Republican Party's Embrace of QAnon Will Outlast Trump

[Frodo]

Trump may have little idea who QAnon really are, but the same cannot be said for Republican Party apparatchiks:

The Republican Embrace of QAnon Goes Far Beyond Trump

[brucejoel99]

Late last month, as the Texas Republican Party was shifting into campaign mode, it unveiled a new slogan, lifting a rallying cry straight from a once-unthinkable source: the internet-driven conspiracy theory known as QAnon.

The new catchphrase, "We Are the Storm," is an unsubtle cue to a group that the F.B.I. has labeled a potential domestic terrorist threat. It is instantly recognizable among QAnon adherents, signaling what they claim is a coming conflagration between President Trump and what they allege, falsely, is a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile Democrats who seek to dominate America and the world.

Texas inches from red to purple & this is the party's answer!?

[Koharu]

W o w .

[Middle-aged Europe]

Like it or not, the GOP is now increasingly the party which is about fighting evil, pedophile, possibly Jewish, global elites.

[Horus]

Like it or not, the GOP is now increasingly the party which is about fighting evil, pedophile, possibly Jewish, global elites.

This is just a modern day version of blood libel, and though it has now gone beyond just Jews and is about most "elites", there's still clearly an antisemitic element in some corners simply from the origin, and from the type of tedious people attracted to bs such as this.

[Absentee Voting Ghost of Ruin]

Late last month, as the Texas Republican Party was shifting into campaign mode, it unveiled a new slogan, lifting a rallying cry straight from a once-unthinkable source: the internet-driven conspiracy theory known as QAnon.

The new catchphrase, "We Are the Storm," is an unsubtle cue to a group that the F.B.I. has labeled a potential domestic terrorist threat. It is instantly recognizable among QAnon adherents, signaling what they claim is a coming conflagration between President Trump and what they allege, falsely, is a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophile Democrats who seek to dominate America and the world.

Texas inches from red to purple & this is the party's answer!?

They'll be a storm every day! A veritable storm front sweeping across Texas!

(Is there any real reason, other than courtesy to Mitt Romney, that we're still calling them Republicans instead of American Nazis?)

[Sir Mohamed]

After W, everyone thought it can't get worse with the GOP. The same was thought once the Tea Party surfaced. Now we believe Mr. Trump has hit the bottom. We might be proven wrong a couple of years from now. They always find a way to surprise us, but not for the good.

[nerd73]

After W, everyone thought it can't get worse with the GOP. The same was thought once the Tea Party surfaced. Now we believe Mr. Trump has hit the bottom. We might be proven wrong a couple of years from now. They always find a way to surprise us, but not for the good.

You ready for Eddie?

[woodley park]

After W, everyone thought it can't get worse with the GOP. The same was thought once the Tea Party surfaced. Now we believe Mr. Trump has hit the bottom. We might be proven wrong a couple of years from now. They always find a way to surprise us, but not for the good.

I think though there is a certain point beyond which independents, GOP leaning suburbanites, and some Obama/Trump voters will absolutely not follow. And a significant chunk of the party embracing a conspiracy theory about a deep state stocked with Satan worshiping pedophiles is very much likely to be that point. This is why I believe the embrace of QAnon means permament minority status for the GOP, for as long as that embrace continues.

[ProudModerate2]

The nutjob, fringe of trump's cult, needs something to hold on to once their Orange Buffoon is gone.
QAnon is their answer.

[Person Man]

The nutjob, fringe of trump's cult, needs something to hold on to once their Orange Buffoon is gone.
QAnon is their answer.

If Trump wins, QAnon will be the perfect thing to bludgeon the GOP on in 2022 and potentially in 2024 (when they will likely nominate someone similar to Trump but without his "charisma").

However, they could do quite well in midterms after Trump if, like there was with Obama, there is enough institutional resistance (conservative democrats trying to run for reelection and hiring managers refusing to hire people because "they don't know what they are working with yet")  to slow down the agenda and reduce the efficacy of governance. QAnon could take the place of the TEA Party in organizing the opposition on the perceived slowed agenda and ineffective governance. It won't be enough to unseat a future Democrat, though. Biden (or Buttigieg, Gabbard, AOC) will be able to paint any future GOP nonimee as being a QAnon stooge. This will continue until they find their next Trump (someone who can simultaneously energize the base and the arouse curiosity of Low Information voters) or Bill Clinton (someone who can simultaneously be interesting  to enough of Trump's base and ancestral Republicans).

I think QAnon (or eventually the Klan itself) will dominate Republican politics until they get beaten 3 times in a row. That appears to be what it takes for a party to turn around to the base and tell them that they aren't helping. That's how Democrats ended up with Bill and that's how Republicans ended up with Ike (of course it took longer then because of the war).

[Devout Centrist]

Can anyone define what 'Qanon' is?

QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory alleging a secret plot by a supposed "deep state" against President Donald Trump and his supporters. The theory began with an October 2017 post on the anonymous imageboard 4chan by "Q", who was presumably an American individual, but probably became a group of people. Q claimed to have access to classified information involving the Trump administration and its opponents in the United States. NBC News found that three people took the original Q post and expanded it across multiple media platforms to build internet followings for profit. QAnon was preceded by several similar anonymous 4chan posters, such as FBIAnon, HLIAnon (High-Level Insider), CIAAnon, and WH Insider Anon.

Q has accused many liberal Hollywood actors, Democratic politicians, and high-ranking officials of being members of an international child sex trafficking ring. Q also claimed that Trump feigned collusion with Russians to enlist Robert Mueller to join him in exposing the ring and preventing a coup d'état by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and George Soros. "Q" is a reference to the Q clearance used by the U.S. Department of Energy. QAnon believers commonly tag their social media posts with the hashtag #WWG1WGA, signifying the motto "Where We Go One, We Go All".

[7,052,770]

Can anyone define what 'Qanon' is?

Was this a serious question? It's been covered extensively here and in the media sources across the spectrum.

[Person Man]

Can anyone define what 'Qanon' is?

Was this a serious question? It's been covered extensively here and in the media sources across the spectrum.

I have never really seen a concrete definition of what it is. It seems like a weird, generalized conspiracy theory club to me, containing bits of everything from aliens to satan-worshipping pedophile elites. It's creepy and cult-like for sure. However, it doesn't seem to be very influential or to have gained much traction (yet). I worry that bringing it to the forefront in the media is only going to draw more people into it.
The rapid emergence of conspiracy cults such as QAnon on the right, and the BLM movement on the left, is a really troubling development. 

If BLM is to be compared with anything disturbing on the right, it’s about 10 or 15 years behind them. It’s at the TEA Party level if anything.

[Koharu]

"BLM = conspiracy theorists"

conspiracy theory
[ kuhn-spir-uh-see theer-ee ]
noun

• a theory that rejects the standard explanation for an event and instead credits a covert group or organization with carrying out a secret plot
• a belief that a particular unexplained event was caused by such a covert group
• the idea that many important political events or economic and social trends are the products of deceptive plots that are largely unknown to the general public

Hmm. QAnon believes that a secret member of the Trump administration is dropping information about how Trump is secretly fighting pedophiles and satanists on an obscure internet forum and that everything this person says can be taken literally but also figuratively, especially if the literal statement is not upheld, such as the claim that Hillary Clinton was taken in to custody.

BLM believes that systemic racism has caused disparities between White and Black Americans and their claims are supported by data from various sources. They seek to bring attention to these issues, especially the issue of police brutality, something that has now been recorded on video and released to the public many times.




[ S ]Yep, absolutely, they are both conspiracy theories and exactly alike. [ /S ]

[RINO Tom]

^ I have long maintained this is the best gif out there, haha.

[Obama-Biden Democrat]

After W, everyone thought it can't get worse with the GOP. The same was thought once the Tea Party surfaced. Now we believe Mr. Trump has hit the bottom. We might be proven wrong a couple of years from now. They always find a way to surprise us, but not for the good.

Old whites are getting angrier, more racist and more conspiratorial by the year. They get brainwashed by getting their daily dose of Fox. They know the demographic time bomb is going off, and their only way to deal with it is to embrace white nationalism.

[Sumner 1868]

If you look at conservative rhetoric during the Cold War none of this is surprising. All they did was replace "the communists" with "the globalists" and lo and behold.

[QAnonKelly]

After W, everyone thought it can't get worse with the GOP. The same was thought once the Tea Party surfaced. Now we believe Mr. Trump has hit the bottom. We might be proven wrong a couple of years from now. They always find a way to surprise us, but not for the good.

The year is 2028, Don Jr actually shoots someone on 5th Avenue to prove what his dad said was true, he wins all 50 states’ primaries.

[Person Man]

After W, everyone thought it can't get worse with the GOP. The same was thought once the Tea Party surfaced. Now we believe Mr. Trump has hit the bottom. We might be proven wrong a couple of years from now. They always find a way to surprise us, but not for the good.

The year is 2028, Don Jr actually shoots someone on 5th Avenue to prove what his dad said was true, he wins all 50 states’ primaries.

Those are rookie numbers.

[Wazza [INACTIVE]]

Can anyone define what 'Qanon' is?

Something that 81% of Republicans and 79% of Moderate/Conservative Democrats don’t know anything about according to a Pew poll from earlier this year. Interestingly, the knowledge of QAnon was significantly higher amongst Liberal Democrats at 40%, which just goes to show that these cooky stories are receiving excessive amounts of attention amongst certain media firms for the sake of smearing the other side and promoting divisiveness in order to attract clicks. More proof of the parasitic nature of contemporary journalism.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Absolutely. It's their next logical devolution. They'll probably sink even lower after this phase too, somehow. I can't imagine what they'll look like then but I'm depressingly sure that we'll found out soon enough

[RINO Tom]

Can anyone define what 'Qanon' is?

Something that 81% of Republicans and 79% of Moderate/Conservative Democrats don’t know anything about according to a Pew poll from earlier this year. Interestingly, the knowledge of QAnon was significantly higher amongst Liberal Democrats at 40%, which just goes to show that these cooky stories are receiving excessive amounts of attention amongst certain media firms for the sake of smearing the other side and promoting divisiveness in order to attract clicks. More proof of the parasitic nature of contemporary journalism.

Exactly ... then you’ll get your lower-information GOPers going, “Well, I guess I suppose Qanon, because screw those other guys!”

This is more or less our modern politics ... you could get poor and stupid Democrats and Republicans to believe literally anything, given the reach of the Internet.

[Bojack Horseman]

Of course it will. The GOP’s entire platform/narrative has been based on conspiracy theories since the 1960s with the John Birch society. The newspaper in my conservative hometown even printed this in the opinion section:

[GP270watch]

The sad part is that once you have a cult of people believing nonsense and they don't get the end they expected, some of the more disturbed ones will force the action.