One of the more bizarre episodes of the lunatic QAnon conspiracies was the widely circulated ‘Pizzagate’ story of how the basement of a Washington DC pizzeria known as Comet Ping Pong was the location where prominent Democratic politicians indulged in sex with minors, and where their orders for pizza were in code where the toppings represented the kind of victim they sought.
One man Edgar Maddison Welch believed the story and felt that it was his duty to stop this crime and so in 2016 he heavily armed himself with an AR-15 and other guns and drove about 350 miles from his home in Salisbury, North Carolina to stop it. Along the way, he made a recording to his family explaining what he planned to do and telling them that he would likely end up dead. Fortunately, things did not end badly, at least on that day. Arriving at the pizzeria, he searched the place after the terrified customers had fled and found that there was no basement and no nefarious activities going on and decided that he had been misled about the whole thing and surrendered himself. (You can read the more lurid details in my post from back in 2016.)
But last weekend, Welch was killed by police at a traffic stop in North Carolina.
The officer recognized the vehicle, having arrested Welch in the past, and knew he had an outstanding warrant for his arrest for a felony probation violation, police said. The press release said the officer spoke with the vehicle’s driver and recognized Welch in the passenger seat as two more officers arrived.
The officer that pulled the vehicle over then moved to the front passenger seat where Welch was sitting to arrest him. But when he opened the door, Welch pulled out a handgun from his jacket and pointed it at the officer, police said.
The arresting officer and a second officer at the scene shot Welch after he refused orders to drop his gun. The press release identified the two officers who fired as Caleb Tate and Brooks Jones.
I usually treat the initial stories of people being killed at traffic stops with a great deal of skepticism since the sources are always the police officers involved and they have a vested interest in telling a version of events that exonerates themselves. The people who are killed always seem to behave extremely stupidly when confronted by armed police, waving their weapons around, refusing to drop them, and otherwise behaving aggressively.
Whatever actually happened, this is a violent coda to one of the more bizarre episodes in the QAnon saga.
Speaking of which, whatever happened to Q and his cryptic messages to his followers? They seem to have stopped. But the movement is apparently still around, and Trump, Musk, and Trump’s nominee for the FBI Kash Patel are seen by the followers of Q as part of them.
It’s hard to know how widespread belief in QAnon is today or ever was.
One challenge is that QAnon is hard to define. Various conspiracy theories that had been floating around the fringes of American culture for decades became incorporated into the movement. “Everything has sort of been sucked into QAnon at one point or another,” said Adam Enders, an associate professor of political science at the University of Louisville who studies belief in conspiracy theories.
As a result, the movement was like a “choose your own adventure book,” said Uscinski.
The nonprofit PRRI, which conducts polls on religion, found that 19% of Americans believe in the core theories associated with QAnon, up from 14% in 2021. The poll found the number rose to 32% among Republicans who support Trump.
Mike Rothschild, the author of “The Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult and Conspiracy of Everything,” said the QAnon movement showed there was a market for “instantaneous conspiracy content creators” who churn out fresh conspiratorial content on social media pegged to the news of the day.
Influencers learned they could “make money by getting shares and replies and responses and retweets to this outlandish stuff that they put out,” Rothschild said.
There haven’t been new Q drops in years and there appears to be less interest in online content analyzing those drops in the way there once was, said Rothschild.
But ideas QAnon helped popularize, like the idea of a battle against an evil deep state, and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, have become common ideas on the right.
“QAnon as a movement based around secret codes and clues and riddles doesn’t so much exist anymore,” Rothschild said. “But it doesn’t need to exist anymore because its tenets have become such a major part of mainstream conservatism and such a big part of the base of people that reelected Donald Trump.”
The Trump administration is supportive the QAnon movement and that may cause them problems because conspiracy theories tend to thrive among people who feel they are outsiders exposing some nefarious government activity. When the government includes their own members, they may feel that there is nothing left to expose.
Huh, after reading this, I realized I’m not sure if I’ve even seen any mention of Qanon through all of 2024 except from a few mentions of the “Qanon Shaman Guy”. I might have, but if so I don’t remember it. I’m even more certain that I haven’t even written about them myself for the entire year. (Though by mentioning this, it probably counts as having done it this year.) So yeah, they’ve mostly been absorbed by MAGA where they didn’t already overlap, but as a separate sociopolitical identity it’s becoming a fading memory.
He was white, so the cops gave him a warning before opening fire.
Moreover, he was white when he took an assault weapon into a neighborhood, family-run pizza joint and threatened the lives of everyone as he spouted tinfoil-hat nonsense. That explains why he lived through that interaction with the police--they murder non-white people for such crimes as selling individual cigarettes, or, ya know, existing while non-white. Surprised the police didn’t take him out to dinner before booking him.
I have an in-law who was turned by listening to conspiracy-theory radio starting about 20 years ago. He’s firmly convinced that the gummit has secret bases on the moon where “they” (the Democrats, of course) are running a child brothel and drinking the children’s blood. He refused to believe his idol Rush Limbaugh flew to Thailand for sex with children, but he’s totally okay with the logistics involved in maintaining a base on the moon and being able to secretly launch rockets back and forth to the moon.
This type of mental illness has been carefully cultivated in the base over the past few decades, and is now a part of the Republican leadership--MTG and the Jewish space lasers, anyone?
The original Q has been silent for a while, essentially stopping when Trump lost in 2020. A couple of tailing posts after that, with the last confirmed post in 2022. There is a certain amount of uncertainty because Q has copy cats and intentional fakes using the name.
QAnon itself is now likely a permanent feature of the fringe for a generation or two. Once Trump is dead it will be possible for another big conspiracy to come along and replace it or it will simply fade into history. Bits and pieces will likely exist forever. The adrenochrome part of the conspiracy existed before QAnon and echos various blood ritual conspiracies that have existed for generations and likely will exist until replaced with a new variation.
IIRC this guy had been forced to flat-out admit he was wrong about there even being a basement to the pizza place where all that child-sex-trafficking stuff was allegedly happening. And yet even after facing that undeniable fact, he still didn’t learn jaque merde and never sought any sort of help or advice. He’s a perfect representative of today’s Republican Party.
Hrrmm -- the John Birch Society was founded by a man named [Robert W.] Welch [Jr.].
Does paranoia have a genetic component?
i’m related to many Welches, heh. where’s my AR-15?
Mr. Welch valiantly put his life on the line to defend children being abused in the basement of a pizza shop by breaking into a pizza shop with no basement and terrorizing the children playing ping pong there (hence the name “Comet Ping Pong”).
A poster child for the MAGA movement, and I do mean child.
Katydid @ 3
Rush Limbaugh ? (vomits).
@9, Yup, the drug-addicted child-raper* Limbaugh had a show that was carried by radio stations across the country. And white men in general and white men of a certain age in particular were his biggest fans. I believe he was the gateway drug for believing in ridiculous, implausible lies that led to a deluded fool believing on he could save children from a threat that didn’t exist…and continue to believe the lie even after he knew that the torture-basement didn’t even exist. And, @8, it’s entirely on-brand for those whackos to terrorize and traumatize actual, provable children innocently playing games in a family-run neighborhood corner pizza joint. What about the rights of the sane and peaceful people to enjoy a family dinner in peace?
* Excessive drug use took most of Limbaugh’s hearing and he was busted traveling solo with a suitcase of Viagra at the customs of some country that’s infamous for child sex trafficking. Also on-brand for the whackos to worship this fool while wanting to assassinate a scientist who says we’re in a world-wide pandemic of a virus we’ve never seen before, so please wash your hands and be careful when socializing.