QAnon (1 Viewer)

[Dragon]

This organisation and its reach is seriously scary. When the head of the New York Police Department's second-largest police union openly shows his support of this "organisation" then something is seriously wrong!

The head of the New York Police Department's second-largest police union gave a television interview Friday afternoon while sitting in front of a mug emblazoned with QAnon imagery and slogans.

The mug behind Mullins featured the word "QANON" and the hashtag #WWG1WGA, which stands for "where we go one, we go all," a popular slogan among QAnon supporters. At the center of the mug was a large letter Q, which refers to a supposed government insider who, according to QAnon supporters, posts cryptic clues on the Internet about the "deep state."


More than a year ago, the FBI reportedly assessed that QAnon was a dangerous movement that was likely to inspire its most extreme members to commit violent acts of domestic terrorism.

In recent weeks, QAnon supporters have been posting videos of themselves reciting an oath and repeating the "where we go one, we go all" catchphrase that is seen on the mug. They say they are preparing "digital soldiers" for an apocalyptic reckoning, when thousands of "deep state" pedophiles will be arrested and prosecuted at military courts at Guantanamo Bay.

https://us.cnn.com/2020/07/17/us/head-nypd-union-qanon-mug/index.html

 

[MT15]

Exhibit #1

Trump laundering Russian money is just a fact. In the real world there are facts and they don’t care about your feelings for Trump.

 

[bird]

Exhibit #1

Not quite. Trump laundered money. The book lays it out. Read it. I know you are hoping and praying that your false god gets past his self-created legal swamp but do yourself and the world a favor and actually learn about him.

 

[SaintForLife]

Trump laundering Russian money is just a fact. In the real world there are facts and they don’t care about your feelings for Trump.

Exhibit #2

 

[MT15]

Whatever dude. Enjoy living in your fantasy world. Let the adults handle the real world.

 

[bird]

Exhibit #2

Hmmm. It appears that the exhibits of your, say we say, issues, regarding your false god have been catalogued in depth on this site as evidenced by your own posts. Laughing at facts collected and researched by others does not appear to sway your worship. Which is unfortunate. The bottom line appears to be Trump/Republicans do something no matter what it is = good. Biden democrats do something no matter what it is = bad.

Logic and facts have left the building and blind fealty to the biggest failure of a president besides Andrew Johnson in the “person” of Donald Trump rules the day.

 

[Bigdaddysaints]

His responses are Case in point to MAGA=QAnon...lol

 

[DaveXA]

His responses are Case in point to MAGA=QAnon...lol

Indeed.

 

[SamAndreas]

Is Q not a thing anymore?

When I see footage of Trump rallies I still see people wearing the gear but haven't heard anything from them in ages

It's past time for them to refocus, Q had run its course, as had the Tea Party, Contract with America, so on and so forth.

Q has lifted them up there into close Earth orbit, for them to jump from Q on to the next new thing they either need to choose from other out in orbit spacy things, or re-enter down through the atmosphere.

They don't have a heat shield. They're trapped out there, if they try to get back "down to Earth" they'll burn up while traveling through the atmosphere.

 

[nolaspe]

Wait, now there's a 'blueanon'? ROFL, the level of stupidity by magatwats just keeps getting more hilarious...

 

[SamAndreas]

Wait, now there's a 'blueanon'? ROFL, the level of stupidity by magatwats just keeps getting more hilarious...

I looked that blueannon thing up and found this video explaining it:



Now as soon as someone explains that video to me I'll be set. I'll ask my daughter.

 

[DaveXA]

Wait, now there's a 'blueanon'? ROFL, the level of stupidity by magatwats just keeps getting more hilarious...

Never heard of that either. Guess that goes to show how effective they are that I first hear of them from SFL.

 

[MT15]

Never heard of that either. Guess that goes to show how effective they are that I first hear of them from SFL.

It doesn’t exist. They made it up because they have project everything they do on other people.

 

[Optimus Prime]

Journalism about the QAnon phenomenon tends to examine the rampant spread of the vague set of conspiracy theories into mainstream society and perhaps wonders at the specific identities of those who propagate those theories from shady corners.

“Trust the Plan,” by Will Sommer, who reported the story for the Daily Beast (and is now a writer for The Washington Post), and Cullen Hoback’s HBO documentary “Q: Into the Storm” traced the origins of Q to message boards like 4chan and Reddit and explored the damage ultimately wrought to our democracy by its disturbing proliferation.

In her assiduously researched and impeccably constructed new book, “The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family,” Jesselyn Cook grapples with the personal ramifications for many of Q’s devotees and the people who care about them.

It’s a subject often overlooked in what Cook describes as “the roaring national discourse surrounding the movement,” and “few resources exist for afflicted families and individuals.”

Cook’s aim is to humanize those deeply committed followers who are so easy to dismiss as delusional or gullible or worse. She also hopes to answer the question she received in “a cascade of emails from strangers across the country sharing chilling” stories of those who abruptly recalibrated their identities around dedication to QAnon: “What happened to the person I love?”


Cook conducted hundreds of interviews to reconstruct how people fell under the spell of Q’s alluringly simplistic depiction of reality.

Her diverse subjects include an empty-nest liberal lawyer, the twin of a Black Lives Matter activist, a rabid Bernie Sanders supporter, a retired baby boomer and a young family man.

The story of Emily and Adam — a mother and son whose lives were shattered by the suicide of family patriarch Dan, a tragedy that nevertheless fortified their bond — is particularly effective, as the about-face Emily made in the years after Adam, the youngest of three children, left for college was almost grotesquely extreme.

Emily, who put herself through law school after her husband’s death and went on to thrive in her own practice, had been Adam’s hero; in his own application essay for law school, he wrote about his socially progressive mother, who he earnestly believed would make the world a better place.

But isolated in her empty nest, Emily plagued her children with tweets and Facebook posts claiming that Mike Pence was a clone and that Michelle Obama was a man, and she rarely engaged with them on any other topics.

Less than a decade later, they were estranged by Emily’s increasingly cruel behavior, which culminated in an email in which she “called Adam a ‘monster,’ a ‘huge disappointment,’ and an ‘utter embarrassment’” and told him to “shed my DNA.”

Kendra and Tayshia, the twins, grew up in low-income neighborhoods in Milwaukee. Though they were “best friends” in their youth, by adulthood they couldn’t have been more politically opposed.

When Tayshia’s husband died of a heart attack, Kendra’s son blamed Tayshia for his death, because she had “made him” get the coronavirus vaccine. “You killed him,” he said to her. “Mom told me.”…….

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/07/11/quiet-damage-qanon-american-family-jesselyn-cook-review/

 

[bird]

Journalism about the QAnon phenomenon tends to examine the rampant spread of the vague set of conspiracy theories into mainstream society and perhaps wonders at the specific identities of those who propagate those theories from shady corners.

“Trust the Plan,” by Will Sommer, who reported the story for the Daily Beast (and is now a writer for The Washington Post), and Cullen Hoback’s HBO documentary “Q: Into the Storm” traced the origins of Q to message boards like 4chan and Reddit and explored the damage ultimately wrought to our democracy by its disturbing proliferation.

In her assiduously researched and impeccably constructed new book, “The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family,” Jesselyn Cook grapples with the personal ramifications for many of Q’s devotees and the people who care about them.

It’s a subject often overlooked in what Cook describes as “the roaring national discourse surrounding the movement,” and “few resources exist for afflicted families and individuals.”

Cook’s aim is to humanize those deeply committed followers who are so easy to dismiss as delusional or gullible or worse. She also hopes to answer the question she received in “a cascade of emails from strangers across the country sharing chilling” stories of those who abruptly recalibrated their identities around dedication to QAnon: “What happened to the person I love?”


Cook conducted hundreds of interviews to reconstruct how people fell under the spell of Q’s alluringly simplistic depiction of reality.

Her diverse subjects include an empty-nest liberal lawyer, the twin of a Black Lives Matter activist, a rabid Bernie Sanders supporter, a retired baby boomer and a young family man.

The story of Emily and Adam — a mother and son whose lives were shattered by the suicide of family patriarch Dan, a tragedy that nevertheless fortified their bond — is particularly effective, as the about-face Emily made in the years after Adam, the youngest of three children, left for college was almost grotesquely extreme.

Emily, who put herself through law school after her husband’s death and went on to thrive in her own practice, had been Adam’s hero; in his own application essay for law school, he wrote about his socially progressive mother, who he earnestly believed would make the world a better place.

But isolated in her empty nest, Emily plagued her children with tweets and Facebook posts claiming that Mike Pence was a clone and that Michelle Obama was a man, and she rarely engaged with them on any other topics.

Less than a decade later, they were estranged by Emily’s increasingly cruel behavior, which culminated in an email in which she “called Adam a ‘monster,’ a ‘huge disappointment,’ and an ‘utter embarrassment’” and told him to “shed my DNA.”

Kendra and Tayshia, the twins, grew up in low-income neighborhoods in Milwaukee. Though they were “best friends” in their youth, by adulthood they couldn’t have been more politically opposed.

When Tayshia’s husband died of a heart attack, Kendra’s son blamed Tayshia for his death, because she had “made him” get the coronavirus vaccine. “You killed him,” he said to her. “Mom told me.”…….

https://www.washingtonpost.com/books/2024/07/11/quiet-damage-qanon-american-family-jesselyn-cook-review/

There is an enormous mental health crisis in the U.S. and likely elsewhere. The political economy combined with social media is toxic and the human brain and psyche cannot deal with it.

 

[Optimus Prime]

I may read this book
=============

When Jesselyn Cook wrote about the children of QAnon believers as a HuffPost reporter in 2021, she didn’t expect the reaction she would receive ― hundreds upon hundreds of emails from readers, all of who had lived some version of the same story, and all of who seemed to have some version of the same question for Cook: What happened to the person I love?
In her new book, “The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family,” released Tuesday, Cook sought to answer that question, profiling five real-life people who fell into the conspiracy theory rabbit hole, and documenting the devastating impacts their departures from reality had on their loved ones.

These days, “QAnon” represents an umbrella of countless conspiracy theory beliefs. But it started with bogus claims on an internet forum by an anonymous account ― “Q” ― who claimed during the Trump administration to have high-level access throughout the American government, and who painted an unimaginably wide picture of corruption, sex abuse and revenge for their followers.

According to Q, financial elites and the “deep state” are in fact members of a vast child abuse ring, and they dictate global politics from the shadows. Donald Trump, in this universe, is secretly fighting against them with the help of QAnon believers, or devoted “digital soldiers,” and working toward the eventual “Storm” when QAnon’s villains will be either executed or imprisoned en masse.

Over the years, Q’s predictions have been widelydebunked. And the “Q” behind QAnon has urged followers to stop using references to “Q” or “QAnon” at all, and instead to try and influence politics from inside the mainstream. These days, QAnon believers have largely fused with existing far-right movements, such as the anti-vaccine movement, or Republicans’ moral panic over transgender rights.

Cook’s five subjects ― she uses the pseudonyms Emily, Matt, Doris, Alice and Kendra for them ― come from a wide variety of backgrounds. They’re Black, white, rich, poor, and range politically from hardcore conservatives to a former Bernie Sanders supporter who became disillusioned with politics after his 2020 presidential primary loss.

But they’ve all fallen under QAnon’s spell. And their families are left to grapple with the devastating fallout.

Cook spent years detailing the intimate personal lives of the five families featured in “The Quiet Damage,” staying in touch with the devastated siblings, parents, children and partners of QAnon believers as they tried desperately to break the conspiracy theory’s hold on their loved ones. The result is as thoughtful ― and as heartbreaking ― a portrait of the conspiracy theory movement as I’ve ever read................

QAnon Broke Families Apart. One Journalist Spent Years Documenting The Fallout.

Jesselyn Cook’s ‘The Quiet Damage’ offers an intimate portrait of conspiracy theory believers ― and loved ones desperate for answers.

www.huffpost.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

article referenced above, from 2021
==========================


Shortly before Joe Biden was inaugurated, Sam’s mother began stocking up on food in a panic. He didn’t know why, but he knew it probably had something to do with QAnon.
The 19-year-old started to notice changes in his mother’s behavior around the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic.

She had always been a nervous woman: She stopped flying after 9/11 and had hovered closely to Sam and his two younger siblings for their entire lives. But during the COVID-19 crisis, his mom’s paranoia spiraled from quirky to deranged. It has turned her into someone he hardly recognizes.

Though she didn’t used to be very political, she now fears the president is a pedophile who stole the election. She’s scared of radiation from the 5G towers in her neighborhood and, as a white woman, she told her son, she’s afraid of being harmed by Black Lives Matter protesters — a movement she once supported.

She worries that Sam’s brother and sister are being “indoctrinated” at their public high school and wants to move them to a Catholic one. She’s also refusing to get them immunized against COVID-19 as false rumors swirl that the vaccine contains a secret location-tracking microchip. (She was initially terrified of the virus but now considers the lockdowns an affront to her freedoms.)

“She wasn’t always like this,” Sam said. “It just keeps getting worse.”

Sam moved back into his mom’s Michigan home last March when his college campus shut down. His dad, who’d been divorced from his mother for many years, had recently died, and it was nice to be back around family. But Sam quickly noticed his mom was spending almost all of her time online.

For hours into the night she’d be on Facebook and, later, Parler, obsessing over articles from obscure, ultraconservative websites that traffic in fake news. She’d send posts to Sam pushing political claims that were risibly false, and they’d get into furious arguments over dinner as he tried to debunk them..............

‘I Miss My Mom’: Children Of QAnon Believers Are Desperately Trying To Deradicalize Their Own Parents

Here’s what it’s like to lose the person who raised you to a far-right cult.

www.huffpost.com

 

[Optimus Prime]

From the Atlantic - I think I will check out this book, it's getting quite a bit of coverage
=========================================================

Before everything changed, Emily Porter was a successful lawyer. She was an outspoken progressive living in deep-red Tennessee. Perhaps above all, she was an intensely loving single mother to her three kids. She had a special bond with Adam, her youngest: When his older sisters moved out, the two of them would care for the animals on their small farm, watch Jeopardy and Lost, and, once a month, treat themselves to dinner at a fancy restaurant, where they’d try everything on the tasting menu. Adam decided that he, too, would go into law; he called Emily his “hero.”

Just a handful of years later, she was emailing him demanding that he “shed my DNA” and warning: “PAIN IS COMING FOR YOU, AND YOUR BELOVED CHINA JOE, FRAUD OBAMA AND HIS MAN WIFE MICHAEL.”

What happened to Emily is, in some sense, no puzzle. As the tech reporter Jesselyn Cook describes in her new book, The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family, Emily (a pseudonym, like all the names Cook uses) tumbled deep into QAnon, a sprawling set of far-right conspiracy theories embraced by some 20 percent of Americans.

At the center of this dark universe is “Q,” a mysterious online-forum poster claiming to be a government official in cahoots with Donald Trump; together, Q suggests, they’re working to defeat a diabolical echelon of global elites.

QAnon posits that those powerful politicians and celebrities are abusing children—trafficking them for sex, eating them, harvesting their blood—and propagating the idea of COVID-19 (a myth, in this view) to harm everyday people with dangerous vaccines.

How Emily and so many others could be taken in by these claims, though, is a great mystery—one that Cook doesn’t pretend she can solve. The Quiet Damage never made me feel that I could understand the people falling for QAnon. But I don’t think the book is meant to make conspiracy thinking clearly legible; it’s not really about the Emilys of the world at all. It’s about the Adams: the ones left peering over the precipice when their family members teeter into the abyss.

Cook illuminates vividly the experience of loving someone in crisis—a crisis you can’t fully understand and definitely didn’t anticipate—and the impossible question of how long to stand by them.

People aren’t drawn to QAnon just because they’re ill-informed, or because they clicked a link that skewed their algorithm. Cook shows how the conspiracy theory also preys, specifically, on vulnerable people. Following five different American families, she unpacks her subjects’ “unmet needs”—the particular ways they were aching, betrayed by individuals or society or just the random cruelties of life.

Emily, for instance, was left to raise three young children by herself after her husband died by suicide, then she fell into intense isolation when they moved out for college. But of course, many people have harrowing traumas, and not all of them retreat into a world of right-wing delusions. The loved ones in this book don’t know why their person did; neither does the reader. What’s clear is that these adherents wanted to believe in something. What, exactly, they came to believe was somewhat beside the point.

In this sense, QAnon isn’t really the main focus of The Quiet Damage. Cook occasionally zooms out to explain how the conspiracy network capitalized on loneliness and anxiety in the early days of the pandemic, or how it exploits real injustices, such as systemic racism, to further seed paranoia. But mostly, she draws on hundreds of hours of interviews with her subjects and their friends and family, immersing the reader in her characters’ interpersonal dynamics and recounting memorable human anecdotes, as in a movie, complete with rising action and cliff-hangers.

The stories are gripping not just because QAnon is so bewilderingly strange but also because the idea of a person you love disappearing before your eyes is so terrible—and perhaps for many readers, relatable. Swap in another conspiracy theory—or cult, or addiction—and you’d likely find similar stories of hurt people who have lost themselves to some compelling and sinister force.


In fact, the QAnon believers aren’t the only ones in Cook’s book grasping for a light in the dark. While another subject, Matt, prepares for “the Storm” (a term often used for Trump’s supposedly imminent military takeover) by using half of his family’s annual income on silver and gold coins—better for bargaining in the coming new world, where U.S. currency will apparently be worthless—Andrea, the wife he’s effectively abandoned, has turned to the multilevel-marketing firm LuLaRoe.

She spends thousands to buy in and purchase clothes to resell—which she then fails to do, like most people lured in by the company’s promise of financial agency and psychological freedom. Cook skillfully shows how eerily Andrea’s story mirrors Matt’s. “The vision she’d been sold never came to fruition,” she writes of Andrea. “In its place, racks of unpurchased pink, purple, and orange garments lined the basement next to Matt’s dust-coated emergency supplies endlessly awaiting the Storm.”


Cook also makes clear that family members such as Andrea have no easy way forward; the people she follows make different choices, all difficult, about how—and for how long—to try bringing their loved one back to reality. One family, after several weeks of careful effort, does have some success: When a former Bernie Sanders supporter called Alice descends rapidly into the depths of QAnon (after watching a single YouTube “docuseries”), her partner, Christopher, and her father, Ted, gently chip away at her beliefs: Rather than critiquing Alice’s claims, they ask her earnest questions about them, as if out of curiosity, or draw attention to how her allegiance is making her life harder.

At one point, Alice rails against Bill Gates, saying that he has admitted to earning a “20-to-one” return on his foundation’s investment into vaccines. Christopher agrees that they should be skeptical of people in power but notes that he heard something different in the video she’s referring to: Gates mentions a 20-to-one return for the world.

Together, they find the full interview, and Alice sees that she was wrong; her mind cracks just slightly further open. At this point, the book feels briefly hopeful. With patience and empathy, it seems to suggest, you can reach someone who once felt very, very far away................

MSN

The Painful Reality of Loving a Conspiracy Theorist

What do you do when a family member falls for a conspiracy theory?

www.theatlantic.com

 

[Bigdaddysaints]

when i saw children of Qanon believers, all i could think about was Children of the Corn...