THE CRAZY AND THE WRONG: What do QAnon adherents believe?

TUESDAY, AUGUST 18, 2020

Plus, a larger question:
What the heck is QAnon? Almost surely, many people who watched Meet the Press this Sunday remain completely unsure.

As we noted yesterday, the program ended with a full segment about The Creature With the Strange Name. But what the Sam Hill is QAnon? This is the way it was described in two attempts by Chuck Todd:
TODD (8/16/20): When we come back, those fringe believers in the QAnon conspiracy theory: Are they really on the fringe anymore?

[...]

TODD: Welcome back. This week, we saw the rise of something called QAnon. If you're not familiar with it, for viewers, it is a really fringey conspiracy theory that sort of lumps all conspiracy theories together, claims some one weird "Deep State" thing, one person's pulling the levers.

It's very popular on the extreme right these days. And an adherent named Marjorie Taylor Greene won a Republican runoff in a Georgia congressional district. She is likely to end up in Congress as the first sort of known conspiracy theorist of this QAnon thing.
According to Todd, "this QAnon thing" is a conspiracy theory—perhaps the mother of all conspiracy theories.

One Republican adherent will soon be serving in the House, Todd said. Her Republican opponent had said she was "crazy," we learned later in the segment.

Todd gave an extremely vague account of what this particular theory maintains. Aside from Todd, three pundits delivered their thoughts about QAnon, but no one made any real attempt to describe the tenets of this theory.

We don't know why Todd and his panelists didn't try to define the beliefs which constitute this conspiracy theory. Othersare sometimesless bashful.

In this morning's New York Times
, Peter Baker offers an analysis of President Trump's recent behavior. At one point, he offers a capsule account of what QAnon maintains:
BAKER (8/18/20): Five years after he originally kicked off his quest for the presidency, Mr. Trump has said and done so many things once considered out of bounds that his critics no longer even know whether to raise alarms or ignore another palpable bid for attention.

When the president recently promoted a “very impressive” doctor who blames various ailments on demon sperm and says treatments are being developed from alien DNA, it was barely a one-day story. When he endorsed a QAnon adherent running for Congress who warns that the world is controlled by a “global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles,” it did not last that long.
Baker was referring to Greene, the congressional candidate Todd had cited. According to Baker, Greene believes that the world is controlled by a “global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles."

Is that what QAnon believers believe? Is that the stuff of this theory?

Those are very good questions. But as we ask those basic question, a much more fundamental question arises:

How could someone believe such things, which do indeed seem "crazy?" Also, how could a person espousing such crazy beliefs possibly get elected to Congress?

As best we can tell, journalists have been trying to describe QAnon since at least December 2017. In a recent column for the New York Times, Charlie Warzel linked to the "first explainer [of QAnon] for a national news outlet," but not before he described some recent problems connected to the movement—and an account of its reach:
WARZEL (8/16/20): For almost three years, I’ve wondered when the QAnon tipping point would arrive— the time when a critical mass of Americans would come to regard the sprawling pro-Trump conspiracy theory not merely as a sideshow, but as a legitimate threat to safety and even democracy.

There have been plenty of potential wake-up calls. Among them: a 2018 standoff at the Hoover Dam with a QAnon believer, the 2019 murder of a Gambino crime family boss by a QAnon supporter who believed the boss was part of a deep-state cabal, an August 2019 F.B.I. report that warned that QAnon could spur domestic terrorism, a West Point report calling the movement “a security threat in the making,” and the April arrest of a QAnon follower who was found with a dozen knives while driving to “take out” Joe Biden, the former vice president and presumptive Democratic presidential nominee.

But it seems the true tipping point came this week. First was the report from Ari Sen and Brandy Zadrozny at NBC News about an internal Facebook investigation that gives the first real glimpse into the size of QAnon’s online footprint. The investigation found millions of members across thousands of QAnon groups and pages.

This was followed by a Guardian investigation that found “more than 170 QAnon groups, pages and accounts across Facebook and Instagram with more than 4.5 million aggregate followers.
Whatever it is that these people believe, quite a few people seem to believe it. And it seems that some adherents do, or at least attempt to, the crazy darnedest things.

Like others, Warzel made no major attempt to explain what adherents believe. He did go beyond Todd in one major way—he said that QAnon is a pro-Trump conspiracy theory.

Eventually, he linked to a December 2017 report at New York magazine, that aforementioned "first explainer." At the time, the conspiracy theory was apparently called The Storm.

Paris Martineau started like this:
MARTINEAU (12/19/17): A new conspiracy theory called “The Storm” has taken the grimiest parts of the internet by, well, storm. Like Pizzagate, the Storm conspiracy features secret cabals, a child sex-trafficking ring led (in part) by the satanic Democratic Party, and of course, countless logical leaps and paranoid assumptions that fail to hold up under the slightest fact-based scrutiny. However, unlike Pizzagate, the Storm isn’t focused on a single block of shops in D.C., or John Podesta’s emails. It’s much, much bigger than that.

As most terrible things do, this story begins with a post on /pol/, a sub-board of the more-or-less-anonymous, anything-goes website 4chan....It’s the sort of place where neo-Nazis and people who believe women shouldn’t have basic human rights used to meet before we started verifying them on Twitter and electing them to public office. And as of late, it’s expanded its ranks to include fringe members of all shapes and sizes.

On October 28, someone calling themselves Q began posting a series of cryptic messages in a /pol/ thread titled “Calm Before the Storm” (assumedly in reference to that creepy Trump quote from early October). Q claimed to be a high-level government insider with Q clearance (hence the name) tasked with posting intel drops...straight to 4chan in order to covertly inform the public about POTUS’s master plan to stage a countercoup against members of the deep state. It was, in short, absolutely insane. However, thanks to some rather forced coincidences—like Q kind of, sort of guessing that Trump would tweet the word “small” on Small Business Saturday, and this one time the internet decided that Q was “totally on Air Force One” because he posted a blurry picture of some islands while Trump was on his trip to Asia—and a whole heck of a lot of wishful thinking, people believed he was the real deal.
"It was, in short, absolutely insane," with very strong echoes of the lunatic Pizzagate episode.

It was, in short, insane, but its reach was apparently growing. Martineau closed his essay like this:
MARTINEAU: It’s been a little over a year since Edgar Welch, military-style assault rifle in hand, walked into a D.C. pizza parlor, convinced it was part of a child sex-trafficking ring run by Hillary Clinton, and the internet hasn’t gotten better. If anything, it’s worse.

Sure, in the wake of Pizzagate’s brief encounter with reality, a lot of changes were made: Reddit shut down the conspiracy’s designated sub, Twitter suspended some of the movement’s most vocal supporters, and the whole thing was debunked time and time again by the press. But it’s more evident now than ever that this was merely a Band-Aid, not a cure. And now, here we are a year later with the same thing. Sure, it’s a bit bigger and a whole lot less focused, but at its core, it’s the same. What is there even left to try? We know that stopping the conversation doesn’t work. Neither do the facts. How can we even begin to argue with hundreds of thousands of people who choose to believe that a top government agent is speaking to them through 4chan, that Trump has been playing a game of 4-D mind chess this whole time, and that the Las Vegas massacre was an inside job? Is the next Edgar Welch already out there, scrolling through the Calm Before the Storm thread, and if so, is it even possible to stop him?
Was it true? Had Hillary Clinton been running a child sex-trafficking ring out of a Washington pizza joint?

By conventional reckoning, the idea was insane. But Edgar Welch, age 29, believed the crazy claim was true and drove up from North Carolina to stop it with the felp of his assault rifle.

Welch was later sentenced to four years in prison. But an expanded version of the craziness he believed now seems to have millions of adherents, at least one of whom is on her way to the House.

If you search, you can find fuller accounts of the body of beliefs held by QAnon adherents. That said, many journalists seem to prefer to focus on the way these crazy ideas are spread, tending to avoid description of the crazy ideas themselves.

In the process, these journalists are avoiding the larger questions we've already floated. What explains the fact that millions of people can believe such crazy ideas, and are willing to act on those beliefs?

Also, an anthropological question: what does this tell us about the true nature of our highly tribal, war-inclined floundering species?

Due to the rise in certain technologies, we the people are now exposed to crazy ideas on a widespread, round-the-clock basis. It used to be hard to hear crazy ideas. Now, the promulgation of The Crazy is a major big business.

From this experience, a surprising fact has emerged:

As a species, we simply aren't especially good at separating gact from fiction. Indeed, there's almost nothing so transparetly crazy that many folk won't believe it.

QAnon seems to be a movement of the crackpot, undiscerning "right." We end today with that same nagging question:

To what extent might something resembling this behavior be going on Over here? If QAnon typesare involved in The Crazy, might our own baldly self-impressed be sunk, perhaps, in The Wrong?

Tomorrow: Instant claims about Candidate Harris

46 comments:

  1. "But what the Sam Hill is QAnon?"

    Why the fuck should any of us care what QAnon believes?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I really don't care what QAnon believes. That some Americans with no brains choose to believe them changes nothing. If it wasn't QAnan, it would be something else. Who cares?

    ReplyDelete
  3. "claims some one weird "Deep State" thing, one person's pulling the levers"

    Heh-heh, without a doubt dembot Todd is being willfully obtuse here, as "the deep state" (aka "the establishment") is a perfectly legitimate concept, very common, and widely accepted.

    And in fact dembot Todd is part of the deep state himself, and he knows it better than anyone.

    And of course "one person's pulling the levers" is dembot Todd's (or his handlers') own invention, designed to delegitimize the concept.

    As for the pedophiles story, you, dear Bob, can only refer to it as "crazy beliefs" if you have never heard of the whole Jeffrey Epstein saga. But you are aware of it, dear Bob, are you not? Did cancerous MSNBC tell you? What did they tell you?

    ReplyDelete
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  4. There is nothing to be gained by journalists describing the contents of the belief system held by Q-Anon believers.

    Somerby asks:

    "To what extent might something resembling this behavior be going on Over here? If QAnon typesare involved in The Crazy, might our own baldly self-impressed be sunk, perhaps, in The Wrong?"

    No, Democrats and liberals do not believe in crazy shit like Q-Anon does. For one thing, Democrats have positioned themselves as the "reality" party. They believe in science and they have not embraced fantasy and wishful thinking, the way Donald Trump and his Republican supporters have done. For another, Democrats have a higher level of education and greater respect for knowledge and expertise than Republicans do (and than Somerby does, based on his bashing of knowledge-workers). Third, Democrats are less likely to be shielded from the consequences of ignoring reality by wealth and a social bubble. Democrats do not have a news station that tells us what we want to believe (contrary to Somerby's assertions about CNN and MSNBC). Democrats work for a living in the real world. Democrats are more likely to come into contact with a variety of people with diverse beliefs and thus do not only talk to others who agree with them (as Republicans do). Fourth, Democrats believe in higher education and are more likely to seek it, which debunks the idiocy of cults like Q-Anon.

    Somerby talks about Greene, but he ignores that there is another Q-Anon believer already in the White House, President Trump. And he is surrounded by sycophants who do not challenge his bizarre and self-serving beliefs. The spreading of crap by the President is lending authority to Q-Anon that cannot be counteracted by reporters listing their odd beliefs. If oddness alone were preventative to conversion, Q-Anon believers would have rejected those odd beliefs when they first heard them from Alex Jones. In fact, they would have rejected Alex Jones himself. There are a large number of frightened people looking for something to cling to, something reassuring. Trump and Q-Anon appeal to their fears. Explaining what Q-Anon believes isn't going to stop them from believing. Only competent management of our pandemic and other national crises will help reduce fears. You don't combat a cult with knowledge because people don't believe it because of its doctrine.

    Somerby is way off base with this, meanwhile, he seems to be trying to legitimize Q-Anon by equating it to liberal beliefs, which are in no way similar (with the possible exception of Bernie's cult of personality). However, Bernie is no liberal and I doubt that is who Somerby is addressing with his claims that "we" might be as cultish as Q-Anon.

    Somerby is jumping the shark. The man needs help. If anyone knows him, now is the time to be concerned about his mental health and cognitive status.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I don’t know, TDHAnon 12:10pm, are you as crazy as QAnon?

      I thought the Q stuff was about PizzaGate, but in reading about it, it seems to be your typical conspiracy theory involving an institutional ruling class that controls all facets of life and subjugates the rest of us to its will and whims.

      Any minute these QAnon space cadets will start burning down cities and demanding a dismantling and restructuring of our society in order to root out the cultural hegemony of our tyrannical overlords.

      Hard to believe, but I hear that bullshit can happen.

      Delete
    2. Great example of the way conservatives don't inhabit reality. Your characterization of the protesters and their goals bears no resemblance to real life.

      Delete
    3. Cecelia, perhaps your humor would be better appreciated at a conservative website?

      Delete
    4. Actually the Q-Anon stuff includes a lot of bizarre things, such as shape-shifting alien Reptilians taking the form of humans in order to impersonate them and infiltrate positions of power. Trying to make Q-Anon appear more normal so that you can equate it with BLM protesters shows no regard for the truth. Anything in service of one of your silly jokes.

      I read somewhere the conservatives are all about "owning" the libs. Your quips here seem to be in service of that. Do you not have anything else that you consider humorous, or are you just here to troll and make fun of the anxieties people have about the damage being done to our country by your Dear Leader? Nearly every remark you make displays that special kind of conservative callousness. Over here, few of us consider Q-Anon funny and I don't find your jokes funny either. They make you seem like a troll, and if trolling is not your intention, you would do better to treat people here like human beings instead of straight-men for the kind of lines that no-doubt crack people up on the right.

      Delete
    5. Hey, wait, those BLM protesters are a riot, especially when they're being pepper-sprayed or tazed or run over by cars. What's the matter, can't you take a joke lefty? Ha ha ha ha ha.

      Delete
    6. Whoa, Cecelia, you triggered a whole bunch of shape-shifting alien Reptilians. Nice.

      Delete
  5. Somerby, 4 years late, finally posts about QAnon.

    But his purpose is not to do an exposé of them, or even criticize them.

    Rather, it is to charge liberals with “something resembling this behavior”, something which he calls “The Wrong”, which he said yesterday too, but hasn’t yet specified.

    We can only guess at his meaning. (He is rather predictable.)

    What is new is the creation of a new narrative, the opposition and yet equivalence of “Crazy” and “Wrong.”

    ReplyDelete
  6. Somerby is on dangerous ground today. There are many mainstream religions that believe things that sound as crazy as Q-Anon to non-believers.

    If Somerby is asking whether it is possible for liberals to believe crazy stuff, of course it is, to the extent that liberals are also religious (any faith has beliefs that must be accepted on faith and not by reason). But humans also have a reality-monitoring process in their frontal lobes. Setting aside that evaluation to meet emotional needs is one of the diagnostic criteria for mental illness. There can be group social delusions (things everyone believes who are members of a group), but to the extent that those delusions conflict with reality, members will be disabled in their functioning in real life. Survival depends on being able to accurately assess reality and do things to cope with it. Retreat into fantasy is not a good coping skill, whether the fantasy is Q-Anon or some other belief (Trump has a cure for covid, for example).

    Of course liberal could be affected by the same needs and emotions as conservatives, but unlike conservatives, liberals are not being encouraged to believe things that are so hugely out-of-sync with reality. One reason is that liberals don't demand the same conformity of belief (at least mainstream liberals don't -- can't answer for Bernie progs). Liberals are being realistic. When liberals demand change and hope for a better society, it isn't as if they expect it will happen, either soon or in the form they might wish. Most liberals believe in incremental change and do not confuse their image of a better society with what is achievable (unlike some in the left fringes). And the fringes have not taken over the left.

    If Somerby has lost track of what Democrats and liberals are like, perhaps he needs to widen his circle of friends.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Conservatives are always accusing the left of making decisions based on feelings instead of reason. Yet liberals are the science and reality party. I wonder if Somerby is swallowing that Republican talking point about liberals following their feelings instead of reason? It isn't true but perhaps he isn't applying his critical faculties to that assertion.

      When the right and the left define almost everything differently, Somerby is going to confuse everyone by using right-wing definitions here in a blog where he attempts to talk about left-wing issues and concerns. His vagueness makes it very hard to discuss much or even understand his concerns.

      Delete
  7. I wonder if Somerby feels like he is going crazy. He keeps asking, is it us or them?

    ReplyDelete
  8. Today, the final report of the Senate Intelligence Committee investigating Russian meddling in the 2016 election and collusion with Trump's campaign was issued. It found that Manafort colluded with Russia and Ukraine, that Roger Stone coordinated the timing of the Wikileaks leaks to benefit Trump (distracting from his Billy Bush interview), and that Russia did engage in hacking and other meddling.

    The Republicans will of course deny all of this, calling Russiagate a hoax and the investigation politically motivated persecution of Trump. However, this report comes from a Republican-controlled Senate and corroborates the Mueller Report, which had the same findings. Conservatives should believe this now. They won't, because denial of reality is their thing. Meanwhile, Russia is still meddling, according to our intelligence services.

    Once you get in the habit of denying one part of reality, it is easy to deny other parts and next thing, Q-Anon makes sense to you. No, we do not need more exposure to lies and fantasy. Mainstream media should be presenting truth, including the FACT that Q-Anon believes crazy things -- without repeating what those crazy things are, because they are crazy and don't deserve to be published in a mainstream news outlet (where they may be quoted in excerpts that give them a specious legitimacy). People believe what they see in the news. That's why you don't repeat garbage itself, just the fact that garbage was spewed.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Once you accept Reaganomics as a real economic theory, it's a short ride to Q-Anon.

      Delete
    2. Right! Trickle Down Reaganomics is the theory that if we one small class of rich people and corporations have all the wealth and power "pulling the levers" then somehow the crumbs will trickle down to the rest of us. The dumbest economic theory imaginable became accepted policy!

      Delete
    3. Today Trump is pushing Russian propaganda intended to discredit Biden. The audio has been determined to be a Russian fake.

      A conspiracy theory is just another kind of lie. Somerby thinks those lies should all be listed in detail in the media. I don't see why they should be.

      Delete
    4. Could you consider the opposite? You are being propagandized with this report? Someone is trying to manufacture consent? Ask yourself what does the report really say? Did the show any conspiracy between Trump and Russia? What would that be exactly? The person they listed as a Russian operative who was working with Manafort therefore making him a grave threat is actually a state department source! And if it's pretty much along the lines of the Mueller report, remember the Mueller report found no conspiracy, coordination or collusion! And how many times do does the report say that things are "suggested"? There is so totally nothing there. The Senate Intelligence Report is a joke. Its intention is to generate headlines based on innuendo and "suggestions" that will invoke the kind of confirmation bias you show here. You won't research it further. And the job is done. Consent manufactured, distributed and consumed. It is very much a hoax. The scale is shocking I admit.

      Delete
    5. It isn't propaganda when it is true. This is a Government report (not from either political party) of what happened, investigated by non-partisan staff and based on testimony. I won't research it further because it IS the further research, done by our elected senators.

      It is another big lie that official reports like this are just another piece of propaganda.

      How can you defend a treasonous piece of shit like Paul Manafort or Roger Stone? Or Donald Trump?

      Delete
    6. What is true? What "truth" is in the report that is important or earth shattering?

      It's a charade. The report is invented to fool you. I don't know about other official reports but this one is a complete and total piece of propaganda. Look just a little at it. It says nothing. What does it say? What is the big truth? Russia interfered but Trump had nothing to do with it. The IRC was a joke. Russia hacked the DNC but there is no proof they stole the emails. Assange has said he had no ties to Russia. Stone is a bullshit artist par excellance who made a bunch of bs, trolling claims about Assange during the campaign that said nothing Assange wasn't saying in public already at the time. Russiagate is a hoax and a joke and it always has been and this report is government propaganda. Weird right? You think it never happens here but it does.

      Delete
    7. And if you believe @4:50, here are some oleander leaves for you to suck down.

      Delete
    8. Senate Republicans find it was Russia, and not that Republican voters are mouth-breathing bigots, for the reason Trump won the election.
      Sounds like it's on the up and up. LOL.

      Delete
    9. Haven't read the report.
      Did they find out Assange was releasing the DNC docs bit by bit, because he was raping women between each leak?
      I ask because a guy who isn't working for a foreign power has no other reason to not release them all at once.

      Delete
  9. Michelle Obama told the truth last night:

    "When Obama said the brutal and much-quoted part of the speech, "Donald Trump is the wrong president for our country. He has had more than enough time to prove that he can do the job, but he is clearly in over his head. He cannot meet this moment. He simply cannot be who we need him to be for us. It is what it is," she framed it in terms of her "When they go low, we go high" dictum. Essentially, the speech was less a corollary to that and more a clarification: "[G]oing high means unlocking the shackles of lies and mistrust with the only thing that can truly set us free: the cold, hard truth. So let me be as honest and clear as I possibly can."

    Q-Anon is lies. Democrats are telling the truth.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. So they run a demented senile old fossil who can't speak straight even a sentence? What are the chances his speech won't be a disaster?

      Delete
    2. Even a "demented senile old fossil" is better than Trump. Who cares what his speech is like if he can kick that jerk out of the White House?

      Delete
    3. There will be a special pleasure to beating Trump with someone who represents kindness and decency.

      Delete
    4. All of that is true but the point is why could they not muster a stronger nominee?

      Delete
    5. They need a consensus nominee. Biden is someone inoffensive who we can all get behind. The most important goal is to beat Trump.

      Delete
    6. "demented senile old fossil"

      They'll dump him before the election, they have to.

      US politics are farcical enough as it is, but actually running Biden for president would be too ridiculous. Way beyond a banana republic sort of ridiculous.

      Delete
    7. In case anyone's interested, here's a salient read on the case for Biden. The title alone makes sense, but it's a good read, for anyone on the fence about this election.

      LINK

      Leroy

      Delete
    8. No reason to expect that Biden would be ineffectual. He was a good VP. He has the experience and he will have a good staff and cabinet.

      Delete
    9. One reason to think Biden would be ineffectual is that he's 80 and his brain is failing.

      Delete
    10. Ad showing why Biden might not be effectual:

      https://www.powerlineblog.com/archives/2020/08/what-happened-to-biden.php

      Delete
    11. Biden's running against a prescription drug abuser/ addict. I like his chances.

      Delete
    12. If installed, Rapist Joe would be exactly as 'effectual' a figurehead of the Deep State as Barry the Demigod was.

      It's just that it would be a national embarrassment, for obvious reasons.

      Delete
    13. "It's just that it would be a national embarrassment, for obvious reasons."

      Trump waddling around Moscow a free man.

      Delete
  10. Aren't most religions conspiracy theories? (God)"one person's pulling the levers."

    Anyway, both left and right have studying the phenomenon for decades.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Paranoid_Style_in_American_Politics#:~:text=%22The%20Paranoid%20Style%20in%20American,author%20in%20the%20same%20year.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conspiracy:_How_the_Paranoid_Style_Flourishes_and_Where_It_Comes_From

    ReplyDelete
  11. "So far, 34 states and the District have adopted mask requirements. Now, mask advocates want police to enforce those orders, a move some police chiefs have said they are reluctant to make. They are seeking legal protection for retail workers put in the awkward position of enforcing mask rules. And they are lobbying for a coordinated federal mask policy."

    ----------------

    Among the dangerous lies circulating is one that says that wearing a mask can be dangerous to the health.

    The right is a festering mass of dangerous lies that are hurting our society. Somerby can focus on Q-Anon, but there are worse beliefs, including the ones that sustain this mask rebellion. Law and order enthusiasts should be behind enforcement of mask-wearing, but they are ignoring it, partly because police are among the mask rebels.

    What is wrong with a country where a substantial minority has no regard for the health of its neighbors and proudly harasses those who are trying to protect themselves (and others) from covid? This is on Trump and the Republicans.

    ReplyDelete
  12. From Political Wire:

    "A new video shows Marjorie Taylor Greene (R), who recently won a Republican congressional primary in Georgia, unsuccessfully trying to interrogate Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Rashida Tlaib (D-MI).

    She falsely claimed that they’re illegitimate members of Congress because they took their congressional oaths of office on the Quran and said she wanted to make them retake their oath on the Bible."

    ReplyDelete
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