QAnon and Bozo

Hat tip to Courrier International.

Satanism and sex rings: How the QAnon conspiracy theory has taken political root

A fringe theory that President Trump is at war with a global cabal of powerful, Satan-worshiping elites who control the world and run a child sex ring has shifted over the last three years from anonymous message boards to Trump rallies to the 2020 ballot.

More than 60 current and former congressional candidates have promoted or embraced the unfounded QAnon theory, according to a count by Media Matters, a left-leaning research site that tracks conservative media.

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The QAnon conspiracy theory is founded on the belief that the world is run by a powerful group of evil politicians and celebrities including the Clintons, the Obamas, the Bushes, George Soros and Hollywood celebrities including Oprah Winfrey and Tom Hanks.

QAnon followers believe President Trump is aware of this and is fighting against an entrenched “deep state” of bureaucrats within the government to bring them to justice. 

They call the moment when the Clintons and other members of the cabal will be arrested “The Storm,” a term inspired by an offhand comment Trump made during an October 2017 photo-op with high-ranking military officials and their spouses. 

“You guys know what this represents?” Trump asked the news media. 

“Maybe it’s the calm before the storm.”

The conspiracy theory has been laid out by an anonymous figure known as Q — likely a group of people — who leaves cryptic messages for his followers to decipher on the website 8kun (Q previously posted on 4chan and 8chan).

Q’s followers believe that, once they convince others, there will be a “Great Awakening.”

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QAnon followers believe Q is a group of high-level military officials who support Trump

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In a sense, the basic tenets of the QAnon theory aren’t novel.

“As wacky as a pedophile deep state working against the president sounds, that’s the plot of Oliver Stone’s JFK movie from 30 years ago,” said Joseph Uscinski, an associate professor of political science at the University of Miami, where he studies why people believe in conspiracy theories. “There’s nothing new here.”

Less than a year before Q started posting, the unfounded Pizzagate theory took off. On Dec. 4, 2016, Edgar Maddison Welch drove from his home in North Carolina to the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C., where he was convinced children were being held captive as part of a sex trafficking ring organized by Democrats and Hillary Clinton.

Welch fired shots from an AR-15 semiautomatic rifle into a locked door. 

When he realized there was no evidence of a trafficking ring, he left his weapons in the store, walked out and was arrested. 

No one was harmed, and Welch was sentenced to four years in prison in June 2017.