On the news, you may have seen crowds gathered in Dallas, Texas, in the USA. They were there because the ‘Q’ social media account told them to be there. At its heart, Q and its followers, the ‘Anons’ is a wide-ranging, completely unfounded conspiracy theory that believes former President Trump is waging a secret war against elite Satan-worshipping paedophiles in government, business and the media. QAnon believers think that this fight will lead to a day of reckoning where prominent people such as former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will be arrested and executed1.
This stuff all started In October 2017, when an anonymous user put a series of posts on the message board used by right-wing nutters, 4chan. The user signed off as “Q” and claimed to have a level of US security approval known as “Q clearance”. These messages became known as “Q drops” or “breadcrumbs”, often written in cryptic language peppered with slogans, pledges and pro-Trump themes1.
Meanwhile back in Texas, the first wave of supporters gathered in downtown Dallas on Monday night (November 1), and the following day another wave of supporters gathered near Dealey Plaza, where former President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated in 19632.
These hundreds of people were there because they expected the return of John F. Kennedy Jr. (the former president’s son), who they believe would then help reinstate the Mango Mussolini (Donald Trump) as president. Q said that after Trump is reinstated, he will step down so John F. Kennedy Jr. can become president and that former national security adviser Michael Flynn would be appointed as his vice president2.This apparently would make The Mango Mussolini the ‘King of Kings’ seemingly replacing Jesus in that sinecure2.
Some of the people at the gathering in Dallas, also expected to see the former president John Fitzgerald Kennedy, he who was assassinated in 1963 in Dealey Plaza, front up with his son2.
There are two problems with these expectations. Firstly, John F. Kennedy Jr died with his wife and sister-in-law in the crash of a plane he was piloting in July, 1999. All three bodies were recovered and autopsies conducted, determining the three died on impact3.
Secondly, former president John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald (conspiracy theories notwithstanding) on November 22, 1963, as his motorcade drove down Dealey Plaza. During the Second World War, he was in the US Naval Reserve and was a commander of a couple of Patrol Torpedo boats in the Solomon Islands, having one of them rammed and sunk by a Japanese destroyer. If Kennedy were to return, as these QAnon people believe, he would be 104 years old, having been born in late May, 19174.
While I know gullible people are everywhere, as demonstrated by the number of people who have fallen for the ‘Nigerian scam’ or the ‘unexpected money scam’5 or who believe Scott Morrison is honest, these QAnon people take the cake. The funny thing is that these QAnon nutters were told that JFK Jr was going to appear in July 2019, to be the Mango Mussolini’s running mate in the 2020 election6. You’d think they would cotton on after that failure, but there have been so many ‘predictions’ like this which have failed to eventuate, that you do wonder about their ability to realise what is happening. Whoever Q is, he must spend a proportion of his day pissing himself laughing at the gullibility of his ‘followers’. I certainly do.
Sources
- https://www.bbc.com/news/53498434
- https://thehill.com/homenews/state-watch/579798-hundreds-of-qanon-supporters-gather-in-dallas-expecting-return-of-jfk-jr
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy_Jr._plane_crash
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_F._Kennedy
- https://www.scamwatch.gov.au/types-of-scams/unexpected-money/unexpected-money-scams
- https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/qanon-jfk-jr-conspiracy-theory-854938/
Don’t laugh. Grieve . Logic and truth is increasingly lost to screaming mobs. Whatever happened to universal literacy and the teaching of civics? Not only are these people history-free and democracy-ignorant, we are seeing the end of a dream that civilisation can only advance.
Jennifer,
I am not so certain of that. These people have always been around. I have known some of them, for decades. The big difference now is that these nutters are being whipped up by conservative politicians and the Murdoch media. Conservative politicians used to be about stability and conserving what we had. However, as Australia becomes more progressive and less religious, many conservatives (many of whom are also religious) are now only concerned with retaining power and they will foment division and violence with that aim. The Murdoch media has been doing the same, as it is now only the coalition’s PR arm. As US commentator David Frum said: “If conservatives become convinced that they cannot win democratically, they will not abandon conservatism. They will reject democracy.” This is what is happening now, and the most effective way we can fix this, is to vote the bastards out. Once that is done, then the work begins.
Re 4chan. It wasn’t JUST a hole for right wing nutters and deranged sex pests. I used it to source pdf of out of print books and to discuss history and wargaming. It was more about sharing ideas and info in a space that wasn’t commercialised or caught up on rules of polite society. Totally ruined by right wing turds.
James,
That is something I didn’t know. I’d like to get some PDFs of long out of print science stuff. They are damned hard to find; because the ‘market’ is so small, I expect. In my game there are about a dozen or two of us around the world.
This mob of gullible nitwits (as do many other mobs of gullible nitwits) makes me think of the scene in The Life of Brian where Brian is trying to tell the crowd of adoring followers that he is not at all what they think he is. “You are all individuals” he says. “We are all individuals” they respond in unison. “I’m not” one small voice says from the back.
Mark,
That made me laugh out loud when I read it. The Life of Brian has lessons beyond its intended target of religion!
Much of America’s constitution and of its political structuring are now seriously out-of-date. This hinders any attempt to repair the many messes the USA finds itself in. Unless that country does the hard yards of renovating the founding document and the state-federal duopoly, it will continue to fray, fracture and disintegrate. The citizens are seemingly no longer taught that the words “freedom” and “personal rights” must never be used unless in the same breath as the words “duties” and “personal responsibilities”. Of course we can debate precisely what those duties or responsibilities are. The main point is that the price of liberty is not only eternal vigilance, but the citizens’ ethical conduct as well, in a polity calling itself democratic. In a democracy, when freedom or liberty is seen only as totally unconditional, danger looms ahead. Aiming for freedom from oppression and exploitation is vital. Freedom to act out certain uncivil impulses or obsessions, can slide too easily into very negative mass behaviours that wreck local or national solidarity or any sense of baseline agreement. America is rotting out as a result of “licentiousness” of the broad (- not narrowly biblical) kind. Its identity as a nation and the common bonds between groups and individuals are suffering massively because personal liberty has become twisted into a society-wide negative force.
And so in the extreme we find people now take liberty to mean that they can blithely shout down most other/oppositional opinions and ideas. Many also define freedom as the option to gun down those one opposes, which is essentially anarchic. Corporate freedom is freedom to rape and pillage the ecological system and the citizenry. And then there is a freedom the media and fourth estate have bestowed on themselves; to ignore facts, to peddle lies, distortions, deceptions and hate memes. Obviously no country can claim to be a valid democracy when such so-called “freedom” (with so little accountability) runs totally rife. Is that not what you see happening in America? The British philosopher Isaiah Berlin wrote in 1958 a now- famous essay called “Two concepts of Liberty”. It should be required reading for every citizen in a place calling itself a democracy.
Russell,
A similar thing is happening here; fortunately without the guns. I hadn’t heard of the essay by Berlin, so I just downloaded a copy of it. Thanks for the reference.
Good summary Russell. I’d add this: if the Republican Party doesn’t split (it won’t change in its current form given the amorality of the majority of its elected federal reps) so that moderate conservatives can act and be heard without fear and retribution, then what Arthur predicts is inevitable. When you add in the failing rule of law, obvious police racism and lack of action to bring the worst of them to account, the country is in deep doodoo. Leadership is almost non-existent on both sides of politics, which only exacerbates their numerous problems. The USA figuratively and literally fighting among themselves is a major problem for the “free” world. It will embolden tyrants across the globe.