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Post by Admin on Jul 25, 2020 9:52:29 GMT
Issue: July 23, 2020 Facebook plans to announce QAnon content crackdown next month By Tom Parker Posted 2:51 pm Two Facebook employees also claimed that the company has been coordinating with Twitter and other social media platforms. reclaimthenet.org/facebook-plans-qanon-content-crackdown/Facebook is reportedly preparing to follow in the footsteps of Twitter and getting ready to purge QAnon content from its platform. Followers of QAnon generally support President Trump and believe that an anonymous user account named “Q” shares information online about the plans of a high-level government insider or group of insiders who are working to take down the Deep State (a group inside the government that operates independently of elected officials to promote its own interests). The New York Times reports that two Facebook employees, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said that Facebook will be taking similar steps to those taken by Twitter in order to limit the reach of QAnon content and the that it will be announcing its plans next month. The employees added that Facebook has been coordinating with Twitter and other social media companies when formulating its plans to purge QAnon content.
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Post by Admin on Jul 25, 2020 18:27:35 GMT
Conspiracy Endorsement as Motivated Reasoning: The Moderating Roles of Political Knowledge and Trust Joanne M. Miller Kyle L. Saunders Christina E. Farhart onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1111/ajps.12234Abstract Given the potential political and social significance of conspiracy beliefs, a substantial and growing body of work examines the individual‐level correlates of belief in conspiracy theories and general conspiratorial predispositions. However, although we know much about the psychological antecedents of conspiracy endorsement, we know less about the individual‐level political causes of these prevalent and consequential beliefs. Our work draws from the extant literature to posit that endorsement of conspiracy theories is a motivated process that serves both ideological and psychological needs. In doing so, we develop a theory that identifies a particular type of person—one who is both highly knowledgeable about politics and lacking in trust—who is most susceptible to ideologically motivated conspiracy endorsement. Further, we demonstrate that the moderators of belief in conspiracy theories are strikingly different for conservatives and liberals .
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Post by Admin on Jul 26, 2020 18:26:39 GMT
HUMANS AND TECHNOLOGY It’s too late to stop QAnon with fact checks and account bans Twitter and Facebook won't be able to deal with the 'omniconspiracy' without ‘rethinking the entire information ecosystem’ By Abby Ohlheiser July 26, 2020 www.technologyreview.com/2020/07/26/1005609/qanon-facebook-twitter-youtuube/amp/Twitter is perfect as a megaphone for the far right: its trending topics are easy to game, journalists spend way too much time on the site, and—if you’re lucky—the President of the United States might retweet you. QAnon, the continuously evolving pro-Trump conspiracy theory, is good at Twitter in the same way as other successful internet-native ideologies—using the platform to manipulate information, attention and distribution all at the same time. On Tuesday, Twitter took a step aimed at limiting how successful QAnon can be there, including taking down about 7,000 accounts that promote the conspiracy, designating QAnon as “coordinated harmful activity,” and preventing related terms from showing up in trending and search results. “We will permanently suspend accounts Tweeting about these topics that we know are engaged in violations of our multi-account policy, coordinating abuse around individual victims, or are attempting to evade a previous suspension,” Twitter announced. The company added that they’d seen an increase in those activities in recent weeks. The New York Times reported that Facebook was planning to “take similar steps to limit the reach of QAnon content on its platform” next month, citing two employees of the company who spoke anonymously. On Friday, TikTok blocked several hashtags related to QAnon from search results. This most recent push to limit QAnon’s reach follows two high-profile campaigns driven by QAnon. First American model and celebrity Chrissy Teigen, who has more than 13 million followers on Twitter, was the target of an intense harassment campaign, then more recently, QAnon accounts were instrumental in spreading a bogus human trafficking conspiracy theory about the furniture marketplace Wayfair. The claims spread from Twitter’s trending bar to Instagram and TikTok accounts promoting the conspiracy theory to their followers. “That activity has raised the profile of the very long-standing problem of coordinated brigading. That kind of mass harassment has a significant impact on people’s lives,” said Renee DiResta, research manager at the Stanford Internet Observatory and an expert in online disinformation. But Twitter proficiency is only one small part of why QAnon wields influence, and just one example of how platforms amplify fringe beliefs and harmful activity. To actually stop QAnon, experts say, would take a lot more work and coordination. That is, if it’s even possible.
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Post by Admin on Jul 27, 2020 15:15:38 GMT
My Father, the QAnon Conspiracy Theorist After my parents got divorced, Dad began a slow slide into isolation. Eventually he found consolation in the darkest corners of the web. Can I help him get back out? narratively.com/my-father-the-qanon-conspiracy-theorist/A slender green toy alien sits inside a water-filled pickle jar in my dad’s garage, perched on a wooden ledge in front of old Christmas and birthday cards pinned to the wall. Photos of my brother, sister and I when we were younger are there too, along with drawings we made in kindergarten. Beneath this green plastic being, mechanic tools litter the ledge. Dust covers everything: nuts, bolts, wrenches, ratchets, sockets and the pickle jar. This toy alien in the pickle jar has been in my dad’s garage for as long as I can remember. Its black oval eyes peer out at its surroundings, while its small black hole of a mouth makes it look like it’s gasping for breath. As the years have gone by, its green color has blended into the water, giving the alien a murky appearance. The alien is isolated from the rest of the world by thin glass. Viewers can peer in and see its suffering. Someone could easily untighten the lid, pour out the water, and the alien would finally be free, but no one ever has. Much like the alien trapped in the pickle jar, my dad has become trapped, not behind glass, but in his own mind. My dad is a conspiracy theorist. Among other things, he firmly believes that aliens exist and that the government is keeping that fact from the public. This interest has grown to consume his thoughts, and his idea of reality has become distorted. Isolation, a lack of close friends and family, the internet, and poor influences have caused him to doubt the reality of the world. In the past year, it’s become difficult to even have a normal conversation with him. Also in the past year, he’s found a network that affirms his beliefs. This network is destroying his life and relationships with those around him. It is known as QAnon. QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theorist group with enough influence and reach that the FBI has called it a domestic terrorism threat. Its members were the driving force behind Pizzagate, the conspiracy theory that posited that Bill and Hillary Clinton were running a child sex-trafficking ring in the basement of a pizza parlor in Washington, D.C. That theory led a North Carolina man named Edgar Maddison Welch to travel to the nation’s capital and point a rifle at an employee of the pizzeria. Since then, the child sex-trafficking ring conspiracy has grown to become an all-encompassing theory of global power, supposedly involving the Obamas, the Bushes, the Vatican, Disney, Hollywood, the CIA and many others — including the FBI, following the release of their document identifying QAnon as a terrorism threat. All of these groups are allegedly involved in a “deep state” plot to control the world.
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Post by Admin on Jul 29, 2020 0:17:33 GMT
The QAnon Conspiracy This growing conspiracy theory posits that a global cabal of pedophiles secretly controls the US government. skeptoid.com/episodes/4738Surveys show that about a quarter of Americans are familiar with the QAnon conspiracy theory, and that's a staggering number of people. What began as a few random and childishly implausible posts on an obscure Internet message board favored by porn enthusiasts, racists, and other fringe extremists, has grown into a very serious political movement in just a few years. Today we're going to shine our skeptical light into the darkest corners of the Internet to illuminate the QAnon conspiracy theory, one of the most fascinating developments that will grace the pages of sociology textbooks for decades to come. During the 2016 US presidential campaign in which Donald Trump ultimately defeated Hillary Clinton, a number of "anons" — a term for people posting to the Internet anonymously — began to make false derogatory claims about Clinton in an effort to tilt public opinion in favor of Trump. These posters included "FBI Anon" who assured Trump supporters that Clinton would be arrested as soon as Trump was elected, and others with names such as "CIA Anon", "WH Insider Anon", and "High Level Insider Anon". They all claimed to be in positions of special insight and power, and all generally assured Trump voters that should their candidate prevail, a vast wave of indictments against Democrats would follow, who would then be imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay. One such anon was "Q Clearance Patriot" who first posted in a forum thread called "Calm Before the Storm" in October 2017. The topic of the thread was an unexplained comment made by Trump — who had, by then, already been elected — in which he said we were in the calm before the storm, and when asked by reporters what he was talking about, he said "You'll find out." Well, nobody ever did, and nothing in particular ever happened that seemed to match it. It was almost certainly just another random word dump from someone well known for just saying words when he had nothing particular to say. But this was the world's introduction to Q. Q clearance is an actual thing; it's the highest security clearance level at the US Department of Energy, equivalent to a Top Secret clearance at the Department of Defense. There's no secret about this or other clearance levels; their existence and meaning is public information. But whoever might hold them, or what classified information they have access to, is another matter. Q claimed to be such an individual, and although the predictions of indictments and "storms" that he made turned out to be as baseless as those made by FBI Anon and all the other anons, for some reason Q is the one who gained traction. Before long, Q had a vast following, mainly among people who longed to see far-right values take over in Washington. Q's posts just seemed to hit the right nerve. The world of QAnon is one in which Trump is a lone, heroic warrior, the only person strong enough to take a stand against a nebulous entity they call the "deep state". The deep state is a secret shadow government, led by Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, philanthropist George Soros, and others, existing to facilitate unspecified corruption and — hold onto your hats — their global pedophilia ring. In the QAnon world, the US Democratic party, the deep state, and pedophilia are essentially synonymous. The added element of pedophilia brings validation to those on the far right who see the left as the cause of all of their problems, and can now also justifiably cast it as the ultimate evil. The conspiracy theory appeals most to those who see themselves as marginalized and victimized, and they seek to retake power through Trump, who they see as a messianic outsider untainted by deep state corruption. In many ways, the Internet commenter calling himself Q is not the cause of anything; rather, the widespread, earnest acceptance of the ideas he expresses is an inevitable symptom of the frustration felt by QAnon believers who see themselves as marginalized in the post-Obama era, smoldering in the ruins following the wave of progressive values that had swept across the nation for 8 years. QAnon just happened to be the rallying point that these victims found, where they could plant a flag of white nationalism and cheer Trump's retaking of America for them. Correspondingly, much of the content shared among QAnon believers is surprisingly positive. Their principle social media hashtag #WWG1WGA ("Where we go one, we go all") celebrates unity and patriotism — granted, it's a peculiar brand of patriotism hard to understand for those outside the movement. Another QAnon hashtag #TheGreatAwakening references what they see as a renaissance for transparency and justice. One of their most common themes is "Follow the white rabbit," which encourages digging for more information about the deep state — though, unfortunately, this usually means an echo chamber of reinforcing YouTube videos. But while adherents see themselves as heroes in pursuit of the ultimate good, the FBI and others do not. The FBI has labeled QAnon a potential domestic terror threat, following a number of violent crimes and threats performed in Q's name. In 2018, a heavily armed man blocked the road over Hoover Dam with an armored van demanding the release of information he believed Q had revealed. In 2019, a man who considered himself a QAnon soldier murdered a boss of the Gambino crime family, believing him to be a deep state operative. Also in 2019, a woman was arrested after conspiring with other QAnon believers to kidnap an unnamed person to protect them from Satan-worshiping pedophiles, whom they planned to attack during the raid. And I, as the author of a book on conspiracy theories, receive anonymous death threats from QAnon believers all the time, as do many of my colleagues. Obviously, the very idea that Q could be an actual person with Q clearance actually posting government secrets to the Internet is so ludicrous as to be comical. Revealing top secret information is extremely illegal, and it would be trivial for federal law enforcement to track down whoever is making these posts — especially if their pool of suspects was as small as the tiny number of people with Q clearance. Any real person at that level in government would probably never have advanced to their current position if they were in the habit of freely posting classified information to the Internet. If we allow the equally ludicrous prospect that the Q persona is a deliberate disinformation campaign in the Trump administration, then what is there to be gained? Making yourself look foolish with failed predictions? Nothing about it makes any sense at all. Yet, as we see, the total implausibility of QAnon has had little impact on its penetration into the far right. In the 2020 US election, at least 60 candidates running for Congress had expressed their belief that QAnon is real. Substantial academic research has sought to answer the question of why sane, smart people believe irrational conspiracy theories, and it's a subject we've covered many times right here on Skeptoid. The tendency to perceive evil threats conspiring against good people is deeply rooted in our human brains and always has been, ever since our earliest primitive days when a certain amount of native paranoia resulted in just enough incremental hazard avoidance that natural selection embedded it into our genes. Today, we see that the more you feel you're not in control of your life, the more likely you are to believe there's a conspiracy against you. The more anxious or worried about it you get, the stronger this tendency becomes. Presidents Obama and Trump were about as polar opposites as two human beings can be; and so the more a person feels slighted by one, the more likely they are to jump aboard a bandwagon glorifying the other. Nevertheless, somewhere there is an actual person typing Q's posts into a computer — and he's real, he's not the figment of an overactive pattern-matching engine in someone's ape brain. So inevitably we're forced to ask who is Q? Who is the person — or group of people — making these posts? While there has never been a serious suggestion that he is actually who he claims to be — an active government operative with Q level clearance who is freely allowed to publicly post classified information to the Internet — there has been at least one interesting piece of evidence suggesting that Q is a deliberate hoax. In the first few months of Q's existence he would frequently make revelations, usually of the form that Hillary Clinton and hundreds of other Democrats would be indicted tomorrow, and of course not one of them ever came true. Perhaps to avoid losing credibility, he began posting in codes — codes which followers have been free to interpret as whatever they want them to mean: Code: AB-aKd&Egh281Q 282-18-2983821-28172391u721 DISTRESS. CHECK-IN 00:00+[37209-a271927]-[381937821] ROUTE T Q In August of 2018, password expert Mark Burnett posted a Twitter thread breaking down Q's codes. Burnett has analyzed countless millions of passwords and written a book about how and why people choose and create passwords — in particular, how they pound out pseudo-random passwords by just haphazardly hitting keys. Taking into account factors like character frequency, character position on the keyboard, character sequencing, and finger positioning on a standard QWERTY keyword, Burnett found that Q's codes bear every predictable trait of random character striking from the standard finger position, and none of the traits of actual meaningful text. Apparently Q got tired of making false predictions, and then just got lazy and typed random codes that he knew his followers would mold into whatever did come true. If your followers are going to do all your work for you, why do it yourself? And so with every reason to believe that Q is a deliberate hoax, we can turn to candidates for who the hoaxer might be. A lot of people have suggested a Russian troll farm, as rallying the far right (and the far left) have proven to be effective tactics for them at destabilizing the US socio-political system. That's a very reasonable guess, and it wouldn't surprise me if it were true. Some have suggested a liberal comedian or writer having fun trolling the far right, but as Q has been dragging on for years now, the time to spring the punchline has long past and this possibility seems unlikely. A strong candidate is Jim Watkins (and/or his son Ron), a former web pornographer, Army veteran, vocal first amendment advocate, and owner of the various web forums where Q has posted. Subpoenaed to Congress in 2019, he showed up wearing a Q collar pin and has promoted values prominent among the QAnon community, e.g., establishing special text formatting conventions on his forum for identifying and calling out gays and Jews. But at the end of the day, it doesn't really matter who the fingers belong to on the keyboard at the other end of the Internet connection. QAnon is not about the person who invented the Q persona and was singularly fortunate in having it succeed so well online; QAnon is about a tribe of people who feel their time has come to regain their power after having been sidelined. And, from this perspective, it is the story of nearly all conspiracy theorists, whether they're on the left or the right, or whatever other ideology unites them in their belief. Conspiracy ideation cuts horizontally across all demographics and it reaches all of us to some degree. This non-partisan, equal-opportunity tendency for all of us to embrace conspiracy theories is, in fact, a somber echo of "Where we go one, we go all." Our task must not be merely to laugh at the foolishness of the QAnon phenomenon, but rather to reexamine our own beliefs and flush out all conspiratorial tendencies — including our own.
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Post by Admin on Jul 29, 2020 20:17:13 GMT
6 Reasons so Many Spiritual People Have Been Fooled by Qanon By Martin Winiecki / filmsforaction.org / Jul 27, 2020 www.filmsforaction.org/articles/6-reasons-so-many-spiritual-people-have-been-fooled-by-qanon/At a time, when paramilitary units snatch nonviolent protesters from the streets of big American cities and when even Fox News has finally begun to apply scrutiny on the occupant of the White House, seeing much of the New Age scene convert into the latest constituency for Trump's re-election and fascist takeover (deemed as “the great awakening”), is scary on so many levels. In recent weeks, I've had various dialogues through social media with acquaintances or friends in the spiritual scene who have fallen for what I consider an outrageous propaganda campaign by and for the far-right, QAnon. I've tried my best to lead these conversations with respect and the modesty to learn about new things. From what I've seen is that people who flirt with or buy into the QAnon narratives aren't stupid or unaware. I recognize many of them as intelligent and open-minded. That's what makes the phenomenon all the more alarming. In my view, QAnon highlights something is deeply rotten in the spiritual / New Age scene that goes way beyond individuals. It concerns the blind spots collectively held and passed on this subculture. I know some of you will find this contentious or will take this as proof that I'm brainwashed by the powers that be (TPTB). But here are what I consider 6 reasons why so many spiritual folks have been fooled by QAnon (this list isn't intended to be exhaustive): 1) Lack of Structural Analysis People who have stepped out of the negative mentalities of mainstream culture often shockingly begin to detect conspiracies, corruptions and lies everywhere. Their eyes suddenly open for the highly criminal nature of this entire society. And for how mainstream media (MSM) has functioned as the doorkeeper for TPTB, the censor against the truth of the injustices underlying the normality of everyday bourgeois existence. Yet when this sense of being deceived by what MSM is telling you isn't backed up by an actual understanding of the systems of oppression that are causing both the crimes, oppression and injustice and their cover-up through media, you can easily be manipulated by those who will seek to exploit this sense of disillusionment and deception by frame the conspiracy around certain people, social groups and organizations – rather than unveiling the system that's wired for conspiracy, for exploitation, war and deceit. As a general principle, I would say: Any type of communication that's trying to cast blame for systemic problems on particular individuals or groups without addressing the system itself is just another way for the system to protect itself. And that is precisely what QAnon is. It's an extremely smart "divide and rule" wedge that channels the disillusionment with a broken and structurally unjust system, which could lead to actual political awakening into identification with a proto-fascist government by, for and of the billionaire class, Wall St, oil companies and the Military-Industrial Complex. Due to lacking structural analysis, people simply can't imagine that the one allegedly "telling the truth" is part of the same system as the ones they attack. But just because you recognize one of two competing factions to lie doesn't mean the other faction automatically speaks the truth. Counter-propaganda can just be as deceiving as mainstream propaganda. People forget that power isn't about truth, but about narrative control. 2) Overly Simplistic, Binary Thinking The new age scene has a serious psycho-spiritual problem: the suppression of unconscious shadow material. Their often excessively one-sided focus on the pure, spiritual plane of light and love leads to an equally excessive negation of "negative emotions" like fear and anger. Many new agers have created a self image of their own personality, a "spiritual ego," by which they pretend to already embody the pure, luminous being they aspire to be and thereby suppress their “negativity” in a way that it isn't accessible to their conscious reflection. The shadow therefore takes on a life of its own, which will terrorize and subconsciously dominate them from the psychological substratum of the neglected, unloved parts of themselves. Fear and anger are powerful emotions, which don't go away by denying them. To the very contrary, the shadow grows the more it's denied. And the more you have to suppress negativity in yourself, the more susceptible you will be to binary conspiracy narratives of good-vs-evil. As Paul Levy writes in his seminal work Dispelling Wetiko: Spiritual/New Age practitioners who endlessly affirm the light while ignoring the shadow are one more example of yet another style of falling under the spell of wetiko. It’s a beautiful thing to visualize and affirm the light, just not as an unconscious or fearful reaction against the darkness. Many metaphysical “light workers” are actually caricatures of genuine spiritual practitioners, as in their affirmations of the light are unwittingly avoiding conscious relationship with the darkness within themselves. Thinking that they don’t want to “feed the darkness” by putting their attention on it, in their turning away from and avoiding their own darkness, they are unwittingly reinforcing the very evil from which they are fleeing. Looking away from darkness, thus keeping it unconscious, is what evil depends upon for its existence. If we unconsciously react, as compared to consciously respond, to evil by turning a blind eye toward it – “seeing no evil” – we are investing the darkness with power over us.” In this way, the new age scene has come to be the useful idiot for TPTB. Simplistic and dualistic spiritual narratives have come to serve as a new "opium for the people." This is nothing new. Totalitarian ideologies have always needed the ideological foundation of a metaphysical world view which would trap people in their neurotic personality split and incite them to suppress and externalize their shadow – or "emotional plague," as Wilhelm Reich put it – by projecting it onto others. Just because new age spirituality doesn't come along as dogmatic and rigid as the teachings of institutionalized religions doesn't save it from this trap. Only consciously embracing and working with the shadow will. As the great psychologist C.G. Jung said, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” 3) Implicit Racial Bias Implicit racial bias, i.e. racist prejudice that people carry within themselves unknowingly, is obviously another factor that makes people to fall for far-right conspiracy theories. In a world in which Black, Indigenous and People of Color are rising for equal rights, many white people socialized to feel entitled to their privilege of racial superiority currently feel (subconsciously) threatened and so victimize themselves. Though people who spread those narratives might not be willing to admit it (or intend to perpetuate racism), the infinitely repeated stories of "George Soros is controlling all the social movements" or "Black Lives Matter is a tool of the liberal elites to stage a race war" are clearly reflections of well-known racist tropes. The Soros narrative is just another version of classic antisemitic fairytale of "the powerful shady Jews who pull the strings from behind closed doors." And the BLM narrative reveals deep anti-black bias, e.g. racist beliefs such as "black people aren't able to speak for themselves" or "they must be manipulated by powerful forces behind them." The equation of BLM with "riots" and "looting" is just another testimony to the anti-black sentiment of white people who associate black equity and liberation with danger, threat and violence. The new age scene in its aforementioned suppression of shadow material can't admit to racism being a problem. And for lack of structural analysis, it can't be seen as a systemic issue either. Instead people use spiritual bypassing to escape the confrontation, arguing to see no color because "we are all one" and "all beings are the same," and will often discredit those struggle for equal human rights by saying "all lives matter." And when racism is pointed out directly, many a spiritual seeker will turn it around against the person giving the feedback, claiming, "You're projecting your shadow onto me,” “This is your karmic wound,” or “By bringing up this divisive topic, you're creating separation.” 4) No Scrutiny on Alternative Media Many spiritual folks are so detached from the actual down-to-Earth reality, which they denounce as "illusion," and are so reluctant to accept that their own political views reflect ideology that many are in a mental state in which they believe everything and nothing at once. According to the great political philosopher Hannah Arendt, this is precisely the psychological state of people who follow totalitarian ideologies. In the case of today's new age movement, this phenomenon plays out in very tricky ways. Something deeply contradictory is going on here. While many of my new age friends apply highest scrutiny and skepticism on MSM, most will believe the cheapest lies handed out by alternative platforms, even if communicated in the most primitive ways. (By which you know that it's not about the truth, it's about which camp you identify with. Confirmation bias will do the rest for you.) Behind this is a massive media crisis. Most people who've grown up in the last century saw the MSM as stable pillars of reliable, objective truth. Something was held as true because it was reported on TV. In the last decade especially, MSM has been exposed as being biased and untrustworthy, committed not necessarily to the truth, but to preserving the status quo and the power of the dominant elites. Being shaken in their worldview, many people with turned away, switched sides and now believe whatever alternative media is telling them, in similar ways they previously believed MSM. However, the ethical and journalistic standards of many of the rapidly growing alternative media outlets (e.g. InfoWars, London Real, Collective Evolution, ...) are actually way lower than those of their mainstream competitors, for everything that's problematic with them. In addition, social media platforms are programmed in ways that encourage binary thinking and create echo chambers in which like-minded people reinforce each others beliefs, conjuring up a kind of groupthink without critical assessment of claims passed around in certain scenes. Lies, because repeated by many over and over, are finally just being "felt" as if they are true. For commercial alternative media platforms this is clearly not just about content, but about money. It's about generating the biggest possible numbers of followers and viewers so they can cash in on them. And they've seen, just like much of MSM has, that releasing emotionally charged, simplistic messages which feeds into people's neurotic minds and racial stereotypes is what gets you millions of followers – instead of an honest, nuanced and thorough engagement with an ever more complex and contradicting world. 5) The Left has Lost its Appeal Another strong reason why spiritual folks are running into the open arms of the far right is that they've grown tired of the Left, which used to be the traditional political home for most. In my view, there are clearly understandable factors for this, such as: stubborn materialism and rejection of anything to do with spirituality or even love intellectual elitism and arrogance hypocrisy / collusion with the system (e.g. by political or social movements that start out with radical critique but ultimately become part of the mainstream and defend the status quo) moral and ideological rigidity lack of empathy in treating with people who hold different beliefs or commit mistakes, as expressed in merciless character assassinations 6) The Need for Tribe and Community QAnon's narratives are those of a salvationist cult: "we," the righteous few, will liberate the world from the spell of evil. People who've previously had no connection to each other are fused together in an illusionary sense of shared identity, in an unprecedented historic mission. Why do people fall for this story? Because they feel lonely and lost in an anonymous, alienating world of competition, isolation and collapse. People join movements and adhere to ideologies because they need belonging. We all need belonging – this is fundamental to our very humanity. Instead of ridiculing those who seek to find belonging in movements with dehumanizing ideologies, we need to build movements that affirm people's dignity, because they can offer a sense of belonging while having a greater, shared purpose for the world. Ultimately, QAnon to me is a provocation and a mirror that shows that the concept and practice of "sacred activism" needs to be deepened, so we can build movements that are both spiritual and political, that combine structural analysis of the systems of power with shadow work (addressing the internalized patterns of racist and patriarchal bias as well as the deeper wounds and patterns of collective trauma), while building community, regenerating bioregions and focusing on the vision of a post-capitalist, post-imperialist world that can bring together those who are currently still divided.
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Post by Admin on Aug 1, 2020 18:37:45 GMT
The QAnon Conspiracy Theory: A Security Threat in the Making? JULY 2020, VOLUME 13, ISSUE 7 Authors: AMARNATH AMARASINGAM, MARC-ANDRÉ ARGENTINO ctc.usma.edu/the-qanon-conspiracy-theory-a-security-threat-in-the-making/Abstract: The QAnon conspiracy theory, which emerged in 2017, has quickly risen to prominence in the United States. A survey of cases of individuals who have allegedly or apparently been radicalized to criminal acts with a nexus to violence by QAnon, including one case that saw a guilty plea on a terrorism charge, makes clear that QAnon represents a public security threat with the potential in the future to become a more impactful domestic terror threat. This is true especially given that conspiracy theories have a track record of propelling terrorist violence elsewhere in the West as well as QAnon’s more recent influence on mainstream political discourse. Generally speaking, law enforcement and public policy attention with respect to terrorism and political violence in North America tends to focus on jihadi or far-right extremism.1 At first glance, QAnon, the bizarre assemblage of far-right conspiracy theories that holds that U.S. President Donald Trump is waging a secret war against an international cabal of satanic pedophiles seems to present a far lesser threat to public security. However, QAnon has contributed to the radicalization of several people to notable criminal acts or acts of violence. In light of these events, this article attempts to take stock of the violence this bizarre set of conspiracy theories has engendered thus far and asks whether it should be seen as a security threat in the making.2 Though less organized than jihadi or far-right extremists, the authors argue that QAnon represents a novel challenge to public security. This is consistent with a May 2019 report by the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation, which details the increasing influence of anti-government, identity-based, or fringe political conspiracies, including QAnon, on motivating criminal or violent activity. The report, as presented by Yahoo News, claims that “based on the increase volume and reach of conspiratorial content due to modern communication methods, it is logical to assume that more extremist-minded individuals will be exposed to potentially harmful conspiracy theories, accept ones that are favorable to their views, and possibly carry out criminal or violent actions as a result.”3 Further, the report emphasizes that the internet allows for a “crowd-sourcing” effect wherein “conspiracy theory followers themselves shape a given theory by presenting information that supplements, expands, or localizes its narrative.”4 This effect appears particularly salient with QAnon, where followers are directed to take interpretation and action into their own hands, rather than at the explicit direction of the anonymous user (known only as Q) behind the movement. QAnon is thus markedly different from other far-right extremist groups and jihadi groups, as it lacks both a clear organizational structure and a centralization of interpretive duties. In this article, the authors provide further context on the emergence of QAnon, a summary of five criminal cases with a nexus to violence motivated by QAnon, including one case that resulted in a guilty plea on a terrorism charge. The data presented here was collected by the authors from various sources from 2018 to the present, including QAnon community messaging pages, social media pages of individuals radicalized to criminal or violent activity, and publicly accessible news reports.
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Post by Admin on Aug 3, 2020 9:32:59 GMT
9/11 News Coverage: How 36 Reporters Brought Us the Twin Towers’ Explosive Demolition on 9/11 www.globalresearch.ca/how-36-reporters-brought-us-twin-towers-explosive-demolition-911/5718119Editor’s Note: As of the publication of this article, Architects & Engineers for 9/11 Truth is awaiting a decision from the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) regarding the request for correction that AE911Truth and ten family members of 9/11 victims submitted to NIST on April 15, 2020. The request seeks corrections to eight separate items of information in NIST’s 2008 report on the collapse of World Trade Center Building 7, any of which would effectively force NIST to reverse its conclusion that fires caused the building’s destruction. NIST informed AE911Truth on June 12, 2020, that it was unable to meet its goal of responding within 60 days. Under the procedure governing such requests, NIST must provide a decision within 120 days of the submission, which would fall on August 13, 2020. If NIST elects not to take the corrective action being sought, AE911Truth and its fellow requesters would then have 30 days to file an appeal with NIST. Should NIST fail in any way to comply with the procedure governing requests or should it fail to rectify the information quality violations documented in the request, AE911Truth and its fellow requesters are prepared to take legal action. In the meantime, AE911Truth is taking one further step toward correcting the record on the destruction of the Twin Towers with the publication of this article. This exhaustive review of 70 hours of 9/11 news coverage reveals that the hypothesis of explosions bringing down the Twin Towers was not only prevalent among reporters covering the events in New York City on 9/11 but was, in fact, the dominant hypothesis. The 36 reporters who brought us the Twin Towers’ explosive demolition on 9/11 include, by network, ABC’s George Stephanopoulos and Cynthia McFadden; CBS’s Harold Dow, Tom Flynn, Mika Brzezinski, and Carol Marin (appearing on WCBS); NBC’s Pat Dawson and Anne Thompson; CNN’s Aaron Brown, Rose Arce, Patty Sabga, and Alan Dodds Frank; Fox News’ David Lee Miller and Rick Leventhal; MSNBC’s Ashleigh Banfield and Rick Sanchez; CNBC’s John Bussey, Ron Insana, and Bob Pisani; WABC’s N.J. Burkett, Michelle Charlesworth, Nina Pineda, Cheryl Fiandaca, and Joe Torres; WCBS’s John Slattery, Marcella Palmer, Vince DeMentri, and Marcia Kramer; WNBC’s Walter Perez; New York 1’s Kristen Shaughnessy, Andrew Siff, John Schiumo, and Andrew Kirtzman; USA Today’s Jack Kelley; and two unidentified reporters (1 and 2) who attended a press conference with Mayor Giuliani and Governor Pataki. Video clips of each reporter’s statements on 9/11 can be viewed below. *** The widely held belief that the Twin Towers collapsed as a result of the airplane impacts and the resulting fires is, unbeknownst to most people, a revisionist theory. Among individuals who witnessed the event firsthand, the more prevalent hypothesis was that the Twin Towers had been brought down by massive explosions. This observation was first made 14 years ago in the article, “118 Witnesses: The Firefighters’ Testimony to Explosions in the Twin Towers.” A review of interviews conducted with 503 members of the New York Fire Department (FDNY) in the weeks and months after 9/11 revealed that 118 of them described witnessing what they interpreted that day to be explosions. Only 10 FDNY members were found describing the destruction in ways supportive of the fire-induced collapse hypothesis.
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Post by Admin on Aug 6, 2020 16:50:56 GMT
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Post by Admin on Aug 15, 2020 18:17:51 GMT
QAnon Conspiracy Increasingly Popular with Antigovernment Extremists www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2019/04/23/qanon-conspiracy-increasingly-popular-antigovernment-extremistsAntigovernment extremists, including some who’ve committed violent acts, are increasingly subscribing to and propagating the QAnon conspiracy theory, which asserts that pro-Trump forces will soon take down the so-called deep state. A series of events linked to QAnon supporters includes: The capture of nearly 300 migrants at gunpoint on the U.S.-Mexico border The firebombing of a Minnesota mosque and attempted firebombing of a Champaign, Illinois women’s health center by an Illinois militia An armed Nevada man’s blocking of traffic with an armored vehicle on a bridge near Hoover Dam The arson by a California man of the Washington, D.C., restaurant Comet Ping Pong, which is at the center of the patently false Pizzagate conspiracy theory Sovereign citizens, border militias and antigovernment Three Percenter groups have latched on to Q as well. QAnon followers posit that Q, an anonymous user of the internet forum 8chan (and previously 4chan), is a government agent with a top security clearance who’s battling the deep state and the shadowy cabal which really runs the government – including Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and James Comey – on behalf of President Trump. The QAnon faithful await “The Storm,” a coming purge of deep state operatives, who will be shipped off to Guantanamo Bay. “The interesting thing about QAnon is it actually has an extraordinary amount of faith in the government and legal processes,” Travis View, a QAnon researcher and co-host of the QAnon Anonymous Podcast, told Hatewatch. “It sounds incompatible with the sovereigns or the antigovernment stuff, but they imagine that there’s going to be a perfectly clean and legal process to have an extraordinary revolution. I think that’s where the overlap is – a deep distrust in the normal institutions of the federal government, obviously the alphabet agencies and all that. They think that the military – and they think Q is military intelligence – is going to enforce the true law of the land to get rid of the deep state.”
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Post by Admin on Aug 16, 2020 23:25:47 GMT
How three conspiracy theorists took 'Q' and sparked Qanon Pushing the theory on to bigger platforms proved to be the key to Qanon’s spread — and the originators’ financial gain. www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/how-three-conspiracy-theorists-took-q-sparked-qanon-n900531Aug. 14, 2018, 5:25 PM BST By Brandy Zadrozny and Ben Collins In November 2017, a small-time YouTube video creator and two moderators of the 4chan website, one of the most extreme message boards on the internet, banded together and plucked out of obscurity an anonymous and cryptic post from the many conspiracy theories that populated the website's message board. Over the next several months, they would create videos, a Reddit community, a business and an entire mythology based off the 4chan posts of “Q,” the pseudonym of a person claiming to be a high-ranking military officer. The theory they espoused would become Qanon, and it would eventually make its way from those message boards to national media stories and the rallies of President Donald Trump. Now, the people behind that effort are at the center of a fractious debate among conspiracy enthusiasts, some of whom believe the three people who first popularized the Qanon theory are promoting it in order to make a living. Others suggest that these original followers actually wrote Q’s mysterious posts. While the identity of the original author or authors behind “Q” is still unknown, the history of the conspiracy theory’s spread is well-documented — through YouTube videos, social media posts, Reddit archives, and public records reviewed by NBC News. NBC News has found that the theory can be traced back to three people who sparked some of the first conversation about Qanon and, in doing so, attracted followers who they then asked to help fund Qanon “research.” Qanon is a convoluted conspiracy theory with no apparent foundation in reality. The heart of it asserts that for the last year the anonymous “Q” has taken to the fringe internet message boards of 4chan and 8chan to leak intelligence about Trump’s top-secret war with a cabal of criminals run by politicians like Hillary Clinton and the Hollywood elite. There is no evidence for these claims. In addition to peeking into the mainstream, the theory has been increasingly linked to real-world violence. In recent months, Qanon followers have allegedly been involved in a foiled presidential assassination plot, a devastating California wildfire, and an armed standoff with local law enforcement officers in Arizona.
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Post by Admin on Aug 18, 2020 20:00:52 GMT
QAnon Is the Future of the Republican Party Even if Trump loses in November, the influence of this unhinged conspiracy theory will only grow. By Jeet Heer www.thenation.com/article/politics/qanon-future-republican-party/Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Republican nominee for Georgia’s 14th congressional district, is a harbinger of her party’s post-Trump future. She’s running in a strongly Republican district with an almost certain prospect of going to Congress. She disdains Black Lives Matter and argues that Muslims shouldn’t be allowed to serve in government. She’s also an adherent of QAnon, the amorphous conspiracy theory that holds that Donald Trump is battling a secret cabal of Satanic cannibalistic pedophiles who control the Democratic Party, Hollywood, and the American government. In a 2017 video, Greene said, “There’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to do it.” For his part, Trump returned Greene’s regard. On August 12, the president tweeted, “Congratulations to future Republican Star Marjorie Taylor Greene on a big Congressional primary win in Georgia against a very tough and smart opponent. Marjorie is strong on everything and never gives up—a real WINNER.” Asked about QAnon on Friday, Trump avoided disavowing the conspiracy theory and reiterated his praise of Greene. This tweet is in keeping with Trump’s general approach of aligning himself with the QAnon movement but not explicitly affirming it. As The New York Times notes, “Trump has not directly addressed QAnon, but he has conspicuously avoided denouncing it, and has shared dozens of posts from believers on his social media accounts.” A few Republicans, to their credit, have spoken out against Greene and QAnon—but they all are much less well-known than Trump. On the same day as Trump’s warm words for Greene, Republican Representative Adam Kinzinger of Illinois tweeted, “Qanon is a fabrication,” adding that there is “no place in Congress for these conspiracies.” Another Republican, Virginia Representative Denver Riggleman, tweeted, “QAnon is the mental gonorrhea of conspiracy theories. It’s disgusting and you want to get rid of it as fast as possible.” But if QAnon is gonorrhea, more and more Republicans are getting infected, and party leaders are doing nothing to stop the spread. Kinzinger and Riggleman are lonely voices in their own party. As CNN reports, “Top Republicans, including President Donald Trump and House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy, are embracing their party’s nominee for a House seat in Georgia, despite her history of racist and anti-Semitic remarks and promotion of the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory.” Other Georgia Republicans, notably Senator Kelly Loeffler and Representative Doug Collins, have joined in welcoming Greene’s primary victory. The response of the GOP to Greene echoes the way the party handled Trump in 2016. At first there was some trepidation about Trump, with a few voices denouncing what he was doing to the party. But eventually, Republicans made their peace with Trump when they realized that they had to support him as their standard-bearer or suffer humiliating defeat as a divided party.
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Post by Admin on Aug 19, 2020 13:02:15 GMT
www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Y2_vPj9cyATwo of this podcast’s hosts have been involved in destructive cult dynamics. Matthew’s three years with Michael Roach and three years at Endeavor Academy are at the root of his cult research and journalism. Julian’s six years in the inner circle around what he describes as Ana Forrest’s incendiary and manipulative approach to yoga left him with repressed memories. Those experiences also left his family deeply scarred by some of the same Satanic Panic themes prevalent in the QAnon movement. His ongoing work advocating for critical thinking and community health is part of his recovery. Derek describes himself as being “cult-adjacent”—not uncommon for a lifelong wellness industry professional. In this episode, he’ll interview Julian and Matthew about their cult experiences, the recovery process, and cultic dynamics in modern yoga, Buddhist, and New Age communities informing the growing field of conspirituality. They’ll also discuss cultic organizations being ideally positioned to sell “Disaster Spirituality” (props to Naomi Klein) in times of crisis. Cult leaders understand the power of charisma, the attractiveness of transcendental ideology, and what it takes to make vulnerable people feel like every question is answerable with jargon, intrusive eye contact, and deeply deceptive shit. Matthew will ground the discussion with a synopsis of cult research, basic concepts, and useful definitions
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Post by Admin on Aug 20, 2020 20:10:36 GMT
Trump Embraces Support From Far Right Conspiracy Group QAnon truthout.org/articles/trump-embraces-support-from-far-right-conspiracy-group-qanon/President Trump crossed a new line Wednesday — one that until recently no one knew existed — when he offered praise from the White House briefing room for the baseless QAnon conspiracy theory, which the FBI has labeled a potential domestic terrorism threat. QAnon followers “like me very much” and “love America,” the president told reporters, before affirming the group’s core belief that he is in fact “saving the world” from the “radical left.” NBC News correspondent Shannon Pettypiece kicked off the discussion, asking, “Can you talk about what you think about [QAnon] and what you have to say to people who are following this movement right now?” “I don’t know much about the movement, other than I understand they like me very much. Which I appreciate. But I don’t know much about the movement,” Trump said. He then connected the values of the group to one of his own campaign themes — law and order.
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Post by Admin on Aug 20, 2020 20:14:08 GMT
How You Can Be 100% Certain That QAnon Is Bullshit caitlinjohnstone.com/2019/05/26/how-you-can-be-100-certain-that-qanon-is-bullshit/President Trump has yet again advanced an evil longstanding agenda of America’s depraved intelligence and defense agencies, so as usual the QAnon cult is out in force telling everyone not to worry because this is all part of the plan. Ever since WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange was slammed by Trump’s Justice Department with a mountain of espionage charges carrying a possible sentence of 175 years in prison, QAnon acolytes have been showing up in my social media mentions with screenshots of a new post from the mysterious 8chan anon assuring us all that Assange is actually being protected by Trump. The post reads in the typical QAnon cryptic word salad style that its adherents often annoyingly imitate when normal people try to engage them in an adult conversation: “Under protection. Threat is real. Key to DNC ‘source’ ‘hack’ ‘187’. Q” I find this subject very tedious, and my regular readers aren’t generally the types to fall for this sort of toxic propaganda construct, but I’m putting this information out there anyway as a public service since many people are being deluded by it. If you’re one of those fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with the QAnon phenomenon, in October of 2017 odd posts began appearing on the anonymous message board 4chan, which is wildly popular with trolls, incels and racists. Those posts ceased appearing on 4chan and moved to a related site, 8chan, where they continue appearing to this day. The poster purports to have insider knowledge of a secret, silent and invisible war that President Trump has been waging against the Deep State with the help of the US military and various “white hats” within the US government, and shares snippets about this war with 8chan users in extremely vague and garbled posts. Here are three reasons you can be absolutely, 100 percent certain that it’s bullshit:
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