QAnon Corner -- Where one goes bonkers, we all go bonkers

Innula Zenovka

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Since the QAnon madness is unlikely to go away, it maybe needs a thread of its own, particularly since some of its adherents will probably end up in the US Congress:



That should really make for some interesting conversations in the Congressional dining rooms -- how do you handle normal social and professional interactions if you're convinced many of your colleagues are satan-worshipping paedophiles in the pay of George Soros who kidnap and murder babies (asking for a friend)?
 

Spirits Rising

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That should really make for some interesting conversations in the Congressional dining rooms -- how do you handle normal social and professional interactions if you're convinced many of your colleagues are satan-worshipping paedophiles in the pay of George Soros who kidnap and murder babies (asking for a friend)?
You don't. You get (rightfully) laughed at and hopefully replaced by someone with an actual, functioning brain.
 

Innula Zenovka

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Is this the new Scientology?
I don't think so, since they don't have the sort of organisational structure or bricks and mortar presence that Scientology does. Nor is it a multi-level-marketing operation like Scientology. In contrast, anyone can try to monetise it by selling QAnon merchandise or running their own YouTube QAnon conspiracy channel.

I think we've witnessed the birth of self-sustaining viral cult-like movement, starting with PizzaGate back in 2016 and morphing and mutating wildly as it grows.

Not that I know much about them, but to me it recalls some of medieval heretical cults like the Cathars and Bogomils, or later the Anabaptists of Munster.

ETA: I'm sure I hadn't seen this article before a link in the Wikipedia article on the Anabaptists of Munster led me to it:

 
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Sovereignty

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I don't think so, since they don't have the sort of organisational structure or bricks and mortar presence that Scientology does. Nor is it a multi-level-marketing operation like Scientology. In contrast, anyone can try to monetise it by selling QAnon merchandise or running their own YouTube QAnon conspiracy channel.

I think we've witnessed the birth of self-sustaining viral cult-like movement, starting with PizzaGate back in 2016 and morphing and mutating wildly as it grows.

Not that I know much about them, but to me it recalls some of medieval heretical cults like the Cathars and Bogomils, or later the Anabaptists of Munster.

ETA: I'm sure I hadn't seen this article before a link in the Wikipedia article on the Anabaptists of Munster led me to it:

Blatant ageism.
Others are beginning to suspect that QAnon might be a prank targeted at older internet users—people like Roseanne Barr, who is a strong supporter. As Hanna Kozlowska writes, quoting Joseph Uscinski, associate professor of political science at the University of Miami and expert on conspiracy theories:
“[O]lder users [who] can sometimes be intentionally tricked into joining a QAnon group. “These people who haven’t necessarily been raised as digital natives are naively sort of navigating their way through Facebook which is like a giant library with no Dewey Decimal System”
There are many gullible people in the world, apparently far more than Joseph Uscinski is aware of. Maybe he's gullible. Bet he's some old dude. Oops, born in 1975. He's just naturally gullible then.
 

Innula Zenovka

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On reflection, there's a much more recent parallel than medieval heresies -- The antisemitic forgery The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which we know was constructed by the Tsarist political police but which, nevertheless, gained wide currency as an antisemitic conspiracy theory in Europe, the US, and elsewhere.

The industrialist Henry Ford apparently came across it when a fellow passenger on a transatlantic crossing told him about it, and when he returned to the US he printed and distributed hundreds of thousands of copies.
 
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Sovereignty

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Reading through Joseph Uscinski's Wikipedia article, I noticed it mentions surveys done asking people whether they think the government is concealing the true cost of immigration. Honestly, how many people walk around with a formed opinion about the true cost of immigration, etc.

I'm reminded of some comedy bits from a late night talk show (forget which, don't care) where people were asked their opinion about some mundane thing that actually did not exist or had not happened. People happily answered the questions even though it was all nonsense to begin with. They were lying.

I'm not sure how you avoid lying in surveys about obscure topics like the true cost of immigration. It's like the people doing the surveys can create a conspiracy theory on the spot just by asking the question. They wanted to know if people were anxious about immigration. That's a foregone conclusion. If people are going to lie in response to the questions, it seems probable that they would go with a lie that is congruent with their fears. The researchers thereby "discovered" that people think the government is hiding the true cost of immigration from them.
 

Innula Zenovka

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As I recall, Pizzagate started off as a tongue-in-cheek ironic, not really serious game played in 4-Chan or 8-Chan or wherever by the sort of people who like anime and frogs, and it migrated from there to social media via people like Mike Cernovich and other fringe right commentators and grifters who feed stories into the Breitbart media ecology, and it gained traction where.

But interestingly, when that guy turned up at Comet Pizza with his gun, trying to rescue the children held in the non-existent basement, all the people who'd been circulating and embellishing the story turned on the guy for being an idiot and hopelessly naive, which always struck me as a bit unfair since, if you genuinely believe there are children being held prisoner prior to being abused and murdered, then trying to rescue them seems a reasonable course of action.

He'd spoiled the fun by taking it literally when he wasn't meant to.

Then Q turns up and all these folks are going crazy over something that, originally, everyone knew was absolute nonsense. Something similar, though more benign, happened in Britain after WWI, when lots of people were convinced that The Angels of Mons were a real phenomenon.
 
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Sovereignty

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How Mass Hysteria Is Related to Groupthink

Well ... the article falls short of it's headline, but they mention:
It's believed that groupthink increases as group cohesiveness increases, which may help explain the psychological phenomenon of mass hysteria.
Tales of wartime miracles would likely be supported by the need for group cohesiveness to meet the wartime threat. Indeed, the Wikipedia Angels of Mons article has this telling comment.
Machen tried to set the record straight, but any attempt to lessen the impact of such an inspiring story was seen as bordering on treason by some.
Dancing mania has some interesting parallels to this whole business. The article mentions:
Often musicians accompanied dancers, due to a belief that music would treat the mania, but this tactic sometimes backfired by encouraging more to join in.
It's suggestive of how people can choose what they want to reinforce some belief, activity, or state of mind--like choosing to say that the government is lying to reinforce one's fears over immigration.
 

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Dakota Tebaldi

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As I recall, Pizzagate started off as a tongue-in-cheek ironic, not really serious game played in 4-Chan or 8-Chan or wherever by the sort of people who like anime and frogs, and it migrated from there to social media via people like Mike Cernovich and other fringe right commentators and grifters who feed stories into the Breitbart media ecology, and it gained traction where.

But interestingly, when that guy turned up at Comet Pizza with his gun, trying to rescue the children held in the non-existent basement, all the people who'd been circulating and embellishing the story turned on the guy for being an idiot and hopelessly naive, which always struck me as a bit unfair since, if you genuinely believe there are children being held prisoner prior to being abused and murdered, then trying to rescue them seems a reasonable course of action.
It was precedented, though. Prior to Pizzagate personalities like Alex Jones built minor careers out of spreading exactly these kinds of conspiracy theories, even specifically involving cabals of powerful pedophiles maintaining gigantic rings of slave-children (that's what "the Bohemian Grove" was all about, remember), but even more just general "the government is here to suppress white Christians" whining. Jones in particular is well known for his angry bombastic rants declaring that the American people need to rise up and violently eliminate the conspirators; I mean we've all seen the videos. But whenever anybody who's been inspired by his rhetoric to do exactly what he has called for people to do, Jones is right on the spot with a pronouncement that the fan who did it was actually a government conspirator planted to discredit Jones and his real fans.

The Comet Pizza thing presented a conundrum though for exactly the reason you mention. Jones couldn't just declare that an armed raid on the pizza shop to rescue enslaved children was an obvious overreaction in bad faith by a conspirator trying to discredit him. So instead he began trying to distance himself personally from the conspiracy theory, saying that he had only "reported that the rumor was going around" without ever personally promoting it. He started claiming the same thing about his longstanding pronouncement that the Sandy Hook shooting was a "hoax", but that hasn't worked and it's why he's buried in a huge lawsuit from the Sandy Hook parents right now.

But even despite all that, you're still right. Jones aside, his fans and conspiracy fans in general still believe that Comet is part of a Democrat vampire-pedophile ring, and they do believe the only person who actually tried to do anything about it was himself a planted conspirator, meaning that yes they believe thousands of children are being sexually abused and they think they even know exactly where and by whom and to a man are all too cowardly to lift a single finger to help them.

The thing about Qanon though is that it relieves them of that moral obligation because the conspiracy says that Daddy Trump is secretly fixing everything right now behind the scenes and it's only a matter of time until the Mass Arrests begin.
 

Fionalein

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A thread...
No, a threat!
Someone needs to put those maniacs back in place or they will become normal... It's like cancer but for society... sure it can kill you even if you try your best but left untreated it will kill you for sure.