Tag: conspiracy theories
One-Fifth of Americans Believe a ‘Storm’ Is Coming
22%
“Some 22% of Americans believe that a ‘storm’ is coming, 18% think violence might be necessary to save the country and 16% hold that the government, media and financial worlds are controlled by Satan-worshipping pedophiles.” A new study finds the QAnon conspiracy movement continues to thrive and has even strengthened more than a year after Donald Trump left the White House, The Guardian reports.
What Was Spike Lee Thinking?
From the O’Dwyer’s newsletter op-ed section:
The Brooklyn filmmaker had featured 9/11 conspiracy theorists in the final installment of his four-part “NYC Epicenters 9/11-2021 ½” series to be aired next month on HBO.
He interviewed members of the nutjob “Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth” group, which spread the garbage that the World Trade Center was destroyed by controlled demolition and not by aircraft.
In giving them facetime, Lee justified the group. He then set up a false equivalency situation by including interviews with scientists who trashed the notion that 9/11 was an insider job.
The Architects and scientists shouldn’t be on the same set, Spike
The filmmaker defended his work, telling the New York Times on Aug. 23 that he survived past criticism of his films “Do the Right Thing” (racist), “Mo’ Better Blues” (antisemitic) and “She’s Gotta Have It” (misogynist).
He said it was up to viewers to make up their minds about 9/11. After reviewers hammered Lee for showcasing the 9/11 debunkers, Lee caved and is re-editing the last episode.
How out of touch could Spike be?
His endorsement of the 9/11 conspiracy spreaders is a boost to those who deny the results of the 2020 election and safety of the COVID-19 vaccines.
Does Lee want to be a leader in the army of truth-deniers that is ripping the nation apart? One wonders if Lee has gotten his COVID-19 shot, or is that going to be part of his next documentary?
HBO also doesn’t emerge from the Epicenters mess smelling like a rose.
Qanon Accuses Q US Senate Candidate of Trafficking His Own Daughter Because She Wore Red Shoes
Things have been spinning out of control since the first week in July for Pastor Jackson Lahmeyer, a 29-year-old Qanon-courting candidate from Tulsa who’s running to oust Oklahoma’s apostate Republican senator, James Lankford.
After aggressively courting leading Trump/Q propagandists – he’s been photographed with disgraced Gen. Mike Flynn and pillow-grifter Mike Lyndell – Lahmeyer suddenly found himself the target of Q conspiracist madness that has put his once-promising campaign in jeopardy.
It all started when Lahmayer posted a photo of his very young daughter posing in front of a huge campaign photo of himself, proudly showing off her red shoes. What Lahmeyer (and 99.999999 percent of the world) did not know then is that, according to Q fabulism, children who wear red shoes are part of sex trafficking rings.
Since then, Lahmeyer has been on the defensive, fruitlessly attempting to reason with the same hardcore Q cultists whose votes he’d hoped to win. On July 7, he issued this meekly defiant plea for sanity, via Twitter:
Experts Parse the Future of QAnon
Vox has an interesting piece on the future of QAnon as described by journalists and researchers who have covered and studied the group. While the entire article makes fascinating reading, here is a crystallization of the experts’ thinking:
- QAnon should be thought of as a religion, not a political movement.
- Its religiosity enables it to survive, despite its prophesies failing to materialize.
- To the QAnon devout, Q’s true identity does not matter.
- The recent purging of QAnon believers from mainstream social media has reinforced their self-perception as persecuted renegades.
- Democratic lawmakers should be careful about framing the GOP as the “QAnon party” because it could drive the GOP deeper into the fringes.
- Violent extremists are actively working to radicalize QAnon believers for their own purposes.
- Even in the absence of Trump and regular messages from Q, the tagalong theories — 5G, vaccines and alternative medicine — represent significant risks to the public.
