America's new religion

[afleitch]

https://mobile.twitter.com/Salon/status/1293971102948089857

'By claiming to pursue a crusade against the sexual abuse of children, QAnon gives its adherents a feeling of self-righteousness, one that allows them to ignore the reality that they support a deeply immoral and sociopathic president...
Evangelical Christianity played the same role for conservatives in the pre-Trump years, letting them feel holy and moral despite openly backing politicians who promoted immoral policies.'

Have people just got bored waiting for the 'rapture?'

[Chunk Yogurt for President!]

Evangelical Christianity is an international, centuries old religious movement.  People are going to forget about QAnon before too long.

[Benjamin Frank]

QAnon is tied in with fundamentalist Christianity, not a replacement for it.  If you go back to the 1970s fundamentalist Christians have been waging an ongoing war with imaginary (and maybe a handful of real) Satanic cults, and the bizarre conspiracy theories of QAnon directly involve the notion of Satanic cults.

This was not just in the United States.  For instance:  

"And the Kellers’ case was not unique. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s, hundreds if not thousands of other innocent people would fall to varying degrees of similar fates.

British Prime Minister Edward Heath was falsely accused of being a member of an underground cult that murdered and ate 16 children.

A California daycare was shut down and its staff arrested after police received false reports that children had been forced to witness ritualistic killings of animals and babies."

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/the-canadian-book-that-tricked-the-world-into-believing-they-were-overrun-with-satanist-murder-cults

The only thing I disagree with there is that this goes back to the 1970s (if not earlier for all that I know, and not the 1980s.)  It was at the end of the 1960s that a lot of 'new age' religions sprouted up and some of them called themselves Satanists or Luciferians (witches and Wiccans were also lumped in.)  Virtually all of the Satanists or Luciferians were otherwise ordinary people who generally believed that the Bible had been misinterpreted, because, history was written by the winner, God.

They believed, going back to the Garden of Eden, that God was trying to keep humans ignorant and, ultimately enslaved, and that it was Satan or Lucifer who opened the eyes of humans by having them eat the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

However, obviously Fundamentalist Christians could not accept this alternate interpretation of the Bible and believed these Satanists or Luciferians were literally doing the work of Satan and tried to warn the world about them.  (I recently gave away several books written by fundamentalist Christians on 'the new cults' of the 1970s, including a book written by Bob Larson and a book called 'Satan Wants You.') 

The Bob Larson and at least one of the other books was published in the 1970s.  Satan Wants You was published in 1980.  I was actually surprised it wasn't published earlier.

[Mopsus]

This inverted imagination produces things of which it is better not to speak. Some of them indeed might almost be named without being known; for they are of that extreme evil which seems innocent to the innocent. They are too inhuman even to be indecent. But without dwelling much longer in these dark corners, it may be noted as not irrelevant here that certain anti-human antagonisms seem to recur in this tradition of black magic. There may be suspected as running through it everywhere, for instance, a mystical hatred of the idea of childhood. People would understand better the popular fury against the witches, if they remembered that the malice most commonly attributed to them was preventing the birth of children. The Hebrew prophets were perpetually protesting against the Hebrew race relapsing into an idolatry that involved such a war upon children...

The civilisation that centered in Tyre and Sidon was above all things practical. It has left little in the way of art and nothing in the way of poetry. But it prided itself upon being very efficient; and it followed in its philosophy and religion that strange and sometimes secret train of thought which we have already noted in those who look for immediate effects. There is always in such a mentality an idea that there is a short cut to the secret of all success; something that would shock the world by this sort of shameless thoroughness. They believed, in the appropriate modern phrase, in people who delivered the goods.

In their dealings with their god Moloch, they themselves were always careful to deliver the goods. It was an interesting transaction, upon which we shall have to touch more than once in the rest of the narrative; it is enough to say here that it involved the theory I have suggested, about a certain attitude towards children. This was what called up against it in simultaneous fury the servant of one God in Palestine and the guardians of all the household gods in Rome. This is what challenged two things naturally so much divided by every sort of distance and disunion, whose union was to save the world.

[John Dule]

This is how religions get started. One guy tells a lie, too many people take him seriously, and somehow it ends up filling a void in people's lives by allowing them to feel self-righteous. In 1000 years you could easily have people demanding that their Qanon conspiracies receive recognition as a belief system. They'll get offended if you call them crazy and they'll worship at altars to Q. People who point out the obvious absurdities of their ramblings will be called "Qphobes" or just "edgy teens." All the while, they'll keep waiting for Q to topple the deep state, as they have for generations-- repeating "trust the plan" over and over again, hoping for a day of judgement that will never, ever come.

[PSOL]

QAnon most resembles other widespread conspiracy theories when a society enters a period of crisis. Before the 1900s; reactionaries blamed hidden cabals of Freemasons and Jews for a host of societal ills—from a period of revolutionary waves to societal unrest. Instead of blaming, say, the current socioeconomic structures for the failures, it was easier for the people who most depended on the status quo to instead create conspiracy theories to explain away this crisis. Same with the more current cultural Marxist ploy or that reptilians/demons/satanists have infiltrated the highest echelons of society.

Because blaming capitalism is unacceptable to the people most dependent on it, they make up myths to cope with the problem. In this case, a lot of people could not understand the current structural problems caused by the fact of our settler-colonial capitalist foundations, nor could they appropriately defend the status quo and their beliefs against an onslaught of public backlash, so they blamed everything on liberal sex predators running a Child Trafficking ring.

Like other mass delirium events brought forth to cope and deflect from real structural problems, it will exist until the propagators no longer have a platform and are brought to the levels of the masses by taking away their special privileges in society. The solution is easier said than done, as the main propagators and descendants of these movements of old are still here and very much a presence today; the main Jewish libel smearer and hater of Freemasonry still exists in the Catholic Church, Fascism still exists and its national models are becoming more entrenched worldwide, the same pastors and churches making sh!t up about satanists still exist and are still structurally entrenched in our society, and David Icke is still railing about scaly representations on the Jewish people. The newest meme brought forth by a funnyman on 4chan will in no doubt continue on in a long line of cope for the same kind of people.

[Benjamin Frank]

QAnon most resembles other widespread conspiracy theories when a society enters a period of crisis. Before the 1900s; reactionaries blamed hidden cabals of Freemasons and Jews for a host of societal ills—from a period of revolutionary waves to societal unrest. Instead of blaming, say, the current socioeconomic structures for the failures, it was easier for the people who most depended on the status quo to instead create conspiracy theories to explain away this crisis. Same with the more current cultural Marxist ploy or that reptilians/demons/satanists have infiltrated the highest echelons of society.

Because blaming capitalism is unacceptable to the people most dependent on it, they make up myths to cope with the problem. In this case, a lot of people could not understand the current structural problems caused by the fact of our settler-colonial capitalist foundations, nor could they appropriately defend the status quo and their beliefs against an onslaught of public backlash, so they blamed everything on liberal sex predators running a Child Trafficking ring.

Like other mass delirium events brought forth to cope and deflect from real structural problems, it will exist until the propagators no longer have a platform and are brought to the levels of the masses by taking away their special privileges in society. The solution is easier said than done, as the main propagators and descendants of these movements of old are still here and very much a presence today; the main Jewish libel smearer and hater of Freemasonry still exists in the Catholic Church, Fascism still exists and its national models are becoming more entrenched worldwide, the same pastors and churches making sh!t up about satanists still exist and are still structurally entrenched in our society, and David Icke is still railing about scaly representations on the Jewish people. The newest meme brought forth by a funnyman on 4chan will in no doubt continue on in a long line of cope for the same kind of people.

I don't care for David Icke, I think he's a wack job, but he is not antisemitic/Anti Jewish.  His conspiracy theories obviously till the same ground as the anti Jewish smears, but he personally goes to great pains to say Jewish people are not behind the 'cabal.'  He may even have said that the 'cabal' started the anti Jewish conspiracies themselves in order to deflect from them.

[John Dule]

QAnon most resembles other widespread conspiracy theories when a society enters a period of crisis. Before the 1900s; reactionaries blamed hidden cabals of Freemasons and Jews for a host of societal ills—from a period of revolutionary waves to societal unrest. Instead of blaming, say, the current socioeconomic structures for the failures, it was easier for the people who most depended on the status quo to instead create conspiracy theories to explain away this crisis. Same with the more current cultural Marxist ploy or that reptilians/demons/satanists have infiltrated the highest echelons of society.

Because blaming capitalism is unacceptable to the people most dependent on it, they make up myths to cope with the problem. In this case, a lot of people could not understand the current structural problems caused by the fact of our settler-colonial capitalist foundations, nor could they appropriately defend the status quo and their beliefs against an onslaught of public backlash, so they blamed everything on liberal sex predators running a Child Trafficking ring.

Like other mass delirium events brought forth to cope and deflect from real structural problems, it will exist until the propagators no longer have a platform and are brought to the levels of the masses by taking away their special privileges in society. The solution is easier said than done, as the main propagators and descendants of these movements of old are still here and very much a presence today; the main Jewish libel smearer and hater of Freemasonry still exists in the Catholic Church, Fascism still exists and its national models are becoming more entrenched worldwide, the same pastors and churches making sh!t up about satanists still exist and are still structurally entrenched in our society, and David Icke is still railing about scaly representations on the Jewish people. The newest meme brought forth by a funnyman on 4chan will in no doubt continue on in a long line of cope for the same kind of people.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that these beliefs are created by "the people most dependent on the status quo." Are you referring to the capitalist ruling class or the lower classes? Conspiracy theories and religions are products of the downtrodden; the rulers stoke the flames a bit, but they didn't start those fires.

[PSOL]

QAnon most resembles other widespread conspiracy theories when a society enters a period of crisis. Before the 1900s; reactionaries blamed hidden cabals of Freemasons and Jews for a host of societal ills—from a period of revolutionary waves to societal unrest. Instead of blaming, say, the current socioeconomic structures for the failures, it was easier for the people who most depended on the status quo to instead create conspiracy theories to explain away this crisis. Same with the more current cultural Marxist ploy or that reptilians/demons/satanists have infiltrated the highest echelons of society.

Because blaming capitalism is unacceptable to the people most dependent on it, they make up myths to cope with the problem. In this case, a lot of people could not understand the current structural problems caused by the fact of our settler-colonial capitalist foundations, nor could they appropriately defend the status quo and their beliefs against an onslaught of public backlash, so they blamed everything on liberal sex predators running a Child Trafficking ring.

Like other mass delirium events brought forth to cope and deflect from real structural problems, it will exist until the propagators no longer have a platform and are brought to the levels of the masses by taking away their special privileges in society. The solution is easier said than done, as the main propagators and descendants of these movements of old are still here and very much a presence today; the main Jewish libel smearer and hater of Freemasonry still exists in the Catholic Church, Fascism still exists and its national models are becoming more entrenched worldwide, the same pastors and churches making sh!t up about satanists still exist and are still structurally entrenched in our society, and David Icke is still railing about scaly representations on the Jewish people. The newest meme brought forth by a funnyman on 4chan will in no doubt continue on in a long line of cope for the same kind of people.

I'm not sure what you mean when you say that these beliefs are created by "the people most dependent on the status quo." Are you referring to the capitalist ruling class or the lower classes? Conspiracy theories and religions are products of the downtrodden; the rulers stoke the flames a bit, but they didn't start those fires.

Capitalist class, but yeah I should probably clarify that it isn’t the entirety of them. In this instance, the conspiracy theory is pushed by the more reactionary elements of that class and their media, like InfoWars or the Qboomer Karen nominees.

To Frank: Oh yes, be very much is an antisemitic loon

[John Dule]

Capitalist class, but yeah I should probably clarify that it isn’t the entirety of them. In this instance, the conspiracy theory is pushed by the more reactionary elements of that class and their media, like InfoWars or the Qboomer Karen nominees.

See again, I'm not entirely sure who you're referring to here. Class, in a Marxist sense, is about social status, prestige, wealth, property, and influence in government. You can't really make an argument for why some QAnon boomer in a shack in Missouri is somehow in the same "capitalist class" as, say, Tucker Carlson. Conspiracy theories and religious beliefs are not manufactured by the elite; they come from the lower classes as a way for them to cope with their position in life ("the meek shall inherit the Earth," etc). This is because the lower classes are generally dumb, ignorant, and scared of confronting the real world-- because the real world has been somewhat cruel to them. And again, perhaps the "capitalist class" or "ruling class" helps to spread these kinds of beliefs as a distraction (or "opiate"), but it's not like they're forcing these beliefs on the people below them. These delusions are fabricated and adopted entirely organically by poor, stupid people.

[Benjamin Frank]

To Frank: Oh yes, be very much is an antisemitic loon

I was unaware that Icke ever wrote that a small clique of Jews was in league with the 'reptilians.'  I've heard him interviewed several times on the loony talk shows and he's never mentioned such a thing.  I agree that is antisemitic and plays into the vile Jewish tropes.

However, the rest of that section can be read exactly the way I said it (which is what I thought I remembered he said) that the Reptilians are really behind the conspiracy but have told the world that the Jews are to blame to deflect attention from themselves.

[Stranger in a strange land]

I was thinking the other day about how reminiscent QAnon is of the Satanic Panic and very similar conspiracy theories about Satanic Ritual Abuse in the 80s & early 90s.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

This is how religions get started. One guy tells a lie, too many people take him seriously, and somehow it ends up filling a void in people's lives by allowing them to feel self-righteous. In 1000 years you could easily have people demanding that their Qanon conspiracies receive recognition as a belief system. They'll get offended if you call them crazy and they'll worship at altars to Q. People who point out the obvious absurdities of their ramblings will be called "Qphobes" or just "edgy teens." All the while, they'll keep waiting for Q to topple the deep state, as they have for generations-- repeating "trust the plan" over and over again, hoping for a day of judgement that will never, ever come.

If QAnon manages to stick around for a millennium then it'll have earned its keep as far as I'm concerned. Fortunately for the rest of us, though, I think it's far likelier to die with Trump, possibly even with Trump's presidency.

[afleitch]

https://www.npr.org/2020/08/21/904798097/how-qanon-conspiracy-is-spreading-in-christian-communities-across-the-u-s?t=1598191950427

A bit of a follow up looking at the difficulties some congregations already reduced to being online, are struggling to mitigate this cult.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

'Marxism is a doctrine of blind confidence that a paradise of universal satisfaction is awaiting us just round the corner. Almost all the prophesies of Marx and his followers have already proved to be false, but this does not disturb the spiritual certainty of the faithful, any more than it did in the case of chialistic sects: for it is a certainty not based on any empirical premisses or supposed 'historical laws', but simply on the psychological need for certainty. In this sense Marxism performs the function of a religion, and its efficacy is of a religious character. But it is a caricature and a bogus form of religion, since it presents its temporal eschatology as a scientific system, which religious mythologies do not purport to be.'

Main Currents of Marxism: Volume III, The Breakdown, p. 526.

[afleitch]

https://www.christianpost.com/news/evangelical-leaders-denounce-qanon-as-political-cult-satanic-movement.html

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

https://www.christianpost.com/news/evangelical-leaders-denounce-qanon-as-political-cult-satanic-movement.html

Al Mohler's a big name in the "old-guard" religious right. Hopefully people will listen to him.

[Lucius Cornelius Sulla Felix]

In the same way that BLM is the religion of liberals, sure.

[Kingpoleon]

'Marxism is a doctrine of blind confidence that a paradise of universal satisfaction is awaiting us just round the corner. Almost all the prophesies of Marx and his followers have already proved to be false, but this does not disturb the spiritual certainty of the faithful, any more than it did in the case of chialistic sects: for it is a certainty not based on any empirical premisses or supposed 'historical laws', but simply on the psychological need for certainty. In this sense Marxism performs the function of a religion, and its efficacy is of a religious character. But it is a caricature and a bogus form of religion, since it presents its temporal eschatology as a scientific system, which religious mythologies do not purport to be.'

Main Currents of Marxism: Volume III, The Breakdown, p. 526.

Marx very famously expressed, “Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.” Marxism really was this, and he decided that what society really needed was a mechanical heart, a mechanical soul - which is not an incoherent belief system insomuch as it is an untenable belief system.

It is not shocking that an ideology which grounds itself within absolute opposition to religion would find itself grounded within a sort of religious fundamentalism, yet lacking the very sort of metaphysical and moral conceptualizations that allow such ideas to naturally propagate.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

In the same way that BLM is the religion of liberals, sure.

"Every political movement I don't like is an evil religion, and every religion I don't like is an evil political movement."

[Donerail]

Evangelicalism : Mainline Protestantism :: QAnon : Cult of the National Debt?

[satsuma]

QAnon has developed into an extreme wing of Republican-thought, an umbrella narrative for its conspiratorial edges. There are good cases for QAnon being overblown vs. being correctly assessed by the Mainstream Media. On the one hand, it's a minority view among Republicans.

Civiqs poll "Are you a supporter of QAnon?" Republicans say: 14% Yes, 31% No, 34% Never heard of it, 21% Unsure. People are more likely to have heard of QAnon if they're not the target audience for it at all! Most independents and a supermajority of Democrats have heard of QAnon and know they don't support it.

The case for it being correctly assessed is I think mostly in terms of QAnon support not being a significant dealbreaker for primary voters as Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene got noms for House elections. BUT they've both distanced themselves from conspiracy theory for the general election, simply running as red-meat conservatives with typical positions.

In the same way that BLM is the religion of liberals, sure.

"Every political movement I don't like is an evil religion, and every religion I don't like is an evil political movement."

BLM is not the name of the religion imo. But the new thing is that people seem to treat "don't be a bigot towards identity groups" not just as a simple rule, but with such a level of reverence and nuance that it becomes a core point in their morality.

[°Leprechaun]

I don't think that these right wing cults will disappear anytime soon.
The Trump cult is dangerous enough with or without Qanon.