Q is Joe Biden, another non-US Politics thread (Q Anon, Qanon, Q_anon, Joe Biden is Q)

or at least, i think that was true up until a couple weeks ago, the biden inauguration, the subsequent fracturing/rending of garments...and today, what's going on with MJT will go a long way toward determining the future of Q as a political...disaster?

on the other hand, the Q way, and the way of the conspiratorial mind in general, is to double-down and continue evolving the story until there's a new mystery and a new persecutor

A Qbeliever won the Republican nomination to run for US Senator in Oregon last year against Merkley. She won about 30% of the vote.

they'd have to make some vague pro-2A, anti-abortion, pro-Q and yes, pro-Trump remarks, but it would be interesting for some non-trad candidates to run as charismatic weirdo "independents" in some of these historically uncontested districts in the south & west, and then when they get to DC just as quietly as possible fall in line w Justice Dems

i mean, you'd be recalled or murdered almost immediately but what a ride eh?

let's just do it and be legends

hey if i could do it w a halfway straight face and looked better in a cowboy hat...

Facebook data scientists found 70% of its 100 most popular civic groups in the U.S. were “non-recommendable.” Common reasons were “calls to violence,” bullying, harassment and proliferating misinformation.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/facebook-knew-calls-for-violence-plagued-groups-now-plans-overhaul-11612131374

The calm before the storm.@USMC Marines provide security during a simulated raid exercise at @MCIWPendletonCA. pic.twitter.com/WpghORgDqT

— Department of Defense 🇺🇸 (@DeptofDefense) February 4, 2021

Tweet has been deleted, what was it?

The DOD accidentally (?) using Q language.

Jesus...

gonna assume ignorance on their part tbh, "calm before the storm" used to be a perfectly innocuous phrase once upon a time

gonna assume ignorance on their part tbh, "calm before the storm" used to be a perfectly innocuous phrase once upon a time

If it was like the Department of the Interior or something, sure, benefit of the doubt all the way. But not the military. The US military is riddled with Nazis and whack jobs of every stripe. I'd bet cash money that whoever's handling their social media thought this would be witty and cool and a nod/wink to "their people."

tbh I didn't associate that as a white supremacist phrase, so I wouldn't automatically assume the USMC's social media intern did.

yeah tbh I didn't realize that was a Q phrase and this is the problem with them repurposing garden-variety cliches, is that then when people say them you don't know if they are intentionally invoking Q or just innocently using a phrase they've used their entire lives.

which is to a degree by design to 'own the libs by confusing them' but oh i've gone crosseyed

The Y2K crowd reappropriated 'when the shit hits the fan' and 'the end of the world as we know it' as insider lingo.

yup, see also the "a-ok" hand signal shit, basic crazymaking tactics

As the QAnon phenomenon becomes more central to critical political and public safety questions, I realize we need a new vocabulary to describe this and similar phenomena. Q is not a “conspiracy theory”. The faked moon landing was a conspiracy theory. Perhaps birtherism was a conspiracy theory, though one with similarities to QAnon because of its strong ideological valence. But Q is not a conspiracy theory. It’s a fascistic political movement which predicts and advocates mass violence against liberals (and everyone else outside its definition of true Americans) in an imminent apocalyptic political reckoning. What we call the ‘conspiracy theories’ are simply the storylines and claims that justify that outcome. They could easily be replaced by others which serve the same purpose.

In other words – and this is still a very basic confusion – the Q phenomenon is not a factual misunderstanding that more credible news sources or prevalent fact-check columns would deflate and tame. You can even see this play out in real time in what we might call Q ‘man on the street’ interviews in which a reporter dissects or debunks some claim the Q supporter believes. The response is invariably something like, “Well, there are a bunch of other bad things I heard they did.”

Some Q supporters clearly believe some of the movement fables. You can see this in the late 2016 story of the man who stormed the Pizza shop in DC which was a focal point of pedophilia claims in the PizzaGate conspiracy theory, which was a precursor to Q. (Most PizzaGate fables were later incorporated into Qanon.) Edgar M. Welch, the would-be mass shooter and rescuer of abused children, was clearly quite surprised to find that Comet Ping Pong was in fact just a good pizza joint, with no abused children, no dungeons, no secret headquarters of John Podesta.

But Welch, I think, is the exception. Just as the ‘conspiracy theory’ language is inadequate and misleading we need a better way of understanding belief, particularly belief as a form of aggression. I don’t think most QAnon believers actually ‘believe’ that Hillary Clinton runs a pedophilia ring, at least not in the sense that you and I think of the word. Most of us in politics and in journalism have a rather classical and mechanistic understanding of cognition and belief. We use our mental faculties to ascertain what is true and then we believe those things that appear to be true. Or we take the word of trusted sources and believe those things. We may believe things which are not true either because we’ve been mislead or because our pre-existing biases distort our understanding of what is true. For this, good fact-check columns can help. When we say things we know are not true that’s lying. We know that’s not right. But sometimes we do it anyway.

This is a very inadequate way of understanding the Q phenomenon and much else in contemporary politics and culture.

I say you’re a pedophile not because I think you’re actually a pedophile but because it is an attack. Because it hurts you. In online and message board culture there are legions of users constantly attacking anyone they disagree with or don’t like as pedophiles or other horrid accusations. Presumably these people aren’t acting on some mistaken information that the people (the identities of whom they usually don’t even know) they’re attacking have sexually abused children. It’s not a misunderstanding. It’s a form of aggression. Things like the Q phenomenon are just this aggression writ large. I say you’re a pedophile because it is itself an act of aggression but also because it dehumanizes you. It’s a storyline that makes hurting you or killing you make more sense and be more exciting.

Not surprisingly given his role in these movements, Donald Trump is a good illustration of how to think about belief in this context. We know that Trump is a scurrilous, pathological liar. But as I’ve written, Trump doesn’t believe or not believe as you or I likely do. In fact, if you could sit Trump down sedated or under some kind of truth serum and ask why he was lying about some particular claim I think he would find the question almost bewildering. Someone like Trump finds what would be helpful to his needs or claims or interest in the particular moment and then says those things. And I think he even kind of believes them because they help him. What you say and ‘believe’ isn’t tethered to what’s true in quite the same way. You might as well ask a novelist why she writes things that aren’t true. She’d be equally befuddled by the question.

If you’ve worked in business a certain kind of salesman is like this. You size up the customer, find out what they want, what they feel they need and then tell them a story to make the sale. Is it lying? Well, not to them. Not exactly. It’s selling. Again, you don’t ask a playwright why he writes stories that aren’t true. Needless to say Donald Trump is that kind of salesman. How is it Donald Trump always seems to rapidly believe whatever is helpful to him in the given moment? Or later say exactly the opposite when that’s helpful? There’s rampant voter fraud. Bill Clinton is the worst sexual predator in human history and is definitely awful even as Trump himself casually harasses, importunes, assaults, rapes and more? Since they help you you do sort of come to believe them because why not?

Any sports fan comes to believe that their team is absolutely the best and the rival team is definitely the worst, with all manner of chants, regalia and affirmations even though they know – from another perspective – that all of this is in fact absurd. To Trump it really would be like asking a novelist why they keep making up stories that aren’t true. The reaction is incomprehension. The point here is not to defend Trump who is malevolent predator and degenerate liar. It is to explain that his calculus of truth, belief and advantage are quite different than what most of us are likely familiar with.

Just how QAnon and comparable movements work is something I’m still working to get my head around. (These two articles are the analyses that interest me most – here and here.) But calling them conspiracy theories is not only wrong in concept it seriously misleads us about what they are and how to combat them. Qanon is a violent terroristic political movement with strong fascistic facets the upshot of which, in every storyline, is a final violent reckoning in which Trump’s political enemies are rounded up and murdered. That’s what it’s about. The fables are just getting people primed and ready for that moment.

josh marshall

^a critical and necessary distinction we need ASAP

not so solid on the novelist/playwright analogy but that’s a good piece

I don't always like him but that's excellent imo.

osita otm

https://newrepublic.com/article/161266/qanon-classism-marjorie-taylor-greene

just spitballing but i feel like part of this phenomenon is the same logic that bonds frats and sororities together. intelligent, privileged people who coerce each other to do the stupidest shit in order to prove they're close to each other.

Q people jelly right now

JUST IN - Myanmar military says 'voter fraud' justified coup.

— Disclose.tv 🚨 (@disclosetv) February 8, 2021

the josh marshall piece is good, thanks karl

Q is everywhere!

Does yoga have a conspiracy theory problem?

https://www.bbc.com/news/world-55957298

Definitely have heard people talking anti-vax shit in yoga classes. It was very disheartening.

At least one yoga friend of mine has taken the path from "Yoga is good for people and also banned" to "Why can't yoga get an exemption" to "If we all just practiced yoga, we wouldn't need any of this lockdown"... and stayed there. Not everything is QAnon.

Again, the Venn of white supremacy, anti-Semitism, QAnon, anti-vax stuff, and new age spiritual beliefs is a pretty big Venn.

I genuinely don't think that means what you think it means - a bigger Venn diagram would be one with minimal overlap.

And the links between the first three and between the last two are stronger than the links between each group - though there's an increased chance these days that they'll be exposed to each other and have to make a queasy peace. The group missing is anti-lockdown, which is not quite the same as anti-vax.

Again, the Venn of white supremacy, anti-Semitism, QAnon, anti-vax stuff, and new age spiritual beliefs is a pretty big Venn.

i'm guessing it looks like a fried egg within a fried egg

a fried egg Quesadilla within a fried egg Quesadilla presumably

You knew what I meant, dude.

If you want a picture of the future, imagine a fried egg Quesadilla being stuffed inside a fried egg Quesadilla --forever

Not sure why, but Andrew's first response to that post got me really riled up.

If you knew what I meant, which is evident, then why be such a dick?

you say dick, I say diQ, let’s call the whole thing off

I guessed what you meant, because people nearly always only talk about Venn diagrams to say "all these things are the same thing" (and because these things are a lot closer to "completely different things" than "the same thing") - but you said literally the opposite.

The Inigo Montaya line was being a dick though, you're right - sorry about that.

Thanks, and sorry to get up in yr grill. I was just like "damn i was stoned when i posted and this guy is coming after me wth"

What happened to Marjorie? She was big news like two weeks ago, now she's been cancelled and is chopped liver.

I think the general lesson is that the 'whiter' an activity/belief is, the more redolent of insanity that activity/belief is likely to be. Like, unsurprisingly, the more stridently you attempt to partition off your perspective, the more your perspective becomes defined by whatever's inside your asshole (and people whose assholes are most like your own asshole).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZ12_E5R3qc

this is how lauren boebert appears during a house hearing. this is a very sane political party. pic.twitter.com/GvobX1RYho

— Oliver Willis (@owillis) February 18, 2021

And they’re back... because they simply cannot and will not accept reality. Their refusal to admit this is all a hoax speaks volumes about the cult mentality of QAnon. It’s dangerous and damaging to our democracy. https://t.co/9fYbDQ7bw6

— Adam Kinzinger (@RepKinzinger) February 18, 2021

"damn i was stoned when i posted and this guy is coming after me wth"

new board description

What happened to Marjorie? She was big news like two weeks ago, now she's been cancelled and is chopped liver.

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9246917/Marjorie-Taylor-Green-openly-cheated-husband-men-gym.html

I've been plugging away at Reaganland for the last while...Perlstein mentions a Q-like conspiracy having to do with the gas shortage of 1979; some people thought it was all manufactured, that there were full oil tankers parked off the coast and that Carter was plotting with Exxon and Mobil to flood the market at just right the moment.

Back in the day, if you espoused a conspiracy theory like that you'd've been written off as a crank. Today, you toss some human trafficking pixies into the narrative and you're practically mainstream.

He does mention an AP/NBC poll where 70 percent of the public believed the gas shortage in '79 was an "industry hoax." Not necessarily that they believed Carter was in league with Exxon/Mobil, but that somebody was lying. Overall, though, agreed, the wilder stuff is much more mainstream now.

The recent QAA episode on the great awakening map is a good one.

https://soundcloud.com/qanonanonymous/episode-130-psychedelic-5d-qanon