Could it be…is it possible that QAnon is imploding? Q went silent after the election (and his predictions failed), one of the top administrators at 8kun resigned, and the mob of True Believers is dismayed.
Trump’s loss plunged many Q believers into a crisis of faith. “It’s hard to keep the faith when your wife and daughters have left you and we didn’t get the decisive MOAB [mother of all bombs] win we deserved on election night!!” one representative post on a Q forum read.
Some posts, potentially from trolls, in Q’s home subforum on 8kun this week insisted that the poster had died by suicide.
Other movements on the scene suggested at least one high-profile Q influencer was priming to pull the plug on QAnon—and blame 8kun in the process. NeonRevolt, a pro-Q blogger and author of a book on the topic, shared a “blind item” days after the election, alleging that Q’s 8kun account might have been compromised.
Well, yes, it is difficult to maintain your enthusiasm when you’ve ripped your family apart and discover that all the prophecies of your cult flopped. Unfortunately, that just leaves the QAnon cultists desperate for a rationalization to validate their awful decisions, so that kind of catastrophe never ends the belief, it just squeezes it out into another, equally disastrous body of life-ruining fantasies, as we’ve seen in every doomsday cult that’s ever existed.
Just wait for the emergence of “R” (oh, wait, that cult already exists — S, then). Also expect schisms. It’s going to be fun, but not for the faithful.
Like Trumpism, the QAnon Cult isn’t really going anywhere. It may lose it’s coherence around its silent 8kun oracle, but the notion of the all-powerful cabal made up of all people they don’t like, the Satanism, the pedophilia, the adrenochrome/blood libel in one form or another has been with us long before the Internet. They will find a new messiah to rally around who has the “real” information about the demonic cannibals who think are responsible for all the troubles of the world as well as their own personal problems.
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blockquote>Unfortunately, that just leaves the QAnon cultists desperate for a rationalization to validate their awful decisions, so that kind of catastrophe never ends the belief, it just squeezes it out into another, equally disastrous body of life-ruining fantasies, as we’ve seen in every doomsday cult that’s ever existed.
I’m sure I’ve read that persisting in the cult is usually the response of a minority – the majority, when the world doesn’t end on schedule, move on to something else – which may be a new cult, or may just be going back to their “drab, wretched lives” – to steal Tom Lehrer’s phrase.
“When Prophecy Fails.” Conspiracy grifting is a growth industry. I’m sure some savvy entrepreneur is even now concocting the next big theory of Why Your Life Sucks and Who’s Responsible.
Oh, you deserved that win, because you sacrificed sooooo much. If it isn’t the consequences of your own actions coming to haunt you.
There’s so many of these hateful people, Trumpsters, QAnons, Covidfiots, transphobes, who lose their friends and family because they are obsessed, because they make everything about their conspiracy theory. I’m sure their friends and family are sad, but they probably still go on, maintaining social relationships with all kinds of people, while they are stewing in their own small hateful circles.
Those groups are sects like scientology, only maintained online.
It sounds to me less like an implosion and more like a power struggle. Controlling an army of rubes is potentially very profitable. With the election upset there’s a chance to turn things in a new direction and people are jockeying for position.
This is part of why right-wingers aren’t long-term successful very often. They hate each other almost as much as they hate us. I wonder if that’s why rightists tend to favor strong leaders; because it’s the only way they can keep some kind of order in the ranks.
It’s been often noted that QAnon grew out of Pizzagate, which was the hottest of takes around 2016.
I get this faint impression that Pizzagate perhaps existed as some fringe conspiracy theory prior to the 2015-16 election campaign season, when it was systematically promoted by US rightwing apparatchiks and professional anonymous trolls. Possibly, that was also when its main target was redirected from “Jews” to “Democratic elites”.
Then, after the 2016 election, US political machinery just abandoned Pizzagate after nurturing it for months, like it was some fucking Frankenstein’s monster. It was left to live on its own momentum, fading away slowly, mutating freely, open to independent grifters and attention seekers. Within a year, QAnon was born.
Then came the 2019-20 election campaign season. Rinse and repeat. Soon, we’ll see what comes out next.
I wouldn’t say that prophecy failure never ends belief or people would never leave a cult. As cults implode, only the most ideologically attached will remain after multiple prophecy failures. It’s a kind of distillation and each time the heat gets turned up, the distillate gets purer. Right up until the
Allowing Biden to enter the White House is just the next step in a massive sting operation. Once he’s there, we’ll have all the proof we need about Hunter, Ukraine, the pizzeria pedophiles, and children being held captive to extract their precious bodily fluids. Patience, friends! It is a long and subtle game we play here.
@2
Probably, but there is an endless well of new cult ideas. At least Heaven’s Gate serves as a time capsule of prehistoric web page design.
Just going to Xpost what I just wrote on Mano Singham’s blog.
The weak spot of Q is that the Qanon prophet actually exists and is still alive.
Jesus at least has plausible deniability, having died and gone to heaven (or nowhere) 2,000 years ago.
And Q isn’t too far away from being outed right now and he/they know it.
Cults rarely disappear entirely but they increase and decrease and change into different forms.
Ironically, they evolve.
We see this with xianity. Canaanite religion Judaism, xianity, Protestantism, Mormonism (plus 42,000 other sects).
Qanon seemed to be the Protocols of the Elders of Zion crossed with the satanic panics of the late 20th century. It’s likely to decrease and then morph into something similar but different enough to appeal to the reality challenged.
If you are talking about the stats/programming language R, that grew out of another language called S.
So are we waiting for the great prophet T? Cause I think there is one of those already, and he might have something to say about the racism…
“Senator Elect Tommy Tuberville from Alabama believes that WW2 was fought to free Europe from socialism”
Aha, that’s why in the first elections after The Netherlands were liberated the CPN – Communist Party of the Netherlands – got 10% of the votes.
If we’ve learned anything from Christian doomsday prophets, it’s that they never learn, and never quit. They’ll come up with idiotic rationalizations for why none of their predictions came true, and update the conspiracy theory accordingly. Since none of it is based on evidence, the possibilities are endless.
Maybe you recall the 1980s film about a prime minister with two big policies: he blames umemployment on pixies and he creates a million new job opportunities by having one million volunteers jump off the white cliffs of Dover and die.
The Q anon cult may be ready for such a leader when the current cult implodes.
Even if QAnon implodes, it may not go away. Consider that after the Millerite sect of Christian end-of-world wackos dissolved after the Great Disappointment (1844), when the world failed to end; from the ashes rose the beginning of both the Jehovah’s Witnesses and the Seventh Day Adventists.
Ok a long time ago David Icke was obsessed with interdimensional lizard people, bloodlines of the elite, and the poor Illuminati scapegoats who died on the hill of clandestine freethought in Catholic Bavaria (may they RIP and peace be upon them). Add some crazy shit about Nibiru, Annunaki, and gold slave genetic hybrids because eccentric planet’s atmosphere, Taco Bell, transphobic tropes of black guy celebrities forced to dress in drag (wait what?) and we have old school conspiracy theories.
Something tells me we are way beyond all that now. Is Ancient Aliens even relevant or is crazy hair Tsoukalos old hat?
@17 hemidactylus
May I introduce you to the Time Cube Theory.
https://timecube.2enp.com/
And while I’m at it Martin Lawrence’s (Martin) and Jamie Foxx’s (In Living Color) portrayal of trans characters don’t seem to have aged well. Neither did Jim Carrey as Vera De Milo who seems to mock either female body builders or transmen.
Ah, the mighty, all knowing Q got bored and wandered off.
It started out weird, jumped off to Bizarro World. Q supposedly knew “things” due to holding a Q clearance. I had one years ago, the only things you get to know is what goes where and why inside of a nuclear warhead. Oddly, some of that knowledge being poorly documented (such as how to make a component codenamed FOGBANK, which resulted in a $200 million program to replicate it).
Somehow, that allows one to know all of the secrets of the universe or something (w
Archery!
(Well, all secrets except how to make fogbank…)
Turned out that their old process left a specific contaminant that made it work as a weak xray laser, aiding compression in the fusion stage.
No, it’s obscure, but not classified.
What the NSA or CIA was doing, didn’t know, have access to or care. Had enough on my own plate.
The only believers out there never had a security clearance or worked in a compartmented system.
hemidactylus @19: You’d have to search real hard to find a mainstream portrayal of a trans character that’s more than ten years old and isn’t cringe-inducing.
I had a security clearance once. It was CONFIDENTIAL. For those that don’t know, that’s the lowest one there is. I had it because I had a summer job doing tab operations in the San Diego Naval District. That is, moving IBM cards around and running them though machines…sorters, interpreters, collators… If the graveyard shift didn’t finish the payroll, I got to work with some of that. It’s an interesting feeling grabbing 600 cards out a box and knowing that every one of them is a government check…
Must have been interesting when whatever background check was done on me. My father had a clearance that was good enough to crawl around inside B-52s on the flight line at SAC bases…
I suggest you spend the next lockdown coming up with scenarios for outrageous conspiracy theories, and launch the best of them on far-right media platforms.
.
Best case: we can get different groups of whackos fight each other so they have no time for ordinary politics.
Suggestion: “The GOP failed in the election because the party leaders have been suborned by/replaced by freemasons/shape-shifting aliens/the Bilderberg Group.
-I’ve got it!
“The Republicans that recognise Biden as the next president have been suborned by the Conspiracy (TM).
You can expose them by squirting holy water on them, or by immersing them in a liquid that makes them slough off their faux-human skin , revealing their scaly, reptilian hide. A mixture of skunk gland effluvia and tar has the best effect.”
Wait till those right-wing PCT seeds grow tall and strong—and toward the sweet sun name of Liberal Bashing.
Regarding assholes- there is a Democrat named Manchin who was in Fox News and assured them there would be no change under Biden.
@#27, birgerjohansson:
Yeah, so? There is a Democrat named Biden who assured his billionaire backers, rather famously, long before he even had the nomination, that there would be no change under Biden.
Anybody who supported Biden, or any of the assholes who dropped out of the primary early to endorse Biden? You’re a fool, and the many, many problems we are about to see are your fault.
@28- The Vicar
And Trump remaining in power for a second term wouldn’t be worse?
Vicar@28
I don’t care whose fault it is. The fact that you assume any of us care about casting blame is half the reason why your comments seem to be completely detached from any useful discussion.
Kurt Vonnegut gave a great interview for In These Times that was specifically about the run-up to war in 2003 but seems to fit something about every year since then.
A statement I liked (though he’s far from the first to say it) is “One thing which has not changed is that none of us, no matter what continent or island or ice cap, asked to be born in the first place, and that even somebody as old as I am, which is 80, only just got here.”
I’m as helpless against the crap going on around me as anyone. The difference is I don’t pretend otherwise.
hemidactylus@29,
The Vicar wanted Trump to win. He said so. Supposedly because the USA is already doomed, so let it collapse as fast as possible to punish the Boomers. IOW, his primary motivation, by his own admission, is hate. Remind you of anyone?
I’ve read in several sources the QAnon is taking hold in Europe. Especially Germany.