Today was supposed to be THE DAY for QAnon true believers, the day that Donald Trump and his secret military allies would swoop down upon the inauguration, arresting Biden and the Clintons and Lady Gaga and many others. in a swift and brutal crackdown on an evil cabal of politicians and billionaires and celebrities who murder children and drink their blood to get high.
The mass arrests would be followed, perhaps only hours later by mass executions of these traitorous cannibals. And then Donald Trump would be proclaimed president once again.
If you watched the inauguration today you may have noticed that precisely none of these things happened. The QAnon people noticed this too, and they weren’t exactly happy about it. Some were sad, others furious, and all of them were baffled by what turned out to be a surprisingly uneventful inauguration ceremony.
Jesselyn Cook of the Huffpost described what happened in the QAnon chat rooms on Telegram:
as noon arrived, and a grinning Biden placed his hand on a Bible to be sworn in as the 46th president of the United States, reality came crashing down.
“I can’t stop crying. Fuck. Why?” one person pleaded. “It’s over,” another conceded. Some wondered how they could possibly mend their broken relationships with the loved ones they’d pushed away over their obsessions with Q.
Like a flipped switch, the attitude inside online QAnon communities shifted from glee to shock and misery: “NOTHING FUCKING HAPPENED!!!”; “So now we have proof Q was total bullshit”; “I feel sick, disgusted and disappointed”; “Have we been duped???”; “You played us all”; “HOW COULD WE BELIEVE THIS FOR SO LONG? ARE WE ALL IDIOTS?”
And there were plenty of other QAnoners feeling the same way.
So is this the end of QAnon? I doubt it. While some of the people who feel like they’ve been duped may drop out, others may respond by simply coming up with a new explanation for the events that transpired (or didn’t tranpire) today.
Apocalyptic cults tend to survive the “great disappointments” that happen when predictions of the end of the world don’t pan out. The predictors just come up with new predictions, as well as explanations as to why the older predictions didn’t come to pass. It’s not like QAnoners have any trouble believing things that are completely bizarre and obviously untrue.
Indeed, some have already started to explain away why Trump is stepping down.
While some of the disillusioned QAnoners may retreat from politics for a while, others who want to stay involved may find themselves being energetically recruited by other groups on the far right.
The relative peacefulness in D.C. today, as well as the fizzling of protests at state capitols, shouldn’t be taken as a sign that we’re “safe” from QAnon or other groups on the far right. These people won’t go away, and if some of the disaffected QAnoners end up in Nazi accelerationist groups we could end up seeing a great deal more violence that we would have seen if they had simply remained QAnoners doing little more than working through the puzzles that are Q Drops and “trusting the plan.”
Whatever pleasure you take today in the collective disillusionment of so many QAnoners may come back to bit you, and the rest of us, in the ass.
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This is the only way I know how to post this video.
https://www.facebook.com/OccupyDemocrats/videos/251381309679112
I noticed a bunch of crossover language (e.g. “We’ve been cucked” or “We’re the biggest cucks”) when I was looking at another article about this phenomenon earlier today. I thought that was interesting.
This sounds like sovereign citizen shit
As far as I can tell, Q is calling it quits, too. Ron Watkins, who appears to either be Q or one of a group of people who write Q’s lines, has said he acknowledges Biden’s presidency, which presumably means he will no longer be writing “Q drops.” As a result, I anticipate that someone else will invent a new prophet to take Q’s place. We might also see multiple competing prophets and/or a schism over acceptance of them.
Indeed, Q has already done this multiple times. They’ve been moving the prediction dates for the mass arrests and executions ever since the original date in March of 2018, yet the cult has only grown since then. As a result, I’m guessing that Q won’t lose followers, they’ll just get angrier.
I’m most curious about what’s going to happen with the QAnon-believing representatives in the House. Marjorie Taylor Greene has been the most vocal, so I’m keeping an eye on her.
I highly recommend the classic book from 1956 called When Prophecy Fails. Based on this book, I think that Dave is correct about disillusioned Qs.
I remember feeling as sick and sad and lost and disbelieving as they did in 2016. I’d feel sorry for them…if, y’know, they weren’t feeling so sick and sad and lost and disbelieving because they didn’t get to watch their perceived enemies be massacred and Donald Trump installed as President For Life.
I think the Face/Off theory that Biden is actually Trump wearing Biden’s face, therefore Trump has been sworn in for a 2nd term is my favorite. Never mind that Trump and Biden have completely different body types, mannerisms, and voices and just face switching wouldn’t be that much of a disguise.
@[email protected]:
That was my first thought, too. The line about ‘step down from the US corporation (dead entity) into the new administration 1776 party’ just reeks of SovCit thinking.
@WWTH
Whoa. It is amazing what Trump can do.
Hey guyz, didja kno that the whole thing was faked and Biden was a hologram? All to lull the vampire pedo squad into a false sense of complacency. El Trumpo is going to swoop right back in, wreck their crap up, and return to his place as GEOTUS (God Emperor Of The United States) in 10 days, ya better believe it! [/extra snark]
@Jenora Feuer:
Sounds like Civil War II thinking to me. There’s a scarily plausible scenario whereby history more or less repeats itself and 2020 is the new 1860. First, Trump and his pal the governor of Florida declare the election null and void and declare a Trump “government in exile” seated at (where else?) Mar-a-Lago. Some other red-state governors join in, Biden threatens invocation of the Insurrection Act, they call his bluff, and before you know it it’s time for the opening reel of Fort Sumter II: Fortier and Sumterier …
I had a flashback to election night 2016. There was a thread here about Trump supporter reactions to early results suggesting Hillary would win. They were angry, bewildered, despondent. Well, we know how that turned out. There’s a pleasing symmetry in seeing Trump supporters reacting the same way now, and knowing that, this time, they won’t get the turnaround they wanted.
Talking to the hammer and sickle left last night (in a debate where I was arguing that people are allowed to feel relieved and happy about the Biden inauguration – which is ideologically unacceptable, apparently) I was told that Qanon winemoms and stupid white supremacists pose much less threat than the current US police force and talk of a coup was centrist hyperbole. But I genuinely feel like Qanon is as dangerous as it is ridiculous.
I feel like there’s a certain amount of “the USA is the worst it could possibly be and there isn’t a hair’s difference between Biden and Trump” in certain leftist communities and honestly I just don’t get it. Trump deliberately played to Qanon. People were talking about blood on the streets and executing Mike Pence – surely harm reduction isn’t a bad strategy at this point?
@Lollypop : they tried and failed spectaculary. Saying it was “centrist hyperbole” is factually wrong, at best it’s “they could not have succeeded anyhow”.
Overall, on appearance, Qanons dupes are too unorganized, too stupid, and not determined enough to be a threat. But the thing is, evaluations can be wrong, and we should not take too much risk of our assessment being very wrong.
As for “no difference between Biden and Trump”, that mostly depend on what is important to you. I think there’s big differences because the cruel policies of Trump have harmed a lot of americans, including some being separated from their family or losing their jobs. But Biden will only try to make liberalism more tolerable, he won’t go against it.
It seems by “certain leftist communities” you mean the real radical left, those guys who occasionally think Stalin and Mao weren’t all that bad.
It’s not surprising then that they would react that way – ideals may differ, but fanatics always think similar. Roughly speaking, either you support their views to the letter, or you’re with the Enemy.
@WWTH
I also heard a similar theory that Trump is the “shadow president” and Biden is just a figurehead, which, while somewhat more believable than the face swap theory, is still very odd. It’s also clear they haven’t thought through the ramifications of this. I mean, Biden has already undone a few of Trump’s actions, so does that mean Trump is undoing his own stuff? What are they going to do when Biden does things they hate? Assume Trump did it?
@LollyPop
I’ve seen this take as well. I think it stems from certain podcasts/influencers, who realized that if they dunk on Trump they only get views from progressives, while if they dunked on liberals they could tap into right wing viewers as well. For instance, Chapo Trap House, Jimmy Dore, Aimee Terese, etc. This led them to either Trump apologism “to own the libs” or blackpilled nihilism (“both sides equally bad.”)
@Ohlmann
Yeah I agree there, the neoliberal nightmare will continue to march on. Just hopefully with less short-term damage for people and a marginally better chance at change. It would be nice as well to have less gaslighting and truth bending happening in high office!
@Herbert West
I think I was just surprised because I’ve not encountered them before. They were somewhat resistant to my point of view, haha.
@Naglfar
I’ve not heard of those commentators but that does make sense – especially as it seems to be easier to make money from the right wing viewers. I imagine it feeds into the whole “anti-woke” left thing as well that I’ve seen on this blog a couple of times.
@LollyPop
Yes, those are the same people who are behind the “anti-woke left” or “dirtbag left.”
Actually, this reminds me, did anyone see that youtube video from Folding Ideas, “In Search of A Flat Earth?”
The narrator begins talking about how the flat earth movement is losing momentum up until the 37 minute mark, where he blurts out, “because they’re all moving to QAnon!” But obviously that doesn’t have legs anymore. Think we might see more flat earther nonsense?
Apparently Pox Day has gone into full Qultist denial mode on his site, handing out bannings left and right to doubters.
(Second hand info – I don’t pollute my computer with his tripe)
@[email protected]
I doubt it. Those that don’t stick with QAnon will likely try to find something even more extreme, if flat eartherism didn’t cut it then it won’t now.
So, rumours that Trump is going to start his own party.
I’m not sure he has the gumption to go through with it. It would be a lot of hard work. His usual model is just to licence the Trump name to some other pre-existing business. Which come to think of it, was pretty much what the GOP became.
But if he does, does he have a base? He probably disillusioned a lot of them, as we see here, by his ‘weakness’. And throwing the rioters under a bus might not have helped matters either.
https://www.wsj.com/livecoverage/trump-impeachment-biden-inauguration/card/90pPMzFPqr5fMzg1Bkbs
@Alan Robertshaw
I’ve been hearing the rumors as well. My thought is, I doubt Trump himself will start a new party. He will probably not be around much longer, and has a decent chance of either fleeing the country or going to jail, which would make running a party much harder. And he probably doesn’t want to put the effort in.
However, I think someone else, perhaps one of his bigger fans in the House or Senate or a rich donor, could start a party to continue what Trump preached. That seems a more likely scenario. There are millions of people who voted for Trump, and most are likely still loyal. Even those who aren’t still worshiping him likely still agree with much of what he said, so creating a new party that is Trumpism without Trump could gather many followers. This would be potentially more dangerous than Trump, because Trump is an incompetent wannabe autocrat. This party could potentially run a more competent one.
That party already exists. It’s called the Republican party.