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QAnon's Corrosive Impact On The U.S.


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4 minutes ago, Shabibilicious said:

 

That is true.....Just as it could end up being true that companies may choose to not serve those who refuse to get vaxxed.....their choice.  :shrug:

 

GO RV, then BV

 

Watch the video....it will take some time to load......CL

 

http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2021/04/13/covid-19-response-resembles-holocaust-tactics.aspx

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1 hour ago, caddieman said:

Way over the line!

Sorry but if you don't want people to follow the progression of the path that you are walking, then maybe you shouldn't tell people about your path. 

Or maybe you should just study a little pre WW2 German history and then you would understand from whence I made my comment. 

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  • 2 weeks later...
Business Insider

A QAnon believer, who smashed his way into the Capitol, believed he'd stormed the White House, FBI affidavit says

Sophia Ankel
Sun, April 25, 2021, 10:41 AM
 
 
Capitol Riot Trump Signs
 
Trump supporters clashed with police and security forces as people tried to storm the US Capitol on January 6. Brent Stirton/Getty Images
  • A Florida man who stormed the Capitol confused the building for the White House, an affidavit says.

  • Kenneth Kelly sent two text messages on January 6 that referred to the Capitol as the White House.

  • A relative said Kelly held extreme political views and was a QAnon believer.

A Florida man who stormed the Capitol on January 6 repeatedly referred to it as the White House in text messages to a relative, said an affidavit by an unnamed FBI special agent.

Kenneth Kelly, 58, of Ocala, Florida, was amid a group of people who broke the windows of the Capitol on January 6, the affidavit said.

A relative identified in the affidavit as "W-1" said that Kelly sent them a text message on the day, alongside an image that showed him standing inside what appeared to be the Capitol.

 

"Inside White house via breaking in windows," Kelly wrote in the text, the affidavit said. "Tree of liberty was watered today!"

 

The relative also said Kelly had driven to Washington, DC, from his home in Florida, "knowing full well they were going to break in," the affidavit said.

The affidavit also said that Kelly sent another photo to a second witness, identified as "W-2," which showed rioters scaling the side of the Capitol, writing, "Patriots stormed the White House, broke in while Senate (with a little s) was in session."

"Patriots took back our capital today," he added.

Screenshots of the text messages can be seen in the affidavit here.

His relative said Kelly was a Trump supporter with "extreme political views" who had mentioned the QAnon conspiracy theory to them a few months before the riot.

Federal investigators said they were able to identify Kelly in a surveillance video from inside the Capitol. He was wearing a dark-blue beanie with "TRUMP" written across it.

The 58-year-old turned himself in on Friday and is facing charges of disorderly conduct in a restricted building, knowingly entering a restricted building, and violent entry and disorderly conduct on Capitol grounds, the Orlando Sentinel reported.

More than 430 people have so far been charged in connection with the riot, a tracker by Insider showed.

 

https://news.yahoo.com/qanon-believer-smashed-way-capitol-144142276.html

 

GO RV, then BV

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New Rat rule. Track down and prosecute to the fullest extent of the law ALL those "conservative" Trump supporting racist, but antifa and BLM get free pass after free pass, plus bail out of jail and the law does not apply for them. Anyone see where this is headed? Wanna take a stab at how it's all gonna end up??

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Business Insider

'QAnon: Into the Storm' director Cullen Hoback talks about how 2 random guys trolled the entire world and inspired a deadly insurrection

 
 
Anthony L. Fisher
Tue, April 27, 2021, 9:42 AM
 
 
qanon capitol
 
Trump supporter and QAnon follower Jake "The Q Shaman" Angeli attends a "Stop the Steal" rally . Andrew Lichtenstein/Getty Images
  • "If you pretend to be something long enough, you eventually become that thing," said Cullen Hoback, director of the HBO docu-series, "QAnon: Into the Storm."

  • Jim and Ron Watkins, the father-son duo that ran 8chan, are the most responsible for spreading the Q lie. The series gets remarkably up close and personal with them.

  • Hoback spoke with Insider columnist Anthony Fisher about why unmasking Q matters, and how a couple of random guys trolled the entire world and inspired an insurrection.

QAnon was the defining conspiracy theory of the Trump presidency, eventually feeding and morphing into the baseless "Stop the Steal" mass delusion.

We still don't know for sure who was the internet prankster pretending to be the fictitious character, Q - a supposed high-level government official leaking information on the free speech maximalist website 8chan about an anti-Trump cabal of murderous pedophiles that run DC and Hollywood.

Subsequent investigations make it seem highly probable that Q was Ron Watkins, who administered the internet message board 8chan, or his father, Jim, who owned the site which has since been rebranded as 8kun. Or perhaps both were involved. Either way, by hosting Q on 8chan, they are the most responsible for the spread of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

Documentary filmmaker Cullen Hoback traveled to Manila, where Jim Watkins lives, and other East Asian locales to track down the true identity of Q. What resulted was the six-part HBO documentary series, "QAnon: Into the Storm."

 

Hoback spoke with Insider columnist Anthony Fisher by phone this week about the common threads between all the major right-wing conspiracy theories of the past decade, why unmasking Q matters, and how a couple of random guys trolled the entire world and inspired a deadly insurrection.

This interview has been edited for style, length, and clarity.

I'm pretty well-steeped in internet conspiracy theories, but I was truly fascinated to see how message boards like 8chan systematically spread everything from Obama birtherism to Gamergate to the rise of the alt-right to Pizzagate to QAnon and all the way up to the January 6th insurrection. And each of these leads directly from one to the next.

The difference between a fake conspiracy and a real conspiracy, is the real conspiracy can be busted. So when you're describing this lineage that you can trace back 10 years, it should come as no surprise that some of the same characters had been working behind the scenes to plant wild conspiracy theories through these various influencers and into the mainstream.

These theories were once spread by someone like [noted conspiracy theorist] Jerome Corsi or former General Paul Vallely. But the inflection point has changed.

Conspiracy theorists have moved on to some ex-military characters [like retired General Michael Flynn] who were interested in furthering their own agendas. They'll use Qtubers or YouTubers or "citizen journalists" or people who have large audiences and they'll just go around traditional outlets. That's what you see in this story, how these figures get internet influencers to spread their agenda.

QAnon: Into the storm Jim and Ron Watkins
 
Jim and Ron Watkins HBO

This documentary essentially puts the audience on your shoulder as you hang out with Ron and Jim Watkins over hundreds of hours. Why did they trust you with so much access?

Back in 2018, Jim and Ron Watkins were relatively unknown. I don't think anybody was considering them high-level suspects for Q at the time.

I reached out to them initially because Q is hosted on their website, and because they would have the technical data. So if anyone who knew was behind Q, it was them.

It wasn't easy to get a hold of either of them, so I reached out to the most public facing of the three 8chan principles, which was Fred Brennan [the founder of 8chan who later called for the site to be shut down following several mass shootings committed by 8chan users, and who feuded publicly with the Watkins].

We ended up talking for quite a few hours and he said, "Look, you should also talk to these Watkins guys."

I had a little bit of back and forth with Ron at the time, and all of them knew that I'd be coming to the Philippines. I think that the reason they ultimately did agree to talk me - and it makes more sense in hindsight - is because they wanted to get their side of the story out, given their public falling out with Fred.

And, of course, they were running a maximalist free speech website. So I thought they'd have some things to say on the subject. It could just be I was the first one crazy enough to get on a plane and go and meet these guys. I also think they enjoyed trolling journalists. I mean, for trolls, that's the gold standard - trying to get journalists to print false things.

The Watkins both came off as outwardly mild-mannered and intelligent in the series, but they repeated over and over again how apolitical they are and that they're just into objective journalism and free speech.

What I found remarkable as a viewer is that these two guys, who seem to be so unremarkable, have done an incredible amount of damage to American democracy and a lot of people's sense of reality.

The first time I met with them I did not think they were necessarily behind Q. But the next time we met, they changed their story massively. Suddenly they knew a lot less about Q.

You can tell that they had talked behind the scenes and came up with a new story. They were doubling down on the idea that they weren't really following Q, that he was just another user of their website, that they're not political people - which of course is total nonsense.

QAnon: Into the Storm January 6
 
"QAnon: Into the Storm" director Cullen Hoback with Jim Watkins HBO

Whether or not Ron Watkins is Q, the Watkins provided the platform for a conspiracy theory getting that made it all the way into former President Trump's Twitter feed. It ultimately inspired the Capitol insurrection.

What kind of response have you gotten after making a documentary that shows how this entire movement was essentially completely created by these two guys?

I've received numerous messages from people with family members who were heavy believers in QAnon. And now they're talking again. It doesn't mean that everything is perfect, but I think that revealing the mechanics behind the operation has helped those who don't believe in Q understand better what it is that their loved ones were drawn into. And I think it's helped those who were drawn into QAnon to know what was actually going on behind the scenes.

Another thing I've noticed is that after people watch this series, this thing that is Q that just seems so mysterious and powerful to them, that power has been completely taken away. Like the Wizard of Oz, when you pull back the curtain, you're just left with the man.

And I think when you see the man in a green hat and his dad, and what their motives are - and how they think about the world in that they treat the whole thing like a game - it just changes your perception of what Q is.

You realize it was just basically trolls, trolling the world, in maybe the most successful troll operation of my lifetime.

Some critics have panned your series by saying you didn't show the damage wrought by QAnon, like the broken families and the people who've donated tons of money to the cause, or left their jobs and alienated everyone they loved. Other critics said you should have spent more time debunking the conspiracy theory piece by piece.

Some of the criticism was also like, "Should this movie be made? Does it matter who's behind Q?" Of course it matters who is behind Q.

The idea that we need to spend countless hours dissecting each of these obvious lies seems like it's been done. But where did these things come from and how did they spread? That was the novel thing.

Another criticism I saw was that you were providing QAnon proponents with an uncritical platform, just by letting them speak.

But as a viewer, I couldn't imagine somebody looking at these people spouting these theories and saying, "You know what? I was on the fence about QAnon before, but now I'm a believer."

It's not like we're just handing them a microphone and saying, "Go."

We've seen in the last few years, there's been attempts to silence Q or censor it, or ignore it completely or attack it. What hadn't been tried is just showing it for what it is. The antiseptic of sunlight isn't all that flattering.

I'm willing to trust an audience by simply showing them something for what it is and let them draw their own conclusions. I don't think I needed to tell them what to think every step of the way.

QAnon: Into the Storm fred brennen
 
Fred Brennen HBO

Something I found ironic was how the Watkins constantly talk about what hardcore free speech proponents they are. And yet, they got Fred Brennan to flee the Philippines by trying to get him prosecuted using the Philippines' cyber libel law.

There's a scene where I confront Jim on that very point. I asked him if he's concerned about the optics of running a free speech maximalist website, while suing someone for cyber libel for having called him senile on Twitter. His response was, "No."

And I think that tells you a lot about what he really thinks when it comes to free speech, which is that free speech is useful as a business model for him.

In the series you show the beats that led directly to the January 6th insurrection. And it was just stunning how much of the messaging got through the mainstream gatekeepers.

"Stop the Steal" is every bit a part of the QAnon conspiracy theory, which is that there is this anti-Trump cabal running the world from behind the scenes. And Trump actively promoted this bogus theory that was wholly made up by some random guys.

I tried to capture in the series how Q went from a game to reality - from a meme on the internet to people storming the Capitol. What is the nature of that alchemy?

How do you go from people larping on 4chan [and later 8chan] pretending to be a government insider, to actual government insiders and people in the seats of power trying to make the Q narrative real?

Everything in the series is trying to capture the idea of this interactive game becoming reality. If you pretend to be something long enough, you eventually become that thing.

Read the original article on Business Insider

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/qanon-storm-director-cullen-hoback-134249230.html

 

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The Daily Beast

Last-Ditch Plot to Undermine Biden’s Election Goes Full QAnon

 
 
Kelly Weill
Tue, April 27, 2021, 5:00 AM
 
 
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty
 
Photo Illustration by The Daily Beast/Getty

An ongoing “audit” of the 2020 presidential election in Maricopa County, Arizona, is taking its cues straight from a man intimately tied to the QAnon conspiracy theory.

President Joe Biden won Arizona—and Maricopa County—in the 2020 election, a victory that was upheld by multiple bipartisan reviews. But last week, a Republican-led coalition launched its own recount of Maricopa County’s votes, a process helmed by a conspiracy-tweeting tech CEO and funded by an unknown slate of donors.

The counting has just begun, but already the audit has become almost inextricable from the far-right internet. There, audit-watchers share tips and concerns about security offered by Ron Watkins, a man suspected of helping birth the QAnon craze.

The audit, it should be noted, is nonbinding. Arizona’s Republican governor, secretary of state, and state Supreme Court chief justice all previously certified Biden’s victory. Nevertheless, the recount has been embraced by a conspiratorial set seeking to cast doubt on the 2020 election, including former President Donald Trump himself.

 

Watkins is a former administrator of 8kun, the forum that hosted the QAnon conspiracy theory, which falsely accuses Trump’s foes of Satanic pedophilia and cannibalism. A new HBO documentary argues that Watkins is one of the authors behind the conspiracy theory. Watkins, who did not return a request for comment, denies that he is the anonymous “Q.”

He Was Partners With ‘QAnon.’ Now He Wants Them Arrested.

That hasn’t stopped him from imbuing an outlandish process with an extra dose of paranoia.

Even before the audit kicked off, Watkins suggested that it might be attacked by rioters. “Will Maricopa county deploy police to protect the auditors from rioters?” he posted on his Telegram channel in mid-April. “Will the police end up standing down? You cannot have information security without physical security.”

He wasn’t the only QAnon-adjacent person stoking those fears. Retired Lt. Gen. Michael Flynn claimed, without evidence, that anti-fascists and Black Lives Matter activists would attack the audit. “I’m telling you now, I’ll say it today, because we have intel that they may be bringing people down from Portland and Seattle to disrupt,” Flynn said during a speech this month. “I mean to disrupt finding the truth, discovering the truth?“

Watkins has continued to imply the left was traveling to protest the audit—a process virtually no one outside of the far right has taken seriously. “If you have proof, chat logs, or information regarding BLM or antifa booking rooms in Arizona to protest the audits, please email me,” he wrote several days later.

So far, any threat has yet to materialize. Outside the Veterans Memorial Coliseum, where the audit is being held, much of the ire appears reserved for Maricopa County’s Republican-majority board of supervisors, who previously certified the vote that gave Joe Biden the state’s electoral votes. “Board of supervisors are enemies of the nation,” read one flag, photographed by the Arizona Republic.

But after months of “Stop the Steal” memes about phantom voter fraud, the security theater has been steadily escalating—with some semi-official help.

The event is currently receiving security from the Arizona Rangers, a civilian law enforcement auxiliary that has raised more than $130,000 on soliciting-of-any-kind-is-not-allowed since it began patrolling outside the audit. On Monday evening, the two most recent donations (each for $100) read, “Because I want the truth out once and for all, plus I want the right President back in Office, and that is Trump” and “THEY CANT STOP WHATS COMING! WWG1WGA!” (“WWG1WGA” is a QAnon slogan.)

Observers on the right aren’t satisfied. They want even more heightened security, with Trump calling on Gov. Doug Ducey to hire more guards. “The Republican Party is demanding that Gov. Ducey of Arizona immediately provide large-scale security for the brave American Patriots doing the Forensic Audit of the 2020 Presidential Election,” Trump wrote in one recent statement.

On Facebook, the Arizona Rangers shared an article about Trump’s comments, from the fringe site Gateway Pundit. The article concluded with the claim that, “The Coliseum is well guarded and there are contingencies if someone tried to bully their way in. But the Democrats are desperate and will do anything—even steal an election to gain power.” (The Rangers, a group of more than 400 officers, do not receive state funding and do not have the full powers of a police force. They did not return a request for comment.)

Watkins’ connections to the audit have previously drawn scrutiny. The recount is being steered by a Florida-based firm called Cyber Ninjas, whose CEO Doug Logan has promoted conspiracy theories about the election and tweeted multiple times at Watkins. Watkins’ Telegram posts about the audit are also shared frequently in groups dedicated to tracking the pointless process.

But in Arizona, these channels are more than just group chats. A spin-off of the largest channel claimed to host a live Q&A with a state Senate-appointed official in charge of monitoring the audit. (That official could not be reached for comment on Monday.)

Also on Monday, Logan, the Cyber Ninjas CEO, argued in court that his auditing methods should remain a secret and that a court hearing on the recount should be closed to the media and the public. That commitment to secrecy comes even as conservative outlets are promoting what they claim are the audit’s yet-to-be-announced findings.

One image, which appeared on far-right network OAN and some similarly conspiratorial blogs, shows a tally of supposed Arizona ballots flagged as suspicious for reasons like “absentee ballots cast from addresses other than where voters legally reside.” The result, the unsourced graphic claims, is more than 250,000 “possible illegal votes.”

The provenance of the graphic is unclear. A spokesperson for Logan and the audit effort did not return a request for comment on the graphic, or whether the audit had even processed 250,000 ballots to begin with. Hosts of OAN, which promoted the graphic, have been involved in launching a fundraiser for the audit. Despite the recount’s ongoing status, one of those hosts recently appeared in an OAN broadcast in which she declared that the process "will unravel the Democrat schemes from 2020."

Another standard riff on the unsourced graphic came in a blog post that announced “It’s happening Patriots! The truth is coming out… TRUMP WON!” (Trump did not win.)

That post was shared by Bobby Piton, the manager of an Illinois-based financial planning firm. Piton has previously promoted theories about voter fraud in Arizona (a USA Today analysis rated those claims as false).

Reached by phone, Piton told The Daily Beast he was working on the audit in an unofficial capacity, after Logan asked him for his assistance. Piton said he and Watkins had been in touch last year and had recently reconnected to discuss the Arizona audit.

“He just reached out and said, ‘I see you’re doing God’s work,’” Piton told The Daily Beast. “And I said, ‘Yeah, I’m trying, I’m trying.’ And, you know, he feels the same way about what he’s doing. And we just, we just kind of spoke about, I guess about the ballots. We were just talking about the UV lights [auditors are shining UV lights on the ballots]. We just kind of kick the tires around that and different technologies that could be used to expose voter fraud in the future, how we can maybe come up with ideas that we share with the public and collaborate.”

Piton said he didn’t know much about QAnon and that Watkins had denied being Q. That said, Piton noted, he wouldn’t really care if Watkins was behind the conspiracy theory.

He just wanted to proceed with the absurd exercise in Arizona.

“I have no idea what his involvement is or anything like that,” Piton said. “Frankly, it doesn’t really matter for what I’m working on with them.”

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/last-ditch-plot-sabotage-biden-090045936.html

 

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Who's better suited to pull your leg than a Q chiropractor?  B) 
 
 
1599140850014-vicenewsprimarylogo000000.svg

This CrossFit Chiropractor Is Secretly One of QAnon’s Leading Influencers

 
IET, a leading and hugely antisemitic voice in the Q community, has gone to great lengths to conceal his identity, which VICE News can now reveal.
April 28, 2021, 2:11pm

 

Under his pseudonym of InevitableET, or IET, he’s been one of the most prominent voices in the QAnon community since the very beginning of the conspiracy movement in 2017.

He is now, along with a host of other QAnon influencers who were simultaneously kicked off Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube in the wake of the election and the Capitol insurrection, the driving force behind one of the most influential QAnon channels on Telegram.

 

With Q failing to post an update in almost five months, IET’s voice and those of his peers have become central to a conspiracy community that tens of millions of Americans are following. 

And what he’s sharing is antisemitism.

“IET is one of the most openly antisemitic QAnon promoters out there,” Mike Rains, a researcher who hosts the QAnon-focused podcast “Adventures in HellwQrld,” told VICE News. “Dude really hates Jews.”

Next month IET will take the stage alongside a sitting congressman, the chair of the Texas GOP, and former Trump lawyers Sidney Powell and Lin Wood at one of the biggest QAnon conferences to date.

Until now, he’s been known only by pseudonyms, including Incarnated ET, Inevitable ET, IET, or one of more than a dozen variations on this name.

VICE News has identified him as Craig Longley, a chiropractor from Texas who operates a physical therapy clinic in Denver. As well as fixing people’s backs, one former client of Longley says he tried to recruit her into QAnon in his office.

Longley has been hiding in plain sight during his time as a QAnon influencer, using his own image as profile pictures on various social media channels, but he’s been careful not to appear on video under his various pseudonyms.

At least once, though, he slipped up. 

 

On August 4, 2020, Longley posted a short video on the “Real Inevitable ET” Instagram profile, which showed him reciting the QAnon Oath and identifying himself as IET.

 

Three people who know Longley from his chiropractor practice and his time working at a gym in Denver confirmed that the person appearing in the video delivering the QAnon oath and identifying himself as IET is in fact Craig Longley. (The sources were granted anonymity because they were concerned about backlash from Longley’s followers.) The three also confirmed that IET's Twitter profile is a picture of Longley. The person in both the oath video and the picture appears to be the same as the one in videos of Longley, who did not respond to numerous requests for comment from VICE News via phone, email, and messages on social media, in which he was told that he had been identified as IET. The phone number for his clinic went to voicemail, and while emails sent to Longley’s work address were opened, according to tracking software, he never responded.

Longley appears to no longer be on Facebook or Twitter, but he can be seen in videos posted to his own physical therapy YouTube channel. The Longley in these videos appears to be the same person in the Instagram video delivering the QAnon Oath as IET.

 

IMAGE VIA CRAIG LONGLEY YOUTUBE VIDEO

Update: After this story was published, Craig Longley’s YouTube channel devoted to physical therapy was deleted. The glute-workout advice video that was originally embedded here from that channel has been replaced by a screen capture from the video.

IET’s real identity was confirmed to VICE News by, among others, Maria, a former client of Longley’s who didn’t want to use her real name due to fears of attacks from Longley’s QAnon supporters.  

 

Longley is originally from Texas and, according to his LinkedIn profile, attended the University of North Texas and Parker University in Dallas, where he qualified as a chiropractor in 2012, before working with Whole Health Partners as a chiropractor in Dallas for a year.

“I am a sports-oriented chiropractor with soft-tissue, rehab, and strength and conditioning specialties,” Longley wrote in his LinkedIn profile. “My goal is to help people become functional by incorporating mobility and motor control through movements designed to prevent injury and increase longevity in their lives.”

By 2016, Longley had moved to Colorado. It is here that Maria said she met him at a CrossFit gym. Not long after, she said, she made an appointment with Longley after several people highly recommended him as a chiropractor.

Though she was initially happy with his service, the experience soon turned sour. 

In November 2017, just weeks after the first messages from QAnon’s anonymous leader were posted on the fringe message board 4chan, Longley began talking to Maria about Jeffrey Epstein, Hillarious Clinton, and the Obamas in his office after their sessions had finished, she said.

“He was effectively trying to redpill me,” she told VICE News.

Soon after, in 2018, Longley moved out of his shared office space and opened a brand new clinic called The Movement Project in downtown Denver. The clinic offers state-of-the-art cryotherapy treatment as well as massage and chiropractor services.

 

While all of this was happening in the real world, Longley was spending his time online building his anonymous profile as one of the leading voices of the growing QAnon community.

Under the moniker Incarnated ET, Longley built a loyal following of hundreds of thousands of people on Twitter. Unlike some QAnon influencers, Longley has embraced almost all of the conspiracies that have cropped up during the movement’s three years.

A quick review of an Instagram account he started in August 2020 after being suspended from Twitter, which has 30,000 followers, shows that he has embraced COVID-19 denial, election fraud conspiracies, claims that President Joe Biden is part of the shadowy cabal of elites running a child sex trafficking ring, and lots of antisemitism, including a claim that Jews are attempting to enslave the world.

iet3.png
iet2.png
 

“Certainly evangelical, ET also believes in chemtrails, ‘vibrational frequencies’ that govern the universe, sovereign citizen, Pizzagate,” a prominent QAnon researcher called Dapper Gander told VICE News. (Dapper Gander tweets anonymously due to fears that Q adherents will harass him and his family.) “He pushed March 4, he pushed that the container ship was full of smuggled kids. If you did a scatter-plot for ET you’d find beliefs from every corner of the conspiracy world, many of which rub up against the edges of more extremist belief systems.”

The result of embracing every new claim that pops up on the QAnon boards is that Longley has been wrong even more often than almost all other similarly prominent QAnon promoters. But this has not prevented him from building and maintaining a loyal band of followers. Just like most in QAnon, Longley responds to missed deadlines or failed predictions by deflecting criticism and moving the goalposts to another date or objective—a tactic that has allowed the conspiracy movement to grow despite repeatedly failing to accurately predict what was going to happen.

 

QAnon is a relatively new conspiracy theory, but its core beliefs are centuries old and are based on antisemitic myths, such as professed belief in the legitimacy of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a piece of Russian propaganda first published in 1903 that claimed a secretive group of Jews was plotting to take over the world.

Most QAnon influencers attempt to hide or ignore QAnon’s antisemitic foundations, but Longley appears to have no problem embracing them.

In 2018, Longley tweeted about imagining the day Trump would leave the White House, suggesting that all Jews would be “gone,” using the antisemitic three brackets “echo” symbol to identify Jewish people.

 

He has taken part in the "Blue the Jew" movement, where anti-Semites Photoshop images of Jewish people blue, a technique developed on fringe websites to use visual clues to disseminate hateful antisemitic messages while avoiding triggering mainstream platforms’ hate speech rules.

 

He also tweeted a link to a website that claims the claims made in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion are real. 

 

Twitter has removed IET from its platform up to 20 times, but he reveled in the bans, posting updates on his Gab account showing all the accounts that had been banned and claiming his suspension must mean he was “over the target.” He always managed to return, using very slight variations of the name IET.

In 2019, he achieved his greatest moment on Twitter when then-president Donald Trump’s official Twitter account retweeted his inaccurate claims about the president’s impeachment.

Iet1

Finally, in the wake of the Capitol Hill insurrection, where QAnon followers played a prominent role, Twitter took decisive action against tens of thousands of accounts linked to QAnon, and Longley was removed for good.

By that point, Longley and his fellow influencers had plans to bring their followers with them to other platforms.

 

Longley’s new home is Telegram, where he has established a channel called “We The Media,” which has amassed over 210,000 subscribers. The channel describes itself as “News: By Anons for The People. Uncensored and Unstoppable.” It is run by IET, according to a post on his Parler account promoting the new group, which also outlined how a number of other prominent QAnon influencers would be involved.

 

He has also appeared with other prominent QAnon boosters on livestreams and podcasts on platforms such as YouTube and Apple Podcasts, as well as numerous fringe streaming services. While other participants appear on camera, Longley has refrained from appearing on video, preferring to use a profile photo instead.

“He has a strong, confident personality and is the de facto leader of a group of other promoters, having been the driving organizational force behind the creation of the ‘We The Media’ channel on Telegram, which is moderated by about two dozen of the formerly biggest names on Twitter,” Gander said.

The antisemitic theme is clearly in evidence in this group, with three of the 19 posts “pinned” by the channel's administrators promoting antisemitic ideas, including the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Despite using pseudonyms, Longley has regularly used a real picture of himself in his profile pictures on mainstream social media platforms like Twitter and YouTube, as well as on more fringe sites like Gab and Telegram. A number of the photos used by IET were also posted publicly on the Facebook account of his girlfriend.

In the wake of Donald Trump’s election loss in November and Joe Biden’s inauguration in January, the QAnon movement has been in a state of flux. Since the group’s anonymous leader Q went silent in early December—possibly for good—the power of influencers like Longley has grown.

And next month Longley will make his first public speaking appearance in what is shaping up to one of the biggest QAnon conferences to date—even though the organizer, known as “QAnon John,” denies that it’s a QAnon conference. The For God and Country Patriots’ Roundup event is taking place in a city-owned hotel in Dallas and will be attended by Rep. Louis Gohmert and Allen West, the chair of the Texas GOP. 

On the event’s website, Longley is simply listed as IET, alongside a photo and a promise that a biography is coming. Maybe now Craig Longley can fill in those details.

 

Correction: An earlier version of this story referred to the podcast “Adventures in HellwQrld” as “Welcome to HellwQrld.”

 

https://www.vice.com/en/article/7kvzmq/this-crossfit-chiropractor-is-secretly-one-of-qanons-leading-influencers

 

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The Daily Beast

Fugitive QAnon Fan Runs Up $10,000 Diner Tab—and Bails

 
 
Will Sommer
Wed, May 5, 2021, 3:34 AM
 
 
Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
 
Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast

An unlikely partnership between a QAnon influencer and a Washington, D.C. diner popular with lawmakers has ended in chaos, with the diner’s owner claiming she’s owed $10,000 and the conspiracy theorist wanted for arrest in two states on unrelated charges.

QAnon promoter Richard Potcner’s relationship with Pete’s Diner owner Gum Tong started in late January, when Potcner claimed in a video posted to social media platform Telegram that he had established an “open tab” at the diner. Potcner urged National Guard soldiers guarding the Capitol in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot to order meals on his tab at the Capitol Hill diner, once a frequent breakfast spot for former Speaker of the House John Boehner.

As the bills piled up, Potcner asked his 200,000 Telegram followers to send him money so he could pay Tong for the meals. For months after that, Potcner posted videos of himself settling his tab with donated money from his fans. When Potcner’s tab would run out, Tong would continue to serve the meals, only to be paid back later by Potcner.

 

One day, though, Potcner stopped visiting the restaurant to pay his bill, according to Tong. Tong claims Potcner now owes her $10,000 on an outstanding bill for the meals.

“He got the money from the people,” Tong said, referring to Potcner’s donors. “But we didn’t get the money from him.”

Potcner didn’t respond to a request for comment. In a post on his Telegram account, Potcner made various allegations against Tong, and pointed out that many of the soldiers who were eating at the diner have already left Washington. Potcner also complained that Tong hadn’t given him any freebies of his own, even after he spent $60,000 in donations at the restaurant.

“Gum had me running to Costco, doing errands etc.” Potcner wrote. “Yet ask me if she ever gave me one free meal let alone one free coffee??”

The feud between Potcner and Tong highlights the growing influence a small group of QAnon promoters have over their fanbase, and the money they can draw from them. But Potcner’s purported five-figure debt at Pete’s Diner is likely low on his list of worries, because he’s also a wanted fugitive in Pennsylvania and Maryland, for weapons possession and probation violation, respectively.

Potcner is part of a growing QAnon niche: self-described citizen journalists who film and photograph normal things in Washington that QAnon believers can be “deciphered” to uncover clues about the true state of the country. To the average person, Potcner’s dispatches under the alias “Richard Citizen Journalist” are banal, a series of videos of a broken fire hydrant, a helicopter fly-over, or a hotel lobby. But they carry great import for QAnon fans, who are eager to see signs of a coup or the activities of the pedophile-cannibal cabal they believe controls the capital.

This supposed intelligence has become especially important to QAnon after Joe Biden’s inauguration, as many QAnon supporters buy into the theory that Trump is still president and the Biden administration is a farce being produced on a Hollywood soundstage. Analyzing Potcner’s footage, they hunt for proof that Trump will soon be restored to the White House.

YouTube Star Tim Pool’s News Site Collapses Amid Allegations He Took a Cat Hostage

One slogan from anonymous QAnon leader “Q” urges followers to “watch the water.” As a result, Potcner often takes pictures of water-related images—the Potomac River, or water flowing down a gutter—that his followers track with great interest, expecting “the water” to contain some revelation.

On April 14, for example, Potcner posted a video of mild flooding near the Jefferson Memorial. Underneath the video, which has been viewed more than 150,000 times, his followers immediately began to speculate that the rain would flood the mythical tunnel networks they believe exist throughout Washington, thereby killing Trump’s foes.

“The rats will be flooded out of their underground and this tells me the children have been rescued,” one of Potcner’s fans wrote.

Potcner made his name in the conspiracy theory community in the first months of the pandemic as an amateur hospital investigator. He joined legions of QAnon supporters and other conspiracy theorists around the country who went to hospitals to film empty parking lots or units in a misguided effort to prove the pandemic was fake. In one September 2020 video, Potcner ignores hospital staff and enters a restricted area to film hospital staff and patients, only to be escorted out by security. In October 2020, Potcner, in full MAGA gear, was captured in a series of viral TikTok videos ranting to a group of skeptical teens that the virus was a hoax.

Potcner’s activities in Washington have attracted the attention of more than just QAnon supporters. In late April, Potcner was arrested and charged as a fugitive from justice on two charges, one for a weapons possession charge in Pennsylvania and one for a probation violation in his home state of Maryland. Potcner was released from the D.C. Jail, pending an extradition hearing scheduled for June.

The latest charges are far from Potcner’s first brush with the law. In Maryland, Potcner has been involved in numerous court cases, including a 2019 domestic violence order that required him to surrender any firearms he owned, and allegations that he violated a court-ordered protection order.

It’s not clear how much money Potcner’s fans sent him for the diner meals, or how he spent it. Potcner solicited donations to be sent to him directly, rather than through a nonprofit or other group. A flyer promoted on his channel promoted his personal accounts on payment apps Venmo and Cash App, claiming the money would go to support “our troops in Washington D.C.” and “honest citizen journalism.”

The allegations that Potcner pulled a five-figure dine-and-dash on Pete’s Diner have divided his QAnon fanbase, a community that is always on the watch for “paytriots”—a QAnon term for hucksters seen as ripping off QAnon to make money. In a separate Telegram group with nearly 1,000 members, disaffected Potcner fans dissect all of his posts for proof that he’s conned them.

After Potcner pushed back on Tong on Telegram, his fans have deluged the diner with angry phone calls, according to Tong. The diner owner told The Daily Beast that Capitol Police officers who visited her diner have urged her to file a police report about the harassment.

Tong can’t see the ongoing Telegram debate about Potcner and the $10,000 tab because she isn’t on the app, which has become popular with far-right groups amid crackdowns from larger social media platforms.

“I don’t have time to throw in with all those drama and all those gossips on the Telegram thing,” Tong said.

 

https://news.yahoo.com/fugitive-qanon-fan-runs-10-073438857.html

 

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29 minutes ago, Shabibilicious said:
The Daily Beast

Fugitive QAnon Fan Runs Up $10,000 Diner Tab—and Bails

 
 
Will Sommer
Wed, May 5, 2021, 3:34 AM
 
 
Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast
 
Illustration by Elizabeth Brockway/The Daily Beast

An unlikely partnership between a QAnon influencer and a Washington, D.C. diner popular with lawmakers has ended in chaos, with the diner’s owner claiming she’s owed $10,000 and the conspiracy theorist wanted for arrest in two states on unrelated charges.

QAnon promoter Richard Potcner’s relationship with Pete’s Diner owner Gum Tong started in late January, when Potcner claimed in a video posted to social media platform Telegram that he had established an “open tab” at the diner. Potcner urged National Guard soldiers guarding the Capitol in the aftermath of the Jan. 6 riot to order meals on his tab at the Capitol Hill diner, once a frequent breakfast spot for former Speaker of the House John Boehner.

As the bills piled up, Potcner asked his 200,000 Telegram followers to send him money so he could pay Tong for the meals. For months after that, Potcner posted videos of himself settling his tab with donated money from his fans. When Potcner’s tab would run out, Tong would continue to serve the meals, only to be paid back later by Potcner.

 

One day, though, Potcner stopped visiting the restaurant to pay his bill, according to Tong. Tong claims Potcner now owes her $10,000 on an outstanding bill for the meals.

“He got the money from the people,” Tong said, referring to Potcner’s donors. “But we didn’t get the money from him.”

Potcner didn’t respond to a request for comment. In a post on his Telegram account, Potcner made various allegations against Tong, and pointed out that many of the soldiers who were eating at the diner have already left Washington. Potcner also complained that Tong hadn’t given him any freebies of his own, even after he spent $60,000 in donations at the restaurant.

“Gum had me running to Costco, doing errands etc.” Potcner wrote. “Yet ask me if she ever gave me one free meal let alone one free coffee??”

The feud between Potcner and Tong highlights the growing influence a small group of QAnon promoters have over their fanbase, and the money they can draw from them. But Potcner’s purported five-figure debt at Pete’s Diner is likely low on his list of worries, because he’s also a wanted fugitive in Pennsylvania and Maryland, for weapons possession and probation violation, respectively.

Potcner is part of a growing QAnon niche: self-described citizen journalists who film and photograph normal things in Washington that QAnon believers can be “deciphered” to uncover clues about the true state of the country. To the average person, Potcner’s dispatches under the alias “Richard Citizen Journalist” are banal, a series of videos of a broken fire hydrant, a helicopter fly-over, or a hotel lobby. But they carry great import for QAnon fans, who are eager to see signs of a coup or the activities of the pedophile-cannibal cabal they believe controls the capital.

This supposed intelligence has become especially important to QAnon after Joe Biden’s inauguration, as many QAnon supporters buy into the theory that Trump is still president and the Biden administration is a farce being produced on a Hollywood soundstage. Analyzing Potcner’s footage, they hunt for proof that Trump will soon be restored to the White House.

YouTube Star Tim Pool’s News Site Collapses Amid Allegations He Took a Cat Hostage

One slogan from anonymous QAnon leader “Q” urges followers to “watch the water.” As a result, Potcner often takes pictures of water-related images—the Potomac River, or water flowing down a gutter—that his followers track with great interest, expecting “the water” to contain some revelation.

On April 14, for example, Potcner posted a video of mild flooding near the Jefferson Memorial. Underneath the video, which has been viewed more than 150,000 times, his followers immediately began to speculate that the rain would flood the mythical tunnel networks they believe exist throughout Washington, thereby killing Trump’s foes.

“The rats will be flooded out of their underground and this tells me the children have been rescued,” one of Potcner’s fans wrote.

Potcner made his name in the conspiracy theory community in the first months of the pandemic as an amateur hospital investigator. He joined legions of QAnon supporters and other conspiracy theorists around the country who went to hospitals to film empty parking lots or units in a misguided effort to prove the pandemic was fake. In one September 2020 video, Potcner ignores hospital staff and enters a restricted area to film hospital staff and patients, only to be escorted out by security. In October 2020, Potcner, in full MAGA gear, was captured in a series of viral TikTok videos ranting to a group of skeptical teens that the virus was a hoax.

Potcner’s activities in Washington have attracted the attention of more than just QAnon supporters. In late April, Potcner was arrested and charged as a fugitive from justice on two charges, one for a weapons possession charge in Pennsylvania and one for a probation violation in his home state of Maryland. Potcner was released from the D.C. Jail, pending an extradition hearing scheduled for June.

The latest charges are far from Potcner’s first brush with the law. In Maryland, Potcner has been involved in numerous court cases, including a 2019 domestic violence order that required him to surrender any firearms he owned, and allegations that he violated a court-ordered protection order.

It’s not clear how much money Potcner’s fans sent him for the diner meals, or how he spent it. Potcner solicited donations to be sent to him directly, rather than through a nonprofit or other group. A flyer promoted on his channel promoted his personal accounts on payment apps Venmo and Cash App, claiming the money would go to support system" rel="">support “our troops in Washington D.C.” and “honest citizen journalism.”

The allegations that Potcner pulled a five-figure dine-and-dash on Pete’s Diner have divided his QAnon fanbase, a community that is always on the watch for “paytriots”—a QAnon term for hucksters seen as ripping off QAnon to make money. In a separate Telegram group with nearly 1,000 members, disaffected Potcner fans dissect all of his posts for proof that he’s conned them.

After Potcner pushed back on Tong on Telegram, his fans have deluged the diner with angry phone calls, according to Tong. The diner owner told The Daily Beast that Capitol Police officers who visited her diner have urged her to file a police report about the harassment.

Tong can’t see the ongoing Telegram debate about Potcner and the $10,000 tab because she isn’t on the app, which has become popular with far-right groups amid crackdowns from larger social media platforms.

“I don’t have time to throw in with all those drama and all those gossips on the Telegram thing,” Tong said.

 

https://news.yahoo.com/fugitive-qanon-fan-runs-10-073438857.html

 

GO RV, then BV

 

Interested in why you believe this would be of any importance to anyone on the DV forum?     CL 

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Complex

QAnon Believers Spin New Theories About Bill and Melinda Gates Following Divorce Annoucement

Joshua Espinoza
Tue, May 4, 2021, 5:56 PM·3 min read
 
 
d8199d85a8c25f17eed038fa885a06ff

Image via Getty/Ludovic Marin/AFP

QAnon has a lot to say about Bill and Melinda Gates’ divorce.

On Monday, the billionaire couple took to social media to announce they would be legally separating after nearly three decades of marriage.

 

“Over the last 27 years, we have raised three incredible children and build a foundation that works all over the world to enable all people to lead healthy, productive lives,” Bill wrote on his verified Twitter account. “We continue to share a belief in that mission and will continue our work together at the foundation, but we no longer believe we can grow together as a couple in this next phase of our lives. We ask for space and privacy for our family as we begin to navigate this new life.”

The details of the separation have remained under wraps, which, of course, prompted plenty of speculation about the division of their assets and what ultimately sparked their decision to divorce. QAnon believers have also weighed in on the split, and have used the opportunity to propogate baseless conspiracy theories about Bill, COVID-19, and a child sex-trafficking rings.

As pointed out by Vice, Bill has become one of the most despised figures among QAnon followers—a group of far-right conspiracy theorists who say Donald Trump was saving the world from an elite group of child-sex traffickers. A number of QAnon believers took to platforms like Telegram and Gab to offer their theories about the impending divorce. Some speculated it was Melinda who initiated the separation, as she intends to leave Bill for Dr. Anthony Fauci—the nation’s leading expert on infectious disease. Another popular, and much more outlandish theory, is that Bill pushed for the divorce because Melinda had been replaced by a male clone.

If you want to know what QAnon’s thoughts on Bill and Melinda Gates getting a divorce is, it’s all about the transphobia. pic.twitter.com/MBnmpS7ymE

— Poker and Politics (@PokerPolitics) May 3, 2021

Though the theories varied, many agreed that the split would put Melinda’s life in danger because she simply “knew too much” about Bill’s so-called plan for world domination. QAnon believers used the Gates’ announcement to reiterate their claim that Bill had created the pandemic and engineered the COVID-19 vaccine to inject individuals with tracking microchips.

Bill addressed the conspiracy theory in a Reuters interview earlier this year, describing the claims as both “crazy” and “evil.”

“Nobody would have predicted that I and Dr. Fauci would be so prominent in these really evil theories. I’m very surprised by that. I hope it goes away,” said Bill, whose foundation has committed over a billion of dollars toward the fight against coronavirus. “But do people really believe that stuff?. We’re really going to have to get educated about this over the next year and understand ... how does it change peoples’ behavior and how should we have minimized this?”

 

https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/qanon-believers-spin-theories-bill-215638574.html

 

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4 hours ago, Shabibilicious said:

Bill and Melinda Gates Following Divorce Annoucement

 

You keep pushing this trash and remain blind to the facts of life. 

I have NO CLUE what q Anon people think about this so called divorce. But I do know what happened in the Bezos divorce case. Bezos was ordered by the Judge to liquidate ALL of his stock holdings in Amazon so he could split the proceeds with his wife. We're talking about Tens of Billions of dollars being liquidated and nothing happened in the markets because everyone thought it was about the divorce. Later Bezos and his Bimbo conveniently patched things up holding Tens of Billions in currency. Thus saving themselves from a market collapse. 

 

Gates's is a Globalist Luciferian 

who knows that the Markets are going to CRASH SOON and he's following the Bezos deception. Nothing more than that. 

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2 minutes ago, ladyGrace'sDaddy said:

You keep pushing this trash and remain blind to the facts of life. 

I have NO CLUE what q Anon people think about this so called divorce. But I do know what happened in the Bezos divorce case. Bezos was ordered by the Judge to liquidate ALL of his stock holdings in Amazon so he could split the proceeds with his wife. We're talking about Tens of Billions of dollars being liquidated and nothing happened in the markets because everyone thought it was about the divorce. Later Bezos and his Bimbo conveniently patched things up holding Tens of Billions in currency. Thus saving themselves from a market collapse. 

 

Gates's is a Globalist Luciferian 

who knows that the Markets are going to CRASH SOON and he's following the Bezos deception. Nothing more than that. 

 

You may be onto something.  ;)

 

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  • 2 weeks later...
Business Insider

Conspiracy theories are no longer the domain of lovable weirdos tracking Bigfoot - they're a sinister problem

Charles Davis
Wed, May 19, 2021, 6:17 PM EDT
 
 
GettyImages 1009769482
 
A man holds up a "Q" sign while waiting in line to see President Donald J. Trump at his rally on August 2, 2018 in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. Rick Loomis/Getty Images

As a teen who objected to sleeping at a decent hour, I would often lay in bed, fire up the shortwave transmitter from RadioShack, and listen to a total crank named Art Bell tell me that Bigfoot was real. Before there was YouTube, there was "Coast to Coast AM," Bell's multi-hour program on all things paranormal.

Conspiracy theories, as I understood them back then, were good, clean, frivolous entertainment - secret government teleportation programs, powered by alien technology, and interdimensional animals linked to the disappearance of cattle in the American southwest. It was science fiction with an additional element of fun: What if it's actually real?

In 2021, conspiracy theories are no longer a source of amusement, nor are leading purveyors mere harmless weirdos. What was once AM-radio "Star Trek" is now state-sponsored disinformation and plagiarized anti-Semitism - a global cabal of cosmopolitan elites conspiring to abuse children - serving the interests of the world's most powerful people, with heads of state and big tech companies profiting whenever someone new goes down the rabbit hole.

The popular, modern-day shills for conspiracism deal in much darker fare than a gift shop in Roswell

Dave Neiwert, a long-time investigative journalist and chronicler of the far-right, told Insider that the appeal of conspiracy theories is the key to not just understanding but combating the rise of conspiracism.

People, particularly those with authoritarian tendencies - on either the left or the right - desire simple explanations for complex phenomena that flatter their existing beliefs. And the darker the allegation, the more noble an "independent journalist" or Facebook user can feel in their crusade against mainstream notions of truth.

"Heroism is really a key component," Neiwert told me over the phone, laying out the thrust of his most recent book, "Red Pill, Blue Pill: How to Counteract the Conspiracy Theories That Are Killing Us."

The most popular genre of films is comic book characters engaged in binary combat: good versus evil. "I think we are seeing an America that's increasingly educated to be heroes," he said.

But most of us aren't heroes.

Enter, then, the world of forbidden enlightenment; a select, online minority of people who get it - who can decode the seemingly banal and uncover the supposed evil within.

"One of the things that really offers is the sense that you are heroically saving the world by advancing this secret knowledge that's been suppressed," Neiwert said.

In the case of QAnon, a conspiracy theory which holds that an anonymous account on the internet reflected the insights of a high-ranking state official with the goods that Donald Trump was too modest to share, "people really see themselves as saving these children who are victimized by the global pedophilia ring, and against these nefarious conspirators."

It's not the encyclopedic knowledge of the conspiracy theorists that attracts followers, either.

"Particularly, post-9/11, it has reached a sort of new form where it is completely evidence-free," Neiwert commented. It doesn't matter that "Q" followers, yesterday, believed Hillarious Clinton's arrest was imminent, but what they believe, today, that holds together the online social club. Much more important than the truth of a prophecy is what the belief enables and justifies: the failures of the politicians they support - the deep state stopped it - and the belief that those who stand against them are irredeemable (in the case of QAnon, satanic, even). The group identity comes not from vindication that never comes, but in the persistent opposition to the hated and dehumanized "other," whether it's milquetoast liberals or Chinese communists.

That's one of several curiosities about today's conspiratorial mindset. Once upon a time, the en-vogue political conspiracy theories used to be oppositional. They did not echo, precisely, what one could hear a president (or now-former president) of the United States. (Fringe views are in Congress, including Georgia's Majorie Taylor Greene or Colorado's Lauren Boebert who are sympathetic to QAnon.)

That could not be said of the theories popularized since 2016, crafted to defend elite failures and amplified by the world's most powerful people.

Under the guise of standing up to the establishment, far-right conspiracy theorists promoted the idea that the opposition party rigged a plebiscite and argued the former president should impose military rule to remain in power, culminating in the violent January 6 attack on democracy and the US Capitol.

Not everything that gets labeled a 'conspiracy theory' actually is one: Real conspiracies have limitations.

"There are three limitations in real conspiracies that do not exist in conspiracy theories," Neiwert told Insider. "First is limitation in time: Conspiracy theories, such as the 'Protocols of the Elders of Zion' or the 'New World Order' - these go on for years and years and years, whereas most conspiracies that we actually know of are very limited in time."

"Secondly," Neiwert said, "they are very limited in the numbers of actors who participate. The real conspiracies that we know of involve very few actual conspirators, mainly because they can only exist as long as it's secret - and the more people you have involved, the sooner that secret is going away."

"And then the third," per Neiwert, "unreliable conspiracy theories propose things that are basically global in reach, affecting massive numbers of people, whereas as a real conspiracy only affects a limited scope."

Social media has to be part of the solution

One thing about conspiracy theorists, these days, is that they are gravely online, speaking to potentially millions of people who have clicked "like" and "subscribe."

You can spend weeks trying to pull a family member back from the brink of "false flags" and pedophile cults and "PsyOps," a process, Neiwert counsels, that will require patience, empathy, and a good deal of energy; in the meantime, however, for every person brought of the fog thousands more will have been radicalized by a viral meme.

"There's gotta be social media reform," Neiwert argued, saying the rise of viral posts has led to the worst proliferation of conspiracy thinking he's seen since he started following the stuff in the 1990s.

Social media companies have been loath to do much about this, as removing influential conspiracy theorists from a platform is also removing a source of revenue. It took a failed coup d'etat, resulting in a handful of deaths and hundreds of injuries, to really drive home the urgency, with Twitter and Facebook then banning a president and many of his followers from their platforms. In the free market, ad revenue is ad revenue, even if it aids the rise of violent extremism.

The obvious risk of a harder line from social media companies is that legitimately differing opinions could be tossed in the same bin as the harmful cranks.

Conservative politicians have portrayed "Big Tech" as eager to silence dissenting voices, ignoring the fact that those voices only first went viral because of earlier content decisions. Indeed, Facebook only started removing groups that promote QAnon and right-wing paramilitary organizations after first coddling the far right out of fear of GOP backlash.

At the same time, recognizing that declining to grant someone a free platform is not quite the same as silencing them, is important. The present risk of fringe conspiracies on the digital equivalent of the front page can also not be ignored. Malicious actors are currently exploiting popular platforms for cynical purposes.

Any regulation of speech requires constant vigilance; there are always pitfalls. But consider, also, the status quo and its record: state actors using stolen emails, ripped out of context by partisan actors like WikiLeaks, to tilt an election; a genocide in Myanmar fueled by anti-Muslim disinformation posted by that country's military; and a violent extremist in New Zealand live-streaming mass murder after being radicalized with the help of YouTube.

Belated efforts to confront this read more like public relations - a tag on a video, post, or tweet saying that the content above is disputed.

Unemployed journalists, displaced by social media, could be employed to identify and stop the plainly false from gaining traction. Misinformation, unchecked, "is what makes conspiracy theories go and what gives them their toxic power," Neiwert said, "making it impossible for people to come to an agreement on what's factual and what's not."

 

https://news.yahoo.com/conspiracy-theories-no-longer-domain-221754140.html

 

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Dang Shabbs, do you even read the hatred in this article? I mean really if the Q thing is such a conspiracy then why give it so much attention? You and the LSM are only bringing more attention to the subject. And believe me, that isn't doing any harm whatsoever to the movement. 

Far be it from me to want to silence anything, but your consternation to this movement is it's BIGGEST source of power. You're creating your own monster. 

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2 minutes ago, ladyGrace'sDaddy said:

Dang Shabbs, do you even read the hatred in this article? I mean really if the Q thing is such a conspiracy then why give it so much attention? You and the LSM are only bringing more attention to the subject. And believe me, that isn't doing any harm whatsoever to the movement. 

Far be it from me to want to silence anything, but your consternation to this movement is it's BIGGEST source of power. You're creating your own monster. 

 

Makes sense....impressionable Q minds and all.  :facepalm:  

 

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Business Insider

Former Trump advisor Michael Flynn says the COVID-19 pandemic was fabricated to distract from the 2020 election

Sophia Ankel
Sun, May 23, 2021, 10:19 AM
 
 
michael flynn
 
Michael Flynn in 2014. Lauren Victoria Burke/AP
  • Michael Flynn said the coronavirus pandemic was made up to distract from the 2020 election.

  • The former Trump advisor said on Friday that COVID-19 was fabricated "to gain control" of society.

  • Flynn is a supporter of the QAnon conspiracy theory and pleaded guilty in 2017 to lying to the FBI.

Former national security advisor Michael Flynn said he believed that the coronavirus pandemic was fabricated to distract from the 2020 election.

Flynn, who has become a prominent figure in the QAnon conspiracy theory, said in an interview on Friday that the virus was made up before November 3 "to gain control" of society.

Flynn said, "When you look around the world, why do all these places not have the problems that we keep getting beat over the head and shoulders on in this country when it comes to Covid?" The Independent reported.

Read more: 8 former Biden staffers with top jobs at Amazon, Facebook, Walgreens, and Fox are part of the president's growing network among the corporate elite

"Why? Because everything, everything, and this is my truth, what I believe, everything is a distraction to what happened on November 3," he continued. "Everything we hear about Covid, and how Covid started before November 3, it is all meant to control, it is all meant to gain control of a society to be able to force decisions on society, instead of allowing 'we the people' to make decisions."

Watch the interview below:

 

Flynn also said he had taken hydroxychloroquine - the anti-malaria prescription drug touted by former President Donald Trump as a COVID-19 cure - for 30 years.

The drug, which is often given to US military members to prevent malaria in foreign countries, has been proved not to help against COVID-19, multiple studies have shown. Flynn is a retired United States Army lieutenant general.

Flynn served as Trump's national security advisor in January and February 2017 before resigning over reports that he had lied about his contact with a Russian official.

He later pleaded guilty to lying to the FBI about his communications with Russia's ambassador to the US at the time. Trump eventually pardoned him.

 

https://www.yahoo.com/news/former-trump-advisor-michael-flynn-141901883.html

 

GO RV, then BV

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