How did an imbecile like Trump become President?
Featured image courtesy of The Daily Beast.
QAnon
QAnon theory proper began with an October 2017 post on the anonymous imageboard 4chan by “Q”, who was presumably a single American individual; it is now more likely that “Q” has become a group of people acting under the same name. Q claimed to be a high-level government official with Q clearance, who has access to classified information involving the Trump administration and its opponents in the United States. NBC News reported that three people took the original Q post and spread it across multiple media platforms to build an internet following. QAnon was preceded by several similar anonymous 4chan posters, such as FBIAnon, HLIAnon (High-Level Insider), CIAAnon, and WH Insider Anon. Although American in origin, there is now a considerable QAnon movement outside of the United States, particularly in Europe.
Wikipedia
I’m going to ask that you listen to this three minute podcast before continuing. It is a brief interview with one of the guys following QAnon to report on it. What I liked about that short interview is they took the time to point out Pizzagate was a precursor to QAnon and not part of it like many attempt to claim.
Some Assembly Required
When I read The Looming Tower some years ago it was very careful to document the fact that Osama bin Laden didn’t “create” Al-Qaeda as much as assemble it. There were numerous little terrorist groups floating around having little in the way of success. All were focusing on their one true interpretation of Islam and whatever agenda they were striving for. Nobody thought to ask how come there were so many one true interpretations of Islam. By definition the majority had to be wrong.
Creation of Al-Qaeda simply involved assembling one or two planks from each of their platforms to get their support. The “cell” structure of the terrorist group existed from the beginning because nothing was unified. They just agreed to follow orders that supported or at least didn’t violate whatever their agenda was and they took the money.
Conspiracy webs in general come with a “some assembly required” warning as well. There were other precursors. Pizzagate simply proved they had found the correct spin and proper channels. After that things were bundled up into QAnon. Whether or not it is/was the same people doesn’t matter. Pizzagate has also gotten away from QAnon. That’s always the problem when spinning conspiracy tales from bits of truth. The truth will rise up and consume it.
Unsealing of the Jeffrey Epstein documents created something far more tangible for Pizzagate. Especially with the flight manifests documenting Bill Clinton rides on the plane dubbed Lolita Express.
No matter how carefully you try to craft a conspiracy lie, it will get away from you. This is one of the reasons there are lots of little conspiracy things going on at or near the same time. They are looking for the right lever to pull and a hole to hide in when it goes off the rails.
How a Cult Prospers
For a cult to prosper it must do just a two things.
- Indoctrinate the youth.
- Isolate its members from that evil outside impurity.
No, the previous post on marketing wasn’t veering into the weeds nor is this one. You have to understand at least a little bit of marketing to understand how something like QAnon can take off. You have to understand marketing and cults to understand how Fox News keeps its audience Trump loyalist. It should be noted there are currently some major cracks in the Fox News wall.
John Bolton, Donald Trump’s former national security advisor and someone who once had a show on Fox and called for Republicans to declare Biden the winner. Expect there to be a high political price for those who were jumping into Fox News interviews echoing Trump’s unsubstantiated claims. The next election will not be kind to them. They were feeding the denizens of the silo but the silo is now crumbling.
Put Them in a Silo
Every terrorist group, cult, and nutter society I’ve ever read about, once they smile and help you in with all manner of kindness, seeks to keep you in a silo. It usually spins off the rails. Isolated pockets of society have had this problem since there have been isolated pockets of society. Here are just a couple:
I see a lot of this happening today in the Evangelical community. Church communities encouraging members to home school their children to keep them pure or some such thing. Adolph Hitler had his own version of it with The Hitler Youth. You can even watch a movie that has been remade many times.
The as of yet unreleased 2020 version that doesn’t even have a cover image yet.
Whoever designed QAnon as a control mechanism for the population had an awful lot of marketing in their background. They set it up well. We’ve now watched nutters go from Alt-Right to Alt-Religion. I want you to take a moment to listen to this roughly eight minute podcast.
As I said, whoever set this up had an awful lot of marketing in their background. They deliberately use overt spiritual language to draw Evangelical Christian communities into a Bible based Jihad against a Cabal of pedophiles for a biblical battle of good vs. evil. Good vs. Satan. Christian Warriors. What self-respecting Evangelical wouldn’t want to protect children from pedophiles? Some of them even shoot up Planned Parenthood clinics when the proper words are said.
The BBS Days
The genius of it was getting the gullible to believe early on that mainstream media was helping to cover it all up because it was run by this pedophile Cabal. In the real world cults have to create communes or villages away from actual society. They have to get people to go somewhere to isolate them from reality. QAnon did it on the Internet, leaving the people right where they were. COVID-19 stay at home orders helped fuel the rise given people had nothing to do all day.
Oh, don’t get me wrong, we had nutter societies and nutter BBS (Bulletin Board Systems) long before there was an Internet. It was difficult to find out about them without direct contact so their member count remained small. A BBS had to have multiple phone lines if it wanted multiple users at a time. Each one had to have their own dial-up connection. There were message boards and echomail trees. Each BBS subscribed to one and only one tree. Fidonet, Rimenet (became RelayNet), and many more.
You first had to find a BBS. Computer Shopper used to carry a list of BBS names with access numbers and if they were free or subscription based. The long distance charges quickly removed the “free” aspect for many systems. Donations eventually wouldn’t pay the phone bill and the BBS would go away.
I don’t have a landline anymore, but I do still have a bunch of faxmodem cards. Even if you don’t understand a word of what I just said you have to understand that it was incredibly difficult for any nutter society to get too large or widespread. There wasn’t much “private” about the discussion groups. The content was pushed and pulled during nightly dial-outs to another BBS farther up the tree. Email could take a couple of days to get all the way to the intended receiver.
If you want to keep your tiny little society “secret” in today’s world, a BBS is a good way to do it. No search engine will ever find you because you aren’t on the Internet. There used to be various “DOORS” programs that could be run on/with a BBS. This allowed for private non-echoed message boards, games, and all other manner of content.
Given that Bill Clinton chose the fast cash of creating a Global Village instead of following the measured and thoughtful approach of creating a Global Village Council first, terrorist groups and cults are now out of control. They can recruit anywhere in the world and QAnon is proof they can now silo their people at home.
Calling QAnon a cult is not a stretch. Even the House voted 371-18 to condemn it as a sick cult.
Automated Conspiracies
There was someone talking on the radio the other day about how QAnon is using some early AI software to generate new conspiracy theories. Not really much of a stretch if they have the financial backing of Fox News, the RNC, KG-used-to-Be, or insert-deep-pocket-political-agenda-here.
Honestly, you don’t even need that much money anymore. In 2016 you could go watch a movie where an AI actually wrote the screenplay. The movie title was Sunspring in case you don’t want to read the link. You can even buy an app for your phone that dynamically changes stories based on your input.
The earliest and easiest tests, after the failed “conversational” test for AI was story telling. Given a set of data points about a user and a very limited set of data points about a story, concoct a story the user will believe. Generate thousands of them and perform weighted analysis to identify the story this particular user will believe.
At the 10,000 foot level, this is very much like what Facebook does “predicting” your interests. They have a set of data points about you and a finite pool of content. If you ever click on a fringe conspiracy theory that will be one of your data points causing them to feed you more and more conspiracy theory content. Theoretically, if you never logged off Facebook you could periscope down into the dark murky world of conspiracy theories 24×7 until you lost all touch with reality.
The major difference here is that Facebook isn’t generating the content dynamically, just forcing existing content on you.
They might be able to use AI like the movie script, where it generated thousands then weighted them, but that would really only work for the core of the conspiracy. Getting it phrased using obscure biblical text in an overt manner that would hook Evangelicals proud of how well they’ve memorized the bible would require a human touch or a really big database of which biblical passages are used most often in Evangelical services.
That database would be hard to gather as they are all “different.” It’s not like Catholics where on this day is the feast of that saint and these N passages are used for that feast. It’s kind of an edict by the Vatican and controlled by the rather centralized printing of the monthly booklets.
Who?
That is the $64 question isn’t it? Especially since whoever posted the Pizzagate thing that lead to a shooting is probably going to prison.
The Stone Theory
I don’t often look at Mother Jones, but they did a really in-depth piece on the people behind “stop the steal” and “stop the count.” Then you have the CNN report connecting Roger Stone to stop the steal. It would need to be funded somehow and that would be a good method of hiding the money trail.
Honestly, were I an investigator, I would start there. Why? Mr. Stone is a self-described “dirty trickster” and given all of the bungling before it actually worked combined with that first article describes a crew of misfits. FBIAnon was the Pizzagate thing. There was a CIAAnon and others as well. If you are just going by the number and size of the F-ups, it would seem to point that direction.
You can call that “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight” analogy.
They didn’t even get the clearance right. Q is a department of energy clearance for the care and feeding of nukes. They would not have access to any strategic or high level “dark wold” things until it came time to use a nuke. You need code word clearance to actually know things. Really high and secret code words for that level.
Well less secret now that the Snowden video is out. ALL-ACC would have let you read it if you happened to find it. Not that it wouldn’t have most likely set off a few alarms, but if it was stored electronically you could have accessed it, assuming you located it.
It’s possible this theory completely wrong, but one has to believe the Russians would have done a much better job. The KG-used-to-Be would have least known what kind of clearance was needed.
Knowing that Stone is still a player does put Trump setting him free in a new light. It wasn’t a Thank You for past services but marching orders for future services to be provided.
If you subscribe to “The Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight” analogy then you also have to believe someone was brought in to “fix” things after Pizzagate. Someone with a lot of marketing knowledge and not much national security knowledge. That gang of misfits couldn’t have fixed things on their own.
The Fox Theory
There are others that believe it is someone on the Fox News payroll. The logic behind this belief is Fox was in all kinds of trouble with its people spouting completely baseless excrement (much like President Trump Tweets) and having to can people/shows. They might have even had to pay fines. They definitely have lawsuits over COVID-19 to deal with. One was tossed but that doesn’t mean others will be.
For those who don’t see the angle, it would allow their people to still spew complete shit, but now they would spew it to this anonymous Internet troll with a large echo chamber. Now when they said it they could be “reporting on a story in wide circulation on the Web.” Now it is not their people “saying it” it is their people “reporting on it.” They are simply “covering a story.” Same message gets out with no legal ramifications.
It’s a simple theory. Possibly too simple. Completely plausible though. One, or a few people, willing to risk prison for the right money. Background in marketing and the psychology of money. Perhaps even working from a country without a U.S. extradition treaty so for them it is just another marketing job.
You have to understand, marketing people touted the Kent asbestos cigarette filters. In the marketing world you have to come to peace with the fact that no matter what it is you are hired to pitch it will eventually kill or severely harm someone. Yes, especially if you are paid to market smart phones.
Even if you are paid to market something that was thought to be widely wholesome like Boy Scouts of America you have to come to peace with the idea.
QAnon Summary
There can be little doubt QAnon has a rather far reach. There can also be no doubt that it spews baseless shit with wanton abandon.
Who is funding it will be a task for federal investigators as will be finding out who was at the keyboard(s) typing that stuff, especially for the FBIAnon Pizzagate thing.
There can be no doubt that QAnon is Pro-Trump so that kind of rules out anyone in the Biden camp.
Once again this problem was caused by Bill Clinton’s desperate reelection strategy. Chasing big donors promising everyone a “Global Village” and never bothering to set up a “Global Village Council.”
