Josh Marshall of TPM made an important point on Friday: QAnon Not a Conspiracy Theory
I know the Talking Points Memo site is behind a paywall, so I’ll quote a bit
I say you’re a pedophile not because I think you’re actually a pedophile but because it is an attack. Because it hurts you. In online and message board culture there are legions of users constantly attacking anyone they disagree with or don’t like as pedophiles or other horrid accusations. Presumably these people aren’t acting on some mistaken information that the people (the identities of whom they usually don’t even know) they’re attacking have sexually abused children. It’s not a misunderstanding. It’s a form of aggression. Things like the Q phenomenon are just this aggression writ large. I say you’re a pedophile because it is itself an act of aggression but also because it dehumanizes you. It’s a storyline that makes hurting you or killing you make more sense and be more exciting.
He goes on to talk about Trump being “a scurrilous, pathological liar” , but also a good illustration to understand how QAnon believers relate to facts. In that accusing Trump of lying is equivalent to accusing a fiction writer of lying with the plots in her fiction books. The writer would have no idea what you mean.
He finishes:
Just how QAnon and comparable movements work is something I’m still working to get my head around. (These two articles are the analyses that interest me most – here and here.) But calling them conspiracy theories is not only wrong in concept it seriously misleads us about what they are and how to combat them. QAnon is a violent terroristic political movement with strong fascistic facets the upshot of which, in every storyline, is a final violent reckoning in which Trump’s political enemies are rounded up and murdered. That’s what it’s about. The fables are just getting people primed and ready for that moment.
And of course by fables he means the conspiracy theories concerning the elites, Democratic politicians, etc. who need to be killed in order for the QAnon prophecies to be fulfilled. The accusations about pedophilia are just a tool to justify violent uprising. The attacks and the forecasted violence are the point, not the accusations.
I mean, I’ve encountered enough of these right wingers to know they say they don’t believe one single thing mainstream media sources report. It made my jaw drop the first time I encountered this. But there are millions of Americans walking around, and there is no way for anyone to tell them what is actually happening in the USA. Because they don’t trust any news source or person who tries to set them straight.
Marjorie Taylor Greene Says Mainstream Media Just as Dishonest as QAnon
Now obviously they have a major blind spot, because clearly they believed it when the media said that Donald Trump won the 2016 presidential election. They are filtering the news for things that they agree should or shouldn’t be happening. So I’m quite certain MTG believes this about the mainstream media, because it’s what all the conservatives swimming in the deep end believe.
A few of these Q believers could actually be deprogrammed, because disinformation on this scale inevitably draws in a few innocent bystanders. But with the core believers, a fact is only considered a fact if it facilitates their hatred for the people they need to hate.
Really Al Gore should have considered this outcome before he went and invented the internet.
On a totally non-related note, I saw daffodils getting ready to bloom in the northern Virginia forest yesterday. Daffodils by mid-February! If the light snow this week doesn’t kill them. These particular daffodils are descended from bulbs that were planted in Stafford County’s Crow's Nest Natural Area quite possibly before the Civil War in the 19th century. That’s why daffodils are called the eternal flowers.
Spring is almost here! If we can just avoid premature death from COVID or armed extremists.