dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

Former Trump strategist Steve Bannon had a message for his podcast listeners on Tuesday, and for adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory it wasn’t very subtle.

“It’s gonna be a storm,” Bannon said. He was speaking of the closing weeks of the election but using the very same imagery QAnon believers use to describe their dream of Trump arresting and executing his political foes. “The storm clouds are around the Biden camp. The storm clouds are around the Biden camp. A gathering storm.”

For those who may have thought it was just a slip of the tongue, Bannon dispelled any doubt the next day. Speaking once more on his podcast, he claimed that at least parts of QAnon, which posits that Satanic cannibal-pedophile elites in the Democratic Party who drink children’s blood will soon be executed at Trump’s orders, are true.

“How are they not at least, at least an aspect of their argument, at least appears, directionally to be correct?” Bannon asked, while pushing unverified claims that a laptop that supposedly belonged to Hunter Biden was filled with illegal images. The tenets of QAnon, he posited, were “the elephant in the room.”

With less than two weeks before Election Day and Trump lagging in the polls, some of the president’s most prominent allies are going all in on QAnon, while Trump and other top supporters refuse to denounce the conspiracy theory. It is, at its most innocent, a crass political calculation designed to keep a relatively modest though loud and influential chunk of the party’s base engaged. At its worst, critics warn, it’s a green light of acceptance to dangerous conspiracy theorists and a normalization of their beliefs.

And it’s coming from the top. At his NBC town hall last week, Trump refused to disavow QAnon, which the FBI considers a potential source of domestic terrorism. On Sunday, Republican National Committee chair Ronna McDaniel sidestepped a question from ABC host George Stephanopoulos on whether she would denounce QAnon, saying only that it was “not part of our party” and a “fringe group.”

In the Georgia special election Senate race, two Republican candidates are competing for their own QAnon endorsements. Sen. Kelly Loefler (R-GA) touted the backing of Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican and outspoken QAnon supporter who’s set to win a House seat in Congress in November.

Loefler’s challenger, Rep. Doug Collins (R-GA), meanwhile rushed out his endorsement from former Trump National Security Adviser Michael Flynn, a hero to QAnon believers, who recently took the QAnon oath with members of his family.

The courtship of Q has, at times, been covert. In September, House Republicans’ campaign arm launched an ad falsely accusing Rep. Tom Malinowski (D-NJ) of supporting pedophiles, in what was seen as a wink and a nod to Q followers. While Trumpworld has not condemned the movement, they also haven’t wanted to be tied to them publicly. NBC video from a Trump rally in North Carolina on Wednesday showed a Trump campaign worker listing off the types of clothing at the event, including “no QAnon attire.”

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