Blogocentric Formulations

This Just In - August 2

QAnon is terrifying. This is why.  
Written as part of "This Just In..."   for "Blog Harbor from The Talent Pond" 

I'll be honest, I hadn't even heard of QAnon until this week. But apparently during Trump's rally in Tampa, Florida yesterday QAnon supporters showed up en masse with T-shirts and signs that indicated as much, and now QAnon is the topic du jour on almost every political podcast and news source being put out today.

If you're similarly out of the loop like I am, QAnon is apparently a conspiracy theory movement that centers on someone who goes by the handle "Q" online (short for "Q Clearance Patriot"), who has been posting on 4chan and elsewhere online who claims to have access to classified information that reveals Donald Trump is waging a counter-coup against the Deep State. From what I've been able to briefly research online, some of the claims that Q has made include:

That North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Un is a puppet ruler installed by the CIA

That former DNC chairman Debbie Wasserman-Schultz hired the El Salvadorian MS-13 gang to kill DNC staffer Seth Rich.

That Donald Trump isn't actually under federal investigation, but that it's all a ruse to ferret out the Deep State corruption of our country by a globalist cabal that includes former presidents Obama, Bush, Clinton (and Hillary, of course), and even Bush Sr.

Q also seems to think that Trump is sending them coded messages so they know he's on their side and paying attention. For example, Trump's much-discussed tweet from yesterday was, "..This is a terrible situation and Attorney General Jeff Sessions should stop this Rigged Witch Hunt right now, before it continues to stain our country any further. Bob Mueller is totally conflicted, and his 17 Angry Democrats that are doing his dirty work are a disgrace to the USA!" And Q has claimed that his use of "17 Angry Democrats" is a message to them because Q also happens to be the seventeenth letter of the alphabet, so he's paying attention and reassuring them that he knows they're out there.

Online conspiracy theories are nothing new. They've been around in the dark corners of the internet for as long as the internet has been around. What's particularly concerning, though, is that Q's message seems to be catching on. Celebrities like Roseanne Barr and Curt Schilling have indicated support for Q's claims. In addition to them showing up en masse at the Tampa rally, an armed man in an armored truck blocked a bridge near the Hoover Dam in June to demand the release of classified information that Q claimed the government was withholding. Online users are showing up looking for signs of the conspiracy wherever Q mentions there's some perceived illicit activity, including at Michael Avenatti's office (Stormy Daniels' attorney).

In a world where things like Pizzagate happen (that pizza place that was assaulted by a man with an AR-15 because the conspiracy theorists claimed that Hillary Clinton had an underground child sex ring operating out of the basement), I don't think we need any more people propagating these crazy, unsubstantiated theories and inciting people's fear and resentment and rage. And what's really terrifying, as the article points out, is that since the actual claims being espoused aren't true, Q's followers continue to become more and more frenzied, more and more determined to ferret out this conspiracy that doesn't exist... and where does that end? Can it even end when people are waiting for a revolution that will never come because the revolution doesn't actually exist?