Early reactions to episodes 3 and 4 of the HBO doc from QAnon Telegram: almost universally negative.
One lady who was filmed for the doc wanted to sue (good luck), but most were just bored or mad that QAnon didn't come off looking so hot.
More reactions in the next few tweets.
I love the lady who's like "DOES RON EVER CHANGE CLOTHES?"
Two notable things here: 1. The 4th image is like "hey now, Ron is CodemonkeyZ! Trump retweeted him!"
2. Another anon is like "but why are you showing the BAD QAnon followers? Why not Praying Medic?" Not sure Praying Medic would come off much better, but 🤷♂️
Strong anti-Jim-Watkins sentiment here, mixed in with some whining that HBO is anti-Q.
OK, this will be the last batch of reaction shots before I dive in myself. Wish me luck, especially with -- apparently -- the Christchurch Shooting footage that's in it.
That's... gonna be grim and I might skip it.
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You know how I put out periodic reminders that "linked to" and "tied to" are bullshit phrases beloved of conspiracy theorists?
PRIME example right here.
Let's break it down, along with a note on why Lin *absolutely does* know better. 1/5
Lin starts by saying that the "election fraud" in Georgia is being revealed more and more these days.
He then pivots to claiming that a personal enemy of his -- a law-school dean who, IIRC, took his name off a building or plaza or something & has incurred his eternal wrath --
has "direct ties" to two voting-machine companies.
What ties? DIRECT ONES. WHY DO YOU ASK SUCH IRRITATING QUESTIONS? DIRECT! TIES!
Anyway the REAL question is: on whose *behalf* were she and her boss *acting* when she persecuted Lin Wood so savagely? 🙄
The gold standard for assessing whether Ron's claims about Bannon hold water would be to take the unedited, unblurred footage of Ron's evidence and sit down with an independent technical expert to review.
This, we can't yet do. BUT:
We can weigh up the other evidence we have so far (e.g. Ron was neck-deep in the 1/5/18 coup; Ron allegedly sent a hail-Mary plea to Bannon for a lawyer and one materialized -- but also Jim Watkins is wealthy and could afford a lawyer, it doesn't have to be a conspiracy) & go:
OK, which of these fragments of evidence point to X, and which point to Y, and how confident am I of both their authenticity and the strength of my conclusions?
This is the way! You'll almost never have perfectly sourced info but you can start working on the stuff you DO have.
As you can see on the FULL graph (click in to expand, naturally), there was a tiny bit of Q-related content leaking onto the wider Internet almost from the start.
Reddit content was at first largely confined to r/conspiracy, and there were a few YouTubers covering Q early on.
So at the VERY beginning -- the period I'm mostly concerned with -- Q was largely a 4chan phenomenon. The data makes it *look* like YouTube, rather than Reddit, was the key driver of QAnon reaching a wider audience.
This is possible, but we don't have info on *views.*
Somehow I had already forgotten that, IN MID-FEBRUARY OF THIS YEAR,
the VERY conservative American Enterprise Institute found 29% of white evangelicals said it was "completely" or "mostly" accurate that Trump was fighting a cabal of pedophile Dems. 🙃🙃
The article is worth a read, BTW, because it has really interesting breakdowns on prevalence of QAnon belief by race and religion.
Oh! I should add -- this survey may actually UNDER-report the prevalence of that belief, since at least one other reputable survey found approximately 50% of Republicans believing that top Democrats are involved in child-sex-trafficking rings.
Now... y'all know what a funnel is, right? Just in case you don't, here you go: it's a device that starts off broad at the top and narrows down to a tiiiiny little nozzle.
Radicalization is a funnel -- many are called, as it were, but few are chosen.
So is Anon.
Anyone who's curious enough to Google QAnon or watch one of their recruitment videos or what-have-you has entered the sales funnel.
But wait, why summarize? I can let Gander take it from here:
And more conventional right-wingers do share ideological sympathies with their fellows in other countries.
I wouldn't say they COOPERATE much, because right-wingers who participate in electoral politics are going to be pretty well focused *on those electoral politics.*