Fair warning: I am not
a believer in the Qanon phenomenon or in any of the claims made by that
community. So if you are offended by
that, it is best you move on to
something else.
What caught my eye recently was a data analysis of Q posts
that indicates Q is at least two different individuals. If that is true, then there is no real person who is Q, and all the things this community believes
and claims really are the egregious nonsense that I have long thought. QED.
Those claims include (among many other things):
Update 12-18-2020: I forgot the claim that all the mainstream media are
“fake news”, which is also quite
false. Those changes are in blue text
below.
-------------------------------------------------
Update 12-20-2020: For those who prefer ABC News, I added the evaluation in red text below.
-------------------------------------------------
the existence of a “deep state” that is a cabal of
blood-drinking child traffickers that has taken over America,
the claim that Trump actually won the 2020 election but was
robbed of his victory by massive election fraud,
the claim that Trump and the US military will soon lead a
counter-coup to overthrow the “deep state”,
the claim that covid-19 is a hoax (or no worse than an
ordinary influenza), and
the claim that wearing a mask to stop the spread of covid-19
is somehow unAmerican.
and the claim that all the
mainstream media are “fake news”, which
they are not, only some are.
Excerpt from the Wikipedia article about Qanon, obtained 12-16-20 (my yellow highlighting):
QAnon[a] (/ˌkjuːəˈnɒn/) is a disproven and discredited far-right conspiracy theory[b] alleging that a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles is running a global child sex-trafficking ring and plotting against US president Donald Trump, who is fighting the cabal.[2] QAnon also commonly
asserts that Trump is planning a day of reckoning known as the
"Storm", when thousands of members of the cabal will be arrested.[3][4] No
part of the conspiracy claim is based in fact.[5][6][7][8] QAnon
supporters have accused many liberal Hollywood actors, Democratic politicians,
and high-ranking government officials of being members of the cabal.[9] They
have also claimed that Trump feigned conspiracy with Russians to enlist Robert
Mueller to join him in exposing the sex trafficking ring and
preventing a coup
d'état by Barack Obama, Hillary
Clinton and George Soros.[10][11]
An Orphanalytic analysis
of messages is claimed to have uncovered that there are at least two authors to
the website.[12]
Although preceded by similar viral conspiracy theories such
as Pizzagate,[13][14] which
has since become part of QAnon, the conspiracy theory began with an October
2017 post on the anonymous imageboard 4chan by
"Q", who was presumably an American individual;[15] it is now more likely that
"Q" has become a group of people acting under the same name.[16][17] Q
claimed to be a high-level government official with Q
clearance, who has access to classified information involving the Trump administration and
its opponents in the United States.[18] NBC News reported that three people took
the original Q post and spread it across multiple media platforms to build
an Internet following for profit. QAnon
was preceded by several similar anonymous 4chan posters, such as FBIAnon,
HLIAnon (High-Level Insider), CIAAnon, and WH Insider Anon.[19] Although
American in origin, there is now a considerable QAnon movement outside of the
United States, particularly in Europe.[20]
Obtained 12-16-20 from https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/qanon-is-two-different-people-shows-machine-learning-analysis-from-orphanalytics-301192981.html (my yellow highlighting)
QAnon
Is Two Different People, Shows Machine Learning Analysis from OrphAnalytics
An algorithm-based stylometric approach provides new
evidence to identify the authors of QAnon conspiracy theories
NEWS PROVIDED BY
OrphAnalytics
Dec 15, 2020, 08:38 ET
LAUSANNE, Switzerland, Dec. 15,
2020 /PRNewswire/ -- QAnon has spread conspiracy theories to an
unprecedentedly large audience. Its thousands of online messages have
popularized narratives such as the existence of a child-trafficking deep state.
Recently, it inspired a series of violent attacks and was listed as a terrorist
threat by the FBI. The Swiss company OrphAnalytics just published an analysis of all messages posted by
Q. Its patented technology aims at identifying authors of written documents. It
has found two individual signals within the corpus of Q messages. Its new study contributes to revealing the origins and the persons
behind one of the most impactful conspiracy theories in recent times.
Two authors are behind QAnon messages, shows machine
learning analysis from Swiss company Orphanalytics.
"Our results very strongly suggest the existence of two
different authors behind Q," says Claude Alain Roten, OrphAnalytics'
CEO and co-founder. "Moreover, these distinct signatures clearly
correspond to separate periods in time and different online forums."
A former geneticist trained at Harvard and the
University of Lausanne, Roten has derived his text analysis approach from
computational genomics. While conventional stylometry relies on the
interpretation of words, content, or syntax, OrphAnalytics technology is
entirely based on algorithmic analyses. It compares frequencies of character
patterns to bring out individual signatures, regardless of the text meaning.
Experts at the company have provided compelling pieces of evidence in several
legal affairs in Europe and are collaborating with the School of
Criminal Justice at the University of Lausanne.
OrphAnalytics
analysts have skimmed through the entire corpus of Q posts known as
"Q drops". They cleaned the 4952 messages from any content deprived
of individual syntax: lists, greetings, quotes from personalities, and messages
shorter than 50 characters. Then, they fed the resulting elements to their
software.
The analysis shows that the first period of Q messages
clearly bears a distinct individual signature from the rest. These seminal
messages appear on the 4chan web forum, from October 28th to December
1st, 2017. After that, another author takes over QAnon on another forum,
named 8chan. The signal difference is strong enough to leave very little doubt
on this author's swap.
The second and longest period — from Dec.1 2017 to Nov.
13, 2020 — shows a single signature with a slight evolution over time.
While it is not impossible that a few other persons have mixed their voices in
these +4700 messages, the signal is overall very consistent and points to a
single author, says Roten.
"The next step is to contribute putting a name on QAnon
by comparing these signatures to those of the usual suspects," says Roten.
"To do that, we gather and cure written material from these persons to
compare it with Q messages." Recent investigations point to a handful of potential
authors behind Q messages, most notably the owner of 8chan forum Jim
Watkins. "Tracing back the history of
QAnon is important. It could help to understand how and why a baseless and
outlandish theory, initially destined to a few isolated hackers, ended up
having such a broad social and political impact."
Contact
Claude-Alain Roten, OrphAnalytics CEO
261291@email4pr.com
Switzerland: +41 79 785 25 33
USA: +1 857 200 0729
SOURCE OrphAnalytics
My Own Opinions As Of 12-16-20:
I’m pretty sure the posters (plural!) who claim to be Q have
been spreading disinformation merely for profit off the internet. They have been doing this without regard for
the damage it does to America. If that
is not a crime, it should be! So also should be illegal the actions of those
who enabled this travesty by not policing their services for dangerous
content. They, too,
have profited off this damage.
According to most Q interpretations that I can find, the “Storm” is a military counter-coup
against the “deep state” cabal, leading
to a military dictatorship under the excuse of martial law, complete with treason/sedition trials and the
related executions. In most of
these, Mr. Trump leads this
counter-coup.
Favoring an autocratic system that kills off its opponents
is a hallmark feature of both the original Nazi party in 1930’s
Germany, and of neo-Nazi groups
in the US and Europe today. That similarity
of goal in fact explains the neo-Nazi presence at protests and other events where
Q followers are present.
That Nazi stuff is a creed that I cannot, and will not, abide!
I do in fact agree with the FBI’s recent assessment that Q followers, and many related far-right groups sharing
these views, constitute a domestic terrorist
threat to the US.
Followers of these far-right extremist beliefs have already
killed more people, and done more
property damage, than any sort of
leftist/”Antifa” adherents. That
said, there is no one, single organization we can call
“Antifa”, despite what is claimed by
most of the far-right groups. The FBI
confirms this.
Another claim is that the
mainstream media are “fake news”, all
controlled by the “deep state”. The
presumption is then that only sources which make Q conspiracy claims can be
trusted. This is circular
reasoning, but that does not matter to Q
believers, nor does a total lack of
presentable evidence for any of these claims.
It is easy to see the differences in editorial slant among the
mainstream sources, which in turn argues
against common control by a “deep state”.
NBC News has a left-of-center outlook,
while CBS and PBS is more centrist.
I do in fact recommend PBS and CBS as the least-biased mainstream
sources.
ABC News is also pretty much centrist in editorial slant, but for my taste over-prioritizes entertainment news, ever since being bought by Disney. This is not a surprising outcome, since Disney wants to entertain everybody, left and right, as well as centrist. Walt Disney himself was right-of-center politically, but the enterprise he built was deliberately centrist, to appeal to everybody.
Of the mainstream media, the closest to actual “fake news” is Fox
News, long understood to be a propaganda
organ for the pre-Trump Republican party and related voter communities. While the actual Fox News reporters do a
credible job of journalism with a right-of-center slant, the talking head opinion-mongers (Hannity and
the rest) have long been obvious far-right-wing propagandists with no apparent regard
for fact. That intensified dramatically
when Trump first ran for the presidency,
and continued unabated , pretty much throughout his term in office.
As for Mr. Trump, the
track record is quite clear: he has NO
real evidence of election fraud,
as evidenced by virtually all his team’s court cases having been thrown
out, specifically for lack of
evidence! Therefore, he lost the election fair-and-square, as verified by the many officials who oversaw
and certified the results, as well as
these court judgements. He lost both the
popular vote and the electoral college vote,
and no, there is no such thing
as any valid slates of “alternate electors”!
That term is a non-sequitur, as
was “alternative facts”, coined by Trump
adviser Kellyanne Conway back in 2016.
I conclude from his behavior since the election, that Mr. Trump is not only an extreme “sore
loser”, but is also an
autocrat-trying-to-take-over who failed.
What we are seeing is very much along the lines of what might have
happened in 1933 Germany, had
Hindenburg lived long enough to fire Hitler from his chancellor’s job, before he and his party had taken over all
the police forces. We were lucky, they were not.
In 2015 when Trump first ran for the presidency, I warned all around me that he did not really
want to be president, he instead wanted
to be king. Events have indeed borne
that assessment out.
I do in fact believe that with Biden’s win, the US has very narrowly dodged the
fate of going down the road that Germany took into Naziism. I mourn the fact that so many Americans
actually want to follow Trump down that well-known path to hell. Something like 50-75% of Trump voters seem to
believe in at least some of the Q conspiracy disinformation, especially the claim that Mr. Biden’s win is
somehow illegitimate. That’s almost one
third of voting-age Americans. And THAT
is alarming indeed!
The problem with the Q conspiracy is that it is “not
falsifiable” precisely because it is a belief system, and such believers care nothing about facts
refuting their beliefs. All the failed
claims and predictions (and the lists are long in the Wikipedia article) are
excused by the supposed posting by Q himself (themselves?) that “disinformation
is sometimes necessary”.
For people (like me) who persist in pointing out how false
this conspiracy’s claims are, the
ultimate put-down is “you are just part of the deep state”. Such may be Barr’s “fate”, despite his previous adherence to Trump, because he won’t support the “election fraud”
claims anymore.
There is no unified,
organized, stealthy “deep state”
cabal of blood-drinking pedophiles that controls everything. If there were, real whistleblowers would have surfaced long
ago and warned us. They have not: therefore there is no all-knowing, all-controlling, clandestine “deep state”. QED.
There really are two “deep states”, but they are NOTHING like what the Q conspiracy
claims! One is a constantly-shifting set
of alliances among otherwise-competing rich corporate interests, using their wealth to get what they want at
the public expense. The other is a huge government
(and commercial) set of bureaucracies of great inertia, slowly descending further into ever-greater resistance
against any useful action, and also into
greater incompetence. Neither has ever
been a secret.
Those two are bad enough to deal with. We need no all-powerful cabal of
blood-drinking pedophiles controlling everything. We have enough to worry about without that
utterly paranoid notion.
The trouble with the Q conspiracy claims is not just
the dangerously flawed politics, it is
also the dangerous disinformation about the current pandemic. With events so clearly spiraling out of
control, the conspiracy still gets its
followers to believe the disease is no worse than an ordinary influenza, that some dubious or even lethal things might
be “treatments” for it, and that public
health measures like mask-wearing are somehow anti-individual liberty. It has even become an ally of the “anti-vax”
movement. All of that is VERY dangerous
to public health, and leads to
egregiously-irresponsible disease-spreading behavior, as we have already seen at Trumpist
Republican rallies and events.
The Toughest Opinions of Them
All:
Using public office to promote a belief that American
election results are somehow illegitimate strikes directly at the foundations
of American representative democracy (the very definition of a republic). This is basically making disinformation
war against the United States. It is
doing our enemy Putin’s job for him! Mr.
Trump is not the only public official guilty of this. But nearly all of those who are guilty of it,
are Trumpist Republicans.
While no weapons other than lies are involved, it really is warfare against the US. The Constitution defines one kind of treason
as “making war against the US”. It does not
specifically mention disinformation warfare. But if we choose to include it, then spreading the damaging false
claims of this Q conspiracy is a kind of treason, or something very close to it!
And in my own opinion,
not acting to oppose this conspiracy is something very, very unpatriotic!
Note that I do oppose it. Vehemently! That should be quite clear.
Update 1-2-2021: Closely-related articles include "Beware of Leader Cults" dated 13 February 2020, and "Observations About the Mainstream Media, And Much More", dated 1 January 2021.
Update 1-10-2021: there is also "It Ain't Over Yet!" posted 1-10-2021.
Update 1-17-2021: add "Sometimes You Simply Must Do What Is Right" published 1-17-2021.
Update 2-21-21:
The Qanon "fearless leader" cult around Donald Trump seems to be breaking up and morphing into something else. How much a threat it will continue to present, remains to be seen. Bear in mind that there really were a lot of people involved with this cult, at one level or another. They were clearly the majority of Republican voters at the polls, and apparently a majority of Republican members in both houses of Congress.
Cult members seem to be realigning into 3 different categories. First, there are those who now realize the whole thing was a lie. They are crushed emotionally, and will need understanding to rejoin the rest of us. It will take time for them to shed the false beliefs they held so strongly.
Second, there are those who are being recruited by the other far-right extremist and white supremacist groups, such as the Proud Boys, the Nazis, and many others. Those who join up will add to the right-wing extremist domestic terror threat. And a serious threat that is, as we all saw on January 6th at the Capitol building.
There are those who remain convinced to believe in the shifting Qanon narrative that Trump will stage some sort of a great comeback, and still overthrow the "deep state". I do not know how many fall into this category, but their numbers are smaller, and they will be able to elect far fewer of their cult to Congress. And that's a good thing, although time is required for that effect to take place. We are stuck with the ones already in Congress for a few years yet.
It ain't over until it's over. And the right-wing domestic terror threat is actually getting worse.
Update 11-14-2022:
Trumpism, far-right extremism, the Qanon cult, and all the various racist communities all seem to strongly overlap. The "leader cult" that is Qanon/Trumpism is morphing into something a bit different: there's now multiple candidates to be the "fearless leader" figure at the top (De Santis is now challenging Trump himself), and that Trumpist bad behavior has become a model to be emulated by many mini-Trump "clones" (notably Marjory Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert, but there are many more).
This crap is now more widely recognized as a serious threat to our democracy, and that threatening fact (among other things) showed in the mid-term elections. People voted against the "red wave" that most pundits predicted. Trumpist election deniers for secretaries of state and governors in multiple states lost their elections, which I find heartening.
I do have another article about leader cults that you might find informative. It is "Beware of Leader Cults", posted 13 February 2020. If it scares you, then I did my job with it.
It's nice to see that my evaluations of Qanon and Trumpism are seconded by others out there. I did receive by unsolicited email a link to an explanation of Qanon from a source that I probably would not have expected. That explanation is as good as the one I have been quoting from Wikipedia (simply search for "Qanon"). Both sources provide essentially the same evaluation. That link is:
