon isn’t dangerous.
Conspiracy theories are as old as the Anti-Masonic Party,
maybe older. Some unstable people may latch on to them, but they are not
notably violent. If anything, if they really believe a Satanic cabal runs the
world, they are showing remarkable restraint.
I suspect the real reason journalists don’t like QAnon is because at
its core, it tells people the media are lying. It encourages independent
investigation and citizen journalism. This occasionally leads to absurdities, such as building a
worldview around 4chan posts. However, it’s healthy to distrust elites.
Sometimes, journalists lie, stretch the truth,
or hide it entirely.
Sometimes, they demand citizens
be silenced.
Ordinary Americans looking for truth are a threat. I believe mainstream
journalists truly regard themselves as a Fourth Estate, an independent political power.
They think they have the right to determine what Americans should and should
not be allowed to hear or say. Their efforts to censor and suppress QAnon only
fuel the movement.
Journalists promote a
conspiracy far more dangerous and deadly than QAnon. That is the “white privilege”
conspiracy theory. Many journalists and academics tell
non-whites that racist whites hold them down. This implicitly justifies protests,
shakedowns, and even anti-white violence. When George Floyd died,
Americans weren’t allowed to see the
bodycam videos. Instead, many journalists told a fable about a
white policeman murdering an innocent black man. This was the spark, but
journalists had soaked the country in gasoline years before with endless sensationalist
coverage of race and “racism.” Now, riots are destroying
cities, ruining businesses, probably spreading disease, and creating a huge crime wave.
I blame journalists for inciting this violence. It’s not QAnon spreading a
violent conspiracy theory, but journalists at CNN,
the New York Times,
the Washington
Post, and
others who manufactured a fake crisis.
Liberals are right to think
QAnon is dangerous, but not in the way
they think. QAnon is dangerous to whites. It tells them that everything is under
control, that an evil conspiracy will be exposed, and that we just need to
trust President Trump. We can’t be under any illusions that President Trump will save
us. “The Storm” is not coming, the cavalry won’t ride over the
hill, and there isn’t a secret military force ready to scoop up our foes and
liberate America. It’s up to us.
Credit Image: © Thomas O’Neill / NurPhoto via ZUMA Press
Liberals should be thankful
for a conspiracy theory that urges complacency. Our message is more urgent: Our
people, country, and civilization are at stake. You don’t need to pore through
websites to see what’s happening; just walk down any city street. Time is
running out. You have a duty to resist. Don’t
look for a savior. Instead, join us, and be worthy of our ancestors.