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Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

wilderthanmild posted:

My favorite part about the whole QAnon nonsense is that there are so many interpretations of the vague posts that they are never "wrong". Every major interrupted prediction they care about doesn't come to fruition. They just retcon them out of the whole narrative or decide they happened, but are being hidden from us. This is why in their narrative Hillary and Obama are both on some kind of super secret government ankle monitor house arrest thing. It was all a backpedal to get around some arrest/indictment prediction weeks/months ago that never came true.

Psychologically, this whole situation reminds me a lot of the aftermath of Great Disappointment. Although the stakes aren't nearly as high in this instance, the thought process of the group is the same - a major prediction is made, followers hype themselves up for it, and when the chosen date blows past with no major event, the True Believers justify it rather than admit that they were wrong.

Remember Trump's "fake news awards" a few months back? Qanon followers, particularly on Freep, were convinced that Trump would use that event to finally pull back the curtain and reveal that Hillary, Obama, Soros, et al were arrested and being tried for their satanic pedophile cannibalism. Some even said that they would be executed live on television, and that afterwards Trump would order the military to begin the Glorious MAGA Revolution. Of course, the fake news awards went over like a wet fart, so rather than admit that they were wrong, these followers shifted the narrative - the fake news awards were a smokescreen, you see, in order to trick all of the lamestream news media into paying attention to it. While they were distracted, Trump went after key members of the Deep State and ordered their arrest! He will reveal this to us any day now! We were mostly right! And thus the cycle continues.

(Yes, I'm directly comparing Qanon followers to the Seventh Day Adventists, fight me.)

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Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?
I do find it interesting how apocalypse predictions sorta "fall out" of uber-conspiracies like Qanon and previous Illuminati-adjacent storylines. There's always someone shouting about the end of the world, even if they're shuffled off to the fringes.

In the lead-up to the 2016 election, when fake news sites were really amping up, a lot of them seemed fixated on Nibiru, a.k.a. Planet X, and how it was prophesized to return to our solar system and collide with Earth and kill us all. This interacted strangely with the political climate of the day, so you'd see articles about how Obama was SHOCKED and DEVASTATED by Putin's declaration that the American government was hiding Nibiru's existence from the American people. If only Obama showed TRUE LEADERSHIP, like Putin is doing, the American people would know the truth!

If anything, I'm surprised that Qanon people aren't more-openly apocalyptic, as a good portion of them are convinced that they are in a literal battle against Satan's army on Earth, headed by the Whore of Babylon Hillary Clinton.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

OwlFancier posted:

Why is an astronomical extinction event something the president of the US needs to do something about?

No idea. I saw it mostly on the weird "Real USA Patriot" news blogs, and they all had weird pro-Putin slants to them. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that it was initially spat out by a really weird Russian algorithm.

Regardless, it stuck with some people. There were a few freepers that yelled "Google Nibiru!" in a bunch of threads back in the day, but they mostly stuck to the UFO conspiracy side of the site that the Freep thread here mostly ignores.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

Dr. VooDoo posted:

The fact the pizzagate thing is still a thing after the key component of it, a basement at this pizza place, didn’t exist because the pizza joint physically doesn’t have a basement cements Qanon and Pizzagate people as the most out of touch conspiracy people. Other conspiracy stuff ties into stuff that actually exists with their insane theories but you have to ignore literal physical existence to believe in Qanon and Pizzagate because they both hinge on a secret ring of Satan pedophiles that have met in a location that is physically impossible :psyduck:

It's weird, but we have records of this exact same phenomenon happening. In the McMartin Preschool trial - the thing that kicked off the Satanic Panic of the 80's - a big deal was made out of the supposedly-secret tunnels that went underneath the preschool, where they alleged that the teachers were killing/dismembering/raping students secretly. Of course, no tunnels were found - they found what appeared to be an old hollowed-out trash pit, but nothing resembling a tunnel. But, the conspiracy required there to be tunnels, so the kids could be whisked away to remote locations for abuse, including the homes of famous celebrities and politicians. So, to this very day, you have people saying that, no, the tunnels are REAL, and anyone who says otherwise was in on the cover-up!

It seems like people who buy into Satanic Panic conspiracies just inherently need there to be basements and tunnels involved. Most of the tropes of the old Satanic Panic are coming back full force with Pizzagate and Qanon, they're just buried beneath all of the Pepes and confusing charts.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?
The fact that they include anything involving the NFL thing in their lists of "it's finally happening, guys!" events still throws me for a loop. What does professional football players being or not being allowed to kneel have anything to do with a totally-real satanic pedophile ring? Is the NFL involved with the Deep State somehow? Are the Green Bay Packers going to be the first against the wall when the military tribunals start?

OwlFancier posted:

Invasion from... Space?

It may be a little bit of a stretch, but "Iraq/Iran/Russia/China is going to detonate an EMP bomb in orbit over America and invade while all of our electronics are useless" has been a go-to fearmongering talking point in conspiracy circles for a long while now. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that The Storm has folded in that idea as well.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?
Oh, I'm not saying that the people pushing that narrative are smart. But that just might be why they're accusing Hillary of giving away all of our Space Secrets.

Knowing the general age range and demographics of Qanon followers, odds are they just saw that cutscene in Modern Warfare 2 where Russia does that to the US and they think that's exactly how poo poo is going to go down.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

UmOk posted:

But do they really think Jesus is down with racists and warmongers?

Honestly, yeah. Nobody who's really looking forward to the apocalypse has a particularly rosy worldview. These are the people who shrug their shoulders and say "well, the Canaanites totally deserved it, even their kids." They think Jesus is going to be personally slaughtering unbelievers when He comes back, and it'll be totally rad.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

U.T. Raptor posted:

iirc, Jesus taking to the battlefield and mowing people down with a sword is pretty much literally a thing that happens in Revelations.

Revelation describes Him in obviously-symbolic language, having blazing fiery eyes, multiple crowns on his head, wearing a blood-covered robe, and slaying entire armies with a sword that comes out of His mouth. He then fights a giant 7-headed dragon that pretty obviously and directly represents 1st-century Rome. They think that this will actually happen and then they'll all get mansions in heaven, because everything in every book of the Bible should be taken 100% literally.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

GreyjoyBastard posted:

in hindsight, including revelations in the Official Bible was a mistake

To be fair, for most of history, Revelation was treated even by wackier Protestant denominations as the allegory that it almost definitely is. There have always been explicitly-apocalyptic offshoots of Christianity to be sure, but it wasn't until American Evangelicals in the 50's and 60's got their hands on it that it got widespread treatment as literal. The ramifications of this can be felt even today, as can be seen in Evangelicalism's latest offshoot, known as "Qanon"

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

RoboChrist 9000 posted:

My absolute favorite thing about the Q stuff is probably just how juvenile it all is. Like divorce it, for a moment, from the political and racial aspects and from the fact that they honestly believe this stuff. It basically sounds like the sort of edgy grimdark stuff you'd expect a That Guy DM to throw at you or to see in some edgy fanfic or something. The bad guys control the whole world! They're so evil you guys! They, uh, victimize kids! Sexually! But violently, too! Literal cannibalism! They gently caress and eat children! Aren't my villains extreme!?

It was like that during the first "modern" Satanic Panic of the 80's, too. Really, a lot of the whole "Luciferian cabal" part of the story can be traced directly back to the McMartin preschool case and the religious fearmongering about heavy metal music and Dungeons and Dragons.

I've read papers that suggest that imagining purely-evil people doing purely-evil things is one of the few vents for "negative" emotions sexually-repressed groups of people have, and it's been like that for hundreds of years. They're not allowed to think about people other than their spouses having sex... But if it's framed as an "informational" report about scandalous moral failings, then suddenly it's totally okay to think about! It's like all of those paperback books in the 50's and 60's that purported to be factual exposés about the true, shocking world of The Sexed-Up-Teens, when in reality it was just made-up smut with the thinnest veneer of educational language. Hell, there was just straight-up erotica in older times that was framed by "look at what these horrid hell-bound covens of witches are doing", and that somehow made it okay to own.

This current Satanic Panic is just spiraling out of (narrative) control, because it's tied up with the current politics of the day. Otherwise widly-disparate conspiracy nuts are all getting together and playing nice, because they think the President is Their Guy. So, not only are millions of Americans full-blown Generational Satanists having child orgies, but North Korea is going to save us by finally destroying HAARP in a covert operation, thus freeing the MKULTRA victims from their Satanic masters! I just totally made that up by connecting a few dots at random, but someone on r/GA probably believes it!

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?
Oh no, the "secret space program" people are totally out there. They're on the fringe even within the UFO community, but they totally exist and think we're already secretly colonizing Mars 'n poo poo, and that's even before getting to the people who believe in aliens.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

Dr. VooDoo posted:

So I ventured on to the QAnon reddit board and with all the time sensitive dates having fallen flat on their faces it’s devolved into basically the_donald 2.0 with a light smattering of conspiracy. The top threads are about Trump talking poo poo about the Red Hen and then various tweets about immigration. I wonder if the thrill of the LARP is wearing off for a lot of Qultists and now they’re reverting to just regular lovely people instead of bat poo poo insane lovely people

Well, it wouldn't surprise me if they still believed all of the BASICS of the grand conspiracy are still true - once you start to belive that Trump is a hero fighting against a Satanic network of Deep State Democrats, you're already pretty far gone. But yeah, the thrill of "we're figuring it out in real time, together!" seems to be wearing off.

Sure, most Democrats in Congress are Molech-worshipping child-eating globalists, but maybe we're being strung along about those 30,000 secret indictments, you guys.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

glowing-fish posted:

So what is the internal narrative? I think the internal narrative is basically "I am special, I know things that other people don't know, things that make me unique but at the same time give me a sense of group solidarity", and with the corollary that "My life isn't as boring as it seems".

While I think that this is by and large true, I think that it applies to nearly every conspiracy theory out there, not just Qanon. It's the "inner inner narrative", as it were - something that adherents don't even like admitting to themselves.

Henry Zebrowski from Last Podcast on the Left summed it up best years ago, I think - Nobody wants to just be Sad, Fat Kathy, sitting on the couch and doing nothing. Your life instantly becomes a lot more interesting as soon as you think that, for instance, aliens are real and maybe, just maybe, you're going to be the one to blow the thing wide open and finally get the recognition you deserve.

That's a fairly harmless example, but the same thought applies to malevolent narratives - the outer narrative is the 14 words, the inner narrative is racial holy war, and the inner inner narrative is "I'm going to be a hero and everyone is going to like me once they realize I'm right, just like in the Turner Diaries." With Qanon, I think the heart of the fantasy is "I'm going to be seated at the right hand of Trump come judgment day, and he'll publically recognize all the hard work I've done!"

These people just desperately want "and then everyone around me stood up and clapped for me" stories from old email chains to actually happen to them. It's what is largely what's driving their radicalization - their belief that, if they keep following this path, they're eventually going to get the recognition they deserve, in some form or another.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

Bullfrog posted:

so how did the boomers get pulled in to 4chan posts though? that's what i dont get. reading thedonald?

I'd imagine very few of them even realize 4/8chan is an actual website you can visit, and not some mysterious "dark web" thing that they have heard about from the news once.

The conspiracy doesn't require anyone to actually READ the crumbs themselves to buy into it; with each Q post there are entire communities with their own apostles that are dedicated to interpreting them and telling people what's really going on. All they need it their own special hashtags and suddenly they're very easy to search for and retweet/post/blog!

So, in short, your grandma getting really, suddenly intense about satanic pedophile networks is all thanks to social media algorithms introducing them to the idea, and insular word of mouth taking it from there.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

twistedmentat posted:

Satanic Panic was taken super seriously in the 80s and 90s to a level Q could only dream of.

Police took it seriously enough, or at least some did, to use it as basis of investigations. There were people who billed themselves as Satanic Experts, mostly Pastors and supposit former cultists who turned to Jesus, and other Evangelical Busy Bodies. A body would turn up at some remote area or abandoned building, and the Expert would see someone spray painted Iron Maiden on the wall and say "Iron Maidens were used by Satanists to drain the blood of Christians for their rituals" and then the cops would stop looking at the actual evidence and go looking for some edgelord teen that listens to metal and has a pentigram on his cut off jean jacket.

This a pretty good summery of the whole thing.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NBf35HS6atU

Imagine if there was videos out there sent to LEO about how to identify child drug rings and face removal ceremonies?

Yeah, law enforcement somehow taking all of this stuff seriously is the most baffling aspect of the Satanic Panic to me. There are a bunch of videos floating around YouTube that are police training videos, and a lot of them are just straight-up produced by Evangelical churches. Hell, one of them even has the overtone of "Well, you can't arrest a Satanist just for being a Satanist, because they have freedom of religion under the first amendment, which is stupid, maybe we should do something about that [wink wink wink]".

It's just weird to think that entire police forces were totally buying into the idea that secret Satanist cabals could be sacrificing babies in their tiny towns, and the only way you can find them out is by looking for heavy metal records and maybe candles.

Dr. VooDoo posted:

Seeing videos of “converted witches/Satanic leaders” grifters is never not funny because it’s obvious to anyone who isn’t an idiot how much they’re clearly bullshitting through everything they’re saying

It was effective, though. Launched a lot of lucrative, if fleeting, careers. That whole "converted ex-leader" concept is still kicking around in Evangelical-land, only nowadays it's usually "ex-Muslims" talking about the two hidden pillars of Islam and poo poo.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

Dr. VooDoo posted:

Now it seems every maker of popular cartoons are basically evil Satan worshipper baby eaters because of jokes on twitter Oh and in case you missed it that joke account Satan on twitter is actually really a secret contact point for THE CABAL for members to reach out to in public and pass it off as a joke. These people are cutting themselves off from the world by their own choice and I feel bad for any kids they might have

I like the poster that says that they loved Gravity Falls, but now that they know that there's "Satanic" stuff in there, they can no longer watch the show, how dare Disney, etc. Like... Did... Did you not notice any of the obvious conspiracy nods when first watching the show, or...? The main villain is literally an Eye of Providence wearing a top hat, it's not some deep Illuminati cypher that you're so clever for figuring out.

You'd think that they would be more upset about the actual evidence of institutional pedophilia in the animation industry (John K's grooming of kids and whatnot), but nope, they're freaking out because a new cartoon has "owl" in the title, and that can ONLY be a reference to Bohemian Grove. That the Illuminati/Deep State is taunting them with. For some reason.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

Carnival of Shrews posted:

Hold up. Sex with demons? Actual, literal demons? I though this was mean to be a sober-minded police instructional; you can't yadda-yadda your way through the revelation that Satanism allows its practitioners to summon a real demon and bang it.

During the Satanic Panic, even if you didn't buy into the whole "this is literally a spiritual battle between God and Satan here on Earth" narrative, people were still likely to think that Satanists were still out there. They thought they were crazy, but still scary. A bunch of high-profile cults popping up and then burning out in rapid succession sorta codified the "scary cult guy" boogeyman into the public consciousness. Even if you didn't believe that Satanists can summon up and then gently caress literal demons, you thought that they thought they could do that.

That's something we're seeing with Qanon too - it seems like most of the religious Qultists are the type to really think that the Cabal is literally invoking Satan and receiving supernatural power from it. The atheist/secular Qultists, on the other hand, interpret it as "oh, well, they believe they're receiving supernatural power, even though they're not because they're no such thing, but we gotta take them down and protect our kids anyway!"

Crunch Buttsteak fucked around with this message at 17:30 on Aug 13, 2018

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

TulliusCicero posted:

I like to think I am up to date on most insane conspiracy poo poo because I enjoy looking at crazy, but what the gently caress is Bohemian Grove?

I think if I remember that is a conspiracy theory from the like early 70s right?

Get some new material you loving olds

It's essentially just a secret camping trip/cabin retreat for really really rich old white dudes. They have a big opening ceremony that involves burning an effigy of an owl. And for the rest of the time, it appears to just be a standard lovely rich guy hang-out, with a thin veneer of secret society bullshit. Think frat pledges.

Buuut, if you're already convinced that the (((globalists))) are out to get you, suddenly Bohemian Grove is the center for just about every single conspiracy out there. Couple that with the opening ceremony, and religious types also have a nice "they're actually worshipping Satan!" angle they can go with as well.

Undoubtedly, shady poo poo does happen at Bohemian Grove, but that sort of mundane shady poo poo that happens whenever really rich people get together. But it's sort of like Freemasonry; since it's a ~secret society~, you can just put whatever conspiracy theory you want into it and nobody can really challenge you.

One of Alex Jones' claims to fame is that he "infiltrated Bohemian Grove", when in reality he just sorta waltzed in until guards told him to gently caress off because he wasn't invited.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

Doctor Spaceman posted:

It's a specific Nixon quote.

AND it's proof that it's a homosexual society, meaning that these are the people that are infiltrating the media and showing our kids propaganda in order to turn them gay!

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

The Phlegmatist posted:

Yeah. I'm not sure why Clinton in particular got all the conspiracy theorists riled up but she was definitely going to round up all the patriots into cattle cars and ship them to FEMA tent cities.

If I had to guess, a good portion of the boomer Qanon True Believers were at least sympathetic to the "Patriot" militia movement in the 90's, and hating the entire Clinton family with an intense, fiery passion was kind of their THING back in the day.

They were so afraid that Bill/Hillary were going to arrest American citizens and haul them into FEMA prison camps. Now, they're really, really excited for Donald Trump to arrest American citizens and haul them into FEMA prison camps.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

Corsair Pool Boy posted:

Because it's the only way they can explain still having Muslim neighbors two years after winning everything.

I do think this needs to be emphasized - the whole "deep state" line of conspiracy thought, from which Qanon directly sprung from, was an attempt to explain why Donald Trump didn't immediately just go full-dictator like his fascist base wanted him to. People who voted for him were so excited for the God-Emperor to immediately ban abortion and gay marriage, start rounding up Muslims into camps, and publicly execute Hillary Clinton during week one of his presidency. When he ended up not doing that, they needed to concoct fanfiction where he totally wants to do those things, but sinister hidden forces are preventing him from doing so, because otherwise he'd be #winning #yugely.

Once you've already accepted this cosmology, something like Qanon is inevitable. Someone claiming to have insider knowledge that backs up existing worldviews is all it takes to get a following with conspiracy-minded individuals. Qanon is just remarkable in how outlandish its "endgame" is getting, and how many Facebook moms are getting roped into it.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?
Are Qultists STILL using the "well Trump needs to be sneaky about it because otherwise there would be mass panic" excuse? It can kind of make sense when you're talking about just a few indictments or whatever, but by this point, after so much "yes and"-ing, they've gone way beyond that. And, since so many of them believe in a Revelations-esque judgment day, with tens of thousands of arrests and maybe even executions revealed by Glorious Leader in a single day, it makes even less sense. People are going to be told "yes, half of all politicians and celebrities are Satanic child-sacrificing pedophile cultists, but we've already arrested and tried them without telling you." And that's NOT going to cause a mass panic somehow?

I guess I'm not trusting the plan enough.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

jojoinnit posted:



This is from the satellites thread linked a couple pages back. I've read it three times and I'm still not sure I can correctly parse it.

So, not only do you think that the CIA uses AI to discredit your totally-real conspiracy investigation on a website half-dedicated to pornography, but there are multiple AI's, and hey, wouldn't you know it, they've achieved sentience.

How long do you think until Reptilians are a widely-accepted part of Qanon canon? There's not many more places they can go by this point.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?
The slapped-together, duct-taped nature of the Qanon "grand conspiracy" means that, when the whole thing finally, naturally falls apart, former True Believers are still going to have things to cling onto so that their worldview doesn't completely shatter.

They'll begrudgingly admit that, okay, maybe they got roped along, and Trump wasn't this benevolent mastermind... But MKULTRA is still behind all of the false flag shootings, that hadn't changed. And there are still Adrenochrome-harvesting cultists running the government. And, hey, we still haven't seen any birth certificate! And Spirit Cooking, what's the deal, am I right?

They'll just pick up whatever pieces they want to, and will be primed to start blindly following the next person who has claims of being able to tie them all together. When Qanon finally, undeniably fails, the people who drop the whole thing and realize they had a bad case of brain worms are going to be in the minority.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

VitalSigns posted:

America was the last country free of the cabal, it only fell to into the clutches of the international conspiracy in 1965 at the exact moment Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act.

I've heard quite a few people, usually pastors, actually claim that it was the election of the tyrant Abraham Lincoln, and the ensuing Civil War (in which the wrong side won), that was the end of America as God's chosen land. But, the people claiming that usually tie it into older "The Society of the Jacobins infiltrated America to turn us into Satanic communists" conspiracies, so it's not like that line of thought is new or unique to Qanon.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

TulliusCicero posted:

Lmao at claiming one of the most genuinely honorable Presidents and men in history was the downfall of the United States .

Yeah, he must have done something specific that they didn't like. Or maybe he was against something they were really for. Who knows! Too bad that entire era of our history was plunged into darkness once they tore down those Confederate monuments.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

VitalSigns posted:

I guess you could go either way. On the one hand believing in magic is arguably crazier than believing powerful cabals of puppetmasters all have the ridiculous compulsion to reveal their top secret plan to morons in order to gloat because while stupid the latter is at least physically possible. On the other hand magical thinking is a common human foible whereas whereas failing the theory of mind so bad that you assume powerful people give enough a poo poo about you personally to fill the world with coded messages to you is abnormal.

Further muddying this is the fact that most conspiracy theorists who blame the occult don't actually know jack-poo poo about the occult. Its just another scrawled "look, it's all connected!" chalkboard for them, since most of them are Christian in the "if you're not for Jesus, you're for Satan" sense. Like, they'll mix limited knowledge about Aleister Crowley with whatever Bible Code bullshit they found at a bookstore, and then blame it on secret Kaballah mystic Jews who are working with the resurrected Theosophists in order to harvest our vril energy.

They just treat every group in the occult world as interchangeable, since every one of them is just a Chaotic Evil sect with the goal of destroying Christian America. For every person who could actually explain what Thelema is, there are dozens that think that the Satanic Panic was totally justified.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

Helsing posted:

The stuff about Himmler wanting the SS to be a knightly order is well known but not that interesting. I'm talking more about the extent to which the racial ideology of Nazism was was a product of a weird melange of late 19th century ideas like Ariosophy.

Yeah, lots of esoteric writings at the time were big on the whole "Hey, biological evolution is a thing, right? But what if there were, like, layers of spiritual evolution, maaan!?" concept. The thing is, the Jewish people usually got the short end of the stick when it came to what level they were at, which some random soldier named Adolf Hitler really strongly agreed with after reading a few newsletters on the subject.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?
Listen, we're not threatening people! We're just saying that these people completely deserve to die and, GOD, I wish I was the person that Master Trump chose to be directly responsible for their deaths! It would be so satisfying to watch these literal subhuman scum die at my own hand!

wait what do you mean we're banned now, why, who could have seen this coming

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

Peacoffee posted:

the Qultists are having their journey to the holy land moment, and finding that like Palestine it's not quite how the good book made it sound.

Yeah, something that has gotten kind of lost in the shuffle is that, if I remember correctly, 8chan is a break-away from 4chan that was created specifically because 4chan started to finally crack down on "jailbait" threads. So, y'know, kiddie porn.

But maybe that's why the Holy Q saw fit to reveal his master plan there, it's the last place The Cabal would expect him to show up, surrounded by the thing he hates most :tinfoil:

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

SpaceViking posted:

That and Gamergate were the two catalysts. Moot also banned gamergate discussion because it was taking over every board, so 8chan was made to post child porn and complain about women in video games. A more pure chan board was never before seen.

Huh, I thought the split happened a few years before Gamergate. I'm probably just misremembering, though; I'm a recovered (thank God) Encyclopedia Dramatica kid, so I only saw that poo poo from afar.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?
I think that Flat Earth-ism is the end result of Trumpism and modern conservatism taking the "you're being lied to by science" narrative and pushing it to it's absolute limit. That meme has always been stewing in the background of conservatism, but if you've been on the fringes of conservative thought for long enough, it almost seems like the logical next step.

Like, it used to just be "the scientific community is collectively lying about Evolution because they are angry at God". Then it was "the scientific community is lying to you about global warming because they want to institute socialism". Then it was "the scientific community is lying to you about vaccines because they want to hurt our kids". Then it was "the scientific community is lying to you about psychology/LGBT people because they want to turn America into a weak feminized nation". (And that's not even getting into the "the scientific community is lying to you about race science/the Holocaust," that's a whole other can of worms.)

Someone who has been in a right-wing echo chamber for literal decades has absorbed all of these arguments. Now that there's a President in the White House that will boldly declare anything he doesn't like as "fake", and is claiming the scientific community is lying about thousands of dead people in Puerto Rico in order to make him, personally, look bad, it's not out of the question that these people would think "hey, what if the scientific community is lying about literally everything?"

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

Enola Gay-For-Pay posted:

I remember vaguely some...I think it was a children's book one of my kids had? Something I read years ago, regardless, where a farmer goes to his daughter's school and they're learning about germs. He doesn't believe that germs exist until the teacher shows him germs under a microscope.

I think about that story a lot when I think about conservatives.

My go-to is creationist author Ken Ham's insistence that a single kid asking "were you there? :smug:" during a lesson on evolution is the best way to expose the evil, corrupt lies of the scientific-industrial complex. These people have... Interesting ideas about thresholds of proof.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

VitalSigns posted:

"Were you there?" is an interesting creationist argument.

So there I was hanging out in the featureless void with my roommate Jehovah and I said "yo it's really dark in here I can't find my weed" and He said...

Well, there are two kinds of science, experimental and forensic. Nobody's made a species turn into another species in the lab, so then evolution isn't experimental science. So, it must be forensic. And what's the most reliable sort of forensic evidence? That's right, eyewitness testimony . And since The Bible is directly inspired (i.e. written by) God, who was there, it's the most reliable source on origins we have! Checkmate, atheists!

Read that in an Australian accent and boom, I just saved you the $35 it would take to go to Ken Ham's Creationist Museum.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:

Before this decade is out, we will see a congressional hearing on Qanon and a nutjob Republican congressman asking a particle physicist about the Berestein/stain bears and parallel dimensions. There is zero chance of this not happening

Eh, I think it'll fade out of popular thought before then, but there will definitely be one or two congressmen that make that their gimmick for decades to come. Like, it'll be 2040 and some old fart will stand up and say "you know, this reminds me of something I saw in a Q post back in the day..."

It'll be like those congressmen who were ranting about Janet Reno being a secret lesbian Chinese agent even after Clinton left office. They'll just be quietly tolerated because their pet theory doesn't distract them from voting lock-step with the rest of the Republican party.

Crunch Buttsteak fucked around with this message at 19:09 on Sep 23, 2018

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

TulliusCicero posted:

Was there ever any question that Q was another cog in the alt right machine? I mean come the gently caress on.

I have seen a few people try to spin Q as someone who is fighting for all true Americans, Democrat and Republican. Because no average Joe wants a Satanic pedophile cabal running the country, right?

But, then they'll describe the makeup of the Cabal as being 90% prominent Democrats, with the remaining 10% being split between Republicans who have said mean things about Trump and mysterious :airquote:bankers:airquote:. So, it's probably just a recruitment tactic to ease people in. Wouldn't want to scare off potential Qultists with the Jewish Question right away.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

Corsair Pool Boy posted:

Lol it's so easy, just disenfranchise and occupy 1/5 of the US economy, send in the troops, block the roads, declare martial law, and cut the power. This will definitely create an environment where you can 'rehabilitate' an area and bring them back into the fold. In no way will it crater the entire nation's economy, get millions killed, and probably trigger a full on national revolt against the government that other countries would love to get in on.

I think people like this are the same ones that a few years ago blamed almonds for the CA water shortage and insisted everything could be fixed if you'd just stop growing that hippie nut. They just grow up and get crazier.

I'd be willing to wager that a pretty substantial chunk of Qanon true believers don't really actually care much about America continuing to exist as a country. Like the "Patriot" movement before them, they'll wave their flag and scream about loving America until they're blue in the face, but what they're really waiting for is for the government to, in some way, collapse. Then, they'll finally be able to get their buddies together, take out all of the guns they've stockpiled, and get to work carving out their own little Republic of Dave, where there are no taxes and anyone browner than a paper bag is shot on sight.

To them, escalating things to the point of collapse is the entire point, and they've been dedicated to doing that for decades. Qanon is just the latest avenue for advocating for that. The conspiracy theory's overall vagueness and adaptability has just led to this weird point where Very Concerned Moms For Trump are forced to rub shoulders with RaHoWa-worshipping patriots clamoring for their own Day of the Rope. 2018 has been wild.

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

Pope Guilty posted:

On 9/11 it was reported widely that a car bomb exploded at the White House. It happens.

Regardless, this will probably still be used as a "there WAS a bomb mailed to Trump, the Democrats are covering up the truth, proof of a false flag!" talking point for a while. Who says that truth matters in today's day and age?

Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

Raspberry Jam It In Me posted:

Im not sure how a religious person can see this poo poo and not have a serious crisis of faith. This is insane. These people are seriously one mental break away from starting to worship a confirmed 4chan basement troll. They already have holy symbols and phrases and quote their basement prophet by the verse number/post number and it's only been a year.

From what I've seen, religious people who follow Q are a specific type of Christian that has been around for a long while. They have nigh-unshakable faith in God, but are also very fast in loose in how they worship God, and are eager to accept any new lifehacks in order to worship God better. It's the same type of person that gets suckered in by hacky, exploitative Christian "mysticism", the type that says you can totally get God to personally answer all of your wishes just by praying this one weird prayer three times a day! Satan hates it!

I mean, the fact that we've seen multiple "Q code" interpreters by this point is no coincidence. These people have been the target audience for Bible Code and Time-Discerning bullshit for decades now, so it makes sense that they're just applying what they had before to this new thing. Pretty soon, they'll just forget about it, move on, and get really into Blood Moon Prophecies for a few months, until the NEXT thing comes along.

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Crunch Buttsteak
Feb 26, 2007

You think reality is a circle of salt around my brain keeping witches out?

Old Kentucky Shark posted:

There are multiple;e things it could be. One is the Flat Earth belief that Antarctica is not real, but is instead a giant ice-wall ringing the outside of the flat, disc-shaped earth.

One is the belief that a secret alien vessel was found frozen in the ice at Antarctica.

One, and this is my favorite one, is the belief that the Nazis built a secret Antarctic fortress where many Nazis fled to escape the fall of Berlin during WW2. In this secret, vast underground fortress they stashed all of their secret nazi weapon prototypes. It was only after the war that the Allies were able to burn the nazis out of their ice caves one by one in a two year long Antarctic campaign known as Operation Highjump. All the nazi weapons and occult objects were, of course, sealed inside the ice caves and remain, frozen in time.

Weren't there actual nazi obscure plans to have colonies in Antarctica for some reason that never went anywhere, or am I mixing up Delta Green canon with real life once again?

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