dChan - Q Origins Project Archive

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/opinion/think-capitol-rioters-were-ordinary-people-new-research-connects-many-to-far-right-groups/ar-AAWksLm?ocid=msedgntp&cvid=a9eb8e40e44046ab9822f7e35bb653c9

Salon

Think Capitol rioters were "ordinary people"? New research connects many to far-right groups

Kathryn Joyce - 2h ago

Last Thursday, Michael Jensen, a senior researcher at the University of Maryland's National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START center), released preliminary findings on the ideological motivations and connections of about 30 percent of all Jan. 6 defendants. While his research is ongoing, Jensen has already found that at least 244 of the 816 people arrested to date were either members of "extremist" organizations or self-identified with them. In his widely-shared map of the network (embedded below), Jensen documented at least 700 relationships between the defendants and both well-known far-right groups as well as more diffuse movements, including white nationalists, anti-vaccination activists, militias, militant anti-abortion groups, QAnon adherents and more.

Alan Hostetter perfectly encapsulates Jan. 6: He's a Three Percenter, he's anti-vax, he's anti-science. He's spoken at QAnon rallies, and now he's using sovereign-citizen tactics.

For example, Alan Hostetter, I think, perfectly encapsulates Jan. 6. He's a Three Percenter. He's anti-vax, he's anti-science. He has spoken at QAnon rallies. He has links to the QAnon Shaman. Now, in court, he's using sovereign-citizen tactics. He developed his own anti-government militia called the American Phoenix Project and mobilized his fellow group members to the Capitol on that day. So he's sitting at this intersection of just about every ideology that was present at the Capitol.

Somebody like that is important because they transmit ideas from one movement to another. When he speaks at a QAnon rally, he brings sovereign citizen and anti-government views to a movement that maybe otherwise isn't hearing those views. He's able to make connections between those disparate ideologies and bring them closer together.

That seems to mirror the growing enmeshment of different right-wing movements, to the point that we're seeing an almost seamless overlap between anti-vaccination sentiments, election lie narratives, QAnon conspiracy theories and so on.

QAnon played a pivotal role in bringing together groups that weren't necessarily in opposition but had different goals and ideas. QAnon is a self-interested conspiracy theory. It doesn't care about coherence or whether the predictions come true. It wants to survive. It wants to grow. So it's opportunistic and will bring anybody into the fold.

QAnon folks, at the beginning, had a strong connection to the sovereign citizen movement. But you've seen influential people within the movement become more overtly antisemitic, and that brings in the white nationalists. You see them being more overtly anti-government and pushing election conspiracy theories, and that brings in the militias. Then you see them being anti-vax and anti-lockdown, and that appeals to folks that aren't connected to the broader anti-government movement but are vulnerable to radicalization. So QAnon becomes this connective tissue, drawing these individuals closer together and putting them under this umbrella conspiracy theory.

KEEP MY Q ANON OUTCHA FUKIN MOUF