They hit everything in this, trying to trash Qanon, of course. But the headline is a killer itself.

This online cult is a danger in the real world; QAnon is a deep-state conspiracy theory that sees Trump as our saviour in the coming battle between good and evil.

From: The Times (London, England)

Publisher: NI Syndication Limited

Date: July 30, 2020

Earlier this month, General Michael Flynn, former director of the US Defense Intelligence Agency and national security adviser, took an al fresco oath of loyalty with family and friends and posted it on Twitter, using the hashtag TakeTheOath. At the end of the oath, they vowed, in a phrase that sounds like an overtranslation from The Three Musketeers: "Where we go one, we go all."

Readers of The Times may not know what many of those reading, retweeting or "liking" the general's video know: that the phrase and the hashtag indicate his support for an online conspiracy theory network that is becoming a cult. It's known as QAnon. You'll see its supporters at rallies for Donald Trump, and if you look for its #WWG1WGA abbreviation online you'll find tens of thousands of references. YouTube offers a cornucopia of QAnon videos. A full range of QAnon merchandise featuring the letter Q and, often, a rabbit is available at all good Amazon sites near you. There are even QAnon candidates in US elections. The president of the United States retweets contributions from QAnon activists.

A decade ago I published a book about modern conspiracy theories. I had studied dozens of them, from the forged Protocols of the Elders of Zion (guess who the infernal plotters were in that one), to "9/11 was an inside job", via the hidden bloodline of Christ. On the way I looked at "the government is poisoning us" memes, baby sacrifice themes, beliefs in a secret world government, Manchurian candidates, Obama being an undercover Kenyan, accusations that the Clintons had taken to murdering their aides and that the Queen is actually running the world's banks. All were absurd but some were actually demented. Now imagine one gigantic, compendium theory which puts all of these together – that's QAnon.

It emerged in 2016 with the release via Wikileaks of emails from the Democratic National Committee. References in the emails to "pizza" were taken by self-styled online researchers to mean child pornography. This led to a belief worthy of Labour's former deputy leader Tom Watson that there was an establishment cover-up of violent and even murderous child abuse by prominent Democrats.

Not long afterwards people came across an online bulletin put out by someone calling themselves "Q", which purported to be the account by a US intelligence insider of a battle between the deep state (baby slayers, kleptocratic bankers, election stealers, mainstream media shills, the Pope etc) and dissident forces. The battle had not yet been fully joined but the day of reckoning was coming. And soon, a comment by the newly elected Donald Trump that "maybe it's the calm before the storm" was taken as a sign that he was to lead the dissidents against the forces of evil. "What's the storm?" he was asked. "You'll find out," he replied.

cont

>>10394325

>This online cult is a danger in the real world; QAnon is a deep-state conspiracy theory that sees Trump as our saviour in the coming battle between good and evil. cont

Once a phenomenon on the fringes of the internet, the QAnon movement moved mainstream onto Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The latter was facilitated by the algorithm which recommended videos to users of the platform. So in the same way that I get Marianne Faithfull recommended if I've asked for The Dubliners, so people looking at Princess Diana videos might end up with QAnon, and down the rabbit hole they went. (Remember the rabbit?) Within weeks of being established, some of the best-populated QAnon sites were pulling in several million visits per month. Millions more watched the YouTube videos. There was a Q App (it's gone now). There are Facebook groups with tens of thousands of members, many of them outside the US, not a few from Britain. People share a camaraderie as evidenced by that slogan (which they love to repeat), reveal to each other that Michelle Obama is actually a man, praise each other for being part of the Great Awakening and predict "The Coming Storm".

And this was even before the pandemic, which they call, of course, the Plandemic. This week President Trump retweeted something from the "Where we go one, we go all" brother of Michael Flynn, who was promoting as a "fearless warrior for the truth" a doctor who was in turn promoting the virtues of hydroxychloroquine and the uselessness of facemasks. This doctor also believes that infertility is caused by demonic spirits.

Up till now people have described QAnon as a conspiracy theory but increasingly I've come to think that it's something else. There are many reports of people of all ages effectively giving up family and friends to stay with their online community. Many are older and plenty of them are women (which is unusual). The commitment is to the group and to its beliefs. Anecdotally, in America at least, many of its adherents appear to be the kind of middle-class people who have lost out since the crash of 2008: subprime mortgage victims and the recently unemployed. People who feel powerless but need to believe that somewhere there's some meaning to it all.

I think QAnon is our first online cult a kind of cyber-Jonestown without a leader, but with sufficient diffuse momentum to generate its own direction. This has been assisted by Facebook's decision a couple of years ago to try to support "meaningful social interaction" in Facebook communities. After all, one girl's meaningful social interaction is another boy's Hitler Jugend. I think it entirely possible that such groups will be able to move beyond cyberspace.

The language of QAnon is of soldiers and warriors fighting battles against evil. It wouldn't take much for some of those soldiers to think that this fight badly needs to be taken to the physical world. Indeed it would be astonishing if they didn't. Already there have been several instances of armed QAnon supporters being arrested while carrying weapons. A murder in New York last year of a Mafia boss was carried out by a young man claiming that he was attacking the "deep state". The FBI is worried that QAnon could yet supply its own Anders Breivik, the far-right mass murderer who killed 77 people in Norway in 2011.

This being 2020, Twitter has recently taken action to remove 7,000 of the most egregious QAnon accounts, but there's not much that can be done about the more sophisticated and fastest-mutating ones. YouTube has changed its algorithm and partly blocked the rabbit hole. Facebook is still working on its response.

But what is a poor platform to do when the people most effectively spreading this stuff are elected world leaders and three-star generals? The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our sites but in ourselves.

People reveal to each other that Michelle Obama is really a man

>>10394372

why are you trashing me. I am just posting what the DS thinks of Qanon.

you idiots really need to get a clue and think

>>10394347

hey shill, did this post trigger you because you know the DS messed up by characterizing Qanon and Trump is a battle between good and evil.

>>10394388

what is the point in your question.

If you don't read them why ask anything about them.

You just come here and comment . Wow. that's a real tough job you have threre.

>>10394397

>July 29 2020

so………. can you find it posted here before?

It may be of interest to know what the Brits fakenews are saying about Qanon, no?