Thanks for this, I look forward to reading up on it. I didn’t know Russian disinformation sources were involved in spreading the QAnon stuff, but it makes perfect sense.
Since these folks don’t think the 13th amendment happened, this makes sense.
It is probably funded by the republican version of George Soros. So either the Mercers or Kochs.
I ran into this article, describing how young people are posting texts from crazy family members online: People Tweet About Fighting QAnon Lies Sent By Family Members
It seems that some people lost faith after the insurrection, others after the inauguration, but the goalposts may as well be on wheels and the True Q will still believe. I’ve seen March 4th referenced in a few places, but also that Trump was a deep-state plant–he used to be a Democrat!–to lure True Believers out in the open to be targeted.
Be prepared for 4 more years of this bullshit as it metastasizes.
Only two Kochs left at this point, and I don’t expect them to be around too much longer.
O.k. article, except that it seemed to be saying it was only Boomers falling for the Q shit. Looks like a lot of all ages are falling for it to me.
One of my coworkers started ranting on incessantly about election fraud in mid November. After a particular scary episode where she accused several coworkers of being participants in child trafficking and sex abuse, she “decided to take some time off to deal with some health issues” and was on LOA. Returned to work after New Years and after behaving normally for a couple of days, the insurrection happened and she was triumphant during the storming of the capitol, certain that the Patriots has prevailed. The next day she was ranting worse than ever about the Antifa/BLM false flag operation. She was fired.
Her husband was detained while trying to enter our office building the next week. The building has been closed to almost everyone since last March. He claimed that he was there to “retrieve important evidence”. He also was screaming that our CEO was a ring leader of some conspiracy to destroy America.
She’s Vietnamese American and Catholic and has always been very, very right wing. Sees the Vietnam war as a struggle between Christianity and either Atheism of Buddhism. Very angry at Carter (sic) for pulling out of the war and leaving the “heroes and martyrs” behind.
But the last couple of years she’s really gone off the rails. Incredibly as an actual boat person, she virulently anti-immigrant particularly asylum seekers, has been more and more openly racist toward Black, Hispanic and Chinese people. Unfortunately our big boss is also a bigot, albeit a more closeted one. So until this coworker went so nutty as to actually cause concerns about our physical safety, nothing was done. HR and Security had to talk her into taking any action at all.
We have a couple of coworkers who still think the company “silenced her unfairly” while liberal propaganda is allowed (aka our corporate Diversity & Inclusion programs).
These are not some semi-literate yahoos. Every one of these has a degree from a good university (top 100 at least) and makes at least $100k per year.
The whole window of what is acceptable in the professional (virtual) workplace has moved so far to the nutcase direction, it’s really scary.
My brother on the other side of the country also working for a large global company also reports political strife in the workplace that would be unheard of until last year. Constantly taking about “those people” who are going to run amok killing, robbing, raping and looting when Biden emasculates the police. Biden bring a Chinese agent, etc. Two years ago the only vaguely political talk would be complaining about Democrats over regulating their industry.
Not incredible at all, actually I’m tempted to call it typical. You’d think that people that were subjected to hatred and abuse over their ethnicity would be more sensitive to the harm it causes and less likely to do that shit to other people, right?
In my experience, not at all. It’s like thinking that if someone was abused as a child, they’d be less likely to abuse their own children. But that’s just not true, abused children are more likely to be abusers, IIRC.
In my career, I spent a lot of time interacting with recent immigrants - the house staff of the wealthy people I worked for were largely recent immigrants, as were a lot of the construction workers I worked with.
They leaned conservative for a couple of reasons, one was they were very religious, by and large, and strongly against gay rights and abortion. They were also big believers in bootstrapping and against the idea of public assistance. “I grew up in poverty in an oppressive country and managed to extricate myself and become successful in America, and if I can do it, so can they” was the general refrain.
And a lot of them were virulently racist. I’ve heard Muslim Indians go on screeds against Sikh Indians that would be worthy of the KKK and the most racist anti-black sentiments I’ve ever heard came from Central American immigrants.
Now, I’m not claiming that all immigrants hold these views, not at all. A lot of them, especially the younger ones, are quite liberal.
But the idea that immigrants as a block are supportive of policies that allow other people to immigrate and that they will be reliable liberal voters is just wrong, IMHO, and a big political miscalculation.
“Fuck you, I got mine” is an unfortunately common attitude among humans.
Yeah, definitely a warped way some like to consummate how they’ve finally “made it”.
“Fuck you, I got mine” is the tip of the berg. I’ve witnessed ( heard ) others display this weird conflation of being a sore winner and sore loser by resolving to be a a bigger jerk than the ones they were once victims of.
I liken it to this. Say I used to be a slave ( or indentured servant ) and I finally secured my freedom and went on to be prosperous. I’d be happy to see where slavery or indentured servitude no longer exists. The jerks I described above would feel like they have glory denied because slavery is abolished: they want to be able to say “I made it” by having their own slaves.
Obviously not literally, but it illustrates the dynamic.
I myself have a brother who emigrated to the US nine months before I did. And was making fun of my accent and table manners as soon as I landed.
Unsurprisingly, he is a Trumpet.
A huge one. People may not want to believe it, but a whole damn lot of our immigrants did not come particularly looking for enlightened rule, diversity, or liberal values for mankind. Just for safety and opportunity for themselves.
I was abused as a child. Not just discipline, but beaten when my dad was having a bad day. I used that as an example of how not to be and as a result I never lay a hand on my kids. In fact I even get uncomfortable when my wife gives my daughter even a small hand slap. I am fully aware that I am atypical though. I just can’t imagine my kids going through what I did growing up, it makes me sick. 
Yup. My history professor in college liked to point out that many people who arrive in a place promptly try to slam the door shut for others.
One thing I notice is that this requires recognizing the problem in the first place. It seems to me that a lot of those who are abused internalize the abuse as “normal.” This even sometimes persists when they intellectually realize that it was bad.
Also, I suspect that thinking about how to deal with the issues requires thinking about the abuse, which will of course bring up uncomfortable emotions. So there would be a natural inclination to just not think about it at all.
To relate that back to immigrants who want to keep out other immigrants: they may have internalized the way they were treated as the normal “American” way to be, and naturally tend to avoid thinking about how bad it felt to them at the time since doing so is distressful.
I work with a flat earther who believes that Trump will return in triumph “within 90 days”. He had been dead sure that Biden would never become president, of course. I refuse to talk to him directly, it all comes through someone with a greater ability to keep his eyes from rolling and / or from laughing out loud.
Stay tuned. . .
They’ll have at least the next 4 years to complain about Biden/Harris, so they’ll be able to channel their frustrations that way and go back to looking for liberal boogeymen lurking under the woodwork.
The closest I have to a personal QAnon experience was when I went to a Letterkenny viewing party at my friend’s brother’s. He called Biden “The Commander in Queef.” I said let’s not spoil this great occasion with politics. Unfortunately, this was in Georgia and the ad breaks were provided by the senatorial runoff candidates.
Wait… Are you saying there’s a conspiracy to use conspiracy theorists to spread disinformation through conspiracy theories?
In case you’re serious: the disinformation conspiracy theory has been thing since at least October of 2001.
Said another way, it’s conspiracy theories all the way down. All the way down. Deep, deep, deep into the very center of the Earth.