The Qronicles is a series that will collect some of the news, videos, and general mis/disinformation roiling around the conspiracy world of QAnon. You can cringe, you can laugh, but these folks are organizing and showing up at the polls!
What is new in the world of Q-Anon, or Anon, or Q, or whatever they are calling themselves these days? The new thing, it seems, is to pretend you aren’t a conspiracy theory-pushing Q advocate, while very clearly being a conspiracy theory-pushing Q advocate. Also, if you are a tool of QAnon and then cannot prove—and, in fact, cast doubt on—any Q theories of a “plandemic” or the massive election fraud that ousted the unpopular former guy out of office, you are a traitor. It’s an enigma wrapped in a riddle, fermenting in a bag of trash.
First up is the HUGE news that at some point between May 1st and May 5th, Donald Trump was reinstalled as President of the United States.
It didn’t happen, you say? Sounds to me like you’re the one living in the dream world. You know that one QAnon guy, the one who convinced an offshoot of Anons into believing that John F. Kennedy Jr., his dad, and his mom, and maybe Jesus, were coming back on the anniversary of the Kennedy assassination in Dallas, Texas? ‘Member that? That guy goes by the moniker “-48” or something, and his name is Michael Protzman. Protzman’s crew believes that most of the famous celebrities that have died too soon, including but absolutely not limited to Princess Diana, Tupac Shakur, and others, are really alive and well and living among us awaiting our Trumpian deliverance.
Need proof?
As many people have pointed out, this isn’t Tupac Shakur. Shakur was killed in Las Vegas in September of 1996 at the age of 25. This man is “Blacks for Trump” conman Maurice Symonette. Symonette is 69-years-old and has a history of being a member of a similar cult. I would make an “I Ain’t Mad At Cha” joke here if I weren’t so mad at all of this ignorance.
While this is happening, have you heard about the spate of food processing plants that have been strategically firebombed in order to starve Americans into submission? You didn’t? Oh, you heard about the food processing plant fires but not the deep state secret reason?
Surprisingly, not discussed is the fact that all the anti-masker, anti-vaxxer, plandemic Republicans (and Joe Manchin) these people support are against the programs that help lift millions of children out of poverty and rising hunger. The conspiracy to starve the majority of Americans is real—it’s just not working through pretend inflation caused by firebombing food processing plants. It’s killing Build Back Better legislation and food assistance legislation while cutting huge tax checks to the wealthiest among us that’s starving Americans.
Co-founder of Sister District, Gaby Goldstein, joins The Downballot to discuss what Democrats in the states are doing to protect abortion rights
And finally, the candidates. Pennsylvania Republican gubernatorial front-runner Doug Mastriano, best known for anti-COVID organizing, testing positive for COVID-19 while in a meeting with Trump, and lying about his participation in the Capitol insurrection, recently received a “Sword of David” from a QAnon crew of religiously-minded hoodwinkers.
When this was mentioned to him during an interview with the Delaware Valley Journal recently, Mastriano sort of freaked out for about ten minutes and then, when asked about his unsubstantiated election fraud claims, walked out of the interview.
Delaware Valley Journal has interviewed many of the gubernatorial and U.S. Senate candidates from both sides of the aisle and hosted a debate among Republicans in the Senate race. No other candidate has walked out on an interview or debate.
Guess that “Sword of David” is maybe more of a blankie or stuffie situation?
Over in Ohio, GOP congressional candidate J.R. Majewski, who participated in the Jan. 6 event down in D.C. and won his Republican primary last week, denies he’s a QAnon guy. CNN did a profile on this QAnon guy who says he’s not a QAnon guy, and for a not-QAnon guy, he seems to promote mostly QAnon stuff.
After Majewski gained national attention for his Trump lawn, he appeared in news coverage wearing a white T-shirt with a large "Q" embellished with an American flag. He later replied to a tweet confirming that it was a "Q," and noted that he also wore a Trump 2020 badge the campaign had asked him to wear. A day later, he tweeted, "Here come the helicopters flying over better get my Qutfit on and hit the front yard Gotta do the #GoodGuyStuff #PatriotsAwakened #WWG1WGA."
Wanna see it?
Finally, everyone’s least-favorite Trump-related conspiracy theory attorney, Lin Wood, continues spinning around in a circle attacking everyone and everything—including the people he helped fund—conduct one of the many ludicrous election audits that he hoped would prove millions of votes were stolen from Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election. EchoMail recently ended their audit after wasting Otero County, New Mexico, taxpayers’ money, as well as money privately raised by organizations including Wood’s “FightBack Foundation.” Did they find election fraud?
SPOILER ALERT: They didn’t.
But since QAnon and Lin Wood-style conspiracy compulsives cannot be wrong, it means that the auditors are a part of the conspiracy now. EchoMail’s founder and CEO is Shiva Ayyadurai, who has been a right-wing hack conspiracist for some time. Ayyadurai is now the focus of a lot of New Mexico Audit Force (NMAF) anger. The saga of the EchoMail Otero audit includes an audit of the auditors, and the tactics used by the NMAF after allegations that they were lying to residents and intimidating people while they “canvassed” Otero County residents to find out if they voted and who they voted for. You can read all about the plans for the Otero County audit written by my colleague April Siese here.
Then one of the NMAF’s leaders, David Clements, began telling people that he was a colleague of Ayyadurai, which is problematic because Ayyadurai has been dealing with the NMAF blowback and the back-and-forth legal dispute over what money is owed or not owed to his audit company. The dispute has led to an early exit and then a settlement in which Otero County only paid EchoMail about 20% of what was initially quoted. It’s the kind of messy financial situation we have come to see standardized under the scam-demic of Trumpian swamp figures ginning up small-dollar donations from promising to find proof that reality is whatever MAGA-heads would like to believe.
Now Lin Wood is attacking David Clements for Shiva Ayyadurai’s early exit, and the lack of election fraud findings. According to the Daily Beast:
“The pledge by #FightBack to help in Otero was based on David representing that Shiva would run that audit and was the right man for the job,” Wood wrote in a Tuesday Telegram post. “Then Shiva bailed.”
Wood (who did not return a request for comment) announced that Clements and another ally, far-right podcaster Joe Oltmann, were leaving FightBack’s board. Wood also accused Clements of associating with freemasons (a grave sin in certain conspiratorial corners of the internet), and wrote a cryptic post urging followers to research the “Red Shoe Club,” a reference to a bogus conspiracy theory that claims people who wear red shoes secretly torture children. Wood’s fans were quick to share a photograph of Clements wearing red shoes.
Did you get all that? Red shoes or something. I wonder what this means?