Somehow this commentary in Dallas at the recent Faith & Freedom conference slipped through the cracks, but take a look at this and see if it reads for you the way it reads for me. Columnist Virginia Heffernan posted an op/ed in the Chicago Tribune Friday, giving her assessment that QAnon is finished, kaput, all over except for the shouting. She cites historical precedent pertaining to the rise of cults in America and their subsequent demise and then she quotes Sidney Powell speaking in Dallas.
But then late last month, pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, one possible heir apparent to the Q empire, dismissed some of the most popular Q memes at a Dallas Q convention. “There are no military tribunals that’s magically going to solve this problem for us,” she said.
And though Q used to urge followers to “trust the plan,” Powell announced, “I don’t have any evidence that there’s some grand underlying plan.”
Sidney Powell saying that she doesn’t have evidence of Q’s plan is like Colonel Sanders saying he doesn’t have a secret chicken recipe. Say whut?
Now here’s another thought about the Dallas convention: Lin Wood was originally slated to headline, along with Powell and Michael Flynn and he didn’t show up. Wood is such a vociferous proponent of Q that it’s amazing he hasn’t gotten carpal tunnel from making the sign in the air. He just loves to connect with the Q troops in the audience. And that’s not to say that the others were totally ignoring QAnon. Flynn auctioned off a QAnon quilt for thousands of dollars, but auctioning a quilt with a Q on it and standing there preaching Q doctrine are two different things.
In all events, Heffernan makes the case for QAnon being a dead Quck. We have seen this all before, she says:
Where QAnon says that John F. Kennedy Jr. faked his death, past fantasists of yore believed that John Belushi’s death by overdose was a government hit.
And when QAnon followers spin yarns about a phantom cabal of satanic cannibals and sex traffickers, twisted liars of the 1850s and 1860s warned of satanic bankers and Catholics who also drank blood and abused children.
That’s why QAnon, who made a messiah out of former President Donald Trump, was always bound to lose steam. It will follow the arc of furious, loopy-loo American conspiracy theories that have existed since before the Civil War. Cults like QAnon burn bright, and they fade fast.
QAnon’s demise, in fact, is well underway. Its leader, Q, a figure from the internet’s dark side, is now widely suspected to be the creation of Jim and Ron Watkins. The Watkins men are a seedy father-son duo in Asia who serve up pornography and hate speech online.
If you missed the six hour documentary on HBO Max, the identity of Q has never been settled, but it is most probably Ron Watkins. QAnon first appeared on 8chan, which was later rebranded as 8kun, when Frederick Brennan, who created 8chan basically wanted nothing more to do with the platform or either one of the Watkins. He was appalled fairly early on at what QAnon had morphed into and it did take on a life of its own. 8chan went off line in August, 2019 and went back online as 8kun in November, 2019. The El Paso shooter’s anti-immigration manifesto was posted to 8chan, so it’s been a hotbed of controversy for some time, but nothing like what it got with respect to QAnon. All that has quieted down, however.
Q has also been silent for seven months. The cryptic things Q used to post, tone poems that served as Rorschach tests for his followers’ projections, have stopped appearing. They no longer headline the rave at 8kun, the horrifying online image board, administered by Ron Watkins, where they first appeared.
QAnon’s prophecies have been abysmal failures. Early on, Q claimed “the storm” would take place on Nov. 3, 2017. Nothing extraordinary happened. He also repeatedly prophesied that Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., would quit the U.S. Senate. McCain served until he died in 2018.
Q insisted that Trump’s enemies would commit mass suicide on Feb. 10, 2018. Nope. Finally “the storm” was again prophesied, this time for President Joe Biden’s Inauguration Day, on Jan. 20. Zip.
That’s when Ron Watkins, who denies playing a part in the Q phenomenon, posted this to Telegram: “We gave it our all. Now we need to keep our chins up and go back to our lives as best we are able.”
Maybe The Storm didn’t come about but January 6 most certainly did. I’m going to speculate that maybe Sidney Powell is downplaying QAnon right now because of all the arrests that have been made and there are many more to come as well.
Many defendants intend to claim they were brainwashed. Albert Watkins (no relation to Ron and Jim), the lawyer for the pelt-wearing insurrectionist Jacob Chansley, aka the QAnon Shaman, says his client fell into the clutches of a cult.
“He is not crazy,” Watkins told The Associated Press last month. “The people who fell in love with (cult leader) Jim Jones and went down to Guyana, they had husbands and wives and lives. And then they drank the Kool-Aid.”
One thing is certain: the fact that Q stopped transmitting in January essentially leaves the cult directionless and floundering. That, plus the fact that all of its prophecies keep tanking, doesn’t bode well for the continuation of the Q Doctrine. And lastly, the openly voiced defections from people who find themselves in legal hot water from the Capitol riot and no bailout in the form of paid legal fees or a pardon from Trump, and certainly no sign of “the Storm” is disillusioning to say the least. Nothing spells reality check like the clang of the metal doors of a prison cell.
Believe it: QAnon’s coherence, allure and leadership are over. Trump has retired. Many QAnoners are now behind bars.
Of course, that’s not the end of dangers posed by fanatical groups. It might not be QAnon next time, but extremist ideologies and paranoid fantasies will always captivate the dispossessed.
I would like to believe Q is in the rear mirrow. Nothing would please me more. The reason I’m not moping my brow with relief is because I monitor right-wing sites every single day and as long as the Big Lie lives, sedition and insurrection live right along with it. The day I see the Big Lie go down in flames is the day I will believe Q is kaput. Until then, vigilance is the price of liberty.
The collapse of the star which results in a supernova can happen fairly quickly. And a supernova is more than an explosion that creates a fantastic light show. It’s incredibly destructive to everything nearby and the expansion can be rapid. Worse, the various forms of radiation have the capacity to create if not destruction then appalling damage as it flies out even as the light show shrinks.
Q might turn out to be very much like a supernova, and even if the visible explosion and resulting damage is beginning to recede the invisible part is still out there and spreading. And we won’t know the extent of the damage for a long time to come.
Ms. Powell is likely doing a CYA maneuver now she is looking down a very, very, large civil lawsuit.
As for Q being in the rear view-something else will take it’s place or it will morph into some other, but similar, creature. C.T.’s are like trains-always another one coming.
The long history of conspiracy theories, millenarian and other cults, and random looniness, suggest that there will always be some fringe or other. Let’s just hope they remain on the fringe rather than front and center like the erstwhile ( I hope) Q.
Powell has been very vocal up until now. I think it’s the real threat of losing her law license (justifiably!) and possibly being tried for promoting the insurrection that has her backing away.
Yes Q is over but i haven’t heard one person talk about what isn’t over.. Human trafficking. Let’s just talk about Trump and his loonies meanwhile kids are being trafficked at the Biden Border and calling mother’s birthing people ya that’s totally normal.. Which is more loony…?
The problem of women crossing the border to give birth to a child in the U.S. is an old one. Older than I am and I’m well into my sixties. It’s gotten worse thanks to policies (NOT Biden’s btw) that allowed countries we used to provide a measure of support to to devolve into lawlessness. Desperate people do desperate things like make epic journey they or any children they bring along might be murdered along the way. Often after being used as “entertainment” (as in gang raped) by criminals that line the route looking to rob people who might have managed to save up a little money for the journey.
Yes, human trafficking is still a problem as it has been around the world since just about forever. What I find interesting is the Trump policy of separating children including infants from parents at the border with no means to track and reunite families even if just prior to deporting them. Now THAT was I maintain a crime against humanity in and of itself, but it was also an attempt (and yes, Eichman clone – he even looks like him – Stephen Miller is that fucking evil and ole Jeff Sessions has always longed for the days when white people got to own black people!) to establish a new form of slavery – a supply of children that could be raised with no idea of who they were and who would have no actual way to prove it. It was an attempt to establish a new class of slaves for the (conservative) elite!
“Well pete…everyone knows a human being will cast about in a time of stress.” George Clooney’s character in O Brother Where Art Thou?