Qanon

Abstract: The QAnon conspiracy theory, which emerged in 2017, has quickly risen to prominence in the United States. A survey of cases of individuals who have allegedly or apparently been radicalized to criminal acts with a nexus to violence by QAnon, including one case that saw a guilty plea on a terrorism charge, makes clear that QAnon represents a public security threat with the potential in the future to become a more impactful domestic terror threat. This is true especially given that conspiracy theories have a track record of propelling terrorist violence elsewhere in the West as well as QAnon’s more recent influence on mainstream political discourse.

On January 6, 2021 an overwhelmingly White Christian mob stormed the U.S. Capitol building in Washington D.C. as part of a rally to “Save America.” Moving beyond media reports and analyses of popular pundits, we provide an ethnographic outline of some of the complexities and contradictions on display that day. Thinking with Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Ladurie, Ursula LeGuin and others, these notes frame the rally preceding the attack on the Capitol in terms of historical narrative, carnival aesthetics, and Christian symbolisms of salvation. The rally and attempted insurrection displayed multiple social and symbolic inversions, combining yearnings for order and stability with parody, playful optimism, and violent threat. Unlike many other pre-Lenten carnivals, here it was never entirely clear which social order was being overturned and which was being reinstated, one result of the deeply divided worldviews that currently characterize much of the U.S. population.

Nicht alle Verschwörungstheorien sind antisemitisch, aber Antisemitismus ist gegenwärtig immer konspirationistisch aufgeladen. Die enge Verknüpfung von Antisemitismus und Verschwörungstheorien ist Gegenstand dieses Beitrags und soll von seiner historischen Genese bis in unsere Gegenwart hinein beleuchtet werden.

On January 6, 2021 an overwhelmingly White Christian mob stormed the U.S. Capitol building in Washington D.C. as part of a rally to “Save America.” Moving beyond media reports and analyses of popular pundits, we provide an ethnographic outline of some of the complexities and contradictions on display that day. Thinking with Hannah Arendt, Emmanuel Ladurie, Ursula LeGuin and others, these notes frame the rally preceding the attack on the Capitol in terms of historical narrative, carnival aesthetics, and Christian symbolisms of salvation. The rally and attempted insurrection displayed multiple social and symbolic inversions, combining yearnings for order and stability with parody, playful optimism, and violent threat. Unlike many other pre-Lenten carnivals, here it was never entirely clear which social order was being overturned and which was being reinstated, one result of the deeply divided worldviews that currently characterize much of the U.S. population.

This chapter discusses the circulation of conspiracy theories evolving from concoctions of Internet subcultures to global topics of public conversation and political mobilization. The examples provided are those of the Pizzagate and QAnon conspiracy theories, which embody the anti-establishment ethos, the paranoid disposition and the ironic attitude of far-right on-line communities. The chapter analyzes the spreading of a set of myths, symbols and codes created by the 4chan and 8chan users within a global network of White ethnonationalists. The far-right anti-immigration conspiracy theory 'The Great Replacement' is discussed to explore the interlocking themes of White identity politics, trolling and the 'weaponization' of Internet entertainment.

From the Wayfair rumor to mole children, allegedly sequestered in tunnels by the cabal, the theme of the conspiracy of the pedosatanist elite is central to the QAnon movement.
After detailing the extravagant allegations from the QAnon galaxy about child sex abuse, our purpose here will be to analyze how the extreme allegations about child sexual exploitation have strongly mobilized audiences in 2020 who have then, by contiguity as it were, adhered to all the QAnon theses.

In their much discussed A Lot of People are Saying: The New Conspiracism and the Assault on Democracy, Muirhead and Rosenblum (2019) argue that ‘a new conspiracism’ has emerged recently. Their examples include Donald Trump’s allegations that elections have been rigged, ‘Birther’ accusations about Barack Obama, ‘QAnon’ and ‘Pizzagate’. They characterize these as ‘conspiracism without the theory’. They argue that the new conspiracism is validated by repetition, disregards experts, and is satisfied with the conclusion that allegations are ‘true enough’. Here I argue that there is no new conspiracism. Muirhead and Rosenblum have misconstrued their chief examples of new conspiracism and mischaracterized classic conspiracism. The non-existence of a new conspiracism matters. If those studying contemporary conspiracism suppose that many of the objects of their study are theory-free then they are liable to fail to examine the theories that actually are driving contemporary conspiracism. Also, if they suppose that they are confronting an entirely new phenomenon then they are in danger of failing to learn lessons from the rich history of conspiracy theorizing.

Face à la montée des théories complotistes, le chrétien doit être vigilant pour ne pas être manipulé par telle ou telle influence. Révélant les dessous du mouvement complotiste, le pasteur Bozzi rappelle par des passages de la Bible la bonne attitude à adopter pour vivre dans ce monde où la vérité est difficile à trouver.

As representatives of the government, U.S. politicians are tasked with inciting and sustaining the American people’s belief in the system. Their speeches work to reinforce the policy trajectories and ideologies that construct the political paradigms which may last, across presidencies, for decades. This thesis describes and analyses how Barack Obama utilized his presidency to sustain the last great political paradigm to grip America – that of the globalist ‘New World Order’ project (1990 – 2017) established in America under George H. W. Bush – and how he ultimately failed when Donald Trump successfully challenged this paradigm, most markedly within his 2016 presidential debate performance against opponent Hillary Clinton. Utilizing an innovative mixed-methods research design combining corpus linguistics and qualitative coding with argument reconstruction-based critical discourse analysis, this study employs advanced methods to illuminate the complex ways in which political rhetoric is used to sustain institutional power over extended periods of time. A new research approach, based on the analysis of complex argument trajectories through critical comparison and the identification of linguistic patterns, is additionally introduced and applied to examine longterm political policy trajectories as well as the conflicting mainstream and alternative media narratives currently being produced in reference to the political and economic sectors. The results of this study show that the Obama administration’s inability to produce an even economic recovery despite the doubling of the national debt, the failure of the Affordable Care Act and the White House’s covert funding of the Caliphate in Syria have resulted in a severe degree of corrosion in the population’s belief in institutional power, a decline that largely began under George W. Bush due to the fallout from the 2003 Iraq War and the 2007-2008 Great Recession. Largely as a result, a general paradigm shift has been triggered and is manifesting among the American people; this shift is now being narrated by a new alternative media sector – which includes ‘QAnon’ – which is introducing and promoting political, economic, and occult-based theories such as New World Order Theory, Deep State Theory and Global Oligarchy Theory, which heavily influenced Trump’s successful election campaign. This situation is having a profound effect on the nation as it additionally concerns a broader scientific shift out of the materialist construct of ‘reality’ which has defined the globalist model and into a quantum-based ontological construct; this new model broadly overlaps with the view of reality upheld within the spiritual and religious systems which have traditionally defined the belief structures of the American people. In short, the current political paradigm shift is a result of a greater consciousness shift unfolding within the United States today, and while a destabilizing time of transition, this is also a period of transformation and great hope.

What is the role of different epistemic modes in how authority is
established in right-leaning conspiratorial narratives? This paper sets
out to answer this question through a mixed methods analysis. The
first section sets out a model for the analysis of epistemic contestations,
using six epistemic modes. This is then applied to a data set of
Telegram posts in which key terms are used to identify these epistemic
modes. Two questions were then asked of the data. First, how is power
related to different kinds of knowledge claims in the far-right conspiratorial
milieu? Second, what is the role of these different epistemic
modes in how authority is established in right-leaning conspiratorial
narratives? How does the epistemology of QAnon influence how they
argue? We found that while a broader set of epistemic modes could be
identified, there were contestations internally also, particularly around
moments of “failed prophecy,” and the role of Christianity and esoteric
spiritualities.

“Where We Go One, We Go All”: QAnon and the Mediology of Witnessing

When critics admonish their opponents for circulating mere conspiracy theories, they are disparaging them for subscribing to facile accounts of socio-historical phenomena that are more sophisticated and aleatory than such heavy-handed narratives apprehend. Unfortunately, this kind of disavowal has the unfortunate side-effect of precluding conspiracy theories from more serious philosophical consideration.

Arguably the most notorious information age conspiracy theory of the moment is QAnon, a byzantine, messianic truther echo-system that has recently irrupted into mainstream public consciousness. QAnon derives its name from “Q,” a lurid, anonymous, putatively omniscient insider who has been dropping missives on message boards about Donald Trump’s clandestine war with a satanic, sex-trafficking, election-fixing cabal that lurks beneath the liberal establishment.

In order to engage with QAnon as a cultural phenomenon, my article probes the rhetorical coordinates of the popular concept of conspiracy theory through optics provided by Kenneth Burke and Jodi Dean. Drawing on the recent media scholarship of Carrie Rentschler, Kate Starbird, and John Durham Peters, I then examine QAnon culture as a misguided activist modality of witnessing (what Alain Badiou might call a “pseudo-Event”) precipitated, in no small part, by rhetorical and algorithmic architecture that subtends an ever-increasing proportion of human subjectivity.

I conclude with some reflections on the viability of what media theorist Jonathan Sterne terms an "intervention."

Neste artigo, analiso criticamente a dimensão mágica dos populismos conspiratórios de ultradireita do século XXI, relativa aos encantos que eles são capazes de proporcionar. Em seguida, abordo as práticas de debunking e fact-cheking, através das quais a desinformação política e as fantasias de conspiração são normalmente combatidas. Mais especificadamente, almejo mostrar porque elas são muitas vezes ineficazes contra a maravilha gerada pelo populismo conspiratório. Por fim, apresento algumas propostas concretas para neutralizar o discurso deste último. Defendo a necessidade de sensibilizar as práticas e os discursos utilizados contra eles, bem como aquela de se desvencilhar dos moldes narrativos por eles traçados.

In this article, I critically analyze the magical dimension of 21st century far-right conspiracy populisms, related to the wonder they provide. I later tackle debunking and fact-checking, with which political misinformation and conspiracy fantasies are usually fought. More specifically, I aim to show why they are often ineffective against the wonder of conspiracy populisms. Finally, I present some proposals to neutralize conspiracy narratives and political misinformation. I argue that, in order to do that, it is necessary to sensibilize the practices and discourses we use against them, as well as to stop chasing their narratives.

Terrorism as one of the main issues of the world agenda after al-Qaeda’s terrorist attacks on 11 September 2001, was handled in the context of the Middle East and was understood mainly concerning Muslims. Yet, the far-right movements in the West and the attacks from these groups have led to the discussion of the far-right movements in the context of extremism, radicalization, and terrorism. At the end of 2020, Presidential Elections were held. After the emergence in 2017, the movement of QAnon had gotten stronger than before during the reign of Donald Trump, and reached the apex of it in the meantime of Presidential Elections in 2020.  Afterward, the FBI designated the group as a domestic threat, which has the potential to transform into a threat against the Western World due to its cross-border influence beyond the US. After the protests on 6 January 2021, when protesters opposing the election results and claiming that Trump was cheated out of the office, stormed the Capitol Hill housing the US Congress and engaged in vandalism, the American federal institutions started inquiries and engaged in legal processes through uncovering the role of individuals and groups in the Capitol Hill Riot. QAnon has been the most important movement that came to the agenda in this period. Its influence in both the USA and in the Western countries has become a concern for government surveillance and has been characterized by the prominent figures in the classical and social media platforms as ‘extremist’, and its visibility in the mainstream media has remained limited after its sympathizers were banned on the internet. At the same time, QAnon users found new platforms for self-expression through diversity in online platforms and anonymity concerns of some applications such as Signal and Telegram, thereby rushing en masse to these alternative platforms. Therefore, to find out the secret survival recipes of QAnon is a matter of curiosity which should be revealed by research; because it is active till today and is continuing to preserve its existence, expanding its influence, and most likely expected to maintain its role in the coming period.

The QAnon worldview is particularly prone to these sorts of predictions, and many adherents eagerly anticipate earth-shattering future events that will completely change the world, from “the Storm” (a near future apocalyptic realization when members of this evil cabal will be arrested) to the “Great Awakening” (a time when the general population will come to realize that they’ve been lied to for decades). Years of research into millennial movements and how they survive the often-inevitable failures of these prophetic pronouncements make clear that most movements, as we outline below, can survive these failures as long as certain conditions are in place. QAnon is no different.

In der Figur Jake Angeli erfährt die Mimikry, wie sie sich bei Donald Trump bereits zeigte, eine Weiterführung. Dabei wird nicht nur die in dieser Strategie angelegte Herstellung von Anschlussmöglichkeiten an ultra-rechten Bewegungen für sich als links-liberal verstehende Gesellschaftsgruppen sichtbar. Es wird zudem augenscheinlich, dass diese Verschiebung der Wahrnehmungs- und Bedeutungsebenen hochgradig flexibel ist. In diesem Zusammenhang nehmen mediale Ikonographisierungsprozesse und die dabei diskursiv erzeugten Bildgeschichten eine wichtige Rolle ein, da diese im Kontext politischer und gesellschaftlicher Ereignisse zunehmend mit einer sehr schnellen Umdeutung bekannter Narrative einhergehen.

This paper focuses on the phenomenon of QAnon-a newly shaped social, political and quasi religious movement that emerged in recent years as one of the most profound examples of the new right wing radicalism in the United States. The mentioned movement has a significant impact on how contemporary American religiosity and religious driven politics are being transformed and how this transformation affect the public discourse. The paper highlights the most importnat aspects of QAnon and puts them in a larger context of the conservative turn not just in the US politics but also globally. Thus the paper's thesis is based on the assumption that movements like QAnon fill a gap which was neglected for a long time by liberal politics and as a religious phenomenon they influence from the bottom up the political, social and religious mainstream.

The unprecedented World Health Organization orchestrated lockdown and public health measures in response to the SARS-CoV-2/COVID-19 pandemic were enacted by virtually every government worldwide. In many countries, but especially the United States, long-standing political animosities congealed into a discourse of dehumanization between liberal establishment adherents and anti-state revolutionaries. Left out from the field were the plural voices fitting neither camp. Mikhail Bakhtin's lens of Ideologiekritik offers a diagnosis, and the symbolic destabilizing tool of the carnivalesque provides a discursive tool to soften the political polarization and depoliticized technocracy of the coronavirus pandemic state of exception. The conflagration of the global coronavirus governmental response and the often violent counter-responses warrants examining the democratic dangers of dualistic discourses. Disrupting this explosive polarization requires reintroducing plural discursive spaces which widen the conversation to include liminal and oblique perspectives via spectacle and jest-the carnival-providing a potential nonviolent path forward.

L'assalto a Capitol Hill rappresenta un'occasione per riflettere sugli strumenti di prevenzione e repres-sione di condotte lesive di interessi fondamentali-quali il corretto esercizio del voto e il regolare inse-diamento degli organi costituzionali-nell'epoca dell'infosfera. La rivoluzione digitale, che sta subendo un'ulteriore accelerazione a causa dell'emergenza pandemica, sta determinando pericolosi spazi vuoti dal diritto, nei quali proliferano fake news, hate speech, fino ad arrivare a veri e propri culti come QAnon. Alcuni ordinamenti-come Francia e Germania, stanno tentando di regolare-anche attraverso l'utilizzo della legge penale-questo brave new world digitale e lo stesso prevede di fare l'Unione Euro-pea attraverso la strategia "Shaping Europe's digital future". Di fronte a questo quadro così frastagliato, emerge con ulteriore evidenza l'arretratezza della legislazio-ne italiana, in particolare nel negletto settore dei reati elettorali, che risulta, oltre che inefficace, scarsa-mente compatibile con un modello di diritto penale liberale e costituzionalmente orientato.

More Qanon papers XD

F it...

This one's about why the Qanon community is best described as a 'discourse community' rather than a 'speech community' as per the sociolinguistic criteria proposed by John Swales and James Paul Gee in their journal articles on the subject. I wrote this for my Genre and Discourse class at DePaul University.

God bless the potus!!! lets save the kids =)

In 2016, two unexpected election results shook the U.S. and the U.K.: the successful presidential campaign of Donald Trump and the victory of leave campaigners in Britain. Commentary on both events highlighted the anti-immigration rhetoric and the rise of populism: the kind of populism that seeks to mobilize the ‘common’ people against the privileged elites and those deemed to be unwanted outsiders. What was missing from the majority of pre- and post-election coverage was feminist analysis of the patriarchal nature of the campaigns and their impact on women, especially religious women. By drawing on available reports of both election campaigns and views expressed by mainstream and fringe Christian leaders and theologians, this chapter explores the underlying misogyny that led to large numbers of White evangelical women voting for President Trump, despite his openly sexist and racist behavior, and against the growth of the hashtag #whitechurchquiet. Likewise, male voices in political and Christian circles dominated in the lead up to the U.K.’s referendum on EU membership; yet, women are more likely to suffer from the impacts of post-Brexit austerity and the rise in religious hate crime. Hence, this chapter considers the gendered implications of Christian rhetoric and theology in Britain, including that of current Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and its impact on Muslim women in particular. The chapter concludes that the persistence of White Christian patriarchy and its entanglement with right-wing populism (including QAnon conspiracy theories) is evident in responses to Black Lives Matter protests and COVID-19, and, yet, is clearly at odds with liberation theology’s preferential option for poor.

The question of how to address the spread of misinformation in the digital era has become an international issue. Drawing from the field of communication, this article discusses three perspectives that could inform the debate and potential policy responses. First, the article covers the concept of the public sphere and how it applies to information flow. Second, it covers how responses that focus on media literacy development often fall short. Lastly, it provides an alternative account of misinformation as a process in which cultural groups are demarcated. All three perspectives are contextualized through contemporary issues like “fake news,” the 2020 presidential election, communication during the presidency of Donald Trump, COVID-19, the conspiracy theory QAnon, and the Capitol insurrection of January 6, 2021, along with a historical review of misinformation culture in the United States.

Journalism is ostensibly a fact-based profession. So how can journalists cover political movements that deal in symbols and metaphor? I argue we must more fully recognize how American politics has become a game of cultural signifiers. Understanding how elite newsrooms are reluctant to recognize the symbolic languages of American citizenry helps explain the rise in media skepticism that defined the Trump era.

Il complotto al potere è un titolo che suggerisce un ossimoro. Se nel senso comune si concepisce la parola “complotto” come ciò che raggira, che insubordina, che destabilizza il potere, allora come è possibile pensare un complotto “al potere”, un complotto che esso stesso è il potere? Come può darsi questa coincidenza? L’importanza dell’ultimo libro di Donatella di Cesare sta proprio nel saper decostruire, con inesausta verve critica e grande lucidità del contesto politico e filosofico attuale, molti luoghi comuni sul funzionamento del potere contemporaneo e allo stesso tempo evidenziare il ruolo centrale e dirimente che il “complotto” svolge al suo interno.

The current submission will explore those matters further, first by providing a comprehensive definition of the term ‘Fake News’. It will examine the role of disinformation campaigns in the fuelling of hate speech and sectarianist sentiments online and then evaluate to what extend that increases the radicalized views of certain individuals and could subsequently lead to extremist violence. It will use as case study the results of EFSAS' research in the region of Indian-administered Jammu & Kashmir where questionnaires were distributed among 139 young people, assessing their capacity of identifying hate speech online and their levels of social media critical thinking. The Paper will conclude with a list of recommendations on possible interventions for tackling the phenomenon.

In 2016, two unexpected election results shook the US and the UK: the successful presidential campaign of Donald Trump and the victory of leave campaigners in Britain. Commentary on both events highlighted the anti-immigration rhetoric and the rise of populism: the kind of populism that seeks to mobilize the ‘common’ people against the privileged elites and those deemed to be unwanted outsiders. What was missing from the majority of pre- and post-election coverage was feminist analysis of the patriarchal nature of the campaigns and their impact on women, especially religious women. By drawing on available reports of both election campaigns and views expressed by mainstream and fringe Christian leaders and theologians, this chapter explores the underlying misogyny that led to large numbers of White evangelical women voting for President Trump, despite his openly sexist and racist behavior, and against the growth of the hashtag #whitechurchquiet. Likewise, male voices in political and Christian circles dominated in the lead up to the UK’s referendum on EU membership; yet, women are more likely to suffer from the impacts of post-Brexit austerity and the rise in religious hate crime. Hence, this chapter considers the gendered implications of Christian rhetoric and theology in Britain, including that of current Prime Minister Boris Johnson, and its impact on Muslim women in particular. The chapter concludes that the persistence of White Christian patriarchy and its entanglement with right-wing populism (including QAnon conspiracy theories) is evident in responses to Black Lives Matter protests and COVID-19, and, yet, is clearly at odds with liberation theology’s preferential option for poor.

11 Eylül 2001’de el-Kaide’nin terör eylemlerinin ardından dünya gündeminin ana maddelerinden birisi hâline gelen terörizm, büyük oranda Ortadoğu bağlamında ele alınmış ve Müslümanlarla özdeş bir şekilde anlaşılmıştır. Ancak Batı dünyasını etkisi altına alan aşırı sağ hareketler ve bu hareketler içerisinden gelen, bazen grup bazen de bireysel olarak gerçekleştirilen saldırılar aşırı sağ hareketlerin, aşırılık, radikalleşme ve terörizm bağlamında tartışılmasına yol açmıştır. 2017 yılından itibaren ortaya çıkan, Donald Trump döneminde güçlenen, 2020 yılı sonunda gerçekleştirilen başkanlık seçimleri sürecinde ve sonrasında zirve noktasına ulaşan QAnon hareketi; FBI tarafından bir iç tehdit olarak tanımlanmış ancak bunun ötesinde ABD sınırlarını aşan etkisi ile Batı dünyası için bir tehdide dönüşme eğilimi göstermeye başlamıştır. 6 Ocak 2021 tarihinde gerçekleşen protesto gösterisi ve Trump’ın seçimi kaybetmesinde hile olduğu yönünde itiraz etmek üzere toplanan grupların Amerikan Kongre Binası Capitol Hill’i basması ile Vandalizm örnekleri sergilemeleri nedeniyle bu olaylar ABD devlet kurumlarınca mercek altına alınmış, baskını gerçekleştiren kişilerin ve grupların baskındaki rolleri açığa çıkartılarak yasal süreçler işletilmeye çalışılmıştır. Bu süreçte gündeme gelen en önemli hareket ise QAnon hareketi olmuştur. Bu bağlamda QAnon hareketi gerek ABD içerisindeki etkisi gerek Batı dünyasındaki etkisi ile birçok hükûmetin takibi altına alınmış, klasik medya ve sosyal medya platformlarının önde gelenleri tarafından “aşırı” olarak nitelendirilerek QAnon sempatizanlarına yönelik erişim engelleri konulmuş, sonuç olarak ana akım medyada QAnon’un görünürlüğü azaltılmıştır. Bununla birlikte çevrim içi platformların çeşitliliği ve Signal, Telegram gibi bazı uygulamaların anonimlik hassasiyetleri ve özellikleri nedeniyle QAnon destekçileri tarafından yeni bir ifade alanı olarak değerlendirilmiş, böylece alternatif platformlara kitleler hâlinde bir akış yaşanmıştır. Bu şekilde varlığını devam ettiren, hatta etkisini artıran ve önümüzdeki süreçte de önemini koruması beklenen QAnon’un ne olduğu, nasıl bir süreçle bugüne geldiği ve gelecekteki muhtemel etkileri konusunda çalışmalara ihtiyaç doğmuştur.

The massive social media platform - with over 2.6 billion users - has become part of our modern way of life. Is there some way to convert the social web and Facebook in particular into something magical? Into a force for good? Did Facebook start off on a good foot and suddenly went bad? Was it once useful to society but is now harmful? Perhaps some better moderation, better algorithms, stricter fact-checking, some anti-trust regulation might make it less toxic?

Si la logorrhée de plusieurs youtubeurs contre «l’Etat profond» intéresse des dizaines de milliers d’internautes, les adeptes de QAnon ont du mal à mobiliser, notamment depuis qu’ils ont été chassés de nombreuses plateformes. Marginale, la mouvance inquiète cependant les autorités par son discours de défiance.