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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsIs 'Q' The Greatest Hoax Of All Time? - by Joe Conason
August 8, 2018 5:00 am
The political movement swirling around President Donald Trump formerly known as the Republican Party displays certain unique features but is really just the latest noxious excrescence of the American right. Like so many of its predecessors, the Trump movement is built on fear. And like every movement motivated by paranoia, its followers are mentally vulnerable to the most idiotic conspiracy theories.
Not surprisingly, since everything about Trump is always the biggest and the best, his fans are flocking to a truly enormous and enormously deluded conspiracy known as QAnon, or simply, Q.
Insofar as any sane reporter can determine, Q is an entity that delivers anonymous messages via internet chat boards (the same virtual locations that generally attract obsessive right-wing types who carry out harassment campaigns from their mothers basements). Supposedly sent by some person or persons in the upper reaches of the federal government with ultra-secret security clearances, the Q drops assure us that Trump is actually dismantling the deep state and elite international pedophilia cults, both controlled by various liberal politicians and celebrities. Already, Q has reported the arrest of Hillary Clinton (which never happened).
According to Q, all of this exciting activity is being carried out under deep cover, with the assistance of none other than Robert Mueller himself. You see, the special counsel is secretly working to assist Trump, not to investigate him. The verbal assaults and tweets against him emanating from the White House, not to mention Fox News, represent a false flag deception. So does everything else that doesnt fit into the conspiracy.
Among the charms of Q is that any believer can invent his or her own version of this mysterious presence, because there are no facts to fetter the paranoid imagination. Inquire who is delivering those tantalizing internet hints, as a CNN reporter asked Q kooks at a Trump rally last week, and everyone offers a different answer: Its one person, or 10 people, or more; its a committee of military flag officers; its Trump himself; its John F. Kennedy Jr., who didnt really die in an airplane crash off Marthas Vineyard in 1999 after all. (Not kidding!)
If youre not a believer, you will have difficulty understanding how anyone can believe such a patently ridiculous confabulation. Yet among the Trump faithful there are hundreds of thousands, perhaps soon millions, fervently joining the Q queue. They are eagerly awaiting the Storm, their term for the moment of reckoning when Trump and Mueller will seize all those liberal pedophiles and march them off to Gitmo.
Among them is Roseanne Barr, who has promoted Q on her Twitter feed for months. But nearly every right-wing media personality, from Sean Hannity to Alex Jones, is stoking the crazy as are the Russians and their bots, of course, along with alt-right internet trolls like Jack Posobiec and Mike Cernovich. In other words, Q fans include all the usual suspects.
Now, manipulative charlatans on the right have been training stupid people to believe stupid things for decades, dating back to The John Birch Society and its insistence that former President Eisenhower, among others, was a conscious instrument of the Communist conspiracy. Those claims offended principled conservatives, who kicked the Birchers out of their movement.
But in more recent years, the inclination to promote outrageous calumnies has penetrated the upper reaches of the Republican Party and its allies on the religious right and in right-wing media. Republican leaders who are appalled by these tactics are almost always too cowardly to disavow them.
So in the early 90s, furious over losing the White House to Bill and Hillary Clinton after three terms of Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush, Republicans promoted vile accusations to demonize the Democrats. Major GOP figures, including House committee chairs and especially House Speaker Newt Gingrich, slyly endorsed charges they knew to be utterly false. So did Rush Limbaugh, followed later by his many imitators on Fox. And so did Rev. Jerry Falwell, a minister of the Gospel who routinely violated the Eighth Commandment for profit.
The Clintons were slimed for years with concocted stories of cocaine trafficking and murder. Now they are said to operate an international child sex trafficking ring, along with former President Barack Obama (who is really a Communist Muslim born in Kenya) and George Soros (a Jew who is really a Nazi). But those sick fantasies have already gone stale.
The freshest theory, brought to us by BuzzFeed News, is also the most refreshing: Q is merely a hoax, concocted by leftists to make the right look extra dumb. For anyone with a functioning brain, a spirit of decency and a sense of humor, thats the only conspiracy with any traction.
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http://www.nationalmemo.com/is-q-the-greatest-hoax-of-all-time/
Full article posted with the permission of Joe Conason -- Don
rusty quoin
(6,133 posts)Can he stop the child sex trafficking ring in time for Trump to ban the cantalouped calved Muslim invaders from our southern border? What ever became of that bat child I saw that time long ago while standing in line at the market?
I saw him, right there on the cover of that paper. Does he still have ears like a bat? Is he a happy adult?
PJMcK
(22,040 posts)JFK, Jr. underwent a complex series of plastic surgeries to change his appearance. He is unrecognizable today.
By the way, the PTB behind this plot had to rendition JFK, Jr.'s wife and sister-in-law because they didn't want to go along with the plot.
robbob
(3,536 posts)Well??? Have you??!?
Dr Hobbitstein
(6,568 posts)Fritz Walter
(4,291 posts)Not to mention a genius at disguise.
Sometimes he appears as Rudy Giuliani.
Other times, as FL guber-nor Rick Scott.
Still other times, as Michelle Bachman.
Wish I could post pictures, but...
A. Im replying from my smart phone and dont have the knack for adding photo links (yet); and
B. Its too close to lunch time. Those images could put anyone of their feed.
Saboburns
(2,807 posts)He's a whizz at Skee-Ball. He won so many tickets he bought me a deep-fried Snickers.
But he wouldn't ride the Tilt-a-Whirl though. He suffers from a nervous stomach.
Fritz Walter
(4,291 posts)I cant tell you the number of times that ability would have helped me!
leftynyc
(26,060 posts)Why would anyone want to deep fry a snickers? Everyone knows the best was to eat a snickers is frozen. Really? people deep fry snickers bars?
lapfog_1
(29,218 posts)It has replaced the Clenis as the object of fascination with the nutters.
rusty quoin
(6,133 posts)NewJeffCT
(56,828 posts)was that Trump really went to Helsinki to get secret incriminating Uranium One information about Hillary Clinton from Vladimir Putin and that she would be arrested any day now. Of course, I think she's been about to be arrested "any day now" for years and I'm guessing she'll always be about to be arrested "any day now" for the rest of her life and beyond.
That still doesn't give a reason for Donny Dollhands to be acting like Putin's cuckold after the #TreasonSummit or explain why the Clint/Uranium One timeline just doesn't work or how the company hasn't sold 20% of the US uranium to Russia.
rusty quoin
(6,133 posts)Saboburns
(2,807 posts)She's at Gitmo. But the Lame Street Media wont say so. This whole Mueller deal is a feint. Mueller is working with Trump, but to fool the PedoElite, and the Fake News, this is secret. There are 40,000 sealed indictments on Obama, Hollywood and Libruls everywhere.
Trust the plan. The storm is almost breaking.
spanone
(135,857 posts)mikeysnot
(4,757 posts)and ramming things down body openings...
H2O Man
(73,581 posts)Mr. Conason questions if the super-secret top intelligence officer isn't actually depending upon the inbred drunken Trump supporters to save democracy, the Constitution, and apple pie from the Deep State? Hard to believe. I think you should suggest that, as a test of the validity of his theory, he come up with a crazy conspiracy, identify it as such here on DU:GD, and see if the group begins promoting it within 18 days. That, I believe, would serve as proof positive that Q is all knowing and all seeing.
The Genealogist
(4,723 posts)Their witty jokes on game shows like Hollywood Squares and Match Game 75 were actually secret messages to the various upholders or he deep state. Both are still alive and running the deep state from a convenience store outside Boise Idaho. Q is actually an invader from the planet Zed Beta III who are here to save the planet and eat all the hotdogs.
underpants
(182,861 posts)The Genealogist
(4,723 posts)GoCubsGo
(32,086 posts)He's still alive, as well. He and John John are neighbors on the super-secret island where they've been hiding for the past 20 years, along with Frank Zappa and George Carlin. You'll notice all the memes around and about that are quoting Carlin and Zappa. They all seem very prescient now. Hmmmmmmm.....
procon
(15,805 posts)kooks are about. I still have no idea why Republicans find this crazy stuff so believable.
pazzyanne
(6,556 posts)If I remember correctly the Q continuum was an all powerful manipulative group controlling the universes. That fits the tRump party to a "T".
Xipe Totec
(43,890 posts)pazzyanne
(6,556 posts)SansACause
(520 posts)There was a panel with a character that looked like John de Lancie wearing a Star Trek uniform. I was puzzle what that was doing in there, but now I get it.
underpants
(182,861 posts)but Q on Star Trek TNG was what I thought of when I first heard about this nonsense.
Fritz Walter
(4,291 posts)It was in one of the daily cartoon posts, and I enjoyed it especially since Folio Weekly, the local weekly, alternative to the Fascist Times Union dropped This Modern World by Tom Tomorrow a few weeks ago.
However, as a dyed-in-the-wool Trekkie, Im embarrassed to admit that I totally missed the John de Lancie character in the fifth panel!
Thanks for pointing him out. And making me search for alternative ways to continue enjoying this editorial cartoon on a regular basis!
dchill
(38,516 posts)Patriotism or their religion. Q is only for the fringe.
LiberalArkie
(15,727 posts)LBGT "in the closet". Even though the word "Queer" is accepted by the community, I will not use it..
Grins
(7,226 posts)Ain't that the truth.
JohnnyRingo
(18,638 posts)I finally get a detailed explanation of Q.
Thanx for posting.
SansACause
(520 posts)It's bad fan fiction.
flying-skeleton
(698 posts)scheming daemons
(25,487 posts)Judaism, Christianity, and Islam
localroger
(3,629 posts)The 4chan trolls have no political philosophy beyond "who can we own." They were happy to troll us in the last election and help Trump in the process, but now that Trump is "the man" they're happy to troll him and his toadies instead. They smell stupidity and stalk it like sharks. I can guarantee the Q folks -- and it's probably twenty or thirty people who think they have the coolest hobby ever -- are peeing themselves with glee that the fish have bitten so hard. Seeing themselves taken so seriously by the Serious People and news agencies is part of the thrill. And while some of them are teens living in Mom's basement, not all of them will be; some of them are successful professionals who just think spinning up a troll like this and watching the results pour in is a more hilarious way to pass the time than watching whatever's on TV.
Major Nikon
(36,827 posts)Theres those on the left as well. Its just those on the right always seem to be better organized, and now social media gives them a bigger soapbox.
GoCubsGo
(32,086 posts)Or, someone else of their ilk. But, it wouldn't surprise me if someone on the left is playing this bunch of dupes, either. Nothing surprises me anymore.