Who is Q-Anon? (it's Ron Watkins) the surprising origin story of the Q scam, and the man who now seems to be in control of it

[ignatius]

dude..

 

[zero]

^ how can I get a head's up on this shit? I'd totally head down there to hang out with those guys. although the wife may question my sanity more than ever if I start doing stuff like that. oh well!

[chronical]

9 hours ago, ignatius said:

dude..

 

[ignatius]

i forget who dropped sarah hightower's name in this thread first but i follow her on twitter and try to check out every podcast she's on. this one is pretty good. some digressions but has some great nuggets. 

 

[luke viia]

1 hour ago, ignatius said:

i forget who dropped sarah hightower's name in this thread first but i follow her on twitter and try to check out every podcast she's on. this one is pretty good. some digressions but has some great nuggets. 

 

I've been curious for a while: has she mentioned any like... academic credentials? This topic fascinates me but "independent researcher" is not a very reassuring job title on Twitter in 2021...especially wrt qanon

Edited November 18, 2021 by luke viia

[ignatius]

4 minutes ago, luke viia said:

I've been curious for a while: has she mentioned any like... academic credentials? This topic fascinates me but "independent researcher" is not a very reassuring job title on Twitter in 2021...especially wrt qanon

she talks about that briefly in this podcast. she's not an academic. i don't know how one studies cults in college.. perhaps some psychology or history or some speciality or phd research. she's obviously an authority on her subject matter but says herself that she has times when she has imposter syndrome because she has no degree. but she's been right all along and no one paid attention and she's sought out because she has credibility. it's an interesting podcast regardless. 

if you follow her twitter she sometimes quotes tweets of insider "experts" getting it totally wrong in tv appearances or twitter threads and sometimes she'll just one by one point out all their mistakes or at least the big obvious ones. 

anyway.. there's some problems in academia over this subject matter it seems and that's brushed upon in the podcast as well. 

she posted on twitter they're going to do a follow up on the first conversation. 

 

[luke viia]

Cool, thanks. I'll check it out.

edit: also I suppose one would study sociology and cultural history (maybe philosophy of religion?) and then make cults a focus in grad school. That's how I'd go about it anyway

Edited November 18, 2021 by luke viia

[Nebraska]

On 11/16/2021 at 7:33 AM, zero said:

^ how can I get a head's up on this shit? I'd totally head down there to hang out with those guys. although the wife may question my sanity more than ever if I start doing stuff like that. oh well!

 

[ignatius]

22 hours ago, luke viia said:

Cool, thanks. I'll check it out.

edit: also I suppose one would study sociology and cultural history (maybe philosophy of religion?) and then make cults a focus in grad school. That's how I'd go about it anyway

yeah.. i suppose.. but i think her road to this place wasn't exactly planned. i think it's possible to be an autodidact for things like this since in many ways it's currently very niche.. though she seems well versed in the history of it all. i wonder what going back to school on it would even offer her other than some kind of legitimacy for network TV appearances. though i guess it depends on the school experience and professors and all that.. but whatever.. i mean.. she knows her shit regardless. 

[luke viia]

2 hours ago, ignatius said:

yeah.. i suppose.. but i think her road to this place wasn't exactly planned. i think it's possible to be an autodidact for things like this since in many ways it's currently very niche.. though she seems well versed in the history of it all. i wonder what going back to school on it would even offer her other than some kind of legitimacy for network TV appearances. though i guess it depends on the school experience and professors and all that.. but whatever.. i mean.. she knows her shit regardless. 

IMO it's about having a well-rounded base of knowledge to inform the specialty stuff, and having your findings reviewed by others in the field (cultural historians or w/e). I'm certainly not trying to put her down, I just, in general, don't trust "independent researchers" from social media, lol. "Independent researcher" is the sort of title that gives anti-vax online pundits an air of authority, for example. 

[auxien]

21 minutes ago, luke viia said:

IMO it's about having a well-rounded base of knowledge to inform the specialty stuff, and having your findings reviewed by others in the field (cultural historians or w/e). I'm certainly not trying to put her down, I just, in general, don't trust "independent researchers" from social media, lol. "Independent researcher" is the sort of title that gives anti-vax online pundits an air of authority, for example. 

sounds like you’re doing your own independent research on those you choose to trust or not. interesting.

 

 

 

really just joking, i ain’t know who y’all or talking about or whatever. i’m with you on always being a bit hesitant for sure.

[ignatius]

3 hours ago, ignatius said:

yeah.. i suppose.. but i think her road to this place wasn't exactly planned. i think it's possible to be an autodidact for things like this since in many ways it's currently very niche.. though she seems well versed in the history of it all. i wonder what going back to school on it would even offer her other than some kind of legitimacy for network TV appearances. though i guess it depends on the school experience and professors and all that.. but whatever.. i mean.. she knows her shit regardless. 

point taken. 

i find that usually the anti-vax types are somehow trying to convert people into 'followers' of some kind and have different motivations that don't have anything to do w/altruism.  after a few minutes listening to them it becomes kind of obvious what they're about.  

i think scientific/medical/vaccine research vs. studying history/cults or similar etc is pretty different when it comes to 'independent researcher'.

[luke viia]

8 minutes ago, ignatius said:

point taken. 

i find that usually the anti-vax types are somehow trying to convert people into 'followers' of some kind and have different motivations that don't have anything to do w/altruism.  after a few minutes listening to them it becomes kind of obvious what they're about.  

i think scientific/medical/vaccine research vs. studying history/cults or similar etc is pretty different when it comes to 'independent researcher'.

agreed

Really I was just curious what her history with this stuff is, idk, doesn't really matter that much. I'm always trying to check sources, we have a saying in Texas, I don't know if y'all have it in Tennessee, but fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, cain't get fooled again

Edited November 20, 2021 by luke viia

[usagi]

35 minutes ago, luke viia said:

we have a saying in Texas, I don't know if y'all have it in Tennessee, but fool me once, shame on me, fool me twice, cain't get fooled again

fool me once, shame on... shame on you? ya fool me ya cain't git fooled again

this line is burned into my brain.

[Nebraska]

https://wgntv.com/news/birds-arent-real-rolling-rally-makes-first-stop-in-missouri/

[dcom]

Quote

I wasn’t surprised by the misspellings and grammar glitches. Chansley is a college dropout, smarter than his persona suggests and a better writer than some of the undergrads I’ve taught but hobbled by the spotty literacy of the autodidact. (Hitler’s minister of propaganda is “Joseph Gerbils”; the civil-rights icon known for his “I Have a Dream” speech is “Martian Luther King Jr.”)

Also no surprise: the weird syncretism of New Age spirituality and right-wing conspiracy theory, which scholars of American religion have dubbed “conspirituality.” This, after all, is a man who describes himself in his back-cover bio as a “shamanic practitioner, QAnon digital soldier,” New Age energy healer, and “God-loving, country-protecting patriot of the U.S.A.” “What we did on Jan. 6 in many ways was an evolution in consciousness,” he told the Washington Post, “because as we marched down the street… shouting ‘USA’ or shouting things like ‘freedom’… we were actually affecting the quantum realm.” Deepak Chopra, meet QAnon.

One Mind at a Time outlines a unified field theory of power, paranoia, and sinister myth. No surprise there, either: Frank P. Mintz, the historian who invented the term, defines conspiracism as the “belief in the primacy of conspiracies in the unfolding of history.” It’s the metanarrative suspicious minds use to make sense of the world. And a significant part of that sense-making consists of sleuthing out the connections between seemingly unrelated things.

Chansley connects the dots between the Freemasons, the Illuminati, Yale’s secretive Skull & Bones society, MK-Ultra (the CIA’s notorious experiment in Better Brainwashing Through LSD), Nikola Tesla, “reptilians from the Draco star system,” “the artificial monolith” found on Mars’s moon Phobos (on loan from Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 ?), the horrors of fluoridation, the depravity of the Royal Family, Jeffrey Epstein, Jeffrey Dahmer, the performance artist Marina Abramović’s “’spirit cooking’ event based on Aleister Crowley Magic,” which Hillary Clinton attended, we’re told, and where “semen, breast milk, and blood” were on the menu. The scattered points coalesce, as they always do, into a constellation: “the deep state takeover of our nation through corrupt laws and the government’s misuse of force.”

A Close Reading of the QAnon Shaman’s Conspiracy Manifesto (Mark Dery/LitHub)

[beerwolf]

There’s two ladies at work who have fallen down this rabbit hole. They were already down that hole before covid appeared, so with that hitting the planet, it properly fried their brains. Took them one step closer to lunacy. I think both of them were dabbling with right-wing online forums, which then led to some quasi Christian religious stuff. This was all bought about by their (surprisingly quite vocal, especially as there are a fair few of them at work) distrust/dislike of all Muslims. What’s funny is that they think they have some sort of unique knowledge about what’s really going on in the world. Whereas all I see is two gullible muppets who have been taken hook, line and sinker. Though because of the environment I work in, I learnt a long time ago not to start arguing, just go to work, do your thing. Lucky most of my day I work outside and alone, so I just keep grinning. It’s better that than to get stuck into workplace politics, cause it’s a brain drain. My Bose QC remain mostly on my head at the depot.

Anyway I did try once to pick these ladies brains over something. I’d heard a rumour that they spouting some hilarious insane gobbledygook and I think my headphones were on charge and I fancied a bit of mischief, so I went to the room they work in, and cunningly dropped a few vague comments about something. Give Carol her due she just spun round, pointed at me and started yelling almost at the top of her voice I KNOW YOU’RE TRYING TO EXTRACT INFORMATION FROM ME!!! I KNOW YOU’RE TRYING TO EXTRACT INFORMATION FROM ME!!!

Fucking lunatics  

 

Edited November 27, 2021 by beerwolf

[Silent Member]

lol

[Nebraska]

lin wood released audio betwix himself and general michael flynn purporting qanon was a CIA dis-information campaign

https://t.me/RealVincentJames/10791

this comes on the heels of wood being accused of grifting from qanon scholars

 

[zlemflolia]

good CitationsNeeded on faux right wing populism.  doesn't mention QAnon but the topics are adjacent, like Tea Party being an astroturfed right wing billionaire movement

https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/episode-147-the-gops-rightwing-populism-rebrand-how-billionaire-backed-charlatans-pick-off-disillusioned-lefties-part-i

https://citationsneeded.libsyn.com/ep-148-the-gops-rightwing-populism-rebrand-part-ii-messaging-wars-in-white-america

Edited November 30, 2021 by ilqx hermolia xpli

[chenGOD]

Oh look, we have a new Queen of Canada:

https://www.vice.com/en/article/3abb5w/qanons-queen-of-canada-alleges-rcmp-visited-her-after-shoot-to-kill-order

(Sensationalist headline alert - the "shoot to kill" order came from the "Q"ueen, not the cops).

[zero]

some of these Q nutters are still hanging around downtown Dallas. it's been over a month and JFK hasn't shown. do they not have jobs? how do they have $ to pay for hotels and just hang out at the grassy knoll all day? 

https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/on-qanon-leaders-social-media-a-new-conspiracy-what-if-biden-faked-the-waukesha-parade-attack-12881255

Quote

A follower of Protzman’s dismissed JFK’s assassination as fake. “Joe Biden’s been dead for almost two years,” he said. “So has Mike Pence. Why do you think the fly landed on him at the debate?”

lol

[luke viia]

lol

[TubularCorporation]

1 hour ago, zero said:

some of these Q nutters are still hanging around downtown Dallas. it's been over a month and JFK hasn't shown. do they not have jobs? how do they have $ to pay for hotels and just hang out at the grassy knoll all day? 

https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/on-qanon-leaders-social-media-a-new-conspiracy-what-if-biden-faked-the-waukesha-parade-attack-12881255

lol

It's interesting, one of the most rabid Qanoners I know of ended up there through the old PAUL McCARTNEY IS DEAD conspiracies from the 60s.

[ignatius]

1 hour ago, zero said:

some of these Q nutters are still hanging around downtown Dallas. it's been over a month and JFK hasn't shown. do they not have jobs? how do they have $ to pay for hotels and just hang out at the grassy knoll all day? 

https://www.dallasobserver.com/news/on-qanon-leaders-social-media-a-new-conspiracy-what-if-biden-faked-the-waukesha-parade-attack-12881255

lol

that article is cray and kind of scary really. they're going into full jim jones cult behavior. could get pretty weird and scary. if this guy motivates these people to do something to harm themselves or others... wtf. 

One of those followers gave her name as Kelly, explaining that she had made the journey from Minnesota to be present for Protzman's prophecies. "He's wonderful," she said. "He's what we call a truth-teller. And us, we're all called truth-seekers." 

Meanwhile, Vice News has reported that Protzman's followers are having their phone calls and text messages monitored by Protzman's closest confidantes. Some have also been coerced into consuming a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and probiotic supplements, family members of the QAnon cultists told Vice. 

A woman who was in her mid-fifties and from Delaware announced to the others that there would be a "mandatory" meeting in the Hyatt's basement conference room later that night. 

“It’s about a heart connection, and loving each other,” she told the Observer, offering a hug. “Chest to chest.”

Edited December 7, 2021 by ignatius