A new Facebook policy will see all profiles linked to the QAnon conspiracy community wiped from the platform whether or not they promote violence, the company’s latest crackdown on what it claims is a dangerous movement.
Facebook announced the new measures on Tuesday, explaining that the decision updates a policy imposed in August targeting QAnon accounts “containing discussions of potential violence,” broadening the ban to any profiles affiliated with the movement. The policy will also apply to Instagram.
“Starting today, we will remove any Facebook Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts representing QAnon, even if they contain no violent content,” the company said, arguing that the group is tied to other types of “real world harm.”
While we’ve removed QAnon content that celebrates and supports violence, we’ve seen other QAnon content tied to different forms of real world harm, including recent claims that the west coast wildfires were started by certain groups, which diverted attention of local officials from fighting the fires.
The initial ban on accounts promoting violence saw over 1,500 QAnon pages and groups scrubbed from the platform, as well as more than 6,500 linked to other “militarized social movements,” including Antifa and various militia groups. However, the new sweeping ban does not appear to apply to the other movements, singling out the pro-Trump conspiracy community by name.
The move has been blasted as another clamp-down on free expression online, with even some self-avowed opponents of QAnon deeming it “chilling for free speech.”
Others questioned why the new ban targeted QAnon alone, even as a number of militant left-wing groups openly “discuss which city they are going to burn down next.”
Some countered the free speech proponents, however, calling to deplatform “dangerous disinformation” and “QAnon cult followers,” among them Congresswoman Jennifer Wexton (D-Virginia) and California state Senator Scott Wiener. Others said the decision should have been made long ago.
Facebook is not the only platform to attempt to purge its Q-friendly users, as Twitter announced its own massive ban of up to 150,000 QAnon-related accounts, blacklisting the group in its recommendations and Trends tabs while barring any associated web links. Like Facebook, Twitter alleged the group’s behavior had “the potential to lead to offline harm,” also citing “coordinated harmful activity” and “platform manipulation.”
The QAnon movement gained prominence after the election of Donald Trump to the presidency in 2016. While the group embraces a range of theories, some more outlandish than others, many center on the notion that a secretive cabal of Satan worshippers and child sex traffickers has infiltrated world governments, and that the president is working to bring them down.
The
FBI for the first time has identified fringe conspiracy theories as a
domestic terrorist threat, according to a previously unpubl(Read the document below.)
The
FBI intelligence bulletin from the bureau’s Phoenix field office,
dated May 30, 2019, describes “conspiracy theory-driven domestic
extremists,” as a growing threat, and notes that it is the first
such report to do so. It lists a number of arrests, including some
that haven’t been publicized, related to violent incidents
motivated by fringe beliefs.
The
document specifically mentions QAnon, a shadowy network that believes
in a deep state conspiracy against President Trump, and Pizzagate,
the theory that a pedophile ring including Clinton associates was
being run out of the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza restaurant
(which didn’t actually have a basement).
“The
FBI assesses these conspiracy theories very likely will emerge,
spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace,
occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry
out criminal or violent acts,” the document states. It also goes on
to say the FBI believes conspiracy theory-driven extremists are
likely to increase during the 2020 presidential election cycle.
The
FBI said another factor driving the intensity of this threat is “the
uncovering of real conspiracies or cover-ups involving illegal,
harmful, or unconstitutional activities by government officials or
leading political figures.” The FBI does not specify which
political leaders or which cover-ups it was referring to.
President
Trump is mentioned by name briefly in the latest FBI document, which
notes that the origins of QAnon is the conspiratorial belief that
“Q,” allegedly a government official, “posts classified
information online to reveal a covert effort, led by President Trump,
to dismantle a conspiracy involving ‘deep state’ actors and
global elites allegedly engaged in an international child sex
trafficking ring.”
This
recent intelligence bulletin comes as the FBI is facing pressure to
explain who it considers an extremist, and how the government
prosecutes domestic terrorists. In recent weeks the FBI director has
addressed domestic terrorism multiple times but did not publicly
mention this new conspiracy theorist threat.
The
FBI is already under fire for its approach to domestic extremism. In
a contentious hearing last week before the Senate Judiciary
Committee, FBI Director Christopher Wray faced criticism from
Democrats who said the bureau was not focusing enough on white
supremacist violence. “The term ‘white supremacist,’ ‘white
nationalist’ is not included in your statement to the committee
when you talk about threats to America,” Sen. Richard Durbin,
D-Ill., said. “There is a reference to racism, which I think
probably was meant to include that, but nothing more specific.
Wray
told lawmakers the FBI had done away with separate categories for
black identity extremists and white supremacists, and said the bureau
was instead now focusing on “racially motivated” violence. But he
added, “I will say that a majority of the domestic terrorism cases
that we've investigated are motivated by some version of what you
might call white supremacist violence.”
The
FBI had faced mounting criticism for the term “black identity
extremists,” after its use was revealed by Foreign Policy magazine
in 2017. Critics pointed out that the term was an FBI invention based
solely on race, since no group or even any specific individuals
actually identify as black identity extremists.
In
May, Michael C. McGarrity, the FBI’s assistant director of the
counterterrorism division, told Congress the bureau now “classifies
domestic terrorism threats into four main categories: racially
motivated violent extremism, anti-government/anti-authority
extremism, animal rights/environmental extremism, and abortion
extremism,” a term the bureau uses to classify both pro-choice and
anti-abortion extremists.
The
new focus on conspiracy theorists appears to fall under the broader
category of anti-government extremism. “This is the first FBI
product examining the threat from conspiracy theory-driven domestic
extremists and provides a baseline for future intelligence products,”
the document states.
The
new category is different in that it focuses not on racial
motivations, but on violence based specifically on beliefs that, in
the words of the FBI document, “attempt to explain events or
circumstances as the result of a group of actors working in secret to
benefit themselves at the expense of others” and are “usually at
odds with official or prevailing explanations of events.”
The
FBI acknowledges conspiracy theory-driven violence is not new, but
says it’s gotten worse with advances in technology combined with an
increasingly partisan political landscape in the lead-up to the 2020
presidential election. “The advent of the Internet and social media
has enabled promoters of conspiracy theories to produce and share
greater volumes of material via online platforms that larger
audiences of consumers can quickly and easily access,” the document
says.
The
bulletin says it is intended to provide guidance and “inform
discussions within law enforcement as they relate to potentially
harmful conspiracy theories and domestic extremism.”
The
FBI Phoenix field office referred Yahoo News to the bureau’s
national press office, which provided a written statement.
“While
our standard practice is to not comment on specific intelligence
products, the FBI routinely shares information with our law
enforcement partners in order to assist in protecting the communities
they serve,” the FBI said.
In
its statement, the FBI also said it can “never initiate an
investigation based solely on First Amendment protected activity. As
with all of our investigations, the FBI can never monitor a website
or a social media platform without probable cause.”
The
Department of Homeland Security, which has also been involved in
monitoring domestic extremism, did not return or acknowledge emails
and phone requests for comment.
While
not all conspiracy theories are deadly, those identified in the FBI’s
15-page report led to either attempted or successfully carried-out
violent attacks. For example, the Pizzagate conspiracy led a
28-year-old man to invade a Washington, D.C., restaurant to rescue
the children he believed were being kept there, and fire an
assault-style weapon inside.
The
FBI document also cites an unnamed California man who was arrested on
Dec. 19, 2018, after being found with what appeared to be bomb-making
materials in his car. The man allegedly was planning “blow up a
satanic temple monument” in the Capitol rotunda in Springfield,
Ill., to “make Americans aware of Pizzagate and the New World
Order, who were dismantling society,” the document says.
Historian
David Garrow, the author of a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of
Martin Luther King Jr. who has worked extensively with FBI archives,
raised doubts to Yahoo News about the memo. He says the FBI’s
default assumption is that violence is motivated by ideological
beliefs rather than mental illness. “The guy who shot up the pizza
place in D.C.: Do we think of him as a right-wing activist, or
insane?” Garrow asked.
Garrow
was similarly critical of the FBI’s use of the term “black
identity extremists” and related attempts to ascribe incidents like
the 2016 shooting of six police officers in Baton Rouge, La., to
black radicalism. He said the shooter, Gavin Long, had a history of
mental health problems. “The bureau’s presumption — the mindset
— is to see ideological motives where most of the rest of us see
individual nuttiness,” he said.
Identifying
conspiracy theories as a threat could be a political lightning rod,
since President Trump has been accused of promulgating some of them,
with his frequent references to a deep state and his praise in 2015
for Alex Jones, who runs the conspiracy site InfoWars. While the FBI
intelligence bulletin does not mention Jones or InfoWars by name, it
does mention some of the conspiracy theories frequently associated
with the far-right radio host, in particular the concept of the New
World Order.
Jones
claimed the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, in which 26
children were killed, was a hoax, a false flag operation intended as
a pretext for the government to seize or outlaw firearms. The
families of a number of victims have sued Jones for defamation,
saying his conspiracy-mongering contributed to death threats and
online abuse they have received.
While
Trump has never endorsed Sandy Hook denialism, he was almost up until
the 2016 election the most high-profile promoter of the birther
conspiracy that claimed former President Barack Obama was not born in
the United States. He later dropped his claim, and deflected
criticism by pointing the finger at Hillary Clinton. He said her
campaign had given birth to the conspiracy, and Trump “finished
it.”
There
is no evidence that Clinton started the birther conspiracy.
Joe
Uscinski, an associate professor of political science at the
University of Miami, whose work on conspiracy theories is cited in
the intelligence bulletin, said there’s no data suggesting
conspiracy theories are any more widespread now than in the past.
“There is absolutely no evidence that people are more
conspiratorial now,” says Uscinski, after Yahoo News described the
bulletin to him. “They may be, but there is not strong evidence
showing this.”
It’s
not that people are becoming more conspiratorial, says Uscinski, but
conspiracies are simply getting more media attention.
“We
are looking back at the past with very rosy hindsight to forget our
beliefs, pre-internet, in JFK [assassination] conspiracy theories and
Red scares. My gosh, we have conspiracy theories about the king [of
England] written into the Declaration of Independence,” he said,
referencing claims that the king was planning to establish tyranny
over the American colonies.
It’s
not that conspiracy theorists are growing in number, Uscinski argues,
but that media coverage of those conspiracies has grown. “For most
of the last 50 years, 60 to 80 percent of the country believe in some
form of JFK conspiracy theory,” he said. “They’re obviously not
all extremist.”
Conspiracy
theories, including Russia’s role in creating and promoting them,
attracted widespread attention during the 2016 presidential election
when they crossed over from Internet chat groups to mainstream news
coverage. Yahoo News’s "Conspiracyland" podcast recently
revealed that Russia’s foreign intelligence service was the origin
of a hoax report that tied the murder of Seth Rich, a Democratic
National Committee staffer, to Hillary Clinton.
Washington
police believe that Rich was killed in a botched robbery, and there
is no proof that his murder had any political connections.
Among
the violent conspiracy theories cited in the May FBI document is one
involving a man who thought Transportation Security Administration
agents were part of a New World Order. Another focused on the High
Frequency Active Auroral Research Program (HAARP), a
government-funded facility in Alaska that has been linked to
everything from death beams to mind control. The two men arrested in
connection with HAARP were “stockpiling weapons, ammunition and
other tactical gear in preparation to attack” the facility,
believing it was being used “to control the weather and prevent
humans from talking to God.”
Nate
Snyder, who served as a Department of Homeland Security
counterterrorism official during the Obama administration, said that
the FBI appears to be applying the same radicalization analysis it
employs against foreign terrorism, like the Islamic State group,
which has recruited followers in the United States.
“The
domestic violent extremists cited in the bulletin are using the same
playbook that groups like ISIS and al-Qaida have used to inspire,
recruit and carry out attacks,” said Snyder, after reviewing a copy
of the bulletin provided by Yahoo News. “You put out a bulletin and
say this is the content they’re looking at — and it’s some guy
saying he’s a religious cleric or philosopher — and then you look
at the content, videos on YouTube, etc., that they are pushing and
show how people in the U.S. might be radicalized by that content.”
Though
the FBI document focuses on ideological motivations, FBI Director
Wray, in his testimony last week, asserted that the FBI is concerned
only with violence, not people’s beliefs. The FBI doesn’t
“investigate ideology, no matter how repugnant,” he told
lawmakers. “We investigate violence. And any extremist ideology,
when it turns to violence, we are all over it. ... In the first three
quarters of this year, we've had more domestic terrorism arrests than
the prior year, and it's about the same number of arrests as we have
on the international terrorism side.”
Yet
the proliferation of the extremist categories concerns Michael
German, a former FBI agent and now a fellow with the Brennan Center
for Justice’s Liberty & National Security program. “It’s
part of the radicalization theory the FBI has promoted despite
empirical studies that show it’s bogus,” he said.
German
says this new category is a continuing part of FBI overreach. “They
like the radicalization theory because it justifies mass
surveillance,” he said. “If we know everyone who will do harm is
coming from this particular community, mass surveillance is
important. We keep broadening the number of communities we include in
extremist categories.”
For
Garrow, the historian, the FBI’s expansive definition has its roots
in bureau paranoia that dates back decades. “I think it’s their
starting point,” he said. “This goes all the way back to the
Hoover era without question. They see ideology as a central
motivating factor in human life, and they don’t see mental health
issues as a major factor.”
Yet
trying to label a specific belief system as prone to violence is
problematic, he said.
“I
don’t think most of us would do a good job in predicting what sort
of wacky information could lead someone to violence, or not lead
anyone to violence,” Garrow said. “Pizzagate would be a great
example of that.”
While
Trump may not be supportive of labeling a group like QAnon, which
sees him as a hero, as extremist, he’s in favor of broadening the
number of organizations that are labeled as violent extremists, at
least on the left. On Saturday, President Trump tweeted that Antifa,
a far-left movement opposed to what it considers fascism, should be
labeled a terrorist organization.
Snyder,
the former Homeland Security official, agrees that conspiracy
theories may in fact inspire violence and be a threat, but questions
what the government is going to do about it.
He
notes that at the Department of Homeland Security, “nearly all, if
not all, the intelligence analysts focusing on domestic extremist
groups” were eliminated under the Trump administration. “There is
no one there doing this,” he said.
At a time when everyone should be out in the streets shaking the earth and protesting the Trump administration’s prosecution of Julian Assange for exposing US war crimes, those who continue to support this president have one message and one message only when it comes to the WikiLeaks founder: Don’t do anything. Relax, wait and see, trust Trump, and don’t do anything. Trump is about to save Assange, and save us all. Do nothing.
Who do you guys think this strategy benefits, exactly?
These are all people who say they support Assange and WikiLeaks, who say they support free speech and oppose the deep state, and yet what they are doing today hurts Assange and helps the unelected power establishment known as the deep state just as much as the hysterical Russiavape dupes who are overtly smearing Assange today.
To be clear, not everyone who voted for Trump is doing this; many are aggressively opposing this administration’s prosecution of Assange and vocally withdrawing all support for him. But the ones who are engaged in the behavior I’m describing are all helping to kill the loud and aggressive opposition to Assange’s imprisonment which is so desperately needed right now, and they’re helping everyone they claim to oppose. The pussyhat-wearing Assange haters and the MAGA hat-wearing Assange lovers are on the same side on this issue, mindlessly working toward the exact same agenda: the permanent imprisonment of a truth-telling journalist.
Every time President Trump advances a longstanding evil agenda of America’s permanent government, I see my social media notifications swarmed with Trump supporters telling me that it is actually a good thing, because it’s secretly a brilliant strategic chess move that the 45th president is taking against the deep state.
When I say that this happens every time, I’m not being hyperbolic to make a point. I mean it happens every single time, without a single, solitary exception, always. It happens with such clockwork reliability that I preemptively addressed it in the article I wrote when Julian Assange was arrested, saying, “I am going to have a zero tolerance policy for QAnon cultists who try to tell me that this is actually 5-D chess by Trump to overthrow the Deep State. Stay out of my comments, stay out of my social media notifications, stay the hell away from me, and please rethink your worldview.”
I said this because I knew it was coming, and indeed it did. All sorts of theories have been concocted since Assange’s arrest which people cite as proof that Trump is actually protecting Assange with his administration’s indictment and extradition request, instead of working to imprison a journalist for exposing US war crimes, which is actually what’s happening.
They tell me that Trump is bringing Assange to America for trial because he can only pardon him after he’s been convicted. This is false. A US president can pardon anyone at any time of any crime against the United States, without their having been convicted and without their even having been charged. After leaving office Richard Nixon was issued a full presidential pardon by Gerald Ford for “all offenses against the United States which he, Richard Nixon, has committed or may have committed or taken part in during the period from January 20, 1969 through August 9,1974.” Nixon had never been charged with anything. If Trump were going to pardon Assange he could have done it at any time since taking office, instead of issuing a warrant for his arrest in December 2017 and executing it on Thursday after a series of international legal manipulations. A pardon is not in the plans.
Another common belief I keep encountering is that Trump is bringing Assange to America to get him to testify about his source for the 2016 Democratic Party emails in exchange for a pardon, thereby revealing the truth about Russiagate’s origins and bringing down Clinton and Obama. This is false. Everyone who knows anything about Assange (including the Trump administration) knows that he will never, ever reveal a source under any circumstances whatsoever. It would be a cardinal journalistic sin, a violation of every promise WikiLeaks has ever made, and a betrayal of his entire life’s work. More importantly, imprisoning a journalist and threatening him with a heavy sentence to coerce him into giving up information against his will is evil. If you believe your president is doing that, the last thing you should be doing is cheering for him.
But that isn’t what Trump is doing. Trump is pursuing the imprisonment of a journalist for exposing US war crimes, so that he can scare off future leak publishers and set a legal precedent for their prosecution.
I’ve been engaging people in debates on this subject online so I can understand their arguments well enough to address them, and what I’ve learned is that they don’t really have any. Those who believe Trump is actually secretly helping Assange and helping the American people by prosecuting a journalist have no basis for their belief other than pure faith that Trump is good, therefore anything he does must be good. It’s the exact mirror image of Russiagate hysterics, and it benefits the exact same corrupt establishment.
The mental contortions that people are doing to avoid the cognitive dissonance between their support for Assange and their support for Trump is truly something to behold. For the last 24 hours QAnon adherents have been telling me that Assange holding a Gore Vidal book when arrested is an undeniable signal that he’s in coordination with the Trump campaign to bring down the Deep State, and that I’m crazy for being unable to see that. Turns out it was actually a book that Assange wanted to read while he was waiting to be processed at the courthouse, which makes sense since Vidal’s “History of the National Security State” covers a subject that Assange has devoted his entire life to.
QAnon is such a brilliant propaganda construct. With some cryptic posts on an anonymous message board, whoever is behind that psyop has succeeded in manipulating a vocal and impassioned sector of Trump’s base into applauding every single step he’s taken in advancing the dystopian agendas of his predecessors as a brilliant 4-D chess move against the establishment. I’ve been told that his bombing of Syria actually took out an Iranian nuclear base, that he’s helping to free the Venezuelan people without harming anyone, that he’s fighting the deep state in Iran, that his dangerous escalations against Russia are just a show because he and Putin are working together (a comical overlap with the Russiagate crowd), and last year they were telling me that Assange isn’t in the embassy at all because Trump had already covertly rescued and pardoned him. There are people who honestly believe that there is a revolution against the establishment underway which is being led by a plucky alliance between the President of the United States, the Prime Minister of Israel, and the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia. It’s that bad.
QAnon followers make up a minority of Trump’s base, but the insanity of the QAnon psyop bleeds into the greater MAGA crowd and helps normalize the kind of thinking which leads people to conclude that a blatant prosecution of a journalist for telling the truth about the US political construct is actually a strategic maneuver against the establishment. The enthusiastic promotion of this narrative has an undeniable and pernicious chilling effect on opposition to Assange’s wrongful imprisonment, which should be an issue upon which the right and the true left agree.
I’ve never pushed away Trump supporters because I believe isolating into ideological echo chambers makes the left impotent and stupid, and many of them have followed me since I started this gig because they agree with some of what I’ve got to say. I don’t know how many MAGA people I still have in my readership after all the stuff I’ve been writing about their president, but those of you who are still out there, please, for the love of God help get this idea out there. This is a time where everyone who supports WikiLeaks should be flooring the gas pedal, and all the “Don’t do anything, trust the plan, wait and see” rhetoric is keeping one foot on the brakes.
Assange should have been pardoned already, long ago, if not by Obama then by Trump. There is no excuse whatsoever for this not to have happened already, let alone for Assange to be behind bars at the behest of this administration. Stop saying “wait and see”. We’ve already seen. The time to protest is now. Get your foot off the brakes, and aggressively demand that your president cease doing what he is doing. Make this an election issue. Trump can’t afford to lose his base, but if you keep saying “wait and see” the narrative manipulators will keep moving back the line you’d sworn you’ll never let him cross until before you know it you’ve got another four years of another Bushbama while Assange remains locked in a cage.
Don’t let them do this to you. Use your power now.
"I'm going to make the below thread to explain to you exactly why it is an intelligence agency-backed psyop, what techniques are being used, and why you need to stop people falling for it."
Here
is a thread of tweets from Suzie Dawson illustrating why the Qanon
phenomenon is a psychological operation.
If
I have to choose I will go with Suzie and with Wikileaks any day.
Tragically, we have been deprived of Julian Assange’s voice.
The
game was given away when Dr.Jerome Corsi put out the message that
American special forces had rescued Julian and that he was safe in
Switzerland. Later on, that Edwarde Snowden was in China.
THREAD:
After more than 6 months of watching people get scammed by the #QAnon phenomena, I'm going to make the below thread to explain to you exactly why it is an intelligence agency-backed psyop, what techniques are being used, and why you need to stop people falling for it.
1. I referred to #QAnon today as a 'Pied Piper' operation. What I meant by this, is that the operation exists to round up people that are otherwise dangerous to the Deep State (because they are genuinely opposed to it) usurp time & attention, & trick them into serving its aims.
2. To achieve this, the operation moves through three phases.
PHASE 1: ESTABLISH CREDIBILITY.
It does this by appearing to leak insider information to the #QAnon audience. Making them feel that they are getting access to information that they otherwise wouldn't be privy to
2a. This has several effects. Firstly, it establishes Q's reputation as a government source. A whistleblower, or a leaker. More importantly, it begins to shape him/her/them as an authority figure. Someone to be looked up to. Someone who is different from the crowd. The Pied Piper
2b. The information "leaked" to establish credibility is not internal NSA documents like Snowden, or publishing evidence of war crimes like Assange, but is simply "heads-up' style reference points about what will be in the news or internal political machinations in Washington.
2c. In other words, it is not information that is in any way a meaningful threat to the supremacy of the intelligence agencies of the United States. It will not cause them to lose any sleep at night. They are not launching public manhunts for Q like they did for Assange & Snowden
2d. Q employs gamification.
This is a technique frequently used by big data companies/corporates, surveillance companies, and intelligence agencies. It's not enough for Q to simply tell you stuff outright. So it has to become a quiz. It has to be a puzzle. It has to become fun.
2e. Q professes to share the values and priorities of his/her/their target audience.
This creates a natural affinity between audience and Pied Piper. It creates a promise that if they follow Q, they will be led towards achieving the perfect outcomes that they hope and dream of.
2f. Of course the only place the Pied Piper will lead them is exactly where the Pied Piper wants to take them. Not where the audience wants to go. But every time these grand promises don't pan out, he tells them, be patient! Wait! Have faith! We want the same thing. We'll get it!
3. Phase Two: MAKING IT SPIRITUAL
To build a truly evangelical following, the audience must become DEVOTED. Devotion is incredibly powerful. A devoted following is loyal and compliant, willing to silence their Devil's Advocate inner tendencies, willing to extend their faith.
3a. Concept of a global awakening was discussed by @davidicke in print in the 90s. Was written about in James Redfield's Celestine Prophecy series in the '00s. I suspect the concept dates back centuries. The information age has accelerated awareness, yes. DS seeks to control it.
3b. Q/Q followers cross-pollinate the concept of a global awakening with a spiritual awakening, and funnel that energy straight back into the conventional two-party political paradigm. A paradigm which is fundamentally opposed to the empowerment of individuals & spiritual growth.
3c. I have no doubt that the human brain & consciousness is capable of far more than what legacy science has suggested. But the mix of spirituality with politics, & spiritual devotion to a man who rubs shoulders with Kissinger, appoints Pompeo, Bolton & Haspel, is ridiculous.
4. Phase Three: Shifting The Targets & Unleashing The Audience
These ops are not simply just like the day-to-day info ops where they want to make the audience believe false things. In order to unleash their full power, they have to shift focus & direct the audience to action.
4a. Slowly and subtly, the Pied Piper starts to shift the direction. Where Q started out focusing on the int agencies/Deep-State-Will-Be-Drained promises, he begins to start drawing other figures into his narratives. Edward Snowden. Julian Assange.
Targets of the Deep State.
4b. This is where Q's stated motives begin to fall apart.
We don't even have to ask who benefits. We can just start asking some other really basic questions. Who does the Deep State want dead or in jail, more than anyone else?
Edward Snowden, Julian Assange & Kim Dotcom.
4c. Therefore, what is the most subversive thing that an opponent of the Deep State can do?
Clue: not reading #QAnon all day every day on the internet.
Taking action in support of Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Kim Dotcom.
THAT is what the Deep State don't want you to do.
4d. The reason I am mentioning Kim Dotcom is not because of Q, but because Ed, Julian and Kim are all being prosecuted in the Eastern District Court of Virginia. The home of the CIA.
All three are being targeted by massive operations undertaken by the same intelligence agencies
4e. The Snowden file revelations (not the revelations in the MSM, but in the actual documents which @ElizabethleaVos & I have extensively studied) reveal way more than mass surveillance. They reveal the total subversion of every facet of human society by the intelligence agencies
4f. Those files reveal, in the NSA's own words, that they are seeking to build a "global network" that gives them "100% coverage" of every inch of the planet. The wars aren't just for oil. They are for global supremacy. The globalists intend to dominate every country on earth.
4g. We know this thanks to sacrifices of real whistleblowers. Not whistleblowers who showed us what Trump will tweet, or where he will be visiting next, or what will be in the news tomorrow. Whistleblowers that exposed the innermost secrets of the most powerful agencies on earth
4h. So when Q started telling people to look into Snowden and his family, I smelled a rat instantly.
The only people who want you digging dirt on Snowden are the people who want him dead or in jail.
And those people ARE THE DEEP STATE.
5. A lot of you are asking me questions "what about this" "what about that" - I will address the common themes shortly. But first I want to explain why the Q methodologies of building trust, gamification & then subverting the original intent & purpose is so transparent to me.
5a. The answer is because this is how intelligence agency and private security companies target activists. These methodologies have been in use for years. They are the techniques of "handlers". What is different about Q is they they are now handling people on a massive scale.
5b. They make you feel special. They make you feel clever. They make you feel lucky. They otherise you. According to them, you are different. You can do more, be more, achieve more. All these things are true of everyone. But their intent is to build trust so they can shape you.
5c. I think Q - which is more likely to be an operation than a person - is the first instance of a "mass handler". Same techniques and methodologies, same training, same net results. End goal same as #JTRIG: "to use online influence ops to make targets take real world actions"
5d. JTRIG is a psychological warfare doctrine from GCHQ (UK's NSA) but is employed across the Five Eyes at minimum and more broadly the principles are utilised against targets by every intelligence agency on the planet. Study it. It is one of the many gems gifted to us by Snowden
5e. And what is the name of the NSA group tasked with hunting down Snowden for having leaked such powerful information to the world?
The Q Group.
As revealed in June 2013, the week of Snowden's first disclosures:
6. Now I'm going to cover off a few common sense indicators that the Q operation is tolerated at best, or helped to grow at worst, by the same forces that it supposedly stands in opposition to.
Then I will address the common themes of the questions I'm being asked in replies
6a. If the NSA having a "Q group" hunting down Snowden wasn't enough, just stop and think about how the Deep State usually reacts to anyone who meaningfully builds a large movement to ostensibly challenge their authority. Then ask yourself why that isn't used against #QAnon.
6b. The #QAnon movement has swelled to an audience of 100s of 1000s, arguably millions around the world are watching/following in some capacity. That is definitely large enough to get the full-blown state-led-smear, corporate-censorship, intel agency-manhunt treatment. But hasn't
6c. When the Pentagon manhunt for Julian Assange was launched in 2010, ditto with the Snowden manhunt in 2013, we saw the heads of the intelligence agencies warning that they were grave threats to national security. Smears were abundant. Supporters were individually targeted.
6d. The first step of the Deep State is to ridicule the support base, to a mainstream audience. The typical playbook would be for NYT, WaPo, CNN etc to be telling everyone that #QAnon supporters are unwashed kids-in-moms-basement dirty hippies like Occupy etc. Hasn't happened.
6e. Notable individuals who support and circulate #QAnon would be publicly named and shamed, or worse, subject to grand jury proceedings and indictments for being party to the leaking of classified information. Targeted by all of the mechanisms of the state. Also hasn't happened.
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