Q up for the Storm, the Breadcrumbs, the Awakening...

[Stavros]

Has QAnon found a home in the White House?

"Donald Trump adviser Stephen Miller, on behalf of the president’s re-election campaign, has claimed without evidence that Democratic candidate Joe Biden would “incentivise” child trafficking under his administration, if elected.

The claim mirrors conspiracies promoted by the online-driven QAnon delusion that Democratic lawmakers and celebrities are engaged in a child-trafficking operation, a belief that has gripped millions of Americans and elements of the Republican party.

Mr Miller, an architect of the administration’s hardline anti-immigration policies, claimed on a call with reporters on Wednesday that the former vice president would “incentivise child smuggling and child trafficking on an epic global scale.” "
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/w...-b1402665.html

[filghy2]

I've made this point before, but this illustrates the cluelessness of the Trump campaign. When they should be going all out to appeal to undecided votes, they are instead making wild claims that are likely to appeal only to people who are already Trump fans. The same goes for the weird obsession with Hunter Biden. Are these people living in such a delusional bubble that they believe lots of undecided voters are conspiracy theory nutters?

[Stavros]

I've made this point before, but this illustrates the cluelessness of the Trump campaign. When they should be going all out to appeal to undecided votes, they are instead making wild claims that are likely to appeal only to people who are already Trump fans. The same goes for the weird obsession with Hunter Biden. Are these people living in such a delusional bubble that they believe lots of undecided voters are conspiracy theory nutters?

Consider how Rudolph Giuliani has become one of the 'conspiracy theory nutters' -yesterday I watched him ranting on Fox News about Hunter Biden, then frothing at the mouth when the woman interviewing him compared him to Christopher Steele whom Giuliani branded 'a criminal', demanding an apology ("I've been a member of the Bar for 50 years..."..) .the same man I once saw on UK TV over 30 years ago talking in rational terms about his campaign against the Mafia and organized crime.
How did he go from being a sane and reliable opponent of organized crime in New York to becoming one of its beneficiaries in Russia and the Ukraine?

There has always been a degree of conspiracy theory in the US. Some may recall Lyndon Larouche from the 1980s, and Tony Tanner in his survey of post-war American literature (City of Words, 1971) attibutes it in part to the layers of local, state and Federal government that people feel remove them from the heart of decision making, so that the higher up you go, the more secretive people become, fed these days by social media making claims that need not be true, merely seed the suspicion that 'they' ae not telling you everything, and that bad things are happening at the top of American government. It is in fact a form of libertarian ideology opposed to government, and uses conspiracy theory to grow its base- but one has to ask if people truy believe the claims made about child trafficking. The scary thought being that they do.

That Giuliani has become so potent a promoter of conspircy theories is a indication of the decline of the Republican Party as a rational party into a screaming banshee, walking barefoot on the hot coals it laid down in the 1990s.

[broncofan]

I've made this point before, but this illustrates the cluelessness of the Trump campaign. When they should be going all out to appeal to undecided votes, they are instead making wild claims that are likely to appeal only to people who are already Trump fans. The same goes for the weird obsession with Hunter Biden. Are these people living in such a delusional bubble that they believe lots of undecided voters are conspiracy theory nutters?

This strategy worked against Hillary because of how pervasive the hatred was of her aided by the leaked emails and the last minute announcement by Comey, but Trump keeps going back to the same playbook. To hear his campaign speeches is to hear the same loop of demagoguery: conspiracy theories, racism, red scare tactics, inciting anger against the media.

The q conspiracy theories are loathsome but as you say probably play only with their hardcore base. I'm going to say this in the U.S. election thread too but one thing they are doing better is suppressing the vote.

[filghy2]

There has always been a degree of conspiracy theory in the US. Some may recall Lyndon Larouche from the 1980s, and Tony Tanner in his survey of post-war American literature (City of Words, 1971) attibutes it in part to the layers of local, state and Federal government that people feel remove them from the heart of decision making, so that the higher up you go, the more secretive people become, fed these days by social media making claims that need not be true, merely seed the suspicion that 'they' ae not telling you everything, and that bad things are happening at the top of American government. It is in fact a form of libertarian ideology opposed to government, and uses conspiracy theory to grow its base- but one has to ask if people truy believe the claims made about child trafficking. The scary thought being that they do. .

There is also this much-cited essay from the 1960s. https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/...ican-politics/ McCarthyism was the most prominent example at that time, but as he notes, there was also a history of anti-Catholic and anti-Masonic conspiracy theorising. Still, the idea of Communists penetrating the US government seems more plausible than the idea of it being taken over by a cabal of Satan-worshipping paedophiles.

Remoteness of government is as much an issue in Australia, but I can't conceive of either of the major parties being willing to tolerate (let alone embrace) this kind of weirdness. While it's shocking that some Republicans promote these views, it's equally shocking that supposedly mainstream Republicans turn a blind eye to it and continue to support the party with barely a murmur of protest.

[Stavros]

Filghy2 thanks so much for the link to the Hofstadter article, not only brilliant in itself, but proof that the 'paranoid style' is not new and repeats itself, swapping one demon of the past for its present form. It is noticeable how, though they have pilloried the Affordable Care Act, the Republicans have tended now to concentrate not on policy issues such as education, transport, foreign policy, or the wheel of fate known as 'the Debt' which Paul Ryan hung around Obama's neck, but cultural issues.

The so-called 'cancel culture' which is promoted by Junior have become emblems of what his kind feel they have either lost, or are losing to minorities, enabled by a crushing self-guilt among White people constantly apologizing for slavery, capitalism, and so forth, but a movement which has, perhaps more so than McCarthy and the 19th century zealots, held up the truth for ridicule. WHen someone can say in pubic that deaths fro Covid have been reduced to 'almost nothing' on a day 1,000 were recorded, suggests contempt that in itself robs his argument of a shred of value. That he might run for the Presidency exhibits the vanity of this family, as if it were a genetically code fault, though he may need to shave off the beard to be a serious contender, for the beard is a mask that seeks to conceal a deep internal anxiety about sexuality and identity.

One could refer to many theories which are based on the belief that the truth is concealed, and that identifyng it, and acting on it, is a form of liberation. Class consciousness in Marx is concealed from the worker by the daily grind of labour, he has no time to think outside his immediate situation, or he would realize the extent of his exploitation, and organizee to fight against it. Crucially, the oppressed worker does not realize he has been robbed of his humanity, so that liberation through revolution does not just change the economic system, it transform the person from being a 'cog in a machine' to re-developing as a human.

Similarly, in Freud's model, the bourgeois patient has developed a means of coping with trauma by displacing or transferring it onto something less obvious, the trauma itself, usually of a sexual nature, concealing the truth through a nervous habit that itself causes stress and acnxiety. Reveal the truth hidden under the cover of this habit, and that it need not be destructive, and the patient is relieved.

Pastors will extol the truth of the sacrifice Jesus made -for you- when all around you life seems so pointless, so complex, so weighed down by problems -all you need is to tear away the painted veil, and you will be set free. Thus in the Salafi version of Islam, centuries of malpractice and invented ideas have distorted the truth of what Muhammad revealed, while deviations from the 'straight path' can be corrected if the believer re-engages with the original message.

Out of this comes the 'orginalism' that has distorted the purpose of the Constitution, but at least can be debated rationally, whereas this stuff is just batty-

"The research for Hope Not Hate also found that 17% of people questioned said they believed Covid-19 was intentionally released as part of a “depopulation plan” by the UN or “new world order”.
"While 6% of those polled claimed to support QAnon, larger percentages supported broader, linked conspiracies. A quarter (25%) agreed that “secret satanic cults exist and include influential elites”. This rose to 35% amongpeople aged 18-24. A similar proportion (26%) agreed that “elites in Hollywood, politics, the media and other powerful positions” are secretly engaging in large-scale child trafficking and abuse."
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...heories-survey

I suspect that chronic failures of government -not its successes- have led to the proliferation of belief in these views, the bitter irony in the UK being that any conspiracy theory about the EU controlling our affairs, has not been relieved through us 'taking back control' as we never had it at all.

And the more the right fail, the more they blame everyone else, with the blame game probably entering a new phase of hysteria on November 4th...

Junior's Eyes used to be a rock and roll band, now he looms over the parapet -Dad, is it time to run?
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/...publican-party

[Stavros]

So weird they made a film about them, and then discovered the men who are resposible for Q are...a bit weird....

Storm comes on the 21st..

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-r...o-qanon-series