ElI5: What is a QAnon?
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[article](https://www.justsecurity.org/72339/qanon-is-a-nazi-cult-rebranded/)
“The plot, described above, was the conspiracy “revealed” in the most influential anti-Jewish pamphlet of all time. It was called The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. It was written by Russian anti-Jewish propagandists around 1902. It collected myths about a Jewish plot to take over the world that had existed for hundreds of years. Central to its mythology was the Blood Libel, which claimed that Jews kidnapped and slaughtered Christian children and drained their blood to mix in the dough for matzos consumed on Jewish holidays.
The Nazis published a children’s book of the Protocols that they required in the curriculum of every primary school in Germany. The Nazi newspaper, Der Stürmer (derived from the German word for “Storm”) spread the Blood Libel. Hitler’s Mein Kampf, his narcissistic autobiography and manifesto for his battle against the Jewish plot to rule the world, copied his conspiracy theories from the Protocols.
The Nazis worshiped Adolf Hitler as the Leader who would rescue the white race from this secret Jewish plot. Nazi “storm troopers” (“storm detachment” – Sturmabteilung) helped bring Hitler to power. Nazi Germany went on to conquer Europe and murder six million Jews and millions of Roma, Slavs, LGBTQ and other people.”
A conspiracy theory that began on 4chan, reportedly coming from an anonymous source with “Q level security clearance.” The basics of the conspiracy theory is that everything Trump does that looks like he’s dumb or incompetent is actually part of a grand plan to save America by defeating a grand conspiracy of child molesting liberals, who use the basement of a pizza parlor in Washington DC as their secret base. That the evil conspiracy was trying to harvest a chemical from the brains of children so they could make a youth potion, by scaring the kids and traumatizing them.
The conspiracy theory moved to the 8Kun site, and continued to get more and more people convinced that there’s a secret liberal conspiracy that only Trump could defeat. When Trump lost the election, and seemingly proved the entire conspiracy theory wrong, the people who bought into it got deeper and deeper into conspiracy theories about Trump secretly winning, that he’d use some sort of loophole and when it appeared that Biden was going to be inaugurated, take over and arrest him and lead America in a new golden age.
We have at least two Congress members now who are openly believers in this conspiracy theory.
When President Biden was inaugurated today, a lot of the QAnon supporters have not taken it well, some realizing that they’ve been lied to for the past few years, others trying to claim some way of believing that there is still hope for Trump to become President again.
It’s a baseless conspiracy theory that started when someone on a right wing message board pretended to have a job in the intelligence community. He or she went by “Q,” stayed anonymous, and basically said that Trump was secretly fighting a cabal of satanic pedophiles and at any moment, he would basically declare martial law and arrest all the Democrats — most of the Satan-worshipping pedophiles were prominent Democrats.
It kind of grew out of the pizzagate conspiracy. In 2016, some Democratic Party emails got posted on Wikileaks. Some crazy people saw that they ordered pizza for events and said if you replace “pizza” in the email text with “children to rape,” it proved Democrats were pedophiles and using pizza as a code word. They decided Comet Pizza in DC was running the children through their basement. Comet Pizza doesn’t have a basement but someone still showed up with a gun to “save the children.”
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QAnon shares intelligence information over the internet in the style of Dragon Ball Z: lots of hype, not much substance. And every QAnon report concludes with the hints about what will be revealed next time… only it never is because QAnon is made up conspiracy nonsense. The style of “reporting” is persuasive and draws the viewer into a good versus evil battle between murky figures with dark motivations. It preys upon people’s base fears and suspicions. But when you break the report down into logical facts with verified, reliable sources it falls apart. It’s all smoke and mirrors.
Does anyone actually have an example of something qanon would say? Is it like a daily post thing or is it weekly/monthy or based on current events? I get the idea but I don’t know what he actually tells people
Picture a problem at your local combination Pizza Hut/Taco Bell. Say an oven catches fire and everyone has to evacuate. The fire marshal enters the building and notices burnt remains of towels and scorch marks up the sides of the oven. In his expert opinion, there was grease on the side that caught fire and wicked up to the towels, causing a greater conflagration. That’s trusting in experts.
Now picture the same issue, except people dislike the fire marshal. Someone says “Wait a second, wasn’t he supposed to be there earlier in the day for a routine inspection?” Yes, he ran late. But people start “connecting the dots” and mistakenly realize that *the fire marshal must have set the fires*. Him not being there was too coincidental. It must be like the movie Backdraft, where firefighters set the fires so they can show up as a hero! Now we have a culprit and a motive. Case solved. That’s QAnon.
They provide “evidence” like the fire marshal being late, and tell you to follow your instinct. Since you don’t like the fire marshal and assume the worst, that’s where your instinct takes you. It’s an alternate reality game, except it plays you instead of vice versa.
You know how your aunt used to always be afraid of the dangers of the internet? For example if you sent her an email with a family photo on it, she’d be worried it contained a virus?
Well now the internet has radicalized her based on a steady diet of disinformation and hate rhetoric. It jived with her worldview and now she has distanced herself from all her family including her children, and is now awaiting who knows what kind of marching orders through the parler app from either Trump, Q, fake Q, Russia, or any number of white supremacist groups.
What… I posted a huge comment explaining Qanon… and it just got removed for not following guidlines!?!?
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