Though all eyes are on the next few days, when the dust settles and the attention moves to other things. There will be some of us who will continue to research, analyse and wrote about these spaces. The problem does not disappear on Wednesday with a new admin.
The problem is here because we think about it in 4 year terms following electoral cycles, the problem is here because there is attention on it when large incident sof violence occur. However you don't end up with an insurection over night
You don't end up offline impacts of online Conspriacy theories overnight. The rise DVE is not due to months of factors but years. When all the temp extremism experts and reporters move on to other things, remember that this issue will not go away without a multisectoral effort.
Soni hope that in the months to comes mechanisms are out in place to give momentum to research, prevention and identification of vulnerabilities. I hope long term plans are considered and set into motion. I hope we do not forget about this in a few weeks.
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START/ How did the QAnon community react once the eleventh hour passed, once Biden was sworn in, once there were no mass arrests, no declass, no post from Q? I will try and break down todays timeline.
1/ Yesterday into the wee hours of the morning was a series of QAnon interpretations, prayers and hopefulness that all of the past 4 years will have come to fruition
2/ The main narrative I was waking up to in QAnon was that noon was when everything was going down. Why? because they believe that the military and joint Chiefs of staff "know" that Biden will be "illegally sworn in". At that point the military does not need to obey Biden, Why?
1/There is a lot of hope and denialism going on in QAnon communities ahead of inauguration day so I will try and capture some of them throughout the day, and as the acts of President Trump are enacted and decoded for secret meanings.
2/ let's start with this: a QAnon influencer interpreted the jacket worn by Melania in her final address as "no signal texture". Meaning all communications will be shut down and Trump will use the EBS or GBS to announce the INSURRECTION act and military take over of the US
3/ there has been an increase in post and language that is similar to this "there is no political solution".I have mentioned regularly that if they feel the digital war is lost and Q failed they may adopt more extreme language. More and move they borrow DVE tropes.
1/ In the Michael Butter book I read Saturday he made some interesting points. Up to the 1950s, in the West, conspiracy theories were regarded and completely legitimate forms of knowledge whose underlying assumptions were beyond question ( it was normal to believe in them)
2/ Following WWII conspiracy theories were delegitimized in the USA and EU causing conspiracists knowledge to be banished from public discourse and relegated to the fringe, which is not surprising considering the events of WWII.
3/ What we have seen in the past 15-20 years is a renaissance of conspiracy theories that is aligned with he rise of populist movement as there are parallels between the way that populists and conspiracy theorist argue and whom they target/perceive as the enemy.
There are some excellent points in this piece: 1) "the new emerging groups of individuals are devoid of the command-and-control apparatuses that CT practitioners typically seek to disrupt." It's important for realise that we are dealing with a different CT beast.t
The tools kits and some of the lessons learned from IS and AQ are not transferable. There is plenty of excellent work in far-right extremism, it just needs to be teased out to build CT toolkits for our modern threats.
As it is brought up in the brief 2) "But this new collection of terrorist adversaries possesses few of the attributes that proved so vulnerable to CT actions." We cannot speak of the FR in absolute terms, we're all guilty of it at times, this space is amorphous and changing
1/ Linked together, there are two tracts that QAnon influencers were pushing today in coordination. A) This is all part of the plan and the military is still on Trumps side and they will make sure Biden (compromised by China will not become president).
2/ The have also warned about many false flag events that are planned for this week & are asking "patriots/anons" not to attend anything this week. Basically the protests aren't part of the plan. QAnon adherents ask asked for rust the plan as it has been set forth & promised by Q
3/ This is linked to the prophetic role "Q" plays in the movement, not only as a government insider with access to the president and intelligence, but also as someone who has access to time travel and who is being guided by God in this battle between good and evil.
So I am not convinced that this was "planned" in the traditional sense. There is a difference imo between the individual who came with nylon cuffs, vs those who stole items, vs the one who smeared shit on the wall, vs those who were there for the gram.
As @travis_view mentioned the threat made by the QAnon adherent is from a Qdrop. Now belief in QAnon is ideologically linked to anti-government narratives and promotes violences as a solution whereby all QAnon enemies will be arrested and executes
I do not think that this individual had any idea he would be making his way into Capitol Hill when he arrived in DC. However, an opportunity to do so presented itself to him and he took it.