The QAnon Problem

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/20/904237192/journalist-enters-the-world-of-qanon-it-s-almost-like-a-bad-spy-novel

This interview was extremely interesting and informative and yet also frustrating.

There's no doubt a large segment of Trump followers have made him (as incomprehensible as it might be) into a kind of messiah-like figure. This is especially ironic given all the Right-wing concern regarding Obama and how many were making him into a messiah. At the time I found that charge to be ironic given how Bush II was treated by his followers. And so it just keeps getting worse because the Trumpite Cult is just that – a cult. With some of these folks it most definitely has a strong religious element.

One cannot help but be reminded of the progression of late Republican Rome. Society was fragmented and led by a broken and dysfunctional government. Social unrest and eventually civil war was the result. While some hated having a dictator-then-emperor, many of the people were happy to go along with it. Security and stability are (in the end) far more important to people than adherence to principle or tradition. And so given that our society has entered a pre-messianic broken-republican period, take it as a warning. A person who can make the system work and can keep them safe just might be embraced even at the expense of the system and all the supposed ideals it represents.

Those who say it cannot happen here are ignorant of history and fundamentally foolish. Their blindness is in reality indicative of a deep moral or spiritual problem.

Trump is the recipient of religious devotion. I see his shrines everywhere and people are really passionate about him. It's more than a little creepy and I find it hard to respect or even engage such people. This is not to say I like Biden, Harris or Pelosi because I don't. But Trump? Trump is like an animal. He's a fool. There's no truth in him. He has no principles. He has no conscience and I'm left wondering about those who cannot see him for what he is.

Fine, I understand you hate Obama, Biden, Clinton and the DNC and think they're evil so you voted from Trump in 2016. But then to continue supporting him? To decorate your house and build home-made signs and car decorations for him? Something is wrong. The DNC folks are evil but Trump and the GOP aren't?

QAnon hits on the fringe-end of this kind of devotion. Once again it's a lot of people who don't understand how things work. They don't know history either. And, they're angry and frustrated as they can't make sense of what has happened over the past generation (I call it the Post-Cold War Crisis) so they blame it on others – and thus they're susceptible to a lot of deception.

I thought of this Fresh Air interview this last Sunday morning as the preacher talked about how the KGB planted agents in the United States during the 1960's – agents sent to sow moral discord. 'They knew' it was only the way to take down America. It was too strong otherwise.

In other words this rather deluded octogenarian preacher (the one with the Trump sticker on the back of his truck) is convinced that his glorious America was ruined by a communist plot. Everything that happened in the 1960's – civil rights, opposition to the Vietnam War, campus uprisings etc., were all part of a communist plot. All of these people were just being manipulated by a handful of surreptitious plotters.

It's ironic because I could say the very same about him and Birchers like him. And this would include the folks associated with the QAnon phenomenon. As an older person who spends a fair bit of time on the Internet, it wouldn't surprise me to learn he's also into QAnon. He seems primed for it. The only reason he wouldn't embrace them is because his Dispensationalism drives him to a near devotion for the Jewish people and the Zionist state of Israel. QAnon on the other hand has been repeatedly linked to Jewish conspiracy theories regarding the Protocols of the Elders of Zion and narratives concerning international banking.

The story of QAnon is outrageous and yet the reporting also frustrated me. Why? Because there are conspiracies. There is a deep state. Watergate, Iran-Contra, the Vietnam story revealed by the Pentagon Papers – these are all open conspiracies that everyone acknowledges. Does she not think that the Bush case for war in Iraq was fueled by and brought to fruition by a conspiracy? What about all the sweeping changes that took place after 9/11? The fact that the Patriot Act was written before the events not to mention the various cover-ups regarding surveillance under Bush – and Obama? All notions of conspiracy are just silly, right? I'm afraid such people can't be taken seriously.

The Deep State is joke? That's why elements within the 1960's CIA continued operations outside the knowledge of director John McCone. What about the Dulles brothers or the fact that Allan Dulles continued running operations even after he was fired by Kennedy? Who were the elements within the CIA that continued to resist investigation during the Church Committee in 1975? Who was killing off all the people that were to testify? You can't blame it all on organised crime. Speaking of organised crime, what about the CIA collaborations with them? Is that the Deep State or just a conspiracy? Either way it happened, it's not some Alex Jones-like dream scenario.

What about Hoover's FBI and all of its illegal operations and blackmail? What about Bill Casey and his machinations during the 1980 election and during the Reagan administration? What about figures like Henry Kissinger (and the forces he represents) who have exercised influence on every presidential administration since the 1960's? This is just the tip of the iceberg. So much more could be said about political forces and their connections to banking, industry, the media, Silicon Valley, the Pentagon and the like.

Under Trump these concepts and the nomenclature surrounding them have become a joke – ironically to the benefit of Deep State actors who can now laugh at such notions as being associated with nutjobs like the current president. It's rather convenient.

Michael Flynn was certainly taken down by means of a conspiracy. I don't doubt that for a moment. I have a feeling the Atlantic editor fully accepts the Russiagate narrative regarding Putin, Wikileaks, the Steele Dossier and the like – which are all mostly bogus conspiracy theories promulgated by the DNC and its proxies. Trump for his part is dripping with conspiracy, dark deeds and dubious connections. He's dirty as sin and yet most of this has been ignored in order to push the Russia (and Wikileaks) narrative. Again, it's rather convenient.

You see they believe in conspiracies too – or rather in conspiracy theories. It's not always so clear. And I will even grant that within that investigation there were layers of conspiracy. Trump did obstruct justice. Something odd happened with Mueller. I heard a Fresh Air interview from a few weeks back with Jeff Toobin who has written about the Mueller investigation. He admits they didn't really find a smoking gun and yet he is also baffled by Mueller's limited exploration and unwillingness to probe, prosecute and follow through. He still believes there was a Russiagate conspiracy but admits conclusive evidence (apart from obstruction) is lacking. He thinks Mueller was limited by bureaucratic and procedural technicalities regarding the Justice Department and sitting presidents. I don't believe that for a moment. He had a congressional mandate but had little interest in pursuing it.

As stated previously I believe Mueller was limited in his investigations because such probings would have uncovered too much and that his task was as much damage control and whitewash as it was an attempt to take down Trump.

What about the death of Jeffrey Epstein? Was there a conspiracy there? Is there no cover up regarding his actions and his circle of associates? Yes, there is and many would acknowledge that. The media has played no small part in this re-direction – and why? It would be the scoop of the century to break the larger story but everyone is quiet and insisting there's nothing to see. The cover-up and spin indicates the story is probably bigger than most realise. I'm not saying the average reporter knows this. They just know where the pressure is coming from. But the higher ups know – I think someone like the rather-connected (but morally repugnant) Anderson Cooper certainly knows and is playing his part. That's why he's in the position he's in.

And thus I don't believe it's a great leap to also believe Epstein was murdered. But what is being covered up? If the stories are true about his connections to American and Israeli intelligence and that he apparently spent a lot of time setting up powerful men with girls who would legally compromise them – what's to be deduced? He was most likely involved in blackmail of the highest order. And yet he was protected as his earlier troubles in Florida would indicate.

What happened? He became 'too hot' or was too sloppy and derelict. He called too much attention to himself and got caught and this time he wasn't going to get out of it so easy and so he had to be removed. It's an old but familiar story.

Of course if the intelligence angle is true, his larger career plugged into the world of finance is also interesting to say the least. For those familiar with such things it's not surprising but rather it demonstrates the level of their operations and the wide ranging spheres that these folks function within.

Mario Puzo's 'The Godfather' seemed like sensationalist fantasy when it was published in 1969. In the second movie (which Puzo also helped to write) we see a US senator caught in a compromised position at a mafia-owned brothel, resulting in the death of a prostitute. It could ruin him but the mafia lawyer steps in to 'fix' it for him. The senator later offers his support during an organised crime hearing. As much as Puzo was disbelieved, almost everything he wrote about (in broad terms) has proven to be true. He wrote fictionalised versions of things that really happened. He had done his homework and had a serious grasp of how things work – just below the nightly news-friendly surface.

Blackmail is a common tool and it's not just the mafia that uses it. Intelligence agencies do the same (in fact it's routine) and though some thought it impossible at the time, the mafia has a long record of working with the CIA and other intelligence agencies. In other words there's nothing shocking about the Epstein story. The only thing that's shocking is the gullibility (if that's what it is) of the media in thinking they could just pass off his death as a suicide. It will be interesting to watch how Ghislaine Maxwell is dealt with in the months and years to come.

What about Alexei Navalny? I've talked about this before. He has a history of being associated with Russian nationalists, skin-head types and has been connected to derogatory comments about immigrants, people from the Caucasus, Central Asia, and Jews.

If he was running in Hungary, Poland or the United States, he would be demonised and the media would be running a campaign against him. He can hardly be described as someone promoting liberal ideology.

But when it comes to Russia, this is glossed over and largely ignored. Why? Because he's a dissident in opposition to the Putin regime. And thus his sins and thought-crimes are ignored or covered up.

Is this just a coincidence or omission on the part of the media or is there some sort of conspiracy at work?

QAnon is probably the work of a team. If there is an individual running it, Steven Bannon seems the most likely – though the media would have you think that Moscow is behind it. It's mostly lies but with hints of truth. There are actual child-abuse rings out there. The stories have been floating around for years and I don't believe they're just a reiteration of the old anti-Semitic tradition accusing societal 'others' of every dark deed imaginable. There's too much to indicate otherwise. Many 'experts' also came to reject the 'Satanic' conspiracy of the 1970's and 1980's as a mere hoax or panic. There were no cults, covens or circles of child abuse or so people believe today. And nowadays the whole episode is dismissed as a craze. While overplayed to be sure, it wasn't all fiction, it wasn't mere hysteria. Sadly the critics (mostly the then surging Christian Right) played a poor hand and in many respects discredited themselves.

The fact that some people take their theories into the stratosphere and overplay their hand by finding dozens of tenuous and unsubstantiated connections doesn't eliminate the story. That said, I don't think the QAnon people know anything about any of it and wouldn't be able to identify any child abusers if their lives depended on it. It's like Joe McCarthy's witch-hunt. There were communists at work in the West but he was the last person to find one of them. Was he sincere or was there a conspiratorial element to McCarthyism? Or perhaps he was just a buffoon being used by others?

Again, one cannot help but wonder to what degree US intelligence agencies run domestic counter-propaganda? We know they do it abroad. The stories have been coming out for decades. There are certainly suspicious cases here in the US and there are the abundant testimonies of CIA dissidents and whistleblowers who have argued that sometimes the New York Times, Washington Post and other outlets are running stories (almost verbatim) that were prepared by the CIA. They have their people. By 'they' I am referring to the Deep State. And so one wonders if there aren't similar efforts at work in penetrating and misdirecting both conspiracy circles and the alternative media? They muddy the waters, make the labyrinth impossible to penetrate, and mix truth with error, misdirect and misinform. Does QAnon serve such a purpose? What about Alex Jones? I could believe it easy enough. In the end these operations do far more harm than good. They make it easy to paint not just some but all conspiracies as 'kooky' and beyond the pale. They make it easy to discredit the real stories.

Some of the QAnon tales are funny, others are ridiculous. Once again it is evident that many people have no clue or even basic understanding of how things work in the world. They are easily manipulated but I find myself almost as disturbed by The Atlantic editor and frankly struggle to take her seriously.

Davies, the interviewer is somewhat cryptic to me. At times he's completely Establishment-safe but on other occasions such as when he has interviewed authors like David Talbot, he seems quite open to questioning the official line.

I was startled by the discussion of John F Kennedy Jr. and had no idea his name was floating around once more. Unlike some within QAnon circles, I am quite certain of his death and yet the only conspiracy-related ideas I ever heard were in relation to his political aspirations and the fact that had echoed his uncle regarding Dallas and JFK's death. Robert Kennedy had wanted to re-open the investigation but knew he was up against impossible resistance (apparently RFK believed in a Deep State) unless he was president. Everything hung on his election in 1968 and that's why some believe he was killed. The argument suggests that JFK Jr. was hinting at the same and was thus summarily removed in 1999. I've always found it to be a bit of stretch as Jr. had no political base or connections like his uncle would have had. To probe into something of that magnitude without political allies (though he certainly had his uncle Ted) seems a pipe dream. Of course this also touches on the issue of Ted and his own presidential aspirations which in 1976 were abandoned in light of Chappaquiddick – the attempted cover-up was certainly a conspiracy, as were elements of the Kennedy election in 1960. Ted's 1980 insurgent campaign, running against Democratic incumbent Carter was a long shot but he came close. He just never had the charisma or national marketability of his brothers.

It's also interesting to note how commercially and in terms of cyberspace this whole QAnon business has taken on a life of its own. Its creators are certainly laughing – maybe even laughing all the way to the bank. One wonders if they really thought it would reach a point in which followers would be dissecting hand movements, neckties and coded language?

For my part what concerns me the most is what was barely talked about – the religious and specifically Evangelical elements to the QAnon story. Other Christian-oriented news outlets have suggested that significant numbers of Evangelicals are caught up in this stuff and this should concern us. It should also concern Church leaders as these people are flirting with heresy – their views of Trump and the American state are unscriptural. Lies and the whitewashing of evil are also unscriptural. Their leaders are not teaching them how to think and live as Christians and how to think about things like power and money. Actually much of their 'worldview' teaching has actually opened them up to this sort of thing.

It's not surprising as many leaders have (to some degree) also succumbed to this but their corruption is often more basic. It's about numbers and they're not going to introduce controversy into their congregations when they know people will be divided and since these issues are so polarising – some will react and either leave or attempt a congregational coup. If their pastor criticises this stuff he's undoubtedly a crypto-communist! That's where some a lot these people are at. They are virtually unreachable.

In the end, the story is frustrating and The Atlantic editor echoes a growing sentiment in some circles – that something is going to have to be done about the Internet and the way information is passed around. In other words censorship is going to be required in order to stop this false information. On one level I could almost sympathise but given the aforementioned cases of media cover-up I would rather live in a world of QAnon buffoons and fools than a return to the Big Three news channels – in other words a completely controlled and insulated media environment.

That said, I do miss the old days of magazines, mailed newsletters, newsprint book catalogues and the like. It was slower but the quality was often better and the lower volume allowed for better focus.

Like it or not whether QAnon fades away, the mindset and milieu that generated it will continue and we'll have to deal with it.