Vice brings us a blockbuster new exclusive: Michael Protzman, leader of a QAnon cult premised on former U.S. president John F. Kennedy being alive and well and about to reveal himself to the faithful any minute now, just you wait, has died.
Well, probably. Maybe. It depends on your definition of dead, really, and who among us are really alive, when you think about it. Yes, a Minnesota medical examiner may be quite certain Protzman is dead, and the doctors at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, are quite sure he was dead when he was carted off to the morgue, but Vice reports that Protzman's cult followers don't actually believe that he's dead—and why would they? Protzman collected hundreds of Americans who were gullible enough to believe that JFK was alive despite the notable handicap of being assassinated 60 damn years ago. These are people who were not only willing to believe that but willing to turn their belief in that into a core component of their very being, enough to leave their lives and families to follow Protzman around while Protzman spewed out prophecies that were just like any other cult prophecies … except for the part where they were much stupider and for some reason centered around JFK.
These are not people who are going to be dissuaded by a medical examiner's report that their dearest leader died after a dirt bike accident tenderized him to a degree incompatible with continued corporal existence. Nope, they've got Theories.
Shelly Mullinax, who was one of Protzman’s earliest followers but had a falling out with him and other members of the group last year, remains convinced of the conspiracies Protzman concocted about JFK. She believes his death is all part of the plan.
Mullinax said that in recent days someone in her group claimed Protzman “was taken out,” but she dismissed that.
She did however claim that the person who died was in fact just one version of Michael Protzman, “the evil version” and that the good Michael Protzman—who is in fact JFK Jr. in a mask—is still alive and well.
Oh boy. And she's not the only one: Vice reports that they "spoke to several family members of Protzman’s followers and all said that their loved ones have dismissed the news of Protzman’s death as fake.”
Now, we might find ourselves in a bit of a dilemma here in that it's generally rude to be mean toward the recently deceased. Since everyone around Protzman seems absolutely certain that he's not really dead but has instead moved to a farm upstate where he gets to run and play and chase rabbits with John F. Kennedy, none of those rules apply and we can be as mean to Dirt Bike Cult Guy as we like. And that's good, because he was a nasty, malevolent asshole.
Protzman is famous for one incident in particular: He's the cult "leader" who gathered up several hundred cultists at Dallas' Dealey Plaza, the site of JFK's assassination, in November 2021 to await the triumphant return of both the murdered president and his dead son, John F. Kennedy Jr. When neither of the dead Kennedys showed up on his original predicted date of Nov. 2, he was able to keep about 100 of the cultists milling around for weeks with a new claim that he meant Nov. 23. The event especially unnerved experts in cult activity because by the end, Protzman was suggesting that the truth would only be revealed when his followers died, which historically has been the prelude to mass cult suicides. That led to experts pressing local authorities to intervene.
Protzman's theories also were antisemitic at their root, a commonality that matches both the larger QAnon movement and conspiracy theorists in general. He pushed followers to drink hydrogen peroxide as an alleged COVID-19 preventative, had followers clean out their bank accounts on his behalf, and of course never flinched after his multiple failed predictions proved him to be just another con artist rather than any supposed prophet.
It's only natural, then, that his remaining cult followers and other devotees are convinced that he did not die: It's all a trick and actually maybe it was Protzman himself who was JFK Jr. all along.
Why stop there? Perhaps Protzman was a cake this whole time. Perhaps he was strawberry-flavored.
I've done a bit of looking, but there seems to be no actual reasoning behind the QAnon obsession with John F. Kennedy or other celebrities supposedly "faking" their own deaths, nor is there any explanation for why dunderheads of that particular sort would gravitate in such significant numbers toward believing Donald J. Trump, a cornball mugging-for-the-cameras vulgarian, is secretly the vessel or ally or reincarnation of Kennedy or anyone else. Why Kennedy? Why not James Polk? William Henry Harrison?
Nobody ever claims that Ben Franklin faked his own death and instead is still cruising the country, immortal, in a 1972 Pontiac, and it's baffling because that is exactly the sort of thing Ben Franklin would do. The man tied a key to the string of a kite to capture lightning in a bottle—none of these clowns can turn that into a tale of the Illuminati? It's always got to be John F. Kennedy, or Marilyn Monroe, or some ex-child actor, or Elvis, always with the damn Elvis. And for some reason it’s been Trump in particular that attracts not just malcontents, but these specific sorts of lying, pseudo-religious crackpots.
What's worrisome about the Vice article is that it's evident that Protzman heroically pureeing his internal organs at a local dirt track will not be releasing his followers from his own delusions, and family members remain worried about what's going to happen next. I am not an expert, but the willingness of followers to believe that Protzman's death is itself a conspiracy suggests that the way to curb one conspiracy theory among true believers is to offer up some other conspiracy theory that's equally outlandish but less explicitly harmful. Peel off those conspiracy layers one by one, so to speak, rather than ripping them all off at once.
Here's my own proposal for Protzman's followers, then: The new theory can be that ah-ha, Protzman did not actually die in a dirt bike accident; that's just what the Illuminati or the globalists or Panda Express want you to believe. He is actually alive, and living in an undisclosed location, and he personally told me to tell all the rest of you to go home and repair your goddamn lives already.
So, you know, get on with that?
