Good work from @page88 on the demise of QAnon as we know it. As the mythology of Q has enmeshed itself in GOP orthodoxy, the term "QAnon" itself has been dropped by believers. They now think it was invented by the media to make truth-seekers look crazy (it wasn't.)
QAnon as we know it ended with Biden's inauguration - no prophesized mass arrest of the deep state will be carried out by its biggest puppet. But its tenets wait to be rolled into a new conspiracy movement, and the whole thing will start all over again.
QAnon believers - who are now simply mainline consumers of right wing media - now wait not for "the storm" but for "the return." They wait for Trump to come back to office and make everything okay again. A lot of people who don't identify as Q believers think it's inevitable.
Fortunately, I wrote a book about how all of this got started, why people believe it, and where it might go from here - and it's out in 11 days:
I'm absolutely fascinated by the mechanics of "Trump will be reinstated in August." How does any of this work? Who makes the final call? Does Pence get reinstated too? Is Biden supposed to just pack and go? What does SCOTUS do? Why didn't past presidents get "reinstated?"
Often in prophetic conspiracy theories, the details of whatever is supposed to happen shift constantly and aren't regarded as important by believers. That's because they aren't real, and therefore, they don't matter.
I understand that the threat of a coup or takeover isn't funny, and at least some Trump acolytes are taking it seriously. But it's also important to mock things that deserve mockery, even as we monitor them.
Russia's links to QAnon (whatever that even is anymore) are still nebulous, with no compelling evidence of anything beyond early social media boosting. Americans have always excelled at being sucked in by scams and conspiracy theories, so no links are really necessary.
People get unreasonably mad at me when I point that out, and if it were different, I'd gladly say so. But that's how it is. We tend to be our own worst enemy.
A former president in prison is one thing. A former president who commands an armed and violent personality cult is something else.
Look, if the evidence is there, indict him. But it's a pandora's box inside a pandora's box. Let's be clear about the potential consequences - and the potential of limited returns (ie, he pays a fine and declares victory.)
While there's no indication she had any link to QAnon, her motive for killing her children is the same as most Q-driven crimes I've seen: unshakable belief that her children were in mortal danger, and she had to stop it at any cost.
Mothers have killed their own children many times before. It never makes any sense, because it's inherently senseless. What a tragedy for everyone involved.
A lot of people are assuming this woman was a QAnon believer or obsessed with its mythology. I haven't seen any story that confirms this - only that she believed some elements of what other Q believers think. But even Q believers don't routinely kill their own kids.
The far left and the far right agree that everyone in between is merely a mark to be fleeced with all of the scams, schemes, grifts, fundraisers, crappy products, fraudulent investments, and pieces of content that Heaven will allow.
"Well, actually, the Krassensteins' politics..." - just stop. The only thing anyone knows them from is being anti-Trump and a major part of "the resistance" to him on social media. What else matters about them?
Nobody dedicated to fighting Donald Trump should be retweeting crypto investment schemes from a far right activist who led the campaign to overturn his election loss. What they all call themselves doesn't matter.