Thread by @sallutephilipe

1. I Want to talk about #QAnon and where it might go, especially in the event of a GOP loss in the midterms tomorrow...

2. Q is effectively unfalsifiable. No event or lack thereof, no piece of evidence could prove that Q is a LARP. Anyone who stops believing in Q does so based on their own interpretation of the information they receive, same as anyone who starts believing it.

3. Some people will lose faith from a lack of delivery on what they see as promises, but plenty of others just accept that they were wrong in how they interpreted the Q drops.

4. All this is a roundabout way to say even in the face of demoralizing developments, plenty of people will still believe. Which worries me.

5. This man believed, as did many in Q circles at the time, that there is a secret version of the IG report not yet released.
reviewjournal.com/crime/courts/s…

6. A lot of people worry that the QAnon movement will spark violence, acts of terrorism, and I worry about that too. That example is one way it might happen, someone tires of waiting and decides to take action to force things to the fore.

7. Especially if the midterms go badly for the GOP, I worry one or more may think that Trump and the forces of good are at risk of losing and act out of desperation. Thinking this is their last chance to be free of the pervasive evil they’re told is choking them at every turn.

8. But the other possibility is that they get swept up into something more organized, more action-focused.

9. People have courted the Q community for their own ends for a while now. The earliest adopter was Jerome Corsi, who lost favor once folks realized he was just trying to make a buck and is now little more than a punchline (good on ya Q believers, Corsi’s a snake)

10. The Nazi rabble on Voat have also made overtures since Reddit’s crackdown drove their Q community there, but seemingly without too much success. There’s a good bit of daylight between orthodox Qism and, you know, out-and-out Nazis.

11. But recently, seasoned conspiracy theorist John B. Wells, formerly of Coast to Coast AM, has been hanging out with them. He has a regular Friday night time slot on the main QAnon YouTube channel.

12. His wife Brendi, a South African who argues that people being racist isn’t actually a thing and also the international cabal conspired to end apartheid so they could destroy South Africa, has popped into their show before, I first saw her there months ago.

13. This is the show he did last Friday. It’s a long clip, and he doesn’t appear until about 20 minutes in, but I’m posting the whole thing because the comparison between him and the show before is half the reason I bring this up.

14. The show that precedes him, Digging Deeper with Radix and Good Dog (along with the Australians who handle the graveyard shift and The Full English w/ Daddy Dragon, who tbh I haven’t seen lately) is one of the more organized and focused shows they run.

15. They make up infographics, upload a collection of sources viewers can download, and generally have a plan going in. But it’s always a bit of a mess, they get sidetracked and fall behind, get into conversations with YouTube commenters etc.

16. But watch the transition to Wells’ show and how it’s presented. It’s polished, he stays on track, he always speaks authoritatively. What you’d expect from an experienced broadcaster.

17. He goes in knowing what he wants to get across, and he just does it. And what does he get across?
Fear.
America is dirty, stricken by plagues, overrun by 50 million or more illegal aliens, and now George Soros is paying MS-13 to shuttle thousands more people to invade us.

18. What should we do about this patriots? What *can* we do to save this country that we love before it’s *destroyed* by these evil, *globalist* criminals??
Why let’s ask our guest, the founder and leader of the Oathkeepers, Stewart Rhodes.

19. Stewart thinks the solution is for Trump to call up the militia to defend the country against invasion. That all citizens who are willing and able should be organized into armed units to carry out the president’s wishes. Also we should invade Mexico.

20. Also you should all join the Oathkeepers our memberships are on sale for only $29.99

21. I don’t think too many Qists will be taking up arms on the Mexican border just now, but if they lose the sense that they’re winning the war, they’ll likely be more vulnerable to co-option by someone charismatic offering them the chance to change that.

22. Because I don’t think right now the group has any defense against demagoguery. They love Trump, but Trump doesn’t speak directly to them, he’s a distant father. Most of the rest of them, frankly, are a bunch of goofballs.

23. Here’s the opening half hour from Thumper and Deadcat’s show on Halloween for instance:

(Whoever taught the boomers about green screen I’ve got a bone to pick with you)

24. I don’t think the community has the means to resist that kind of a hostile takeover, not when they’re already looking to be saved by a strongman figure in Trump.

25. I really hope it doesn’t happen at all, but it seems very possible and I can’t tell you how much I worry that it will.

26. One last clip, this one an interview with VIPAnon, a (somewhat reluctant) minor celebrity in Q circles after getting a shoutout from Q themself.

27. It’s an unremarkable story if you ignore all of the potentially-insane stuff about Q sending secret messages via an anime board, it’s just a guy wanting to believe that things can and will and are getting better.

28. I think it’s a fiction, but it’s an appealing one, and if I’d been inundated with messaging convincing me I was the victim of *somebody* out there, I’d be primed to believe it too.

29. Because at the end of the day they’re just people, and they’ve got a lot of heart. Caleb555 (not sure how many 5’s) was flooded out of his home by hurricane Michael and is currently road-tripping cross-country to stay with Thumper, someone he only knows through QAnon

30. Gen6Slayr adopted a seriously disabled infant girl who he didn’t know from Adam and still cares for her today like 20+ years later

31. Staff Member offered to use his alchemical Tesla coil machine to transmute silver ions to treat somebody’s... idk, some kind of disease, which... I mean... his heart’s in the right place

32. Point is I think they’re getting suckered, but god I hope none of them get manipulated into doing something that they can’t come back from just because some power hungry asshole wants to play god with people.

33. Everybody is vulnerable to psychological manipulation and coercion under the right circumstances, and there’s been a PA system of lies and fear installed in the right for decades bringing people to this point.