We should stop calling them conspiracy theories. They're conspiracy fantasies. Dark wish fulfillment, immune to reality. — zeddy (@Zeddary) August 3, 2018 Hitting ’em where it hurts… so i got an unsolicited statement just now that the adult site YouPorn is banning Alex Jones and Infowars content from its platform (what? ok.) pic.twitter.com/U4IwkGf4FO — Charlie …
Conspiracy Fantasists Open Thread: War to the Little DeathPost + Comments (106)
Last month, an Italian leftist activist collective called the Wu Ming Foundation pointed to a book they published in the ’90s that is shockingly similar to QAnon.
In 1999, Roberto Bui, Giovanni Cattabriga, Federico Guglielmi, and Luca Di Meo, writing under the name “Luther Blissett,” published an Italian novel called Q…
It follows the journey of an unnamed Anabaptist religious radical across Europe during the 16th century. He joins various movements that emerge following the Protestant Reformation. The whole time he’s being pursued by a spy for the Roman Catholic Church named Q.
The book sparked all kinds of debates about what it’s actually about, but its authors said it was meant to be autobiographical. “We often described it as ‘playbook,’ an ‘operations manual’ for cultural disruption,” they said.
Basically, Q is a handbook for activists who want to disrupt society…
“We can’t say for sure that it’s an homage,” they said. “But one thing is almost certain: our book has something to do with it. It may have started as some sort of, er, ‘fan fiction’ inspired by our novel, and then quickly became something else.”
Ironically, it seems that even QAnon followers have noticed the similarities. A user last month highlighted the book, calling it “an old Q.” …
What if this is all just the middle-aged to oldster version of emo teenaged bullshit pic.twitter.com/Py2JSV9Aub
— QHatSecretMessages (@Popehat) August 5, 2018
Political “outbreaks” like #Qanon only break into the general (media) consciousness when there’s enough genuine fervor to indicate a serious social infection… and for the Repubs, there’s nothing as serious as money. C.R.E.A.M.
The metaphorical Kaposi’s sarcoma of the modern True Believers — the astroturfed Tea Party, the promotion of Sarah Palin, Trump’s triumph over fifteen ‘more suitable’ GOP primary candidates in 2016, the mainstreaming of Alex Jones and his imitators — have fluoresced into an Oval Office Occupancy that the Permanent GOP (from legislators like McConnell & Ryan to funders like Charles Koch) fears it no longer has under control.
BREAKING NEWS: Hacker collective ‘Anonymous’ announces its intent to eradicate #QAnon and its followers. #OpQ
— TARGET: #QAnon (@TAPAlerts) August 5, 2018
How great would it be if the ludicrous QAnon kitchen-sink conspiracy theory turned out to be a setup for Sascha Baron Cohen's greatest prank?
— Charles Johnson (@Green_Footballs) August 5, 2018
It’s the Democrats who are traditionally riven by factionalism, but the current Republican Party is at war with itself. And I’m rooting for injuries.
Going to start a new conspiracy theory in which observable, empirical data is revealed to be the truth.
— Michael Ian Black (@michaelianblack) August 4, 2018
