Getting Played

In every conflict or crisis or disaster or whatever - the first reports are always wrong in one way or another. Details are missing, or numbers aren't accurate, or any of the Who What When Where Why How type questions that good journalists are supposed to live by are missing or unanswered or answered wrong.

It all has to be fact checked and cross checked and double checked. And all that takes time and skill and cooperation between colleagues and sources and competitors.

Eventually, in a few hours or a few days or a few weeks, we start to get a clearer idea of what happened - and why when who how etc.

Social media short circuits that time honored and vital process.

Maybe somebody wants it that way. And that would mean somebody wants it that way for a reason.

I may be paranoid,

but that don't mean

nobody's out to get me

Today's Reddit

They're addled. I just can't come up with anything other than that. Some of these people are fucking addled.

My Qdad just said that salads have killed more people than guns
by u/Peanutbutternjelly_ in QAnonCasualties

Nothing New Here

At about 21:40 -

What makes people predisposed to chase conspiracy fantasies?

We've seen all this shit before.

• Salem Witches
• Commies At The Pentagon
• Poisoned Halloween Candy
• Satanic Panic
• Freed Slaves Are Coming For The White Women
• and and and

The difference now of course, is that mass media isn't a casual gathering down at the town square or a coupla guys printing up pamphlets, or a newspaper or radio or 5 TV channels. The intertoobz gives these manipulative assholes a near-instant global reach, so the damage that a single bullshit story can do is amplified and accelerated so it starts to look like a fusion bomb has gone off in cyberspace.

If the nonsense stays with "I woke up in a bathtub filled with ice and then noticed I was missing a kidney", that's one thing. But when someone with actual real world political power picks up almost any random crap, runs with it, and embellishes it with "stolen election", then it escalates to a whole new level of dangerous shit.

Jordan Klepper Fingers The Conspiracy

Overheard - On The Pelosi Thing

Right Wing Media:

Democrat women want the right to kill their babies right after they're born. Sometimes, Democrats kill babies and drink their blood. Democrats are evil, and Nancy Pelosi is their queen.

Also Right Wing Media:

OMG, it's awful, isn't it? We have absolutely no idea why someone would do this.

(pay wall)

The San Francisco Bay area man arrested in the attack on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband filled a blog a week before the incident with delusional thoughts, including that an invisible fairy attacked an acquaintance and sometimes appeared to him in the form of a bird, according to online writings under his name.

David DePape, 42, also published hundreds of blog posts in recent months sharing memes in support of fringe commentators and far-right personalities. Many of the posts were filled with screeds against Jews, Black people, Democrats, the media and transgender people.

During October, DePape published over 100 posts. While each loads, a reader briefly glimpses an image of a person wearing a giant inflatable unicorn costume, superimposed against a night sky. The photos and videos that followed were often dark and disturbing.

He published a drawing of the Devil kneeling and asking a caricature of a Jewish person to teach him the arts of “lying, deception, cheating and incitement.” Several contain lifelike images of rotting human flesh and blood, including a zombified Bill Gates and Hillary Clinton. Others depict headless bodies against bleak, dystopian landscapes.

Before those writings were removed Saturday, The Washington Post reviewed them, as well as gory photos, illustrations and videos on a website that DePape registered under his name in early August and that his daughter confirmed was his. Notably, the voluminous writings do not mention Pelosi. Police say DePape broke into the home Pelosi shares with her husband early Friday, yelled “Where is Nancy?” and attacked 82-year-old Paul Pelosi with a hammer.

Pelosi remained hospitalized Saturday, recovering from surgery to repair a skull fracture and serious injuries to his right arm and hand, according to the speaker’s office. San Francisco’s police chief and district attorney provided no update, but on Friday local, state and federal authorities said they were working together to investigate DePape’s motive.

A woman who identified DePape as her “father” said Friday that she was stunned by his arrest even though he was, she said, abusive to other members of the family. “I love my father,” Inti Gonzalez wrote in a statement posted to her website and later removed. “He did genuinely try to be a good person but the monster in him was always too strong for him to be safe to be around.”

“This attack on Nancy Pelosi’s husband came as a shock to me,” wrote Gonzalez, who is 21, according to her website. “I didn’t see this coming and there was no sign of the possibility from his end.” Gonzalez wrote she followed her father’s writing online but was not aware of the website he registered in August.

Hold it just a goddamned fuckin' minute, lady - "the monster in him" made you feel it was unsafe to hang out with him, but you didn't think he might pull some shit like this?

Reached by The Post before she issued the statement, Gonzalez declined to comment about DePape.

DePape grew up in British Columbia, a relative told CNN. He briefly drew public attention nearly a decade ago in San Francisco when he participated in a demonstration against a city ordinance banning public nudity. The protest was led by Gonzalez’s mother, Gypsy Taub, an outspoken nudity activist.

Videos posted on YouTube show that DePape was among a group of protesters marching through San Francisco’s Castro neighborhood for the 2013 demonstration.

On his blog, DePape wrote bitterly in recent months of his relationship with Taub, who also promoted debunked conspiracy theories on her own blog, including that 9/11 was an “inside job.” He accused Taub of manipulating her children to turn them against him.

Taub is serving a sentence for felony stalking and attempted child abduction, after prosecutors said she became fixated with a 14-year-old boy and attempted to kidnap him. She could not be reached for comment. Gonzalez told The Post that she had spoken with Taub and that Taub would be making a statement upon her release. She is eligible for parole in January.

Four days before the Pelosi attack, DePape posted on his website what he presented as a 2021 email to Gonzalez. In it, he told her he struggled with the urge to end his life as his relationship with Taub and her children was falling apart. “I was extremely suicidal, Mentally I would beg you guys daily to let me kill myself,” he wrote in the email. DePape cut off contact with Taub and her children after he was he was kicked out of their home and living in a car, according to his online account. He does not say when those events occurred.

The domain frenlyfrens.com was registered Aug. 8 under DePape’s name and to an address in Richmond, Calif., where a neighbor told a Post reporter he lived. The web address uses the phonetic spelling of “friend,” which has become a slang term adopted by many in the far right — a term that is sometimes written as an acronym for Far Right Ethno-Nationalist.

Reddit banned an openly anti-semitic group by the name /r/FrenWorld in 2019, saying it contained postings that glorified or encouraged violence. One cartoon featured repeatedly by members contained pictures of a frog character that has been appropriated by the far right. “Frens, sound the alarms!” one says. “Arm yourselves! The longnose is coming, the longnose is coming.”

Two weeks after registering the site, DePape’s first post was titled “Mary Poppins.” Amid the ongoing feud between Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) and Disney over the company’s criticism of the state’s law known by critics as the “don’t say gay” bill, the violent video depicted a SWAT team firing at Poppins.

Details of DePape’s everyday life in recent months are included in the postings that followed. He played video games at a nearby library and spent hours meditating, according to the writings. In another post, he shared an image of a fantasy miniature salamander he purchased on Etsy. He wrote that he was looking to purchase a fairy house on Etsy but was frustrated that the doors were painted and so could not be used by a fairy. “They have lots of fairy houses but NONE of them are MADE for fairies,” he wrote.

In late August, DePape became engrossed in the decision by Twitter to ban Jordan Peterson for his posts about transgender people. The Canadian psychologist turned conservative podcaster had once said that being transgender was comparable to “satanic ritual abuse.”

DePape published six posts in support of Peterson and then continued with his own caustic takes on transgender people, saying they should not be a protected group. “They were not BORN a freak. They are not INHERENTLY a freak threw no fault of their own. … They are CHOOSING to be FREAKS,” he wrote in one post.

In the last week of September, as the Justice Department filed a motion seeking to compel former Trump adviser Peter Navarro to return government emails, DePape blogged his take: “No evidence of election fraud. Any journalist saying that should be dragged straight out into the street and shot.”

DePape was also active on the message board 4chan, a site notorious for extremist discussion, posting memes and debating other anonymous users about his beliefs, according to his website. In an Oct. 24 post titled “Disinfo Shill Tactics,” he complained that he was a target of law enforcement he described as ‘paid shills’ trying to manipulate the message board. “I would come in and lay out the facts and so all the paid shills would jump on me. To try and suppress it,” he wrote.

That same day, DePape shared images from a construction site where he worked months ago. One highlighted a jackhammer with the number 33 on it, an apparent reference to a conspiracy theory about Freemasons and world control. A co-worker remarked he sounded like the now deceased right-wing radio personality Rush Limbaugh after referring to feminists as “feminazis” during a discussion on feminism, according to the account.

In another post on Oct. 24, four days before the attack on Pelosi, DePape shared images of a wooden birdhouse he said he had purchased for an invisible fairy he communicated with that had begun interfering with his life. “He appears in a form that makes sense in my reality because I can’t see fairies. He’ll do things to let me know its him and he o[f]ten appears as a bird,” he wrote.

Today's Oy

Pennsylvania man in a rainbow wig 'working to restore Trump to President King of the United States’ arrested after bringing loaded handgun into Dairy Queen - with two more in his car

A Pennsylvania man wearing a rainbow clown wig was arrested after walking into a Dairy Queen with a loaded handgun and told police he was looking to make former President Donald Trump 'king of the United States.'

Jan V. Stawovy, 61, was intercepted by police at the Delmont ice cream parlor on Saturday after responding to reports of an erratic driver wearing unusual clothes like a bright yellow safety vest and a rainbow wig.

Stawovy was found to have two more loaded handguns in his car and 62 rounds of ammunition which were seized by police.

He has now been charged the man with firearms not to be carried without a license, person not to possess, terroristic threats and disorderly conduct.

Stawovy told investigators after the incident that he was 'undercover' and had the guns to protect himself from 'drug traffickers' and also indicated he intended to kill 'Democrats and liberals.'

Police also said in a news release that Stawovy told them he wanted to 'restore Trump to President king of the United States.'

Jan Stawovy, 61, entered a Pennsylvania Dairy Queen on Saturday dressed in a clown wig and told police he wanted to 'kill Democrats and liberals'

Police found two more loaded handguns in Stawovy's car after his erratic behavior was reported, and he was arrested without incident

He also told investigators that he was 'undercover' and had the guns to protect himself from 'drug traffickers'

According to his Facebook, Stawovy was banned from a church after turning up in a clown wig and full makeup before becoming 'argumentative and belligerent'

He carried the .40 caliber handgun into the store along with some loose rounds of ammunition, just as a group of people with mental disabilities were entering the restaurant.

Stawovy was arrested without incident and is now awaiting arraignment. It is currently unclear whether he has an attorney representing him.

According to his Facebook, this was not the first time he adorned the clown wig. A September 9 letter from Barren Run United Methodist Church said Stawovy attended church service in a 'clown costume and full makeup.'

Stawovy's appearance 'frightened' other attendees and he 'once again became argumentative and belligerent,' leading to the church banning him from the property.

He wrote '2nd Love Letters' and 'Praise the Lord' on the letter, which also said they 'wish that you are able to seek out the help that you need.'

While there's no confirmation Stawovy was involved in QAnon, his description of Trump as a 'President king' is common terminology among QAnon believers.

- more -

What's All This Q Stuff Anyway?

Brian Tyler Cohen - QAnon Anonymous

QAnon Anonymous podcast via Stitcher - The Rise Of Dark Brandon:

Let's Review

(hat tip = Walker Thornton)

“Conspiracy theories will always be popular, because they make you feel like you’re smart, important, and part of a community.”

Mike Rothschild Via Melville House

On the Ongoing Influence of QAnon and Its Self-Made Mythologies

A small crowd gathered on Dallas’ Dealey Plaza on a cool early November day in 2021, full of excitement and powered by secret knowledge. It was almost a year after the last Q drop, and three years into the COVID-19 pandemic. But the people assembled that morning, in the solemn place where John F. Kennedy was assassinated nearly 60 years prior, weren’t worrying about getting sick. They certainly weren’t wearing masks. Those were slaver muzzles designed to make you stupid. What they did have were a few red ties, a plethora of bedazzled homemade signs and shirts, and the certain knowledge that everything in the world was about to change—within minutes.

The 100 people who had come together that morning were mostly older and mostly women. They sang classic pop songs of their youth, often over the interminable and daily livestreams they were putting out on Telegram and Zoom. They shouted various numbers and slogans seemingly at random—inscrutable codes with hidden meaning that only they understood. They broadcast their arguments with the “comatose vertical meatsacks” who accosted them—their smug nickname for the normies who weren’t interested in the beautiful new world that was about to unveil itself.

More than anything, they waited.

They were waiting for John F. Kennedy’s son, JFK Jr., who, according to their self-made mythology, did not die in a plane crash off Martha’s Vineyard in 1999. He was alive, and had been waiting for the right moment to return to public life. And even more exciting, he would return alongside other “dead” celebrities who had gone underground for various reasons—Michael Jackson, Prince, even John John’s long-dead father. Never mind that JFK would be 104 years old in 2021 and had been so riddled with health problems that it’s likely he wouldn’t have lived to see the 1970s. He was coming back. They were all coming back.

And the people waiting in the increasingly intense rain that day knew not only that he was coming back, but exactly when—on November 2, 2021at 12:30 PM local time, if you want to be precise. The prophecy of JFK Jr. returning had been foretold not by Q—Q had simply answered “no” when asked whether JFK Jr. was alive—but by one of Q’s many acolytes who found meaning in the random noise.

The person who persuaded those people in Dealey Plaza to leave their families behind and wait for a dead Kennedy was a Seattle-area demolition contractor with a history of anti-Semitism and an ability to decode the future in random numbers, ironically using a simplified version of the Hebrew-language alphanumeric cipher known as gematria, to create a vast mythology of hidden events and secrets. “A” equaled “1”, “B” equaled “2”, etc. Like many basic concepts in the conspiracy theory world, gematria (pronounced with a hard “G”) is real. But it’s also been twisted and abused by pseudohistorical crankery, first with “The Bible Code,” and now this—100 middle-aged Trumpers singing “Beat It” in the rain, waiting for dead people to return and make America great again.

Calling himself “Negative48”—the “48” being the supposed gematria value of the letters in the word “evil”—Michael Protzman was once just another QAnon influencer with a few thousand followers on Telegram. He was neck-deep in all of Q’s subsidiary conspiracy theories, lecturing his small following about the evils of “Jewish leaders,” promoting anti-Semitic conspiracy films, and telling people to buy worthless Vietnamese currency that would make them rich when it revalued. It was a rap that was instantly familiar to both Q believers and those who studied the movement. But for the same reason we turn up the volume when “Beat It” plays on the radio, Q believers went for it—the familiar brings comfort. So within a few months, a small, devoted following built up around Protzman’s Negative48 character created an entirely new mythology through a combination of gematria, Q drops, and wishful thinking.

The rain poured down and John F. Kennedy Jr. stubbornly failed to emerge. But just as Q believers had been doing for years, the group which came to call itself Negative48 stuck around. (Just like QAnon, the cult often used Protzman’s nickname to refer to itself.) Members swamped a Rolling Stones concert that night, claiming that Mick Jagger would reveal himself to be JFK Jr. They stayed through Thanksgiving, as Protzman began to control even the movements of his followers, telling them when to go outside, when to look up or down, and what to eat. They stayed through Christmas. To keep themselves going, they cranked out dozens of crowd-funding efforts, starting another as soon as one was de-platformed. They were generally ignored by local authorities who couldn’t do anything about the group until it actually broke a law. And they stayed as winter turned to spring. They might still be there now.

In the post-Trump world, the QAnon movement split along two parallel tracks. Sometimes they happened to intersect, but many other times they went their own way. Most believers went down one, a few went down the other. But both are critical to understanding why this movement persisted long after any hope of “The Storm’s” arrival had passed.

One track was a mainstreaming of Q’s core tenets to the point where the basics of QAnon—the drops, the obscure “comms”—were no longer necessary, or even desirable. Q was no longer the cool, secret club that you had speak the jargon to have a chance of getting into. It was just “conservatism” now. The tenuous coalition of MAGA-devoted Q believers and more progressive pandemic truthers that lurched out of Facebook in 2020 had become one unified front in 2021. In countless school board meetings, city council sessions, protests, “health freedom” conferences, and segments on major right-wing media, the same story was being told, and it was a story that even the most casual Q believer would have no problem embracing.

The other track was much farther on the fringe than even most Trumpists were willing to travel. This was where Michael Protzman and his devoted cultists in Negative48 rode, along with other, even more outwardly racist and ant-Semitic new Q promoters. On this track, Q drops were still gospel and the “comms” still were being decoded for all their secrets. And there were a lot of secrets. Trump and JFK Jr. spoke in number codes with Prince and Elvis, quantum medical beds and NESARA would deliver permanent health and prosperity to all, and Trump was still actually the president of a “devolved” military government. Fewer people were in this part of Q’s big tent, but they got a lot of baffled media attention for their bizarre antics—gematria cultists waiting for JFK and drinking industrial bleach out of a communal bowl to fight COVID will get clicks.

This track, the Negative48 track, was quite possibly sending its members to their doom. The other track, the mainstream one, was possibly sending everyone else.

Local Action = National Impact

That slogan was coined by QAnon hero General Michael Flynn. Faced with crushing legal bills and no help from Trump, Flynn often could be found headlining an endless array of gatherings with names like “ReAwaken America” and “God & Country Patriot Revival,” meant to display a folksy middle finger to the COVID-fearful establishment. At these events, which often sold VIP tickets for thousands of dollars, a host of semi-well-known names from a variety of fringes spoke alongside Flynn. A typical conference would offer incendiary speeches from influencers in the stolen election universe, “constitutional sheriffs” claiming that the federal government is an illegal scheme, decodings from the last remaining QAnon promoters, independent media who had been “censored” by the mainstream for their views, and alternative medicine heavyweights spewing conspiracy theories about the government suppressing COVID cures. You even got the occasional serving Republican politician. All of them excelled at separating believers from their money.

When he wasn’t selling Flynn-branded women’s running tank-tops or spreading deranged COVID conspiracy theories on Telegram, Flynn’s apocalyptic ramblings often focused on what he deemed “local action” having a “national impact.” At one June 2021 conference, headlined by MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, Flynn raged against the school board machine, thundering, “We cannot allow school boards to dictate what is happening in our schools. We dictate that.”

Inspired by the desire of Q promoters that America be “taken back” from what they saw as the godless transgender vaccinator hordes of the left, Q believers began making spectacles of themselves at school board and city council meetings. Using public comment time, they blathered conspiracy theories and threatened baseless lawsuits. The majority didn’t even have kids in their local district.

Q’s encroachment into local politics was its biggest mainstream growth vector in the post-Trump era. The media headlines might have been about Negative48’s antics or the squabbles between major Q promoters fighting over pieces of the same grifting pie. But the story with far more importance was unfolding in the sparely attended and barely observed mechanics of local government. The roots of democracy were being hijacked by fringe activists and conspiracy theory cranks—and they had a message that came straight from figures like Mike Flynn.

In the summer and fall of 2021, “local action” meant rambling speeches spouting Q-approved moral panic about “woke ideology” and Critical Race Theory, vaccines being forced on unsuspecting toddlers, the pandemic being prolonged to enforce the controlling mandates of Dr. Fauci, and masks making it easier for sex traffickers to target kids. Some of these videos went viral, getting millions of views—inflated in some part by liberals passing them around to mock them. Some believers took Flynn’s call even further, as they ran for office at the state, local, and party level. Stolen election believers—many of whom had endorsed QAnon on social media—were running for critical secretary of state positions in swing states, trying to seize the power to overturn elections.

And dozens of candidates who publicly endorsed some part of the Q mythology won elections—for the Clark County School Board, encompassing Las Vegas; the City Council of Huntington Beach, CA; the San Luis Coastal Unified School District’s board in sleepy San Luis Obispo, CA; the mayor of tiny Sequim, WA; and many more. They even got their hands into the mechanisms that ran elections—Q believer Ben Johnson was appointed head of the Spalding County Board of Elections and Registration, helping to set election guidelines in a critical Georgia county. What could go wrong?

Even QAnon luminaries got in on the act, apparently tired of waiting for “The Storm” to usher in utopia. Tracy “Beanz” Diaz had been one of the earliest evangelists of the Q movement, and in 2021, she was elected to the South Carolina GOP’s executive committee. She received only 188 votes, but like so many other barely visible elections, it was enough. And the likeliest candidate to have been the last iteration of Q, Ron Watkins, ran a chaotic and barely-funded candidacy for the Arizona 2nd Congressional District, on a platform centered on defeating “communism” in local schools and slaying the Critical Race Theory beast. (Ron has no school-age children living in the United States.)

But as thick as the gloom is, there are glimmers of hope to be found. The national coverage of QAnon believers and conspiracy cranks running for local office inspired candidates to run expressly on anti-conspiracy platforms. One such slate actually won city council seats in Sequim, the same small Washington town roiled by a QAnon-aligned mayor. The grassroots progressive electoral organization Run For Something, which formed in the wake of Trump’s win in 2016, singled out QAnon candidates and publicly vowed to recruit liberal challengers to run against them. And many Q-aligned potential politicos struggled to have their candidacies taken seriously. Ron Watkins may have as much name recognition as anyone running in Arizona, but his campaign had raised just $30,000 as of February 2022—lagging hundreds of thousands of dollars behind the leading GOP candidate in his district.

As the world entered year three of the COVID-19 pandemic, many Americans responded to the continued upheaval by utterly losing their minds. “Unruly passenger incidents” on airplanes, a euphemism that almost always involved passengers becoming aggressive with airline staff over masks, were at their highest rate on record. Workers at vaccine clinics were attacked and called murderers by COVID deniers. Anti-mask parents physically assaulted teachers over school masking mandates. And in an incident with echoes of the “Grass Valley Charter School Fundraiser” fiasco, Q-driven MAGA diehards forced the National Butterfly Center, located just north of the US-Mexico border in McAllen, TX, to close—because they believed it was a hub of drug smuggling and sex trafficking, and were threatening to storm it, guns in hand.

The madness gripping America wasn’t all linked explicitly to QAnon. But even when there weren’t clear links, it was impossible to deny that the violent chaos touted as the aftermath of “The Storm” (remember Drop #1’s promise of “Marines and National Guard” called up to police the streets after Hillary’s arrest) had seeped into everyday life in COVID-weary, Biden-hating, cancel culture-fearing conservative communities. There never needed to be another Q drop, another decoding thread, or another Q T-shirt printed. The brain worms were loose, and they were hungry.

In particular, Q’s residue was all over the Republican malaise related to COVID. As the omicron variant sent case numbers skyrocketing around the world in the winter of 2021, QAnon promoters were among the most visible anti-vaccine advocates pushing out lies and conspiracy theories meant to dissuade people from getting vaccinated and boosted. Across countless Telegram posts and dozens of their “health freedom” tent revival events, the message was both clear and completely contradicted by the available evidence: they believed the pandemic was over, and any mandates related to vaccines or masks were totalitarian control mechanisms that were what was actually killing people. Only occasionally did reality creep in—as when a spate of virulently COVID-denying right-wing media personalities and conspiracy believers died of COVID, including conspiracy legend and QAnon promoter Robert David Steele.

The stolen election industry and the grift around it were also thriving. They lasted well beyond the shelf life of the actual election, which even Trump seemed to admit he los. Even as they feuded amongst themselves over money and credit, QAnon personalities like Mike Flynn, Lin Wood, and Sidney Powell still pumped out a relentless stream of conspiracy theories about Biden’s election win eventually being undone, promising they would “fix 2020” as a steady stream of donations rolled in. Other new conspiracy promoters found fame and fortune in the Biden-era landscape, using Q as a jumping off point for wherever they wanted to take their fans—and they didn’t all involve JFK Jr. ripping off his Mick Jagger mask.

One was the viral series of blog posts called “Devolution,” which posited that Trump was secretly running the country through a “devolved” military government while Joe Biden doddered away on a fake White House set. Unfolding over dozens of almost incomprehensible blog posts, videos, podcasts, and Telegram posts, “Devolution” was a comforting fiction that netted its creator, a North Dakota school employee who went by “Patel Patriot,” thousands of dollars per month in subscriptions from fans waiting to see what would happen next. Another sect believed that Trump’s election wasn’t legitimate—in fact, no election since 1871 held any validity—because Washington DC had quietly become a corporation that year. The details are vague and meaningless, but the upshot was always the same: The bad guys will get theirs; the good guys will deliver the blow—and the special people will be rewarded for their belief.

That’s what’s kept Q’s mythology alive even as the Q persona itself receded in importance. Because that’s what conspiracy theories have always been about—feeling special. You know the secrets “they” don’t want you to know, you know what “really” happened in some historical event, you know that Fauci and Biden and Gates and all the other liberal do-gooders are actually genocidal maniacs, you know that Q and Alex Jones and Tucker Carlson are patriots, and you know more than “the experts”.

Q is like every other conspiracy theory in that way. And whatever absorbs and replaces Q will be like that, too. Conspiracy theories will always be popular, because they make you feel like you’re smart, important, and part of a community.

And it’s that sense of community that kept that flock of believers in Dallas, long after the rest of the world had forgotten about them and moved on to the next freak show. These people, like Q’s faithful, were in it together and for the long haul. They were in it for each other. Where we go one, we go all.

Q-volution

The Foil Hat Gang is changing in subtle ways, and while it looks like Qanon may be on the wane in general, there's still a core group that makes up about 16% of the population here in USAmerica Inc who're fully addicted in one way or another.

CNet:

False QAnon Conspiracies in Politics: What to Look Out for Ahead of the Midterms

What's happening

Even with Donald Trump not in office, QAnon beliefs continue to infect politics.

Why it matters

The debunked conspiracy theory will be in play during the upcoming midterm elections, but that doesn't mean you have to fall for it.

The QAnon conspiracy theory, which started in October 2017, falsely claims that former President Donald Trump fought a hidden war against a cabal of Satanist pedophiles in Hollywood and the Democratic Party while he was in the Oval Office. Believers in the conspiracy theory's outlandish assertions continue to be part of the political landscape, which could have serious ramifications as the midterm elections draw closer.

The nonpartisan Public Religion Research Institute, a nonprofit that researches the intersection of religion, culture and public policy, released a study in February showing that nearly 16% of Americans believe the core QAnon conspiracy theory.

"QAnon has evolved from a movement centered around Trump leading a secret military intelligence operation to save the world, into a movement that not only doesn't need Trump but doesn't even need the iconography it developed over the past four years," said Mike Rothschild, conspiracy researcher and author of The Storm Is Upon Us, which provides a history of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Conspiracy theories can be dangerous and even deadly, as seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, with vaccine misinformation playing a role in some people succumbing to the virus. Despite being repeatedly debunked, belief in the QAnon conspiracy theory continues to infect areas of politics beyond Trump. So far this year, aspects of the QAnon have seeped into protests, a Supreme Court hearing and legislation.

"Its mythology of secret pedophile rings, suppressed cures and technology, massive corruption and fraud propelling a [purportedly] decrepit Joe Biden into office, and COVID being a hoax, have infected every aspect of mainstream conservative politics and culture," Rothschild added.

It doesn't help that the mysterious figure Q broke 18 months of silence and reemerged on June 24. With the midterm elections approaching, the conspiracy theory is likely to continue popping up in campaigns and on social media feeds. Being able to recognize its influence may make it easier to spot, and avoid, in the future.

Here are some of the current events that QAnon has latched onto, some obvious and others less so.

Jan. 6 committee hearing reveals Trump's QAnon inner circle

The House select committee investigating the deadly Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the US Capitol began holding public hearings in June, looking at Trump's actions leading up to the day of the riot. A July 12 hearing focused on a fiery meeting Trump had at the White House on Dec. 18, 2020. In attendance along with White House staff were former Overstock CEO Patrick Byrne, former National Security Adviser Gen. Mike Flynn and former federal prosecutor Sidney Powell. The three are associated with the Q movement.

Byrne was a Trump supporter, and weeks after the 2020 presidential election, he appeared on various QAnon shows claiming he had proof of the election being stolen. Flynn also showed his support for the conspiracy theory in 2020 when he uploaded a video of himself and his family reciting an oath created by Q. Powell was an attorney for Flynn in his criminal case and had given subtle hints of her support for QAnon.

The three, along with former Trump attorney Rudy Guiliani, advised Trump to call a national emergency and seize voting machines, which they falsely claimed had been compromised. Their suggestions countered those of former White House officials who had little reason to doubt the election was conducted fairly, leading to a screaming match between the two groups.

The return of Q

On Dec. 8, 2020, Q made what many people thought would be a final post. But on June 24 the account began posting again on 8kun, formerly known as 8chan.

The three posts made by the Q account consisted of the same sort of cryptic verbiage used previously. Another post was made on June 28 referencing Cassidy Hutchinson, a former aide to then White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows. Hutchinson testified in front of the Jan. 6 committee the same day.

Midterm elections

In 2020, almost 100 candidates who expressed support for QAnon ran for office. The two most prominent candidates who won their races were Rep. Lauren Boebert, a Republican from Colorado, and Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia.

This year, so far, there are 78 candidates running for office in 28 states who believe in QAnon, according to Grid News. One race in particular has an interesting candidate, with the person allegedly responsible for posting as Q running for office.

Ron Watkins is the former site administrator for the anonymous board 8chan and, as laid out in the Q: Into the Storm documentary series, the person purportedly responsible for many of the Q drops (he denies it). He's also running for Arizona's 2nd Congressional District seat.

Watkins gained prominence among Republicans following the 2020 presidential election, when he repeated claims of election fraud that have since been debunked. He's one of several candidates running for the seat in the Republican primary, which is scheduled for Aug. 2. Watkins has also said he received a subpoena in early June to testify in front of the Jan. 6 committee. Since he received the subpoena, Watkins has missed multiple media and campaign appearances in July.

Another candidate who has in the past supported QAnon, Doug Mastriano, is running to be governor of Pennsylvania. Mastriano won the Republican nomination on May 17. He tweeted multiple times in 2018 with QAnon hashtags and slogans. He'll go up against Democrat candidate Josh Shapiro in November.

A QAnon influencer who goes by the name Juan O. Savin -- an alias intended to sound similar to James Bond's codename "007" -- is working on a coalition to get Q faithful candidates into the secretary of state offices in South Carolina, Colorado and Nevada, according to a report from Media Matters. The 2020 presidential elections and false claims of voter fraud made Americans more aware of the responsibilities of the position of secretary of state. In many states, this is the official who helps determine whether an election had voter fraud issues.
Durham investigation

In May 2019, Attorney General Bill Barr ordered an investigation into the 2016 presidential election and tapped US Attorney John Durham to lead it. Many QAnon followers viewed this investigation as part of the "storm" that would lead to arrests of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and others within the Democratic National Committee. One of the last messages from Q in 2020 had only one word: Durham.

Michael Sussmann, a cybersecurity lawyer who worked with Clinton's campaign in 2016, was indicted by Durham in September for allegedly lying to the FBI. A jury acquitted him of the charge on May 31.

Both Trump and Q followers shared their dismay at the US legal system after the acquittal was announced. Some also began to spin the decision to support the false conspiracy.

War in Ukraine

Since Russia invaded Ukraine in late February, Russia has been using misinformation to try to justify Russian President Vladimir Putin's decision to go to war. Both Facebook and Twitter have called out Russia for its disinformation efforts. One false narrative touted by Russia early in the invasion was that Ukraine had supposedly been developing bioweapons, a conspiracy theory that was floated by QAnon believers months earlier.

Posts from conspiracy theorists in 2021 claimed falsely that Biden and his son, Hunter, were part of a plot to develop bioweapons in foreign countries, according to Media Matters. One of the countries mentioned was Ukraine.

Days before Russia began spreading misinformation about biolabs, a conspiracy theory Twitter account shared the false claim about the labs in Ukraine. It began circulating in QAnon circles, and then quickly spread to other right-wing forums and was amplified by conservative media including Fox News' Tucker Carlson. Eventually, both Russia and China began running with the narrative of the Ukraine biolabs.

Claims of bioweapons being made in Ukraine have been proven false. The US and Ukraine do have a treaty to prevent the development of bioweapons in labs that were created when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union.

 
Trump's potential return to Twitter

In April, Elon Musk agreed to buy Twitter for $44 billion. (In July, though, the Tesla CEO said he wants out of the deal -- prompting a lawsuit from Twitter.) Earlier, Musk had said that if he did acquire Twitter, he'd remove the platform's ban on Trump. The former president's account was banned by Twitter days after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot.

This news sent some QAnon believers into a fervor on various social media platforms where they congregate, such as Gab and Telegram.

They suggested Trump's possible return to Twitter was predicted by Q in 2017 and would be a sign the former president was about to confirm a crackdown on the fictional cabal. Like the entire QAnon conspiracy, this is completely false.

This prediction – an alleged sign that "the show" will have truly begun – comes from this Q drop, posted in November of 2017.

Such theories have been present on and off for weeks, but it's not the first time they've emerged in the past few years...and it won't be the last. pic.twitter.com/SqWoPnDY05— Sara Aniano (@coolfacejane) May 10, 2022

It's unclear if Trump would return to Twitter if allowed. The former president would reportedly be obligated to post first to his own social media platform, Truth Social, before sharing things on other sites.

Supreme Court hearing

The US Senate confirmed Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson for the Supreme Court by a vote of 53-47 last month. She'll replace retiring Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer, who will step down on June 30 at the end of the judicial term.

Jackson's confirmation hearing was expected to be a political circus. But some Republican senators questioned her judicial decisions, while also appearing to make subtle references to QAnon.

Sen. Josh Hawley, a Republican from Missouri, attempted to portray Jackson as having a soft record in cases involving sexual offenders who targeted children. His attacks were considered misleading. Other Republican senators -- including Lindsey Graham from South Carolina, Tom Cotton from Arkansas and Ted Cruz from Texas -- followed suit in declaring Jackson was lenient to pedophiles. In reality, her record is on par with other judges who tried similar cases.

QAnon believers took to social media platforms such as Telegram and Truth Social, posting messages supporting the Republican senators pursuing these attacks and denouncing Jackson. The Q faithful viewed these senators to be in support of their conspiracy that Democrats were part of a pedophile cabal and turned a blind eye to child sex crimes.
Trucker Convoy/Anti-vax

At the start of the year, a group of anti-vaxxers in Canada formed a movement to occupy the country's capital over vaccine requirements. Their secret weapon was the use of semi-trucks. The trucker convoy lasted weeks as trucks camped out in Ottawa before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau made use of emergency powers to force the removal of the protestors.

In March, a similar protest happened in the US with the goal of reaching Washington, DC. This version got much less attention and support, in part due to the beginning of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

QAnon believers played a role in both the protests. COVID vaccine misinformation runs rampant in the Q communities, and that misinformation begins infecting other right-wing groups. Trucks and other vehicles in both the US and Canada were adorned with QAnon logos and slogans.
Disney Protest

Florida's Parental Rights in Education bill, also referred to by opponents as the "Don't Say Gay Bill," was signed into state law in March. Disney employees protested the company's lack of action on the bill's passage, which in turn led the company to say it'll work to repeal the law.

This drew the ire of Republican state legislators who passed a bill to remove Disney's special tax status in April. The Mickey Mouse company also became the target of QAnon believers.

Protests at the entrance of Disney World in Orlando, Florida, started in April. Those protesting chanted and carried signs referring to Disney World as "Pedo World" and the slogan "Ok, Groomer," which is a take on the "Ok, Boomer" meme.

QAnon believers not only supported these protests but also began spreading misinformation about the company and its CEO, Bob Chapek. This included exaggerating losses the company experienced due to the protests and false claims that Chapek was arrested for human trafficking and child pornography. The claims about Chapek and his arrest are completely bogus.

Today's Reddit

We've got us a pretty fucked up joint here.

Today In Daddy State News

Daddy State Awareness - Rule 1:

Every accusation is a confession

Insider:

A QAnon influencer who accused Democrats of being pedophiles turned out to be a convicted child molester

A mid-level QAnon personality who often accuses top Democrats of being pedophiles is himself a convicted child molester.

David Todeschini, 70, runs a medium-sized channel on Bitchute, an alternative video sharing site like YouTube, called Net4TruthUSA.

In several of his videos, Todeschini has said Democrats are pedophiles. In the title of one recent video, Todeschini wrote that President Joe Biden was a "cho-mo," which is prison slang for pedophile.

QAnon followers claim that there is a "deep state" of senior Democratic Party politicos, CEOs, and celebrities that run a sex cult involving children. There is no evidence for this theory.

However, records show that Todeschini is in fact a pedophile. In 1990, he was convicted of coercing an 8-year-old boy into sexual acts in 1987, as noted on the New York state sex offenders register.

The news was first reported by Right Wing Watch.

Todeschini, who is known in QAnon circles as David Trent, is classed as a level three threat by New York state, meaning he has a "high risk of repeat offense and a threat to public safety exists."

He was released from prison in 2006 and said in a recent video that he now lives in North Carolina.

- more -

What If

What if the QAnon boneheads are just a buncha guys who grew up watching Scooby Doo, but now they're remembering it wrong - thinking it was a documentary?

Kinda like Creationists and The Flintstones.

A Very Fine Line

This is actually a really tough row to hoe.

I have no love or sympathy or any regard in any sense for Facebook, except that they should be more or less free to do their thing as long it doesn't directly harm anyone, or facilitate harm to anyone.

And that, I think, is at the heart of this:

KIRO-TV7 (Seattle)

Texas court: Facebook can be held liable for sex trafficking predators

The Texas Supreme Court ruled Friday that Facebook is not a “lawless no-man’s land” and can be held liable for the conduct of people who use the platform to recruit and prey on children.

The justices ruled that trafficking victims can move ahead with lawsuits because Facebook violated a provision of the Texas Civil Practice and Remedies Code, which was passed in 2009, the Houston Chronicle reported.

The ruling stems from three civil actions from Houston involving teenage trafficking victims who met the predators through Facebook’s messaging functions, according to the Chronicle. The plaintiffs sued the California-based social media giant for negligence and product liability, arguing that Facebook failed to warn about or try to prevent sex trafficking from occurring on its platforms, the newspaper reported.

The lawsuits also alleged that Facebook benefited from the sexual exploitation of trafficking victims.

Facebook’s attorneys argued the company is shielded from liability under Section 230 of the federal Communications Decency Act, which states that what users say or write online is not the same as a publisher conveying the same message.

A Facebook spokesperson said in a statement that the company is considering what steps to take next.

“Sex trafficking is abhorrent and not allowed on Facebook,” the spokesperson said. “We will continue our fight against the spread of this content and the predators who engage in it.”

The justices, in their majority opinion, wrote that “We do not understand Section 230 to ‘create a lawless no-man’s-land on the internet’ in which states are powerless to impose liability on websites that knowingly or intentionally participate in the evil of online human trafficking.

“Holding internet platforms accountable for the words or actions of their users is one thing, and the federal precedent uniformly dictates that Section 230 does not allow it,” the opinion said. “Holding internet platforms accountable for their own misdeeds is quite another thing. This is particularly the case for human trafficking.”

The lawsuits were brought by three Houston women who alleged they were recruited as teens via Facebook apps and were trafficked as a result of those connections, providing predators with “a point of first contact between sex traffickers and these children,” the Chronicle reported.

According to the Human Trafficking Institute, the majority of online recruitment in active sex trafficking cases in the U.S. in 2020 occurred on Facebook. The organization made the assertions in its 2020 Federal Human Trafficking Report.

“The internet has become the dominant tool that traffickers use to recruit victims, and they often recruit them on a number of very common social networking websites,” Human Trafficking Institute CEO Victor Boutros told CBS News earlier this month. “Facebook overwhelmingly is used by traffickers to recruit victims in active sex trafficking cases.”

One plaintiff said she was 15 in 2012 when she communicated with the friend of a mutual friend on Facebook, the Chronicle reported. She alleged that after the man offered her a modeling job, he posted photos of her on Backpage, an online platform that was shut down in 2018 because it promoted human trafficking. The woman claimed she was “raped, beaten, and forced into further sex trafficking,” the newspaper reported.

The second plaintiff said she was 14 in 2017 when she was contacted on Instagram, another Facebook property. The woman alleged that the man lured her with “false promises of love and a better future,” and then used Instagram to advertise her as a prostitute and set up “dates,” according to the Chronicle. The woman claimed she was raped numerous times and alleged that when her mother reported what had happened to Facebook, the company “never responded.”

The third plaintiff said she was 14 in 2016 when a man she did not know sent her a friend request on Instagram, the Chronicle reported. They exchanged messages for two years, and in March 2018 the man allegedly asked her to leave home and meet her, the newspaper reported. The man allegedly photographed the teen in a motel room and posted the images on Backpage, according to court records.

Facebook’s attorneys argued that Congress used “very broad terms” to preserve free speech, guard against censorship via threat of litigation and avoid inconsistent liability standards.

“When Congress decided to amend Section 230 to combat the scourge of online sex trafficking, it did so with a scalpel, not a hammer -- carefully enumerating precisely the types of claims that would be exempt from Section 230,” Facebook’s attorneys argued in a September 2020 brief to the court. “The balance Congress struck is embodied in the language it used. Congress is free to alter that balance by amending that language. But this Court doesn’t sit as a super legislature to rewrite the statute under the guise of divining legislative ‘purpose.’

“But regardless of what plaintiffs contend Facebook should have done about that third-party content -- prevent it, block it, remove it, edit it, flag it, or warn about it -- the purported duty to take action that undergirds plaintiffs’ claims derives from (Facebook’s) role as a publisher, which is why these claims are prohibited by Section 230.”

My hang up is that I want Facebook kicked in the nuts really really really hard, but I don't want the Q-birds to take this as any kind of vindication that their stoopid fantasies have some tiny scintilla of rational justification.

Can't wait to hear more on that shit.

Developing

The conspiracy fantasies that have grown out of the COVID-19 mess wouldn't be funny if they weren't couched in such tragedy.

Here's a thread that keeps popping up on the Twitter Machine.

OK, hold on there a minute, Skeezix - slow your roll.

You really think 9 jillion un-vaccinated spermatazoons are going to be more valuable than a few hundred unvaccinated eggs?

A coupla things come to mind for me right off.

First, you still don't know jack shit about Supply & Demand.

Second - since the dynamics ain't changed, you still ain't gettin' laid.

The variations on the Elimination Fantasy are rife, and when they dress it up in Dr Strangelove terms, it just gets so fucking creepy.

And I think maybe "Spike Protein" is a great nickname for my penis - it's more up-to-date (and it scans better) than "Oscar The One-Eyed Pocket Snake".

Money Meets Mouth

QAmom - from YouTube guy DurtySean:

Take the fact that we all had to stay put during the pandemic - with not enough to occupy ourselves - plus the election cycle, plus the decades-long push towards plutocracy - you put it all together and you get some pretty weird shit goin' on here in USAmerica Inc.

Seems like a pretty good idea to make those bets though.

Color Me Unsurprised

Hey, everybody! Guess what.

Water is wet. Pain hurts. And squirrel turds are nutty.

Not to belittle the sick, and dismiss or discount their problems, but c'mon - those idiots acting all crazy and shit? Yeah - it's because they're crazy. Maybe we should stop lifting them up like they're a buncha fuckin' heroes of the American experiment. Maybe we could take the threat seriously and address their health issues, but stop pretending their political philosophy is something that merits any real consideration.

They need fuzzy slippers, TV game shows for an hour in the Day Room, and regular dosing with thorazine, but they don't deserve the kind of fawning recognition they've been getting from the Press Poodles - and they sure as fuck don't belong in my government.

This, from two months ago at UPI:

Many QAnon followers report mental health diagnoses

- by Sophia Moskalenko, research fellow in social psychology at Georgia State University.

QAnon is often viewed as a group associated with conspiracy, terrorism and radical action, such as the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. But radical extremism and terror may not be the real concern from this group.

QAnon followers, who may number in the millions, appear to believe a baseless and debunked conspiracy theory claiming that a satanic cabal of pedophiles and cannibals controls world governments and the media. They also subscribe to many other outlandish and improbable ideas, such as that the Earth is flat, that the coronavirus is a biological weapon used to gain control over the world's population, that Bill Gates is somehow trying to use coronavirus vaccinations to implant microchips into people and more.

As a social psychologist, I normally study terrorists. During research for Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon, a forthcoming book I co-authored with security scholar Mia Bloom, I noticed that QAnon followers are different from the radicals I usually study in one key way: They are far more likely to have serious mental illnesses.

Significant conditions

I found that many QAnon followers revealed -- in their own words on social media or in interviews -- a wide range of mental health diagnoses, including bipolar disorder, depression, anxiety and addiction.

In court records of QAnon followers arrested in the wake of the Capitol insurrection, 68% reported they had received mental health diagnoses. The conditions they revealed included post-traumatic stress disorder, bipolar disorder, paranoid schizophrenia and Munchausen syndrome by proxy -- a psychological disorder that causes one to invent or inflict health problems on a loved one, usually a child, in order to gain attention for themselves. By contrast, 19% of all Americans have a mental health diagnosis.

Among QAnon insurrectionists with criminal records, 44% experienced a serious psychological trauma that preceded their radicalization, such as physical or sexual abuse of them or of their children.

Psychology of conspiracy

Research has long revealed connections between psychological problems and beliefs in conspiracy theories. For example, anxiety increases conspiratorial thinking, as do social isolation and loneliness.

Depressed, narcissistic and emotionally detached people are also prone to have a conspiratorial mindset. Likewise, people who exhibit odd, eccentric, suspicious and paranoid behavior -- and who are manipulative, irresponsible and low on empathy -- are more likely to believe conspiracy theories.

QAnon's rise has coincided with an unfolding mental health crisis in the United States. Even before the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of diagnoses of mental illness was growing, with 1.5 million more people diagnosed in 2019 than in 2018.

The isolation of the lockdowns, compounded by the anxiety related to COVID-19 and the economic uncertainty, made a bad situation worse. Self-reported anxiety and depression quadrupled during the quarantine and now affects as much as 40% of the U.S. population.

More serious problem

It's possible that people who embrace QAnon ideas may be inadvertently or indirectly expressing deeper psychological problems. This could be similar to when people exhibit self-harming behavior or psychosomatic complaints that are in fact signals of serious psychological issues.

It could be that QAnon is less a problem of terrorism and extremism than it is one of poor mental health.

Only a few dozen QAnon followers are accused of having done anything illegal or violent -- which means that for millions of QAnon believers, their radicalization may be of their opinions, but not their actions.

In my view, the solution to this aspect of the QAnon problem is to address the mental health needs of all Americans -- including those whose problems manifest as QAnon beliefs. Many of them -- and many others who are not QAnon followers -- could clearly benefit from counseling and therapy.