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How is this possible that QAnon, which is literally just random text fragments, became something that breaks something like the GOP?

by k__ 6y ago

ceejayoz 6y ago
The start is long before QAnon. Birtherism, Tea Party, Limbaugh and Hannity. Many things led here.
- toyg 6y ago
  Indeed! Birtherism is arguably how Trump became a high-profile politician, the Tea Party is how the GOP lost control of its nominations, and there wouldn’t have been either Birtherism or Tea Party without the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity stoking flames - and Fox News exists because Newt Gingrich showed there was a market for right-wing extremists in the ‘90s, a market that had fed on shock-jock radio in the late ‘80s... It takes time to develop a popular ideological framework, but once it’s entrenched it is bound to reach some of its goals (in this case, to riot against Congress).
Y-Bopinator 6y ago
Fake news
hprotagonist 6y ago
30-plus years of social priming sure helps. You can peg this to Newt, or Goldwater in 64, if you want to go back a step, but at some point in the postwar 20th century the republican party decided to court insanity for votes, and now the inmates are running the asylum. For the moral indignation claims of Q, you can go back much further, if you like. QAnon is a thinly covered and warmed over blood libel, and we’ve had that particular bit of malign story with us since ... at least Carthage? Probably a lot longer. So it’s an idea that has a very long history of being one that is very good at worming its way into brains and staying there.
orange_tee 6y ago
Because the GOP thought it was a good idea to appeal to different groups of nutjobs to build their base of political support. They thought the nutjobs were easily controllable and they are right. They did not realize that somebody else other than them could take control of the nutjobs. And to be fair to them, before the internet it would have not be possible to do that. But now in the 21st century, everyone can appeal to nutjobs and start a cult over the internet.
- smitty1e 6y ago
  Your thesis is the sound of one hand clapping. It's one thing for the elites to disdain Trump. It's quite another for them to do so without saying precisely why, and declining to offer a coherent alternative.
  - orange_tee 6y ago
    I didn't mention Trump, and Trump has nothing to do with what I am saying.
    - smitty1e 6y ago
      Yet the orange elephant will continue to dominate the room. We can factor out That Five Character Symbol, and point to the fundamental discussion of whether "We The People" actually matter anymore.
runawaybottle 6y ago
Look at how Christianity emerged as a persecuted group, or used persecution as a form of organization. We are mostly watching what it would be like to witness a religion evolve in real time. Most religions believe in some pretty crazy shit too, and I challenge anyone to find the difference between believing in a pedo ring in a pizza store vs the day of judgement and the layers of hell, angels, demons, resurrection, etc. Nothing new is happening here. Anyways, I think the belief in some of the crazy qanon stuff is a subconscious manifestation of their true nasty dispositions. The raw beliefs are probably embedded in racism, and it’s driving that subset rotten so much so that it is manifesting in a mutated outgrowth of a similarly nasty conspiracy (pedo rings, dominion by a lizard class). It’s the same with religion, if you give it to mostly naive and dim witted people you will get dim witted beliefs and customs. It’s the same with giving someone an elite education in a proper field, you get a highly useful member of society. The rottenness of their basic beliefs is metastasizing into these forms that feel obvious to me. Believing in lizard dominators is no different than being unabashedly racist in this day and age, pure dysfunction. Hell, I’ll even suggest believing in semi-human demon form of a lizard person out to harm you is poetic licensing of racism, the belief in another human that isn’t exactly you and something to be feared, to be dealt with. > just random text fragments Modus operandi of every religion, it was written. Just random shit that was written over ages. Why would the GOP be particularly susceptible to it? Well why wouldn’t they be? Their bread and butter base was always the evangelical or some form of white Christian. That’s a specific type of person through and through. Why wouldn’t this group be the ones that gravitate to this stuff? A group of people that believe in the greatest conspiracy of all time about a deity, running things in a planned way, with all kinds of backstory and lore about the purpose of humanity, and yet we’re all shocked they gobbled up another equally laughable conspiracy. They’ve remixed their beliefs, god running the world and finding his true believers is repurposed in Trump secretly rallying his true believers against a world order that seeks to harm them. It’s not even original, they are just manifestations of racism embedded in the reality of a globalized world that is economically weakening them. Can we follow the money here? It’s the same exact people guys, why is our memory so lenient?
- swirepe 6y ago
  >A group of people that believe in the greatest conspiracy of all time about a deity, running things in a planned way, with all kinds of backstory and lore about the purpose of humanity, and yet we’re all shocked they gobbled up another equally laughable conspiracy. Everyone on some level is aware that they are going to be deceived for their own good. There's no other way to go to church, or pay taxes.
thu2111 6y ago
QAnon is pretty weird, but the idea that Russia was secretly manipulating every aspect of American society was also pretty bizarre, I mean looking in from the outside across the pond in Europe. There wasn't really any evidence for either idea but the Russia conspiracy ate the Democrats - if anything, far worse than QAnon has eaten the Republicans. Indeed given the demographics of HN I'm guessing someone will reply to this post and claim that "The 2016 election was rigged by the Russians" or "Russians controlled Trump" etc was all totally true and not a bizarre conspiracy theory at all. The descent of US political parties into fantastical theorising is a general trend.
- runawaybottle 6y ago
  Both groups are internalizing after trauma. They say children that go through abuse and trauma in childhood start to internalize and develop compulsive fantasy worlds as a defense mechanism (or rather we all do it via escapism - avoidance, drug abuse, paranoia, compulsive behavior, all anti-social outgrowths). It’s really hard for the left to remain mature and fight rationally. They have given up on doing that and taken on the ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ strategy where they are now using the same right-wing nonsense conspiracy tactics to rile up the base. The right has fully internalized as a traumatized child into madness. They’re political capital was wasted on a party that used them to goto war, bailout banks, not buff up or protect the working class. They are betrayed, and like an abused child, fully cocooned themselves from rationally considering the circumstances. Even when they actually evolve and reject pro-war platforms (you know , the right wing actually adjusted and fixed this), they are unable to formulate their economic concerns in a non-racist way. They are exhausted and beaten down, and basically need rehab. They literally need a breather, but the Republican machine won’t give them that and will rile them up against everything Biden/Dems will do for the next four years. It’s viscous stuff, reminds me of a bipolar kid I remember from elementary school where all the kids would just rile him up knowing he’d eventually start throwing chairs uncontrollably. It’s callous as fuck, there’s no love amongst ourselves at all. There are no healthy adults at the table at the moment.
- digitaltrees 6y ago
  The Muller report details quite a lot of evidence actually.
xlm1717 6y ago
People keep believing something that has no ties to reality and reality inevitably snaps back. If you really want to go down the rabbit hole, that may have been the point of QAnon from the start.

How is this possible that QAnon, which is literally just random text fragments, became something that breaks something like the GOP?

by k__ 6y ago

How is this possible that QAnon, which is literally just random text fragments, became something that breaks something like the GOP?

ceejayoz 6y ago

The start is long before QAnon. Birtherism, Tea Party, Limbaugh and Hannity. Many things led here.

toyg 6y ago
Indeed! Birtherism is arguably how Trump became a high-profile politician, the Tea Party is how the GOP lost control of its nominations, and there wouldn’t have been either Birtherism or Tea Party without the likes of Limbaugh and Hannity stoking flames - and Fox News exists because Newt Gingrich showed there was a market for right-wing extremists in the ‘90s, a market that had fed on shock-jock radio in the late ‘80s... It takes time to develop a popular ideological framework, but once it’s entrenched it is bound to reach some of its goals (in this case, to riot against Congress).

Y-Bopinator 6y ago

Fake news

hprotagonist 6y ago

30-plus years of social priming sure helps. You can peg this to Newt, or Goldwater in 64, if you want to go back a step, but at some point in the postwar 20th century the republican party decided to court insanity for votes, and now the inmates are running the asylum. For the moral indignation claims of Q, you can go back much further, if you like. QAnon is a thinly covered and warmed over blood libel, and we’ve had that particular bit of malign story with us since ... at least Carthage? Probably a lot longer. So it’s an idea that has a very long history of being one that is very good at worming its way into brains and staying there.

orange_tee 6y ago

Because the GOP thought it was a good idea to appeal to different groups of nutjobs to build their base of political support. They thought the nutjobs were easily controllable and they are right. They did not realize that somebody else other than them could take control of the nutjobs. And to be fair to them, before the internet it would have not be possible to do that. But now in the 21st century, everyone can appeal to nutjobs and start a cult over the internet.

smitty1e 6y ago
Your thesis is the sound of one hand clapping. It's one thing for the elites to disdain Trump. It's quite another for them to do so without saying precisely why, and declining to offer a coherent alternative.
- orange_tee 6y ago
  I didn't mention Trump, and Trump has nothing to do with what I am saying.
  - smitty1e 6y ago
    Yet the orange elephant will continue to dominate the room. We can factor out That Five Character Symbol, and point to the fundamental discussion of whether "We The People" actually matter anymore.

runawaybottle 6y ago

Look at how Christianity emerged as a persecuted group, or used persecution as a form of organization. We are mostly watching what it would be like to witness a religion evolve in real time. Most religions believe in some pretty crazy shit too, and I challenge anyone to find the difference between believing in a pedo ring in a pizza store vs the day of judgement and the layers of hell, angels, demons, resurrection, etc. Nothing new is happening here. Anyways, I think the belief in some of the crazy qanon stuff is a subconscious manifestation of their true nasty dispositions. The raw beliefs are probably embedded in racism, and it’s driving that subset rotten so much so that it is manifesting in a mutated outgrowth of a similarly nasty conspiracy (pedo rings, dominion by a lizard class). It’s the same with religion, if you give it to mostly naive and dim witted people you will get dim witted beliefs and customs. It’s the same with giving someone an elite education in a proper field, you get a highly useful member of society. The rottenness of their basic beliefs is metastasizing into these forms that feel obvious to me. Believing in lizard dominators is no different than being unabashedly racist in this day and age, pure dysfunction. Hell, I’ll even suggest believing in semi-human demon form of a lizard person out to harm you is poetic licensing of racism, the belief in another human that isn’t exactly you and something to be feared, to be dealt with. > just random text fragments Modus operandi of every religion, it was written. Just random shit that was written over ages. Why would the GOP be particularly susceptible to it? Well why wouldn’t they be? Their bread and butter base was always the evangelical or some form of white Christian. That’s a specific type of person through and through. Why wouldn’t this group be the ones that gravitate to this stuff? A group of people that believe in the greatest conspiracy of all time about a deity, running things in a planned way, with all kinds of backstory and lore about the purpose of humanity, and yet we’re all shocked they gobbled up another equally laughable conspiracy. They’ve remixed their beliefs, god running the world and finding his true believers is repurposed in Trump secretly rallying his true believers against a world order that seeks to harm them. It’s not even original, they are just manifestations of racism embedded in the reality of a globalized world that is economically weakening them. Can we follow the money here? It’s the same exact people guys, why is our memory so lenient?

swirepe 6y ago
>A group of people that believe in the greatest conspiracy of all time about a deity, running things in a planned way, with all kinds of backstory and lore about the purpose of humanity, and yet we’re all shocked they gobbled up another equally laughable conspiracy. Everyone on some level is aware that they are going to be deceived for their own good. There's no other way to go to church, or pay taxes.

thu2111 6y ago

QAnon is pretty weird, but the idea that Russia was secretly manipulating every aspect of American society was also pretty bizarre, I mean looking in from the outside across the pond in Europe. There wasn't really any evidence for either idea but the Russia conspiracy ate the Democrats - if anything, far worse than QAnon has eaten the Republicans. Indeed given the demographics of HN I'm guessing someone will reply to this post and claim that "The 2016 election was rigged by the Russians" or "Russians controlled Trump" etc was all totally true and not a bizarre conspiracy theory at all. The descent of US political parties into fantastical theorising is a general trend.

runawaybottle 6y ago
Both groups are internalizing after trauma. They say children that go through abuse and trauma in childhood start to internalize and develop compulsive fantasy worlds as a defense mechanism (or rather we all do it via escapism - avoidance, drug abuse, paranoia, compulsive behavior, all anti-social outgrowths). It’s really hard for the left to remain mature and fight rationally. They have given up on doing that and taken on the ‘if you can’t beat them, join them’ strategy where they are now using the same right-wing nonsense conspiracy tactics to rile up the base. The right has fully internalized as a traumatized child into madness. They’re political capital was wasted on a party that used them to goto war, bailout banks, not buff up or protect the working class. They are betrayed, and like an abused child, fully cocooned themselves from rationally considering the circumstances. Even when they actually evolve and reject pro-war platforms (you know , the right wing actually adjusted and fixed this), they are unable to formulate their economic concerns in a non-racist way. They are exhausted and beaten down, and basically need rehab. They literally need a breather, but the Republican machine won’t give them that and will rile them up against everything Biden/Dems will do for the next four years. It’s viscous stuff, reminds me of a bipolar kid I remember from elementary school where all the kids would just rile him up knowing he’d eventually start throwing chairs uncontrollably. It’s callous as fuck, there’s no love amongst ourselves at all. There are no healthy adults at the table at the moment.
digitaltrees 6y ago
The Muller report details quite a lot of evidence actually.

xlm1717 6y ago

People keep believing something that has no ties to reality and reality inevitably snaps back. If you really want to go down the rabbit hole, that may have been the point of QAnon from the start.