QAnon

Other Pandemic: How QAnon Contaminated the World
by James Ball
Published 19 Jul 2023

It is hard not to feel from our modern vantage point that the chaos and nihilism of 4chan has, over the site’s twenty-something-year lifespan, seeped out into the wider world. And while Coleman rightly thinks it is unfair to draw a straight line between Anonymous and QAnon, it is clear that they grew out of the same place, and that QAnon learned much from its forebear. But Anonymous and QAnon are very different. Anonymous was born at least in part as a social justice movement, and clearly has very different DNA to QAnon. There are other movements born from 4chan that have more claim to serve as direct forebears to QAnon: Gamergate and the alt-right. This is a story of the ripple effect, and how one man’s bitter vendetta against his ex, fuelled by our bizarre online ecosystem, arguably gave rise to much of Trumpism.

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Once outside that digital viral reservoir, QAnon would spread and mutate further, with huge consequences in the real world. Perhaps the most telling change, though, took a few years to happen. So embedded are QAnon’s ideas in the conspiratorial corners of the internet that there are now hundreds of thousands of people who subscribe, at least in part, to QAnon – without ever having heard of Q or QAnon itself. 4chan and 8chan had always been incubators for fringe and extreme ideas. These could burst onto the wider internet and information ecosystem – as Gamergate and others did – but then tended to eventually wither away. QAnon, though, proved able to spread and mutate in a whole new way – as we’ll now explore.

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Actual perpetrators of major attacks trended even younger, and exclusively male.23 A further START study that same year found more than 100 QAnon-related offenders,24 and warned that traditional counter-terror approaches would be unlikely to work for this issue, especially as it was believers’ loved ones who were most at risk. While QAnon presents a danger, it is not a traditional terrorist threat. QAnon offenders have not displayed the motivation or capabilities required to successfully carry out terrorist attacks. Rather, QAnon adherents have been primarily motivated to commit acts of interpersonal violence, often targeting those around them, including their own children … QAnon crimes have been committed by a significant number of women, as well as individuals struggling with mental health concerns, substance use disorders, and family disruptions.

Off the Edge: Flat Earthers, Conspiracy Culture, and Why People Will Believe Anything
by Kelly Weill
Published 22 Feb 2022

Globe Thing,’ ” CBS Sports, February 25, 2018, www.cbssports.com/nfl/news/geno-smith-i-may-be-with-kyrie-irving-on-this-whole-flat-earth-vs-globe-thing/. 195 Adolf Hitler in a past life Rachel Mcgrath, “Tila Tequila Pays Tribute to Adolf Hitler on His Birthday in Twitter Rant,” Daily Mail, April 21, 2016, www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-3552058/Tila-Tequila-pays-tribute-Fuhrer-birthday-epic-Twitter-rant-Jews-black-people-gays.html. 196 Ninety-seven QAnon supporters Alex Kaplan, “Here Are the QAnon Supporters Running for Congress in 2002,” Media Matters, November 9, 2020, https://www.mediamatters.org/qanon-conspiracy-theory/here-are-qanon-supporters-running-congress-2020. 196 Witzke’s campaign manager “Will Sommer, “New QAnon-Allied GOP Senate Candidate Also Pushed Anti-Semitism, Flat Earthism, and 9/11 Conspiracies,” Daily Beast, September 16, 2020, https://www.thedailybeast.com/new-qanon-allied-gop-candidate-lauren-witzke-also-pushed-anti-semitism-flat-earthism-and-911-conspiracies. 196 lasers in space Zack Beauchamp, “Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Space Laser and the Age-Old Problem of Blaming the Jews,” Vox, January 30, 2021, https://www.vox.com/22256258/marjorie-taylor-greene-jewish-space-laser-anti-semitism-conspiracy-theories. 196 “invasion of our government” Ally Mutnick and Melanie Zanona, “House Republican Leaders Condemn GOP Candidate Who Made Racist Videos,” Politico, June 17, 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/06/17/house-republicans-condemn-gop-candidate-racist-videos-325579. 196 Trump retweeting QAnon personalities Tina Nguyen, “Trump Isn’t Secretly Winking at QAnon.

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He’s Retweeting Its Followers,” Politico, July 12, 2020, https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/12/trump-tweeting-qanon-followers-357238. 196 “assign blame for distressing events” Van Prooijen, Psychology of Conspiracy Theories, 22. 197 leave the European Union Viren Swami et al., “To Brexit or Not to Brexit: The Roles of Islamophobia, Conspiracist Beliefs, and Integrated Threat in Voting Intentions for the United Kingdom European Union Membership Referendum,” British Journal of Psychology 109, no. 1 (2018): 156–79, https://doi.org/10.1111/bjop.12252. 197 “the truth” about immigration “Brexit and Trump Voters More Likely to Believe in Conspiracy Theories, Survey Study Shows,” University of Cambridge, November 23, 2018, www.cam.ac.uk/research/news/brexit-and-trump-voters-more-likely-to-believe-in-conspiracy-theories-survey-study-shows. 197 definitely or probably true Katherine Schaeffer, “A Look at the Americans Who Believe There Is Some Truth to the Conspiracy Theory That COVID-19 Was Planned,” Pew Research Center, July 24, 2020, www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/07/24/a-look-at-the-americans-who-believe-there-is-some-truth-to-the-conspiracy-theory-that-covid-19-was-planned. 197 nearly three million COVID-19 truthers “Dashboard: New Far-Right Groups on Facebook Protesting COVID-19 Stay-at-Home Directives,” Institute for Research and Education on Human Rights, August 6, 2020, www.irehr.org/covid19updates/dashboard-new-far-right-groups-on-facebook-protesting-stay-at-home-directives. 197 harassment from QAnon followers Ari Sen and Brandy Zadrozny, “QAnon Groups Have Millions of Members on Facebook, Documents Show,” NBC News, August 1, 2020, www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/qanon-groups-have-millions-members-facebook-documents-show-n1236317. 197 heard of QAnon “5 Facts about the QAnon Conspiracy Theories,” November 16, 2020, Pew Research Center, https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/11/16/5-facts-about-the-qanon-conspiracy-theories. 198 criticism of the governor Craig Mauger, “President Trump Tweets on Kidnapping Plot, Criticizes Gov.

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One man in her group lost both his parents to the conspiracy theory, she told me. “He’s been trying to tell [QAnon followers] what we know: that Q’s just a franchise for profit and entertainment, and it has estranged him from his mom and dad.” Leaving the QAnon community was a harsh break, one that left Serena so disenchanted with conservatives that she cut ties with the Republican party and got “out of politics” entirely. She also started reading about cults, and recognized too many uncomfortable similarities to the QAnon circles she used to frequent. Cultists and the QAnon community both “isolate their followers and turn their followers against all other sources,” she told me.

Cultish: The Language of Fanaticism
by Amanda Montell
Published 14 Jun 2021

October 16, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/15/qanon-violence-crimes-timeline. dystopian video game: Alyssa Rosenberg, “I Understand the Temptation to Dismiss QAnon. Here’s Why We Can’t,” Washington Post, August 7, 2019, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/07/qanon-isnt-just-conspiracy-theory-its-highly-effective-game/. a cognitive analysis of QAnon: Joe Pierre, “The Psychological Needs That QAnon Feeds,” Psychology Today, August 12, 2020, https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/psych-unseen/202008/the-psychological-needs-qanon-feeds. About the Author AMANDA MONTELL is a writer and language scholar from Baltimore, Maryland.

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To put it crudely, with QAnon, there are cults inside cults inside cults inside cults; it’s the ultimate cult-ception, and social media made it possible. Depending on their subsect of beliefs, QAnon participants feel free to define the broad talk of “sheeple” and “5D” in whatever way “resonates.” After all, for them, “truth is subjective.” It doesn’t matter to them that some interpretations of this language have led to enough real-world violence* that QAnon has become one of the most threatening domestic terror groups of our time. It also doesn’t matter that at its core, QAnon is just another madcap apocalyptic cult in a line of them that goes back centuries.

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over half of the Republicans surveyed: Tommy Beer, “Majority of Republicans Believe the QAnon Conspiracy Theory Is Partly or Mostly True, Survey Finds,” Forbes, September 2, 2020, https://www.forbes.com/sites/tommybeer/2020/09/02/majority-of-republicans-believe-the-qanon-conspiracy-theory-is-partly-or-mostly-true-survey-finds/?sh=3d8d165b5231. The glossary goes on and on: “Conspirituality-To-QAnon (CS-to-Q) Keywords and Phrases,” Conspirituality.net, https://con spirituality.net/keywords-and-phrases/ nightmarish crimes: Lois Beckett, “QAnon: a Timeline of Violence Linked to the Conspiracy Theory.” Guardian. October 16, 2020, https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/oct/15/qanon-violence-crimes-timeline.

The Chaos Machine: The Inside Story of How Social Media Rewired Our Minds and Our World
by Max Fisher
Published 5 Sep 2022

An American iteration, which had first appeared on the message board 4chan under the label “QAnon,” had recently hit Facebook like a match to a pool of gasoline. Later, as QAnon became a movement with tens of thousands of followers, an internal FBI report identified it as a domestic terror threat. Throughout, Facebook’s recommendation engines promoted QAnon groups to huge numbers of readers, as if this were merely another club, helping to grow the conspiracy into the size of a minor political party, for seemingly no more elaborate reason than the continued clicks the QAnon content generated. Within Facebook’s muraled walls, though, belief in the product as a force for good seemed unshakable.

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Most of all, it was endlessly time-consuming, the primary trait for which the platforms maximized. By the time Americans realized that this was something dangerous, QAnon Facebook groups held millions of members, QAnon YouTube videos won millions of views, and QAnon Twitter accounts organized mass-harassment campaigns targeting celebrities they accused of bizarre, cannibalistic plots. An app that aggregated Q drops became one of the most popular downloads on the App Store. A book, QAnon: An Invitation to a Great Awakening, written by a collective of anonymous followers, reached #2 on Amazon’s bestseller list. Members spent their lives immersed in the community, clocking hours per day in the video chats and comment threads that had become their world.

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Followers largely ignored evidence of Q’s pedestrian identity, though, or perhaps, on some level, didn’t want to know. The draw was in what his story offered, not in its authorship or objective truth. Even many researchers who tracked QAnon considered Q’s identity something of a footnote. For all of Q’s string-pulling manipulation, it was the users, the platforms, and the interlinking tendencies of both that drove the movement. QAnon, like so much technoculture before it, flowed quickly from fringe to mainstream platforms. Facebook and YouTube’s systems slid QAnon into the slipstream of conspiracy and extremist recommendations. At first, it was just another node. But its ever-escalating claims and totalizing story allowed it to absorb other conspiracies, making it a focal point—much as Alex Jones had once been—of disparate communities, from anti-vaxxers to race-war preppers to anti-government paranoiacs.

Going Dark: The Secret Social Lives of Extremists
by Julia Ebner
Published 20 Feb 2020

lang=en. 30See https://8ch.net//qresearch//res/4279775.html#4280231. 31See https://www.qanon.pub. 32Kyle Feldscher, ‘QAnon-believing “conspiracy analyst” meets Trump in the White House’, CNN, 25 August 2018. Available at https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/25/politics/donald-trump-qanon-white-house/index.html. 33Will Sommer, ‘What is QAnon? The Craziest Theory of the Trump Era Explained’, Daily Beast, 7 June 2018. Available at https://www.thedailybeast.com/what-is-qanon-the-craziest-theory-of-the-trump-era-explained. 34Fruzsina Eordogh, ‘What is QAnon, the Conspiracy Theory Attracting Alex Jones, Roseanne Barr and … a Guy from “Vanderpump Rules”’, Elle, 7 August 2018.

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No. Q. The success of QAnon is baffling. QAnon mutated from conspiracy theory on the fringes of 4chan and 8chan into a mass movement that has conquered mainstream social media channels as well as pro-Trump rallies. In 2018 alone, ISD’s social media monitors identified close to 30 million uses of the word ‘QAnon’ across Twitter, YouTube and other blogs and forums such as Reddit and 4chan. On YouTube, QAnon videos often attract hundreds of thousands of views, and self-described bakers are in the tens of thousands, with offshoots in almost every part of America and Europe. QAnon followers have a significant overlap with the Reddit board r/The_Donald, one of the alt-right’s favourite mingling hotspots, according to data analysis from the influential twenty-first-century news website Vox.

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Wright, who blocked off a highway close to the Hoover Dam in an armoured vehicle in June 2018, had subscribed to the QAnon motto: ‘For where we go one, we go all’.17 Two years earlier, Edgar Welsh, firefighter and father from South Carolina and firm believer in Pizzagate – the QAnon predecessor conspiracy theory which claimed that Democrats were running a massive child-abuse network from their alleged headquarters at Comet Ping Pong, a DC pizza restaurant – opened fire in the pizzeria to free nonexistent children.18 In January 2019, a QAnon supporter killed his brother with a sword because he believed that he was a lizard.19 ‘Military, we need a plan and must expose evil to light,’ Max writes in late 2018.

You've Been Played: How Corporations, Governments, and Schools Use Games to Control Us All
by Adrian Hon
Published 14 Sep 2022

It’s less helpful when conspiracy theorists “yes, and…” each other into shooting up a pizza parlour or storming the US Capitol. And because there is no coherent QAnon community in the same sense as the Cloudmakers, there’s no convention of SPEC tags. In their absence, YouTube first annotated QAnon videos with links to the QAnon Wikipedia article, then banned many entirely; Twitter banned 7,000 accounts and restricted 150,000 more, NBC reported; and Facebook banned all QAnon groups and pages.35 These are useful steps. Deplatforming works.36 It reduces the reach of extremist content and destroys the delicate network of connections between followers.

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I’d know: I wrote a novel-length walkthrough of The Beast when I was meant to be studying for my degree at Cambridge.7 QAnon is not an ARG, or a role-playing game (RPG), or even a live-action role-playing game (LARP). It’s a dangerous conspiracy theory, and there are lots of ways of understanding conspiracy theories without games—but it pushes the same buttons that ARGs do, whether by intention or by coincidence. In both cases, “do your research” leads curious onlookers to a cornucopia of brain-tingling information. In other words, QAnon may be the world’s first gamified conspiracy theory. By some measures, a staggering 15 percent of all Americans adhere to QAnon’s beliefs.8 ARGs never made it that big or made that much money: they arrived too early in the internet’s evolution, and it was too hard to charge players for a game that they stumbled into through a Google search.

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And at the time hundreds of thousands of people were participating and contributing to a fictional universe and creating strands upon strands.12 Conspiracy theories and cults evince the same insouciance when confronted with inconsistencies or falsified predictions; they can always explain away errors with new stories and theories. What’s special about QAnon and ARGs is that these errors can be fixed almost instantly, before doubt or ridicule can set in. And what’s really special about QAnon is how it’s absorbed all other conspiracy theories to become a kind of ur–conspiracy theory such that it seems pointless to call out inconsistencies.13 In any case, who would you even be calling out when so many QAnon theories come from followers rather than its gnomic founder, Q? Yet the line between creator and player in ARGs has also long been blurry.

Black Pill: How I Witnessed the Darkest Corners of the Internet Come to Life, Poison Society, and Capture American Politics
by Elle Reeve
Published 9 Jul 2024

v=VyHgtSy41VM Westphal testified: Alyshah Hasham, “Forensic Psychiatrist Continues His Testimony for the Defence at Minassian van Attack Trial,” Toronto Star, December 1, 2020. https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/forensic-psychiatrist-continues-his-testimony-for-the-defence-at-minassian-van-attack-trial/article_afae3c3b-8b1c-52d0-b5b5-24967a134ee0.html He told the New York Times: Kevin Roose, “ ‘Shut the Site Down,’ Says the Creator of 8chan, a Megaphone for Gunmen,” New York Times, August 4, 2019. https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/04/technology/8chan-shooting-manifesto.html He told the QAnon Anonymous podcast: “Episode 63: Battle of 8chan feat Fredrick Brennan,” QAnon Anonymous podcast, October 2019. He presented his evidence on the podcast: “#166 Country of Liars,” Reply All podcast, September 2020. the New York Times published a linguistic analysis: David D. Kirkpatrick, “Who Is Behind QAnon? Linguistic Detectives Find Fingerprints,” New York Times, February 19, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/19/technology/qanon-messages-authors.html Asked about QAnon by NBC: Dylan Scott, “Trump Town Hall: President Says He Agrees with Part of the QAnon Conspiracy Theory,” Vox, October 15, 2020. https://www.vox.com/2020/10/15/21518697/donald-trump-town-hall-what-is-qanon-conspiracy-theory When Trump campaign spokeswoman: Max Cohen, “White House Press Secretary Says She’s Never Heard Trump Talk about QAnon,” Politico, August 20, 2020. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/20/kayleigh-mcenany-trump-qanon-399273 CHAPTER 14: FANTASIZING ABOUT SELF-DEFENSE (Tarrio worked as a federal): Aram Roston, “Exclusive: Proud Boys Leader Was ‘Prolific’ Informer for Law Enforcement.”

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Linguistic Detectives Find Fingerprints,” New York Times, February 19, 2022. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/02/19/technology/qanon-messages-authors.html Asked about QAnon by NBC: Dylan Scott, “Trump Town Hall: President Says He Agrees with Part of the QAnon Conspiracy Theory,” Vox, October 15, 2020. https://www.vox.com/2020/10/15/21518697/donald-trump-town-hall-what-is-qanon-conspiracy-theory When Trump campaign spokeswoman: Max Cohen, “White House Press Secretary Says She’s Never Heard Trump Talk about QAnon,” Politico, August 20, 2020. https://www.politico.com/news/2020/08/20/kayleigh-mcenany-trump-qanon-399273 CHAPTER 14: FANTASIZING ABOUT SELF-DEFENSE (Tarrio worked as a federal): Aram Roston, “Exclusive: Proud Boys Leader Was ‘Prolific’ Informer for Law Enforcement.” Reuters, January 27, 2021. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-proudboys-leader-exclusive/exclusive-proud-boys-leader-was-prolific-informer-for-law-enforcement-idUSKBN29W1PE CHAPTER 15: FOR HISTORY He’d once written: Matt Parrott, “The Color of Capitalism,” Counter-Currents, February 13, 2012. https://counter-currents.com/2012/02/the-color-of-capitalism Sean Hannity repeated it: “One on One with Sen Lindsey Graham,” Hannity, Fox News, November 5, 2020.

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In the fall of 2017, a 4chan user claimed Hillary Clinton would be arrested, that the extradition treaties were being worked out with several countries in case she tried to run, and that the National Guard was involved. This person claimed to have Q-level clearance. This was the birth of QAnon. After a month, Q moved to 8chan, where he was welcomed with open arms. Fred, who had resigned as admin but was still working for Jim and Ron Watkins, thought it was a stupid troll, and he was annoyed that it used his favorite letter of the alphabet. Jim and Ron convinced him to pose for a photo with a big blue letter Q. Fred didn’t think much of it at the time. But by the time I visited Manila, there had been several major QAnon incidents, including a man arrested on terrorism charges after he used an armored truck to block traffic at the Hoover Dam, demanding the Justice Department release documents that Q said existed.

The Undertow: Scenes From a Slow Civil War
by Jeff Sharlet
Published 21 Mar 2023

I started listening to another Q-related podcast, this one a debunking, QAnon Anonymous. Its hosts also heard echoes in McEnany’s words. It was on this podcast that I learned of the woman I’m calling Evelyn. When I called one of the hosts, Julian Feeld, to ask how he’d found her, he said a listener had seen the attack in the local Waco news. The report mentioned nothing about QAnon. But the listener wondered if there was more. Feeld didn’t wonder, he just knew there had to be. He knew because he’d been listening even longer. In his voice I hear what sounds like pleasure, a kind of frightened delight in piecing together the puzzle of QAnon’s shattered mind.

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She was bright—a good listener, says one friend, a liberal lawyer whom Evelyn called “Freedom Fighter.” She was gullible, says another friend, the one who introduced Evelyn to QAnon not long into the pandemic. Not because she believed in it, or thought Evelyn would, but because they were both bored, locked down, stuck at home, staring at screens. “For shits and giggles,” said Evelyn’s friend. Which is how Evelyn came to believe that the shadows that she’d seen within Wicca as the nuances of life might be—no, were—actually the satanic forces of which QAnon warned. Q, she learned—an anonymous figure on a message board—was in fact a government “insider.” He revealed President Trump’s decades-old plan to destroy the deep state—the satanic forces.

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The politics of the fringe may not be rational, but they’re cunning, surrounding the center and moving inward, until suddenly there they are, at the heart of things: the QAnon Shaman, who on January 6 wore horns into the Senate Chamber to leave a menacing note for the vice president, or a congresswoman, Marjorie Taylor Greene, who has called for Democrats’ execution; Ashli Babbitt, who died empty-handed, or Lauren Boebert, a Colorado congresswoman who open carries; the “zip-tie guy,” seen at the insurrection leaping over Senate chamber seats with a handful of wrist restraints for hostages, or a senator, handsome young Josh Hawley, who raised his fist in solidarity. Straight, like adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory and its spin-offs, called what was happening now a “Great Awakening,” and such was the inward tide of the first one, too, in the eighteenth century, when an equally unsettling man named Jonathan Edwards thrilled and confused his congregation with talk of sinners in the hand of an angry God, dangled over hellfire “much as one holds a spider or some loathsome insect.”

Sandy Hook: An American Tragedy and the Battle for Truth
by Elizabeth Williamson
Published 8 Mar 2022

In April 2020, Jaselskis was sentenced to four years in federal prison.[11] Burning along the same social media fuse, and sparking on new platforms, Pizzagate begat QAnon, a new, more virulent mass delusion. QAnon, some of whose adherents see Trump as an avenging hero in a child-trafficking scheme led by Democratic politicians and Hollywood liberals, first appeared on 4chan around 2017, grew steadily, then surged during the coronavirus pandemic. In 2020, Times technology columnist Kevin Roose described lurking[12] in QAnon Facebook groups and watching them “swell to hundreds of thousands of members,” spreading misinformation about the coronavirus along with the claim that Hillary Clinton and liberals drink the blood of children.

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In 2020, Times technology columnist Kevin Roose described lurking[12] in QAnon Facebook groups and watching them “swell to hundreds of thousands of members,” spreading misinformation about the coronavirus along with the claim that Hillary Clinton and liberals drink the blood of children. The FBI began the 2020 election cycle by warning that QAnon posed a potential domestic terror threat. The social media platforms cracked down, but the hoaxers adapted, using hashtags like #SaveTheChildren as camouflage. In August 2021, a forty-year-old QAnon believer shot his ten-month-old daughter and two-year-old son in their chests with a spearfishing gun. He told investigators that by killing them he was saving the world from monsters. QAnon followers have allegedly murdered a New York mafia boss, vandalized a church, and run for office by the score.

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References to pizza and its toppings, the theory went, were Clinton campaign code words denoting child sex trafficking. In this imaginary lexicon, “cheese pizza,” for example, meant child pornography. Pizzagate is the direct predecessor of QAnon, the false worldview that several years later caught fire among some Americans. Both delusions rest on a pastiche of ancient tropes. Secret satanic meetings, the ravaging, selling, and killing of innocents by bloodthirsty elites—Pizzagate and QAnon contained elements of blood libel, the hateful, centuries-old falsehood that Jews murder Christian children as part of religious rituals. Days before the November 8 vote, Pizzagate popped up on the radar of Will Sommer, a reporter then working for the Washington City Paper, who had been covering the far right during the 2016 election and had been to Comet many times.

Doppelganger: A Trip Into the Mirror World
by Naomi Klein
Published 11 Sep 2023

These formations bring together many disparate political and cultural strains: the traditional right; the QAnon conspiratorial hard right; alternative health subcultures usually associated with the green left; a smattering of neo-Nazis; parents (mainly white mothers) angry about a range of things happening and not happening in schools (masks, jabs, all-gender bathrooms, anti-racist books); small-business owners enraged by the often-devastating impacts of Covid controls on their bottom lines, which gave way to rage at everything from inflation to induction stove tops. Significant disagreement exists inside these new convergences—Wolf, for instance, is neither a QAnon cultist nor a neo-Nazi.

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This kind of predatory, extractive capitalism necessarily breeds mistrust and paranoia. In this context, it’s not surprising that QAnon, a conspiracy theory that tells of elites harvesting the young for their lifeblood (adrenochrome), has gone viral. Elites are sucking us dry—our money, our labor, our time, our data. So dry that large parts of our planet are beginning to spontaneously combust. The Davos elite aren’t eating our children, but they are eating our children’s futures, and that is plenty bad. QAnon believers imagine secret tunnels underneath pizza parlors and Central Park, the better to traffic children. This is fantasy, but there are tunnels—literal Shadow Lands—under some major cities, and they do house and hide the poor, the sick, the drug-dependent, the discarded.

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Despite shifting names and players, the script has stayed remarkably similar: an international Jewish conspiracy stands accused of colluding in the shadows to undermine Christian values, weaken Christian states, seize Christian property, and, in later versions, control the media. From revolutions to pandemics to terrorist attacks, it always seems to be our fault. QAnon stands out not for the originality of its plotlines, but for its ability to mash up the more modern trope of a Jewish cabal running the world with the more ancient blood libel involving kidnapped and drained Christian children. In QAnon’s version, an international conspiracy that includes many prominent Jews, but is not restricted to Jews, kidnaps children to drain them of adrenochrome, apparently in the hopes of prolonging the conspirators’ own lives.

Internet for the People: The Fight for Our Digital Future
by Ben Tarnoff
Published 13 Jun 2022

Chris Turner, New Formations 8 (Summer 1989): 131–47. 145, While this relationship is mutually … Facebook crackdown on Stop the Steal group and internal report: Craig Silverman, Ryan Mac, and Jane Lytvynenko, “Facebook Knows It Was Used to Help Incite the Capitol Insurrection,” BuzzFeed News, April 22, 2021; Ryan Mac, Craig Silverman, and Jane Lytvynenko, “Face-book Stopped Employees from Reading an Internal Report about Its Role in the Insurrection. You Can Read It Here,” BuzzFeed News, April 26, 2021. Facebook made a lot of money from QAnon: Matt Stoller estimates that Facebook made nearly $3 billion from QAnon in 2020, based on a rough calculation of the number of QAnon-sympathetic users; see Matt Stoller, “Facebook Made Up to $2.9 billion from QAnon in 2020,” March 22, 2021. Not particularly effective ban: QAnon continues to be active on Facebook, according to a report by US nonprofit Avaaz, “Facebook: From Election to Insurrection,” March 18, 2021. 146, These measures are motivated … “Advertisers don’t want …”: Nick Clegg, “You and the Algorithm: It Takes Two to Tango,” March 31, 2021. 146, Making the balancing act … Zuckerberg currying favor with Republican leaders and the latter’s influence on content policies: Natasha Bertrand and Daniel Lippman, “Inside Mark Zuckerberg’s Private Meetings with Conservative Pundits,” Politico, October 14, 2019; Craig Timberg, “How Conservatives Learned to Wield Power inside Facebook,” Washington Post, February 20, 2020; Elizabeth Dwoskin, Craig Timberg, and Tony Romm, “Zuckerberg Once Wanted to Sanction Trump.

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A Facebook group called Stop the Steal was an excellent source of engagement until its members stormed the US Capitol in January 2021, prompting a crackdown from the company and an internal report that confirmed its role in the riot. Similarly, Facebook made a lot of money from the right-wing conspiracist movement QAnon until rising public pressure, particularly surrounding hoax-mongering by QAnon-linked accounts during the 2020 presidential election cycle, pushed the company to implement a half-hearted, and not particularly effective, ban. These measures are motivated by profit considerations. When reactionaries go off the rails, advertisers can get nervous; as Facebook vice president of global affairs Nick Clegg explains, “Advertisers don’t want their brands and products displayed next to extreme or hateful content.”

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See also New Brandeisians Brin, Sergey, 88, 89, 91 Brown, Chris, 105 Bush, George, 27 capitalism and accumulation, 35–36, 147, 154, 177 and coal as fuel, 87 competitive markets under, 63, 103, 176 Karl Marx on, 78 and Luddite movement, 174, 175 and subsumption of labor, 78, 84 and surveillance capitalism, 92, 94, 96 in the US, 125 and venture capital, 119–22 See also The Age of Surveillance Capitalism, (Zuboff); Bezos, Jeff CenturyLink, 59–60 Cerf, Vinton, 11, 19–20, 113, 114 Chattanooga, TN, 38–39, 46, 49, 55 Clinton, Bill, 18, 20, 21, 22 Comcast and broadband internet, 25, 29, 53 and digital divide, 59 and end of net neutrality, 28 and enrichment of CEO and shareholders, 31 lawsuits of, 46 and the profit motive, 127–28 proposed taxes on, 61 and US government, 52 and Washington, DC’s neighborhoods, 49 worth of, 67 common carriage regulations, 26, 27, 28 Communications Act of 1934, 26 Communications Decency Act of 1996, 95–6 community networks, 42–56, 61–63, 154–55, 169, 170, 176 Computer Science Research Network (CSNET), 21–22 Cottom, Tressie McMillan, 132 Danton’s Death (Bűchner), 57 Davis, Angela, 156, 157 Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) ARPANET network of, 8–9, 10, 12, 13, 114 email study of, 79 and internet’s mobility, 113, 114–15 and investment in computing, 7–8, 89 and linking of networks, 11, 114 technical expertise of, 15 democracy and Clintonian neoliberalism, 26 and collective ownership of economy, 52 and Homo politicus, 64 importance of resources to, 34–35, 36 and inclusive government, 66–67 and the internet, 158 monopolies as a threat to, 150 and self-rule, 33–35, 36 Dewey, John, 33–34, 35 Donovan, Joan, 143, 161 Duke, David, 134, 139–40 eBay as AuctionWeb, 73–74, 80, 81–82 CEO Meg Whitman of, 99 and community as market, 80–84 and e-commerce, 75, 76, 80–84, 86, 98, 99, 100, 103 on the Nasdaq, 88 network effects on, 82, 83 user participation on, 79, 82, 83, 94 Electric Power Board (EPB), 38–39, 40 Equitable Internet Initiative (EII), 43–46 Facebook antitrust suit against, 151 and content moderation, 152–54 data of, ix, 29–30, 96, 101, 116, 165, 173 and e-commerce, 98 and election of 2016, 148–49 Fox News on, 142 and Instagram, 150, 159 and interoperability scenarios, 170 investigation into, 150–51 Joel Kaplan of, 146 and library funding, 160 and MAREA, x market capitalization of, 97 and Mark Zuckerberg, 94, 96–97, 146, 154, 166 online advertising of, 60–61, 94, 112, 124, 137–38, 146, 150, 165, 170, 173 and online malls, 115, 119, 129, 147, 155, 158 and politics, 141, 143–49, 150 and the profit motive, 127, 147 and purchase of startup companies, 124 QAnon movement on, 145–46 Schifter’s post on, 126–27, 131 and Sheryl Sandberg, 94 WhatsApp of, 150 Federal Communications Commission (FCC), 26, 27–28, 41, 48, 59, 60 Fourcade, Marion, 109 Fox News, 142, 161 Friere, Paulo, 44 Gates, Bill, 71–72, 81 Google and capitalism, 92 and data generation, 89–90, 92–93, 112, 124 and e-commerce, 98, 124 founding of, 88 and Google Fiber, 29 investigation into, 150–51 and large amounts of data, 91–93, 96, 101, 116 and library funding, 160 online advertising of, 60–61, 90–93, 94, 112, 124, 136, 173 as an online mall, 93, 115, 119, 129, 138 and parent company Alphabet, 97, 124 and platforms, xv, 75 and purchase of startup companies, 94, 124 and radicalization by Council of Conservative Citizens, 138–39 search technology of, 90, 133–39, 144 software of, 173 and submarine fiber-optic cables, 29–30 worth of, 67, 124 Goonhilly Satellite Earth Station, 4 Gore, Al, 19–20 Gruen, Victor, 85, 86 Grundner, Tom, 23 Guattari, Felix, 145 Hanna, Thomas M., 50, 66 Healy, Kieran, 109 High-Performance Computing and Communications Act of 1991, 20 Inouye, Daniel, 21, 22 internet access to, xv, 10, 13, 21, 23, 25, 28, 30, 31–35, 40–41, 44, 46, 50, 51, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 65, 77, 127, 163, 76 and algorithmic management, 114–15, 116, 118, 119, 121 ARPANET network of, 12, 18, 24, 79, 104, 114 and broadband internet, xv, 27–29, 31, 32–33, 35, 39, 40, 41, 43, 46, 48–49, 50, 53, 55–56, 59–61, 176 buying and selling on, 71, 73–74, 81–82, 124 and the cloud, 103–9, 110, 111, 112, 115, 116, 118, 119, 121, 123, 128, 131, 163 common language of, 9, 10–11, 14, 79, 110, 113, 177 and communications networks, x–xi, 5, 8, 27, 123, 128, 148, 170 and competition among providers, 61–64 and connectivity, xi, xii, 29, 30, 33, 35, 41, 43, 44, 59, 60, 127 and consumer costs, 23, 30–31, 40, 43, 44–45, 49, 50, 52, 60, 61–64 and content, xvii, 29, 152–54 creation of, xiii, 6–12, 13, 88, 104, 113 and data generation, 88–89, 92–93, 101, 108–9, 121, 123, 129, 149–50, 158, 165–66 and data’s value, 86–87, 92, 109, 121, 122, 165 and data transmission, 3–6, 8, 10, 14–15, 25, 28–29, 39, 55, 103–4, 159 and data trusts, 165–66 and democratic internet, xvi, 37, 42–43, 47–48, 50, 55, 56–57, 58, 66–67, 155, 175–76 and deprivatization, xvi, 51, 56, 59, 153, 154–55, 157, 169–70, 175, 176 and dial-up modems, 23, 27, 28 different scales of, 54–55, 168 and dot.com bubble, 72, 76–79, 80, 83, 90, 93, 94, 98, 102, 106, 109, 123, 124 and email, xiv, 12, 15–16, 79–80, 159 and fiber to the home (FTTH) networks, 39, 40, 41, 51 and founding of startups, 76, 119–20, 123–24 and infrastructure, xiii, xiv, 7, 15, 17, 24, 27, 28, 30, 31, 41, 43, 44, 45, 48, 49, 51, 56, 61–62, 65, 85, 106–9, 127, 160, 164, 176 and internet service providers, 15, 17, 24–26, 27–31, 38, 39–41, 46, 49, 51–53, 59–63, 65, 72, 77, 95, 127–8 and market-dominated internet, 22, 35, 42, 46–47, 119, 122, 152–54 and the military, 9–10, 11, 12, 79, 113–15, 177, xiii and online classes, 32, 34, 132–33 and online malls, 86–87, 93, 103, 108, 109, 112, 115, 121, 123, 128, 129, 131–33, 135, 137–40, 147, 148, 149, 151, 153, 154–58, 160, 163, 165, 166, 168, 169, 170–73, 176 and organizing, xv, 37, 43–46, 50, 58 and Pets.com, 77, 82 and platforms, xiv–xv, 67, 75, 84, 98, 127, 158, 164, 166, 176 and politics, xi, xii, 18, 28, 46, 47–49, 54, 80, 139–49, 171, 174, 177 privatization of, xiii, xiv–xv, 14, 16–20, 23–25, 27–30, 36–37, 44, 45, 47, 56, 58, 65, 67, 72, 76–79, 84, 93, 98, 109, 119, 120, 123–25, 127, 135, 147, 148, 154, 159, 172, 174–75 and profit motive, xi, xii, xiii, xv, xvi, xvii, 9, 26, 31, 33, 35–36, 37, 45, 47, 52–53, 55, 87, 127–28, 147, 152, 174–75, 176 public funding for, 6–8, 14, 15, 16, 18, 21, 22, 23, 41–42, 48–51, 59, 60, 160, 164–65, 176 public or cooperative ownership of, xvi, 8, 40–46, 48–49, 51–52, 60, 62, 65, 71, 155, 163–65, 168, 169, 176 and racism, xvii, 31, 43, 134, 137–40, 153 regulation of, xii, 17, 22, 28, 147, 149–53 and rise of search engines, 72, 136–37 and selling ads, 93–94, 96–97, 146 and shopping malls, 84–86 and “smartness,” 110–13, 118 and smartphones, 6, 31–32, 110, 112, 115, 119, 123, 128 social aspect of, 79–80, 81, 86, 94–95 state surveillance of, 64–65, 66 and submarine fiber-optic cables, ix–x, xii, xiv, 29–30, 56, 65, 113 and the techlash, 149, 152, xii, xiii, xv universal protocol for, 9, 11–12, 19, 88, 110, 113, 159, 172 and universities, 52, 88, 109, 169 and US government, xiii, xiv, 7, 13–14, 17–20, 21, 22, 23, 25, 48–49, 59–60, 64–67, 113–15, 170 and web applications, 103, 170, 171, 176 wide area networks (WANs) of, 117–19 and the World Wide Web, 15–16, 72, 76, 80, 89 and Yahoo!

There Is Nothing for You Here: Finding Opportunity in the Twenty-First Century
by Fiona Hill
Published 4 Oct 2021

early exponent of “birtherism”: Adam Serwer, “Birtherism of a Nation,” Atlantic, May 13, 2020, https://www.theatlatic.com/ideas/archive/2020/05/birtherism-and-trump/610978/. QAnon: Adrienne LaFrance, “The Prophecies of Q,” Atlantic, June 2020, https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/qanon-nothing-can-stop-what-is-coming/610567/; Ilana Strauss, “The Dark Reality of Betting Against QAnon,” Atlantic, January 1, 2021, https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2021/01/betting-against-qanon-predictit/617396/; Sabrina Tavernise, “ ‘Trump Just Used Us and Our Fear’: One Woman’s Journey Out of QAnon,” New York Times, January 30, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/2021/01/29/us/leaving-qanon-conspiracy.html. openly embraced it: E.

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President Trump was an early exponent of “birtherism,” which posited that his predecessor, Barack Obama, had been born in Kenya, not the United States, and was therefore an illegitimate president. Then there was QAnon, a conspiracy with Trump at the center in the sense of the president combating a ring of child-trafficking pedophiles, led by Hillary Clinton, among others, and a shadowy group inside and outside the U.S. government. The woman who left crude messages on my phone at the NSC gave herself away as a QAnon follower when she asserted, on several occasions, that the U.S. government was run by “deep-state pedophiles” and asked whether I knew I was working for them. Given the reach of the internet, the QAnon conspiracy quickly spread during Trump’s term from the United States to Europe, securing thousands of adherents in places like the UK and Germany.

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openly embraced it: E. J. Dickson, “A Timeline of Trump’s QAnon Presidency,” Rolling Stone, October 27, 2020, https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/qanon-trump-timeline-conspiracy-theorists-1076279/. posted his picture: Hannah Levintova and Dan Friedman, “The Head of Albania’s Conservative Party Faces Criminal Charges, and an Ex-Trump Aide Is Involved,” Mother Jones, June 13, 2019, https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2019/06/the-head-of-albanias-conservative-party-faces-criminal-charges-and-an-ex-trump-aide-is-involved/. I might be “Anonymous”: “I Am Part of the Resistance Inside the Trump Administration,” New York Times, September 5, 2018, https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/05/opinion/trump-white-house-anonymous-resistance.html; Anonymous, A Warning (New York: Twelve, 2019); Margaret Hartman, “All the Theories on Who Wrote the Anonymous Anti-Trump Op-Ed,” New York Magazine, September 6, 2018, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/09/theories-who-wrote-trump-op-ed.html.

An Ugly Truth: Inside Facebook's Battle for Domination
by Sheera Frenkel and Cecilia Kang
Published 12 Jul 2021

Internal reports also showed a steady rise in extremist groups and conspiracy movements. Facebook’s security team reported incidents of real-world violence, as well as frightening comments made in private groups. Facebook’s data scientists and security officials noted a 300 percent increase, from June through August 2020, in content related to the conspiracy theory QAnon. QAnon believers perpetuated a false theory that liberal elites and celebrities like Bill Gates, Tom Hanks, and George Soros ran a global child trafficking ring. They built their following on the foundation laid by “Pizzagate,” a conspiracy theory that claimed that Hillary Clinton and other prominent Democrats were abusing children in the basement of a Washington, DC, restaurant.

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While the theory was repeatedly proven false—the restaurant in question did not even have a basement—the idea that there was a conspiracy being hatched among the global elites persisted and grew under the Trump administration. On August 19, Zuckerberg agreed to take down some QAnon content on the grounds that it could lead to violence. It was a narrow change in policy, pertaining to a small portion of all QAnon content. And in a nod to what some team members called Kaplan’s relentless internal lobbying for political equivalency, Facebook also announced that it would remove 980 groups, such as those related to the far-left antifa movement, a bugaboo for Trump and Republicans, who blamed violent demonstrations on leftist groups.

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All I can tell you is that we had to announce both of them the same day,” said one Facebook engineer on an exasperated call with a reporter the day of Facebook’s announcement. “It’s political, okay? We can’t announce QAnon without announcing something on the left.” The Facebook team dedicated to finding and removing extremist content on the site felt Zuckerberg’s decision was a good first step, but they were closely monitoring how QAnon and other right-wing groups responded. They knew that as the election neared, the potential for violence would become more acute. On the morning of August 25, their fears were realized as escalating right-wing anger on the site boiled over.

Merchants of the Right: Gun Sellers and the Crisis of American Democracy
by Jennifer Carlson
Published 2 May 2023

Some fell so deep into conspiracist thinking that they embraced “big tent conspiracy theories,” like QAnon, united by the Deep State conspiracy theory that—in the description in the New York Times—“former President Trump is facing down a shadowy cabal of Democratic pedophiles”16 (a claim that persists despite no evidence). For many onlookers, conservatives were acting out the conspiracist tendencies that historian Richard Hofstadter labeled the “paranoid style” in US conservative politics17—a pathological scourge on liberal democracy’s promises of popular sovereignty and political equality. Indeed, people like Jake Angeli—the so-called QAnon Shaman who entered the Capitol Building on January 6, 2021, bare-chested and wearing a headdress of fur and horns, and who was later diagnosed with an array of mental health problems18—reinforced the stereotype of conspiracy adherents as narcissistic, unhinged, and aberrant.

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Where the Jan. 6 Insurrection Investigation Stands, One Year Later. NPR. Accessed May 6, 2022. https://www.npr.org/2022/01/06/1070736018/jan-6-anniversary-investigation-cases-defendants-justice. Lynch, S. N. (2021). Exclusive: “QAnon Shaman” in Plea Negotiations after Mental Health Diagnosis. Reuters. Accessed August 10, 2021. https://www.reuters.com/world/us/exclusive-qanon-shaman-plea-negotiations-after-mental-health-diagnosis-lawyer-2021-07-23/. Mak, T. (2021). Judge Dismisses NRA Bankruptcy Case, Heightening Risk for Dissolution of Group. NPR. Accessed July 25, 2022. https://www.npr.org/2021/05/11/995934682/judge-dismisses-nra-bankruptcy-case-heightening-risk-for-dissolution-of-group.

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Punished: Policing the Lives of Black and Latino Boys. New York University Press. Robinson, B. A. (2020). The Lavender Scare in Homonormative Times: Policing, Hyper-incarceration, and LGBTQ Youth Homelessness. Gender & Society, 34(2), 210–232. Roose, K. (2021). What Is QAnon, the Viral Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theory?. New York Times. Accessed August 10, 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-qanon.html. Roosevelt, K. (2021). I Spent 7 Months Studying Supreme Court Reform. We Need to Pack the Court Now. Time Magazine. Accessed January 7, 2022. https://time.com/6127193/supreme-court-reform-expansion/. Rosenblum, N. L. and Muirhead, R. (2020).

The Great Wave: The Era of Radical Disruption and the Rise of the Outsider
by Michiko Kakutani
Published 20 Feb 2024

Naughton, “Nixon Slide from Power: Backers Gave Final Push,” The New York Times, Aug. 12, 1974, nytimes.com/​1974/​08/​12/​archives/​nixon-slide-from-power-backers-gave-final-push-former-defenders.html. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT John Birch Society: Erick Trickey, “Long Before QAnon, Ronald Reagan and the GOP Purged John Birch Extremists from the Party,” The Washington Post, Jan. 15, 2021, washingtonpost.com/​history/​2021/​01/​15/​john-birch-society-qanon-reagan-republicans-goldwater/. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT grew by an estimated 55 percent: James Wilson, “White Nationalist Hate Groups Have Grown 55% in Trump Era, Report Finds,” Guardian, Mar. 18, 2020, theguardian.com/​world/​2020/​mar/​18/​white-nationalist-hate-groups-southern-poverty-law-center/; “The Year in Hate & Extremism Report 2021,” Southern Poverty Law Center, Mar. 9, 2022, splcenter.org/​20220309/​year-hate-extremism-report-2021.

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But it is hardly confined to him, as the Republican Party has doubled down on his lies and efforts to sow mistrust in democratic institutions. This contagion is so virulent that in mid-2023, a third of the country believes Trump’s lie that the 2020 election was stolen from him; an estimated 16 percent buys into the deranged conspiracy theories of QAnon; and an estimated 7 percent believes violence is justified to restore Trump to the White House. Such developments point to how far today’s emergency extends beyond politics—how it goes to our very ability to process reality, to tell the difference between fact and fiction, between truth and fantasy.

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How was a novelist, Roth asked, to understand and describe (much less, make credible) a reality so routinely filled with outrageous scandals, insanities, idiocies, and noise—and this, remember, was in the days before the assassinations of JFK, Martin Luther King Jr., and RFK, before Watergate and 9/11, before Donald Trump and QAnon. “The actuality is continually outdoing our talents,” Roth complained, “and the culture tosses up figures almost daily that are the envy of any novelist.” And when a social landscape is so surreal that it “produces in the writer not only feelings of disgust, rage, and melancholy, but impotence, too, he is apt to lose heart” and “turn to other matters, or to other worlds; or to the self, which may, in a variety of ways, become his subject” as “the only real thing in an unreal environment.”

Rationality: What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters
by Steven Pinker
Published 14 Oct 2021

Decision making from economic and signal detection perspectives: Development of an integrated framework. Frontiers in Psychology, 6. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2015.00952. Lyttleton, J. 2020. Social media is determined to slow the spread of conspiracy theories like QAnon. Can they? Millennial Source, Oct. 28. https://themilsource.com/2020/10/28/social-media-determined-to-slow-spread-conspiracy-theories-like-qanon-can-they/. MacAskill, W. 2015. Doing good better: Effective altruism and how you can make a difference. New York: Penguin. Maines, R. 2007. Why are women crowding into schools of veterinary medicine but are not lining up to become engineers?

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Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 145, 621–29. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000153. Thomas, K. A., DeScioli, P., Haque, O. S., & Pinker, S. 2014. The psychology of coordination and common knowledge. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 107, 657–76. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0037037. Thompson, C. 2020. QAnon is like a game—a most dangerous game. WIRED Magazine, Sept. 22. https://www.wired.com/story/qanon-most-dangerous-multiplatform-game/. Thompson, D. A., & Adams, S. L. 1996. The full moon and ED patient volumes: Unearthing a myth. American Journal of Emergency Medicine, 14, 161–64. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0735-6757(96)90124-2. Tierney, J. 1991.

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Trump told around thirty thousand lies during his term, had a press secretary who touted “alternative facts,” claimed that climate change was a Chinese hoax, and suppressed knowledge from scientists in federal agencies overseeing public health and environmental protection.4 He repeatedly publicized QAnon, the millions-strong conspiracy cult that credits him with combating a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles embedded in the American “deep state.” And he refused to acknowledge his defeat in the 2020 election, fighting crackbrained legal battles to overturn the results, led by lawyers who cited yet another conspiracy, this one by Cuba, Venezuela, and several governors and officials of his own party.

How to Stand Up to a Dictator
by Maria Ressa
Published 19 Oct 2022

c_id=3&objectid=11551882. 13.Doug Bock Clark, “The Bot Bubble: How Click Farms Have Inflated Social Media Currency,” New Republic, April 21, 2015, https://newrepublic.com/article/121551/bot-bubble-click-farms-have-inflated-social-media-currency. 14.Chris Francescani, “The Men Behind QAnon,” ABC News, September 22, 2020, https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/men-qanon/story?id=73046374. 15.Clark, “The Bot Bubble.” 16.Ibid. 17.Jennings Brown, “There’s Something Odd About Donald Trump’s Facebook Page,” Insider, June 18, 2015, https://www.businessinsider.com/donald-trumps-facebook-followers-2015-6. 18.Nicholas Confessore, Gabriel J.

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Here’s What We Need to Do,” NBC News, March 22, 2021, https://www.nbcnews.com/think/opinion/teen-terrorism-inspired-social-media-rise-here-s-what-we-ncna1261307. 55.Kyle Chua, “8Chan Founder Says Current Site Owner Jim Watkins Behind QAnon—Report,” Rappler, September 29, 2020, https://www.rappler.com/technology/8chan-founder-fredrick-brennan-jim-watkins-behind-qanon/. 56.Jim Holt, “Two Brains Running,” New York Times, November 25, 2011, https://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/27/books/review/thinking-fast-and-slow-by-daniel-kahneman-book-review.html. 57.Peter Dizikes, “Study: On Twitter, False News Travels Faster Than True Stories,” MIT News, March 8, 2018, https://news.mit.edu/2018/study-twitter-false-news-travels-faster-true-stories-0308. 58.

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Many foreign businesses experimenting in gray areas came to the Philippines because it had few or no internet regulations, and what regulations it did have, it didn’t enforce.12 Some parts of the Philippines developed a reputation for services euphemistically known as “onlining” that spammed email addresses around the world.13 Our country was also where the hate factory 8chan, later 8kun, best known as a forum for violent extremists, was based and later linked to QAnon: the American father and son suspected of creating it had been living on a pig farm south of Manila.14 A lot of that changed after a global crackdown between 2010 and 2012, when internet security researchers and law enforcement agencies dismantled spambots and technology evolved to control them. So when those involved in that homegrown industry looked for new business opportunities, they turned to social media.15 Well before the 2016 presidential elections, the stage had already been set in our country for three converging trends that helped the government shamelessly consolidate power: click and account farms, information operations, and the rise of political influencers in the grayer areas of the advertising industry.

Homegrown: Timothy McVeigh and the Rise of Right-Wing Extremism
by Jeffrey Toobin
Published 1 May 2023

He abandoned even the pretense of detachment from right-wing extremist groups. He openly embraced QAnon, a quasi-mystical political cult that spreads the false theory that the Democratic Party runs pedophile rings. On his social media platform, Trump regularly reposted QAnon content, including an image of himself wearing a Q lapel pin overlaid with the words “The Storm is Coming.” In QAnon lore, the “storm” involves Trump’s return to office, a televised trial of his opponents, and their possible execution. Trump played the QAnon theme music as background to his speeches at rallies. At one event before the 2022 midterm elections, many in the audience responded with the raised-right-arm gesture that signals affiliation with QAnon and recalls the Nazi salute.

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“it would have been armed”: Chandelis Duster, “Greene Again Downplays Capitol Riot and Says It Would Have Been Armed if She Led It,” CNN, Dec. 12, 2022, https://www.cnn.com/2022/12/12/politics/marjorie-taylor-greene-armed-insurrection-comments/index.html. Trump regularly reposted QAnon content: David Klepper and Ali Swenson, “Trump Openly Embraces, Amplifies Qanon Conspiracy Theories,” Associated Press, Sept. 16, 2022, https://apnews.com/article/technology-donald-trump-conspiracy-theories-government-and-politics-db50c6f709b1706886a876ae6ac298e2. In another speech, Trump said: Peter Wade, “Crowd Jeers and Laughs When Trump Threatens Journalists with Prison Rape,” Rolling Stone, Oct. 22, 2022, https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-news/trump-threatens-journalists-prison-rape-1234616603/.

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At one event before the 2022 midterm elections, many in the audience responded with the raised-right-arm gesture that signals affiliation with QAnon and recalls the Nazi salute. In another speech, Trump said the government should threaten journalists with prison rape in order to convince them to reveal their sources. (“When this person realizes he’s going to be the bride of another prisoner very shortly, he will say, ‘I’d very much like to tell you exactly who that leaker is!’ ”) With criminal investigations closing in on him from several directions, Trump predicted violence if he is charged. “I don’t think the people of this country would stand for it,” he said in an interview.

The Internet Is Not What You Think It Is: A History, a Philosophy, a Warning
by Justin E. H. Smith
Published 22 Mar 2022

See in particular the discussion of “birds” at the thirty-third annual São Paulo Biennial, as related by the biennial’s curator, Gabriel Pérez-Barreiro: Seph Rodney, “At This Year’s São Paulo Biennial the Curator Prioritizes Feeling Over Discourse,” 30. Williams, Stand Out of Our Light, 12. 31. Leopold, A Sand County Almanac, 215–216. 32. Lanier, You Are Not a Gadget. 33. See “Our Statement,” at https://www.somanyofus.com. 34. See Charlie Warzel, “Is QAnon the Most Dangerous Conspiracy Theory of the 21st Century?” New York Times, August 4, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/opinion/qanon-conspiracy-theory-arg.html 35. Lynn, “The Big Tech Extortion Racket.” 36. For an engaging analysis of this phenomenon, see Vanderbilt, You May Also Like. 37. Niall Ferguson, “TikTok Is Inane. China’s Imperial Ambition Is Not,” Bloomberg Opinion, August 9, 2020. https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2020-08-09/tiktok-is-the-superweapon-in-china-s-cultural-warfare?

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Either way, we are in uncharted territory, far outside the realm of traditional praise and blame, as now the normative evaluation of human action cannot proceed without “running it through the machines,” without reference to the behavior of artificial systems that are themselves insusceptible to praise and blame. This transformation is shaping the way we understand not only interpersonal relationships, but also political movements. According to the video-game designer Adrian Hon, the QAnon conspiracy theory, whose supporters became a vigorous and multitudinous force backing Donald Trump in the later phase of his presidency, might best be understood as an “ARG” or “alternate reality game.”34 Such a game is not played on a console; instead its strategies and prizes are spread across the internet, built into apps, inserted into newspaper advertisements and even into real-world interpersonal relations.

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According to the video-game designer Adrian Hon, the QAnon conspiracy theory, whose supporters became a vigorous and multitudinous force backing Donald Trump in the later phase of his presidency, might best be understood as an “ARG” or “alternate reality game.”34 Such a game is not played on a console; instead its strategies and prizes are spread across the internet, built into apps, inserted into newspaper advertisements and even into real-world interpersonal relations. Yet it is conceived and executed on the model of a traditional console-based game, and designers and users of traditional video games are generally the people who are most invested in the construction and navigation of such alternate realities. According to Hon, QAnon is “a uniquely 21st century conspiracy theory,” in that it rewards its supporters for “going down rabbit holes” and making connections between disparate clues in order ultimately to discern an underlying unity. Arriving at such unity is the standard desideratum of conspiracy theories in general, and now it is also a sort of grail or ultimate reward after which a new species of gamers-cum-conspiracy theorists are questing.

Survival of the Richest: Escape Fantasies of the Tech Billionaires
by Douglas Rushkoff
Published 7 Sep 2022

I suppose I was suggesting that this was the same Civil War that America’s been fighting since Lincoln’s day, having never resolved fundamental questions of race, sovereignty, and entitlement. “They’re crazy,” the student said, no doubt musing on the off- campus reality he was about to re-enter. “QAnon conspiracy people are going to cost us democracy.” We watched in silence as one of the video streams followed along with a group of protesters, through the police line and into the building. “What if you could just make all those QAnon people disappear,” the Twitter guy said. “Would you do it?” “What do you mean, ‘disappear’?” asked the student. “You mean kill them?” “No. Not like that,” Twitter explained. “I just mean, well, if you could just push a button and have those people not exist anymore.

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I also saw it up close as I lost one of my best friends—let’s call him Sam—to the most successful campaign of the online war game, what became known as QAnon. It started out innocently enough. More like an extended, intellectually adventurous game of “What if ?”—the sort of conversation Sam and I used to have in our college dorm room after a few bong hits. What if reality is a video game we forgot we’re playing? What if Stanley Kubrick faked the moon landing on a movie set? What if the HARP station really can control the weather? It was a brain game that sometimes even yielded some penetrating insights on the interplay of media, technology, and the collective psyche. QAnon “drops”—a series of cryptic messages online supposedly sourced from a whistleblower somewhere in the Deep State—provoked that sort of inquiry.

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Peters, “Bannon’s Worldview: Dissecting the Message of ‘The Fourth Turning,’ ” New York Times , April 8, 2017, https:// www .nytimes .com /2017 /04 /08 /us /politics /bannon -fourth -turning .html. 149   1960s science fiction novel : Roger Zelazny, Lord of Light (New York: Harper Voyager, 2010). 149   “In Silicon Valley” : Andy Beckett, “Accelerationism: How a Fringe Philosophy Predicted the Future We Live In,” Guardian , May 11, 2017, https:// www .theguardian .com /world /2017 /may /11 /accelerationism -how -a -fringe -philosophy -predicted -the -future -we -live -in. 150   “It’s a fine line” : Max Chafkin, QAnon Anonymous podcast, December 10, 2021. 150   “cognitive elite” : Mark O’Connell, “Why Silicon Valley Billionaires Are Prepping for the Apocalypse in New Zealand,” Guardian , February 15, 2018, https:// www .theguardian .com /news /2018 /feb /15 /why -silicon -valley -billionaires -are -prepping -for -the -apocalypse -in -new -zealand. 150   Thiel also funded : Max Chafkin, The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley’s Pursuit of Power (New York: Penguin, 2021).

The Wires of War: Technology and the Global Struggle for Power
by Jacob Helberg
Published 11 Oct 2021

Roberts, “How the Chinese Government Fabricates Social Media Posts for Strategic Distraction, not Engaged Argument,” Harvard, April 9, 2017, https://gking.harvard.edu/files/gking/files/50c.pdf. 130 Marc Faddoul, Guillaume Chaslot, and Hany Farid, “A longitudinal analysis of YouTube’s promotion of conspiracy videos,” UC–Berkeley, March 6, 2020, https://farid.berkeley.edu/downloads/publications/arxiv20.pdf. 131 Renee DiResta, “The Digital Maginot Line,” Ribbonfarm, November 28, 2018, https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2018/11/28/the-digital-maginot-line/. 132 Mark Scott and Laurens Cerulus, “Russian groups targeted EU election with fake news, says European Commission,” Politico, June 14, 2019, https://www.politico.eu/article/european-commission-disinformation-report-russia-fake-news/. 133 Davey Alba and Sheera Frenkel, “Russia Tests New Disinformation Tactics in Africa to Expand Influence,” New York Times, October 30, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/30/technology/russia-facebook-disinformation-africa.html. 134 Michael Schwirtz and Sheera Frenkel, “In Ukraine, Russia Tests a New Facebook Tactic in Election Tampering,” New York Times, March 29, 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/03/29/world/europe/ukraine-russia-election-tampering-propaganda.html. 135 Alba and Frenkel, “Russia Tests New Disinformation Tactics in Africa to Expand Influence.” 136 Ibid. 137 Davey Alba, “How Russia’s Troll Farm Is Changing Tactics Before the Fall Election,” New York Times, March 29, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/29/technology/russia-troll-farm-election.html. 138 “America has always been hinged on hard-working people,” UMD Archive, September 23, 2016, https://archive.mith.umd.edu/irads/items/show/8941.html. 139 Alba, “How Russia’s Troll Farm Is Changing Tactics Before the Fall Election.” 140 Ibid. 141 Ibid. 142 Nicole Perlroth, “A Conspiracy Made in America May Have Been Spread by Russia,” New York Times, June 15, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/15/technology/coronavirus-disinformation-russia-iowa-caucus.html. 143 Joseph Menn, “Russian-backed organizations amplifying QAnon conspiracy theories, researchers say,” Reuters, August 24, 2020, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-qanon-russia/russian-backed-organizations-amplifying-qanon-conspiracy-theories-researchers-say-idUSKBN25K13T. 144 Nicole Perlroth, “A Conspiracy Made in America May Have Been Spread by Russia.” 145 Andy Greenberg, “Hackers broke into real news sites to plant fake stories,” Wired, July 29, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/hackers-broke-into-real-news-sites-to-plant-fake-stories-anti-nato/. 146 Charles Davis, “ ‘Grassroots’ Media Startup Redfish Is Supported by the Kremlin,” Daily Beast, June 19, 2018, https://www.thedailybeast.com/grassroots-media-startup-redfish-is-supported-by-the-kremlin. 147 Albert Shuldiner, “Declaratory Ruling,” Federal Communications Commission, May 29, 2020, https://docs.fcc.gov/public/attachments/DA-20-568A1.pdf. 148 “Assessment on U.S.

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Officials Warn,” New York Times, October 21, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/21/us/politics/iran-russia-election-interference.html. 173 Ellen Nakashima, “Cyber Command has sought to disrupt the world’s largest botnet, hoping to reduce its potential impact on the election,” Washington Post, October 9, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/cyber-command-trickbot-disrupt/2020/10/09/19587aae-0a32-11eb-a166-dc429b380d10_story.html. 174 Ellen Nakashima, “U.S. undertook cyber operation against Iran as part of effort to secure the 2020 election,” Washington Post, November 3, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/cybercom-targets-iran-election-interference/2020/11/03/aa0c9790-1e11-11eb-ba21-f2f001f0554b_story.html. 175 Nakashima, “U.S. undertook cyber operation against Iran as part of effort to secure the 2020 election.” 176 “New Steps to Protect the US Elections,” Facebook, September 3, 2020, https://about.fb.com/news/2020/09/additional-steps-to-protect-the-us-elections/. 177 Adam Rawnsley, “Putin’s Troll Farm Busted Running Sprawling Network of Facebook Pages,” Daily Beast, September 25, 2020, https://www.thedailybeast.com/putins-troll-farm-busted-running-sprawling-network-of-facebook-pages. 178 Shirin Ghaffary, “Facebook is finally cracking down on QAnon,” Vox, August 19, 2020, https://www.vox.com/recode/2020/8/19/21376166/facebook-qanon-take-down-groups-conspiracy-theory. 179 Vijaya Gadde and Kayvon Beykpour, “Additional steps we’re taking ahead of the 2020 US Election,” Twitter, October 9, 2020, https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/2020-election-changes.html. 180 Vijaya Gadde and Kayvon Beykpour, “An update on our work around the 2020 US Elections,” Twitter, November 12, 2020, https://blog.twitter.com/en_us/topics/company/2020/2020-election-update.html. 181 Nick Statt, “YouTube defends choice to leave up videos with false election claims,” The Verge, November 12, 2020, https://www.theverge.com/2020/11/12/21562910/youtube-2020-election-trump-misinformation-fake-news-recommendations. 182 Jason Murdock, “Parler Tops App Store Charts As Conservatives Flock to Site After Biden Victory Over Trump,” Newsweek, November 9, 2020, https://www.newsweek.com/parler-tops-app-store-ios-android-charts-conservatives-twitter-biden-trump-election-1545921. 183 Tweet from @ewong, Twitter, December 9, 2020, https://twitter.com/ewong/status/1336742141264072705?

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Malign actors are increasingly relying on accounts that have been around for a while, avoiding the red flag of recency and aiding the illusion of authenticity.140 As pages and accounts with large numbers of followers are attracting greater scrutiny, many Russian trolls are shifting to smaller, more intimate accounts.141 These days, the Russians are even letting Americans come up with false narratives all by ourselves. In February 2020, a homegrown falsehood—quickly picked up and amplified by RT and a chorus of trolls—alleged that an app tenuously linked to former Hillary Clinton campaign manager Robby Mook had manipulated the all-important Iowa caucuses.142 Far-right conspiracy theorists like QAnon, claiming that Satan-worshipping Democratic politicians are trafficking children to harvest their blood, have grown alarmingly in popularity—aided by IRA trolls.143 “They aren’t looking for their own accounts to go viral anymore, because it draws attention to themselves,” Cindy Otis, a former CIA analyst, observed.

Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy
by Jamie Raskin
Published 4 Jan 2022

But Trump wrapped this political coup in the House in the chaos of insurrection by inviting his most extreme followers to Washington for a “wild” protest to “stop the steal” at the exact time we would be counting Electoral College votes. The Proud Boys, the Three Percenters, the Oath Keepers, the Aryan Nations, QAnon followers, different Christian white nationalists and militia forces would all show up in force in response to President Trump’s invitation and engage in a mass violent assault against the Congress and the Capitol the likes of which had not been seen since the War of 1812. And just as I will condemn myself for missing multiple glaring clues that Tommy was on the path to taking his own life, I will condemn myself for missing multiple glaring clues that Trump and his forces were on a path to overthrow the 2020 election and would come dangerously close to doing so.

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On the usually deserted western steps of the Capitol—the place where, four years ago, Trump introduced the ominous image “American carnage” to the world—a surly mob of thousands is now assembling, pressing forward against the fencing, jacked up by Trump’s apocalyptic pep talk from a rally he held outside the White House. “If you don’t fight like hell,” he told them, “you’re not going to have a country anymore.” Led up front by fierce-looking Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters, QAnon brawlers, and other shock troops of the extreme right, the crowd, in a matter of minutes, will begin to taunt, push, shove, punch, gouge, scratch, spray, smash, jab, and harass the U.S. Capitol Police force, kicking off four hours of savage, medieval-style violence that will result in eight physical breaches of the Capitol.

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We have all heard rumors that high-ranking military people are afraid Trump will try to muster and mobilize the National Guard and federal troops to subdue Congress and Vice President Pence, declaring martial law and canceling the 2020 election as fraudulent and corrupt. Listening to the nonsensical arguments of the next speaker, my new colleague Rep. Lauren Boebert from Colorado (a QAnon sympathizer, brandisher of guns, and rabid Trumpian polemicist), I remember something I once heard Rev. Jesse Jackson say: “Text without context is pretext.” The text of all these irrelevant speeches today is just a pretext for executing the president’s plans, which involve the strong-arming of the vice president and the disruption of Congress in the counting of votes, the parallel strategies that make brutal violence the context for everything that is happening.

Hiding in Plain Sight: The Invention of Donald Trump and the Erosion of America
by Sarah Kendzior
Published 6 Apr 2020

“Mueller will save us” had replaced “Comey will save us,” and was later supplanted by “Pelosi will save us” and “the 2020 election will save us,” all while the damage of the Trump administration grew more irreparable. Rumors swirled throughout 2017 and 2018 about imminent indictments and secret plans, and Mueller disciples found a funhouse mirror in the “QAnon” cult surrounding Trump. The QAnon phenomenon—in which Trump acolytes believe an anonymous high-level official named “Q” leaves them coded tips about secret prosecutions as well as other enticing developments, like the underground revolution they claim is being led by a still-alive JFK Jr.—is a disturbing example of savior syndrome.

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And so, for two years, one group of political junkies lit Mueller-themed prayer candles while another parsed Trump tweets for coded clues. Both sides told the skeptics to shut up and “trust the plan.” Neither side got what they wanted. The delusion was disheartening to watch. I felt sorry for those QAnon acolytes who were nonviolent and would occasionally would hit on something real, like the Epstein case, and be dismissed as conspiracists by onlookers while Trumpian manipulators drew them deeper into the QAnon cult. But I was also frustrated with the side proclaiming allegiance to logic and law: the legal scholars and political pundits who baselessly assured the public of Mueller’s forthcoming success as Mueller continued to blow the case.

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See September 11, 2001 1984 (Orwell) Nixon, Jay Nixon, Richard normalcy bias North Korea autocratic kinship ties in Biegun, Stephen (special representative to North Korea) Kim Jong Un Trump’s threats to nostalgia and The Apprentice under authoritarianism for the future for what never was nuclear weapons and Trump, Donald Obama, Barack and birtherism conspiracy theory declaration of organized crime as national emergency and Missouri voters and Russia 2008 presidential election 2012 presidential election Obama administration Lynch, Loretta and Magnitsky Act research funding cuts on former Soviet Union on Russian interference in 2016 election and Treasury breach unemployment rate Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria Occupy Wall Street movement oligarchs Abramovich, Roman Blavatnik, Len and Caputo, Michael definition of Deripaska, Oleg Firtash, Dmitry and June 2016 Trump Tower meeting and Kleptocracy Initiative (Hudson Institute) and Kushner, Jared and Lauder, Ronald Leviev, Lev and Magnitsky Act and Manafort, Paul Mogilevich, Semion and the National Rifle Association and Putin, Vladimir and Republican Party and “right of return” sanctions on and Sater, Felix and “torturers’ lobby” firm of Manafort and Stone and Trump, Donald and Trump officials Omar, Ilhan Orbán, Viktor organized crime Clinton, Bill, on and Cohn, Roy death toll from transnational activities “The Evolving Organized Crime Threat” (Mueller “Iron Triangles” speech) Italian mafia and Mogilevich, Semion Obama, Barack, on state as proxy for transnational organized crime and Trump, Donald Orwell, George Papadopoulos, George Pecker, David Pence, Mike Pendergast, Tom Pentagon Papers Pieczenik, Steve Pizzagate conspiracy Podesta, Tony Politkovskaya, Anna Pompeo, Mike post-employment economy Powell, Kajieme Powers, Kajieme Prince, Erik propaganda “alternative facts” as and American media “Big Lie” (Third Reich technique) conspiracy theories as dark money campaigns and digital media “fake news” and gun issues inoculation against and investigative journalism of Trump and networked authoritarianism scandal covering up crime (Trump technique) and sense of time in Syria protest and Andijan massacre anti-globalization protests anti-Iraq War protests anti-Trump protests Arab Spring romanticizing of See also Ferguson protest public good public leverage Putin, Vladimir authoritarianism of and axis of autocrats and Burnett, Mark and Caputo, Michael and Chabad and “the color revolutions” and Deng, Wendi and hypercapitalism and Lauder, Ronald and Lazar, Berel meeting with Trump at G20 and murder of Anna Politkovskaya and oligarchs Order of Friendship granted to Rex Tillerson by pardon power of and poisoning of Alexander Litvinenko and Russian interference in 2016 presidential election and Stein, Jill and Trump’s 2013 visit to Moscow Trump’s admiration of underestimation of QAnon Qatar racism and birtherism conspiracy and Central Park Five conspiracy and election of Barack Obama and Ferguson unrest and Missouri and partial repeal of Voting Rights Act and policy racist attacks on Elijah Lovejoy rebranded as populism systemic racism and Tea Party movement and Trump, Donald and Trump administration in works of Mark Twain and Yosef, Yitzhak Rather, Dan Reagan, Ronald and deregulation economic policy and Fairness Doctrine and Soviet Union Red Scare Reid, Harry Reid, Joy Roberts, Virginia Robinson, Don Rogers, Fred Romney, Mitt Rosenbaum, Ron Ross, Wilbur Rove, Karl RT (Russian state media outlet) Rubenstein, Howard Russia.

The New Nomads: How the Migration Revolution Is Making the World a Better Place
by Felix Marquardt
Published 7 Jul 2021

The Transformative Power of Migration 1 We named the think tank after Abd Al-Rahman al-Kawakibi, a leading nineteenth-century Syrian intellectual and reformist. 2 Fewer than 15 per cent of Muslims are Arab. 3 ‘Get out while you can, says Monsieur Scram. The Times (1 July 2013). 4 Renamed the International New York Times in 2013 and the New York Times International Edition in 2016. 5 The tagline of the WEF. 6 Hedges, C., Sacco, J., and Peters, J. Days of Destruction, Days of Revolt. Bold Type Books (2014). 7 Eisenstein, C. ‘From QAnon’s Dark Mirror, Hope.’ Charleseisenstein.org (December 2020). 8 Said, E. ‘Between Worlds’. London Review of Books (7 May 1998). 9 Goodhart, D. The Road to Somewhere. C. Hurst & Co. (2017). 10 Scred Connexion and Mafia K-1 Fry. 2. Going Places 1 Then the managing editor of the International Herald Tribune before becoming its executive editor and eventually the United Nations’ under-secretary-general for global communications. 2 McIntosh, A.

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Suicide: A Study in Sociology. Translated by John A. Spaulding and George Simpson. Routledge & Kegan Paul (1952). Durkheim, É. The Division of Labour in Society. Translated by W. D. Halls. Free Press (1997). Eisenstein, C. Climate: A New Story. Berkeley, California: North Atlantic Books (2018). Eisenstein, C. ‘From QAnon’s Dark Mirror, Hope.’ Charleseisenstein.org (December 2020). Elwood, J., Andreotti, V., and Stein, S. Towards Braiding. Musagetes (2019). Esteva, G., Babones, S., and Babcicky, P. The Future of Development: A Radical Manifesto. Policy Press (2013). Freud, S. Civilization and its Discontents. Translated by James Strachey.

Waco Rising: David Koresh, the FBI, and the Birth of America's Modern Militias
by Kevin Cook
Published 30 Jan 2023

The government is willing to kill children to take away your guns—that became the narrative.” The election of Obama, the Tea Party movement, and the rise of Donald Trump all kindled belief in a cabal of secret power brokers working against “real” Americans, she says. “Now you’ve got militias blending with QAnon—people who see Democrats as child-abusing predators.” According to Doxsee, 2021 saw the most right-wing terror attacks in recent history, “starting with January sixth.” On January 6, 2021, between two thousand and three thousand Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol, hoping to keep Joe Biden from being certified as president.

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The Davidians had built their swimming pool, he believed, “to reclaim a desecrated spot” after Koresh found evidence of a sex-slavery ring based in the cellar, though Koresh never mentioned such a thing. “This is all proven,” said Pace. The website he built for the church, wacothebranchdavidianpropheciesfulfilled.info, featured a Star of David logo, posts including “Why the Deep State Massacred David Koresh and his Followers,” references to Republicans and “Demonic-rats,” and the QAnon hashtag WWG1 WGA (“Where we go one, we go all”). President George H. W. Bush, he said, “was a pedophile and homosexual. As head of the CIA, Bush built tunnels under the White House. They found fifteen hundred dead children in those tunnels, dead from torture and sexual abuse. When they found out, Donald and Melania Trump cried for hours.

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“I don’t view ‘brainwashed’ as a psychological diagnostic category, but as a general description of someone who isn’t thinking clearly due to being overloaded with bogus information. I’d characterize Koresh’s followers as having an almost hypnotic belief in anything he told them. Is that being brainwashed? Are followers of the QAnon conspiracy brainwashed, naïve, stupid, or purposefully manipulated by others? The definition seems less important to me than the absolute, unquestioning loyalty, worship, and adherence to the instructions of the harmful narcissist in question. Donald Trump and his most ardent followers are a clear example, in my view.

The Contrarian: Peter Thiel and Silicon Valley's Pursuit of Power
by Max Chafkin
Published 14 Sep 2021

Harris was a staunch Trump supporter and a member of the House Freedom Caucus who’d attracted attention in early 2016 when, in what normally would have been a routine vote, he was one of eight Republicans to oppose naming a post office after the poet and civil rights activist Maya Angelou. One of the most celebrated Black artists in American history had been, he claimed, a communist sympathizer. Harris would acquire further renown during Trump’s presidency by voting “present” on a resolution condemning QAnon, by opposing COVID stay-at-home orders and what he called the “cult of masks,” and by supporting Trump’s efforts to overturn the results of the 2020 election. He was also a longtime advocate for NIH reform, proposing that Congress force the agency to make more grants to younger researchers—a pet cause of Thiel’s.

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Bannon suggested that the White House might go further, by regulating Facebook and Google like utilities—essentially controlling prices on advertisements and ensuring that the companies didn’t skew content ideologically (that is, against conservatives); Trump would return to this threat throughout his presidency. As the 2020 campaign began in earnest, Trump invited a group of social media influencers—including those who promoted QAnon, a pseudo-religious right-wing conspiracy theory that saw the president in messianic terms—to a Social Media Summit where the president claimed that tech companies, Facebook included, were censoring his supporters. He pledged to use his power as president to protect them. Even in the face of this blowback from the White House, Zuckerberg had reason to believe that the Democrats posted a greater threat to Facebook than Trump.

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A few days later, Cruz made a similar announcement, along with ten other Republican senators. Trump, who was attempting to pressure Vice President Mike Pence into trying to disrupt the certification, had encouraged supporters to amass in Washington that day. Thousands of them showed up—drawn in from QAnon and alt-right “Stop the Steal” groups that had formed and been nurtured on Facebook. They were angry, and some of them were armed for combat. Around midday, as Congress was preparing to vote, Trump hyped the protestors up further with a bellicose speech. He thanked the senators and others for holding the line and urged the crowd to march to the Capitol.

Like, Comment, Subscribe: Inside YouTube's Chaotic Rise to World Domination
by Mark Bergen
Published 5 Sep 2022

GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT starting in 2018: Madeline Berg, “How This 7-Year-Old Made $22 Million Playing with Toys,” Forbes, December 3, 2018, https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2018/12/03/how-this-seven-year-old-made-22-million-playing-with-toys-2/. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT banned videos promoting QAnon: YouTube said it had categorized pro-QAnon videos as “borderline,” in its penalty box, since early 2019. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT Facebook’s popularity charts: Facebook often disputed these measurements. GO TO NOTE REFERENCE IN TEXT low and falling: In 2021 YouTube shared a metric called Violative View Rate: for every ten thousand views, roughly eighteen came from videos eventually removed for breaking rules.

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Raskin opened a copy of the prior day’s Washington Post and read, “YouTube recently suggested videos that politicians, celebrities and other elite figures were sexually abusing or consuming the remains of children, often in Satanic rituals.” He looked up. Certain videos claimed that Hillary Clinton and her top aide assaulted a young girl and drank her blood. This was Frazzledrip, a bizarre cousin of Pizzagate, a theory that had, by then, morphed into QAnon, the cultlike conspiracy theory and movement. “What is your company policy on that?” Raskin asked. At that time YouTube was working on a major overhaul of its recommendation engine to bury conspiracy clips and other footage deemed “harmful” in its penalty box. But this change wasn’t ready for public consumption, so Pichai didn’t mention it.

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But Google’s superhuman AI couldn’t solve a messier issue—the endless quagmire about truth and misinformation online. YouTube tried throwing computer science and its rulebook at this problem. Like other tech platforms, YouTube outlawed certain topics when they became politically untenable. A month before the 2020 election, YouTube banned videos promoting QAnon, the extremist pro-Trump movement. When COVID-19 vaccines arrived, YouTube removed footage that questioned official scientific guidance. (Several Trump videos came down for this reason.) After Russia invaded Ukraine, YouTube zapped Russian state media channels for violating rules against “trivializing well-documented violent events.”

Bottoms Up and the Devil Laughs
by Kerry Howley
Published 21 Mar 2023

In the claim that the Obamas and the Clintons traded in innocent children, there was an opportunity to feel deeply: the welling horror of indignation, of deep sadness, of clean clarity between good and evil. It felt good to feel. It was reminiscent of something we had lost, between the day the towers fell and the twenty years after, the sense of purpose stripped of enervating ambiguity. QAnon is to its core a positive movement, and has much in common with the kind of insistent optimism that characterizes American charlatanry. QAnon is about making life better, both for yourself and the babies who would otherwise be eaten. The enemy (pedophiles, eaters of babies, the pope) is apparent, and the good guys are winning. There is a plan in place to clear the world of wicked-doing, and an all-powerful president executing that plan.

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By 2020 the participants were not money-grubbing Jews but Satan-worshipping pedophiles involved in what happened to be a matter of obsessive concern for America’s police procedurals, which comprised most of its popular television: child sex trafficking. The theories went further. It was not hard to find the claim that Hillary Clinton ate babies, or that furniture retailers sold children. “A nontrivial 15% of Americans agree with the sweeping QAnon allegation that ‘the government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation,’ ” reported the Public Religion Research Institute. And yet with repetition, anything becomes mundane. “There’s a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles out,” Georgia representative Marjorie Taylor Greene told her constituents, “and I think we have the president to do it.”

The Plague Year: America in the Time of Covid
by Lawrence Wright
Published 7 Jun 2021

Clifford Lane, said he received about $45,000 from the patents; Fauci donated his entire portion to charity.) Mikovits asserts that SARS-CoV-2 was created in laboratories at the University of North Carolina, the U.S. Army Medical Research Institute of Infectious Diseases in Fort Detrick, Maryland, and the Wuhan Institute of Virology, without offering proof or saying why they would do this. Boosted by QAnon and anti-vaccine advocates, Plandemic was liked, shared, or commented on nearly 2.5 million times on Facebook before it was taken down. The contest between science and conspiracy would constantly undermine efforts to coordinate a national response to the Covid-19 pandemic. * * * — The roots of the modern anti-vaccine movement are in the swine flu scare of 1976.

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Carlson’s main concern, however, was the effect on the economy. “Millions of unemployed people makes your country volatile,” he said. “You don’t want to live in an unstable country, period.” The next day, the president retweeted a Photoshopped image of himself playing a fiddle. The meme sounded a QAnon slogan: “Nothing can stop what is coming!” Trump commented, “Who knows what this means, but it sounds good to me!” * * * — The New York City Health Department felt muzzled by the mayor. “Every message that we want to get to the public needs to go through him, and they end up getting nixed.

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(It didn’t hurt the prospects for building the Rushmore memorial in South Dakota that Roosevelt had been a cowboy in the Dakota Territory). Each of these men knew how to use government for the good of the people. The president always encouraged fringe groups—conspiracy theorists, such as Alex Jones and QAnon followers, and the white supremacists that he tacitly endorsed. Perhaps he believed their dogma. Perhaps he just liked to toy with irrational and polarizing ideas because they stirred up chaos. He had assumed office with little understanding or interest in governing; he demanded loyalty above all, and filled the offices of government with people whose sole mission was to please him.

Lurking: How a Person Became a User
by Joanne McNeil
Published 25 Feb 2020

Those users are put in motion as little cogs in a machine of chaos, in events ranging from distributing naked photos of Jennifer Lawrence obtained without her consent or making an ordinary person’s life miserable on Twitter. Much of the mid-aughts tech enthusiasm took the self-organizing free labor of users for granted, but here is how it landed: one of the best known examples of “peer production” is Gamergate, and QAnon is, perhaps, the world’s only successful work of “transmedia storytelling.” One characteristic has distinguished the racism online today from yesterday’s innocent-ish little cyberspace: online patronage—fund-raising on Patreon or their own crowdfunding platforms when Patreon kicks them off. Social media and crowdsourcing platforms, and today’s internet of micro-fame and grift, appeals to the vanity of racists as much as any other deluded Instagram influencer.

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More people edit the page for Justin Bieber than the page for Pascoag, Rhode Island, and Bieber’s page has more visitors, but that does not correspond with more revenue. Both pages meet Wikipedia’s notability guideline, which does not reflect where the internet traffic is raining down at any given moment. This also explains why Wikipedia wasn’t a vector for QAnon or Pizzagate conspiracies. Its standards for notability and reliable sources help prevent the spread of conspiracies and hoaxes—unreliable information is deleted. There is only one Wikipedia page for each subject. There’s no redundancy. The single page might seem simple and obvious (it is an encyclopedia, after all), but in today’s media environment, this constraint means attention is siphoned to a page that can be maintained and guarded.

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Yishan Wong, the CEO of Reddit from 2012 until 2014, once refused to ban any content that was legal. That’s the “easiest way to host a forum because you invest no resources,” Kat Lo told me. In the past five years, it has banned a number of extreme subreddits, including r/beatingwomen and a forum for QAnon, and it has “quarantined” others like r/The_Donald. Other tech companies and platforms are strongly censorious when they choose to be, given examples like Facebook’s quick deletion of users with Native American names in 2014 but its resistance to banning Alex Jones until 2019. It took Apple quite some time to remove Alex Jones’s Infowars podcast from its iTunes listings, but in 2012, Josh Begley’s Drone+ app—a simple project that provided users with updates on drone strikes and their location on a map—was swiftly purged from Apple’s App Store.

Last Best Hope: America in Crisis and Renewal
by George Packer
Published 14 Jun 2021

Hundreds of Republican officials broke their oaths in order to advance the lie, and 70 percent of Republican voters believed it, and this belief brought the year to its apocalyptic end two weeks before Inauguration Day, on January 6, when a mob that Trump had summoned to Washington and incited to march on Congress just as it was voting to ratify his opponent’s victory—20,000 neo-Confederate seditionists, QAnon conspiracists, white supremacists, and swag-wearing Trumpists, with their hats and flags and face paint, their sagging bellies and jeans—stormed the Capitol and searched for members of Congress to lynch, or else milled around taking selfies, while Trump watched with pleasure on TV, until our exhausted democracy mustered one last effort to save itself from destruction.

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Is that what’s happening today? A lot of noise in the service of the republic? Meet me at the barricades, traitor, loser, cuck, and we’ll figure out how to keep the American experiment alive! Trust? It doesn’t feel that way. I see an image of a Trump rally shot from behind a man wearing a baseball hat with the letter “Q,” for QAnon, sewn on the back—a conspiracy theory that believes leading Democrats are involved in child sex trafficking and other atrocities, a theory to which Trump nodded and a new Republican congresswoman subscribed—and I think: It’s hopeless. But actual secession is impossible. Even Rush Limbaugh admitted this after his listeners took him seriously.

The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth
by Jonathan Rauch
Published 21 Jun 2021

That is a very bold, very broad, very tough claim, and it goes down very badly with lots of people and communities who feel ignored or oppressed by the Constitution of Knowledge: creationists, Christian Scientists, homeopaths, astrologists, flat-earthers, anti-vaxxers, birthers, 9/11 truthers, postmodern professors, political partisans, QAnon followers, and adherents of any number of other belief systems and religions. It also sits uncomfortably with the populist and dogmatic tempers of our time. But, like the U.S. Constitution’s claim to exclusivity in governing (“unconstitutional” means “illegal,” period), the Constitution of Knowledge’s claim to exclusivity is its sine qua non.

…

Feeling that their voices and votes are disregarded and that mainstream paths to change are blocked, they search for a narrative which offers a heroic role in a millenarian drama. Encouraged by their connections on social media and sometimes in real life too, they eagerly join a club whose initiates purport to share privileged insight into hidden truths and future events. Conspiracy theories like QAnon and predictions that a military intervention would install Trump instead of Biden as president were delusional from any rational perspective, but emotionally they made perfect sense. “It’s a fight between good and evil,” one woman told the Associated Press in 2021, explaining why she spent hours every day scouring the internet for proof that the 2020 election was stolen from Trump.

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See also disinformation; information warfare; trolls and trolling propositions for reality, 86–90, 95–98, 124 Protestantism and creed war, 39, 49–50 public choice, 229–30, 243 Publick Occurrences, mission statement of, 5–6 Pulliam, Eugene, 136 punitiveness of canceling, 219 Purdue University, 235, 250 Putin, Vladimir, 157, 166, 167, 173, 181, 184 QAnon, 183 race and racism: cancel culture and, 13, 126–27, 211, 213, 215, 220, 242, 250–51; emotional safetyism and, 203; empiricism and, 90; free speech and, 229, 252, 253; partisan identification and, 31 RAND Corporation, 164 RAR (Reedies Against Racism), 250–51 Rauch, Jonathan: Kindly Inquisitors, 15–16, 88, 98–99, 199, 203, 249, 253 reality: conformity bias and, 38–39; conservative media defining, 176; digital media splintering, 131–33, 169; emotional safetyism and, 208; identity-protective cognition and, 31; network epistemology and, 71–73, 86–87; objectivity of, 9, 86–87; rules for, 88–92; troll epistemology and, 167–68, 184–85 reality-based communities, 4; beliefs accommodated by, 114–17; boundaries of, 17, 96–97; common cores of, 103–08; defined, 16; digital media and, 119, 132, 154; error correction in, 73–75; filtering function of, 124–26; free speech and, 96; globalization of knowledge in, 68–70; marginalizing bad ideas in, 258–60; organization of knowledge in, 96–100; Peirce and, 61; persuasion in, 92–94, 134; public goods of, 75–78; reality in, 86–87; rules for, 88–92, 100; safety-based communities vs., 204; scientific development in, 62–68, 70–73; self-correction in, 110; social funnel of, 95–96; triumphs of, 41–42; troll epistemology vs., 164, 186–88, 263; viewpoint diversity in, 198–99; Wikipedia and, 140–43 reason: biases and, 29–30, 33–34; Lincoln on, 233; Montaigne on, 52–53; state of nature and evolution of, 22–24 Reddit, 135, 158 reductionism in cancel culture, 219 Reed College, 250–51 Reedies Against Racism (RAR), 250–51 Reformation, 52 Reid, Harry, 180 Reifler, Jason, 177 religion and religious difference, 49–51, 56, 80, 114–15, 233 repetition bias, 28 republican virtues, 48, 112, 113 research universities, 68–69 Resnick, Brian, 31, 257 retractions, 6, 73–75, 179.

Reset
by Ronald J. Deibert
Published 14 Aug 2020

It’s worth remembering that some of the most innovative and “media literate” uses of social media have come from those who aim to sow confusion and undermine accountability. Donald Trump tweets a steady stream of lies, insults, and encouragement of hatred to his nearly one hundred million followers. Russian trolls, murderous Islamic extremists like ISIS, and far-right conspiracy theorists, like followers of QAnon, are all among the most “media literate” entities of our age. Among the partial or fragmented solutions are the technological fixes: We just need a new app to help us correct the errors and false information circulating on all the other apps! Among these are the proposals to use machine learning and artificial intelligence to sweep through social media, keeping humans with all their cognitive biases and other shortcomings on the sidelines.

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Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2018/10/09/business/facebook-philippines-rappler-fake-news.html Questioning the integrity of all media can in turn lead to fatalism: MacFarquhar, N. (2016, August 29). A powerful Russian weapon: The spread of false stories. Retrieved from https://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/29/world/europe/russia-sweden-disinformation.html “A plurality of unreality … encourages the listener to doubt everything”: Zuckerman, E. (2019). QAnon and the emergence of the unreal. Journal of Design and Science, (6). https://doi.org/10.21428/7808da6b.6b8a82b9; Farrell, H., & Schneier, B. (2018). Common-knowledge attacks on democracy. Berkman Klein Center Research Publication 2018-7. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3273111. Social media remain polluted by misinformation and disinformation: Lewis, P. (2018).

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See also environment in China, 218–221, 228–229, 241 coal power and, 206–208 mining and, 217–225 technology manufacturing and, 227–229, 234 Polybius, 279 Pomerantsev, Peter, 121, 122 power plants, 207–208 Priest, Dana, 146 Prigozhin, Yevgeny Viktorovich, 123 Privacy Badger, 59 Privacy International (PI), 56–57, 149 psy-ops, 115–128, 295–296 public sphere, 90–91, 114, 315, 318. See also civic virtue deterioration of, 89, 112, 134, 297 social media as, 106–109, 112–113, 140 Putin, Vladimir, 120, 123 QAnon, 269 Q Technologies. See nso Group Quovo Inc., 40–41 Ramirez, Joyce, 126 Range International Information Hub, 241 ransomware, 12, 17, 84 rare earth elements, 214–221 Raytheon Co., 181–182 Reddit, 84 republicanism, 277–278, 279–281, 315–316 and restraint, 281–283, 303–304, 325 reset and restraint mechanisms, 288–289 as term, 6–7, 269, 272 restraint, 32.

Trumpocalypse: Restoring American Democracy
by David Frum
Published 25 May 2020

They wanted to lock up Hillary Clinton for sending and receiving emails on a personal server, not caring even slightly when Ivanka Trump did the exact same thing or when Trump outright blabbed to the Russian foreign minister secrets much more vital than anything Clinton could possibly have risked. They plunged into the QAnon fantasy of a wise and good Trump poised to crush a global ring of child molesters—in order to avoid the reality of a malignant Trump who by his own admission had preyed upon teenage beauty pageant contestants.6 Have you ever known anyone swindled by a scam? It’s remarkable how determined they remain, and for how long, to defend the swindler—and to shift blame to those who tried to warn them of the swindle.

…

Trump and, 125 politicization of, 36–37 voting rights and, 81 Kavanaugh, Brett, 80, 109 Keillor, Garrison, 117 Kemp, Brian, 79 Kennedy-McCain immigration bill, 129 Kentucky, 138, 184 Khamenei, Ayatollah, 172 Kim Jong-un, 48 King, Martin Luther, 99 King, Steve, 136–137 Kipling, Rudyard, 192 Krauthammer, Charles, 179–80 Kundera, Milan, 67 Kurds, 3, 17, 94–96, 169 Kushner, Jared, 26–27, 44, 88 Laden, Osama bin, 95–97 Lasseter, John, 117 Las Vegas, 83 mass shootings, 55 Lauer, Matt, 117 Law and Justice Party (Poland), 66 law enforcement, reforming, 125–27 Lebanon, 173 Legan, Santino William, 57 Leibniz, 157 Lengyel, Joseph, 93 Levin, Mark, 150 libertarians, 134 Libya, 43 Lieberman, Joe, 85 life expectancy, 13, 131–32 Limbaugh, Rush, 34, 75 Lincoln, Abraham, 17, 19–20, 199 lobbyists, 35, 102, 127, 190 Loesch, Dana, 59 Logan, John, 187–88 Lord, Jeffrey, 176 Los Angeles, 83 Louis C.K., 117 Louisiana, 80, 122–23, 187 Louis XIV, King of France, 98 lynching, 117–18 Maine, 76, 118 Malaysia, 160 Manafort, Paul, 31–32 Mansfield, Harvey C., 82 manufacturing, 12, 102 Mar-a-Lago, 26 Marciano, Paul, 117 Marine Corps, 92–93, 101 Marist Institute, 110 marriage, 13–14, 148 Maryland, 83, 117 masculinism, 65 Massachusetts, 117, 129 mass shootings, 53–58 Mateen, Omar, 54–55 Mattis, James, 88, 93, 100–101, 165, 174 McCabe, Andrew, 125 McCain, John, 19, 73, 183 McConnell, Mitch, 121 McGahn, Don, 85, 90 McKenzie, Frank, 97 media, 15, 67, 189–91, 194 Medicaid, 132–33, 138 Medi-Cal, 144 Medicare, 112, 130, 133–35, 142, 148 Medicare for All, 106, 118, 130, 134 men labor-force participation and, 13 political attitudes, 14 sexual anger and, 5, 65–66 #MeToo movement, 117 Mexico, 46, 108, 145–46, 159, 178–79 border wall and, 21–22 NAFTA/USMCA and, 178 Michigan, 75–76, 78, 186 Middle East, 157, 171–74 “Might Is Right” (racist tract), 57 Milano, Alyssa, 117 military, 90–94, 100–101, 165, 191 parade and, 90–91 spending, 133, 165 Military Times, 91, 93 Milley, Mark, 92 Ming dynasty, 156 Minnesota, 76 misogyny, 57, 65–66, 118 Mississippi, 80, 121–23 Missouri, 137 Mitchell, John, 125 Monmouth polls, 139 Montenegro, 63 Moonves, Les, 117 Morocco, 172 Morris, Gouverneur, 98 Moynihan, Daniel Patrick, 131 Mueller, Robert, 1, 29–33, 59, 125 Mulvaney, Mick, 189 Muslims, 51, 54, 61, 63–64, 179 Mussolini, Benito, 86 Naipaul, V.S., 18 Napoleon, 65 National Enquirer, 109 National Guard, 93 nationalism, 50–51, 62–63, 196 National Lynching Memorial, 117 National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), 126 National Rifle Association (NRA), 59, 61 National Security Agency (NSA), 45 National Security staff, 88, 96–97 Navajo Generating Station, 118 Naval Operations Chief, 92 Nazism, 64, 145 NBC, 24, 59 Nebraska, 184 Neller, Robert, 92 Netherlands, 133 Never Trumpers, 90 New Black Panthers, 69 New Hampshire, 76 New Jersey, 75 New Orleans, 80 Newton, Isaac, 157 New York City, 83, 163 New York magazine, 109 New York State, 75, 118, 184–86 New York Times, 41, 43, 46, 61, 65, 95, 102, 111, 118, 194 New Zealand, 55–56, 162, 177 Nicaragua, 108 Nixon, Richard, 62, 82, 85, 99–100, 105, 125, 198 No Child Left Behind Act (2002), 140 Nolte, John, 149 Noonan, Peggy, 196 Norquist, Grover, 196 North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA), 41, 112, 178 North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), 45, 63, 93–94 North Carolina, 76, 78, 80, 123 North Dakota, 122, 164 Northeastern University, 55 North Korea, 44–46, 48–49, 169, 171–72 nuclear energy, 164, 166–67 nuclear weapons, 93–94, 180 Oak Ridge nuclear complex, 167 Obama, Barack, 12, 15, 64, 130–31, 136, 178, 183, 196–97 ACA and, 134–35 bin Laden and, 95–96 China and, 177 climate change and, 152 elections of 2010 and, 79 foreign policy and, 171, 179 immigration and, 21, 24, 106 Iran and, 172 Islamic world and, 53–54, 179 Obama, Michelle, 26 Ocasio-Cortez, Alexandria, 147, 167 oceans, 155–56 Office of Management and Budget (OMB), 102 offshore tax havens, 102, 174 Ohio, 78, 82–83 oil and gas (fossil fuels), 42, 94, 127, 150, 153–56, 161, 163–64 One American News Network (OANN), 15 O’Neill, Brendan, 149 O’Neill, Tip, 127 Orbán, Viktor, 67, 69, 143 Oregon, 118 O’Reilly, Bill, 15 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, 132 Ornstein, Norman, 77 Owens, Candace, 64 Paddock, Stephen, 55 Pakistan, 88–89, 95, 173–75, 180 Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), 60 Palin, Sarah, 83, 84 Panama, 45, 108 Paris Bastille Day parade, 90–91 Paris climate accords, 41, 162 Parnas, Lev, 89, 190 Patriot Prayer, 60 Pegler, Westbrook, 83 Pence, Mike, 4, 26, 35, 63 Pennsylvania, 82–83, 118, 186 Perkins, Tony, 3, 75 Perón, Eva, 18 pharmaceutical companies, 133 Philadelphia, 184, 186 Philippines, 44–45, 146 Pierce, William, 60 Pittsburgh, 186 synagogue shooting, 56, 61 plastics, 118, 156, 160 Playboy, 49 Poland, 50, 66–67, 89, 93, 193 polarization, 15, 130–31, 137–38, 187 political correctness, 15, 110 poll taxes, 71 pollution, 159–61 Pompeo, Michael, 47, 171 population distribution, 75–79, 83, 121–22 Prager, Dennis, 149 progressives, 107–8, 110–13 protectionism, 3, 50, 161 Proud Boys, 60–61 public schools, 136–37, 140–41 Pulse nightclub shootings, 53–55 Putin, Vladimir, 3, 32–33, 44, 48, 63–64, 89, 176, 197 QAnon, 34 Quartz, 156 race and racism, 5–6, 43, 56–58, 62–63, 65–66, 107, 111–12, 127, 140–41, 191 voting and, 71, 80–81 Reagan, Ronald, 18, 39, 51, 62, 105–6, 181, 191 real estate, 120 recessions, 12, 127, 144 recycling, 159–60 red flag laws, 117 redistricting, 84 red meat consumption, 163 reform, recommendations for consensus and, 118–19 DC statehood and, 122–23 filibuster and, 120–22 gerrymandering and, 124–25 law enforcement and, 125–26 presidential tax returns and, 119–20 regulation, 127, 188 Reid, Harry, 121 Republican National Convention 2008 (St.

12 Bytes: How We Got Here. Where We Might Go Next
by Jeanette Winterson
Published 15 Mar 2021

We believe received opinions are actually our own. We are also lazy, and prefer an easy life – we like being ‘told’ what to think, as long as we can believe we are thinking for ourselves. Militant Trump supporters made this frighteningly clear as they stormed the Capitol in the name of freedom, obeying orders from President Trump. QAnon supporters have no basis for their extreme views, and yet they believe that they are thinking for themselves – rather than being manipulated. Anti-individual behavioural theory came into vogue with the American Harvard psychologist B. F. Skinner after World War Two. Back then it was straightforward Behaviorism.

…

* * * Sidney Powell, Kraken Queen and lawyer who was part of Trump’s Stop the Steal campaign, has responded to the 1.3 billion-dollar lawsuit brought against her by Dominion Voting Systems. Powell claimed that mail-in voting machines rigged the election for Biden, and that they were part of a Venezuelan plot against Trump. QAnon supporters loved this bedtime story – and eagerly awaited their Kraken moment. Today, Sidney Powell’s defence against the suit is that ‘no reasonable person would conclude that the statements [her statements] were truly statements of fact.’ * * * The UN Convention on the Rights of the Child has accepted General Comment 25.

The Man Who Broke Capitalism: How Jack Welch Gutted the Heartland and Crushed the Soul of Corporate America—and How to Undo His Legacy
by David Gelles
Published 30 May 2022

Together, Welch and Trump had come to understand just how powerful lies could be in the age of social media. At the time, their antics were written off as buffoonery and bluster, the mad musings of washed-up tycoons. But their falsehoods found a willing audience, helping propel Trump to the Oval Office, and laying the groundwork for Pizzagate, QAnon, and the endless cascade of falsehoods that would soon come from President Trump himself. Reflecting on the loony news cycles sparked by Birtherism and the jobs numbers conspiracy, the news anchor Chuck Todd foresaw the insanity to come. “The idea that Donald Trump and Jack Welch—rich people with crazy conspiracies—can get traction on this,” Todd said, “is a bad trend.”

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Boone, 57 Pierson, Ed, 156 Pigou, Arthur Cecil, 167–68 Pizzagate, 160 Plank, Kevin, 182 Polaris, 77, 84–85, 107, 116 Polman, Paul, 139–40, 203–7, 211, 217, 220 Powell, Lewis, 36–37, 39 private equity firms: dealmaking by, 2, 51, 54, 57, 70, 105, 110–11, 142, 175–82, 185, 213–14 stakeholder capitalism and, 213–14 Procter & Gamble, 102, 204 profit maximization, see shareholder capitalism Pruitt, Scott, 198–99 public benefit corporations, 212–13 QAnon, 160 Qatar Airways, 130 Rather, Dan, 131 RCA: GE acquisition, 51–54, 56, 57, 95, 152, 175, 176 GE sell-off of, 51–52, 152 RCA Records, 51 Reagan, Ronald, 7, 15–16, 24, 38–39, 47, 51, 65, 95, 196 Reaganomics, 15–16, 93 Real-Life MBA, The (Welch and Welch), 131 Regan, Donald, 39 REI, 215–16 Republican Party, 12, 156–60, 196–200 Restaurant Brands International, 179 Reuters, JW as contributor, 11, 131 Ries, Eric, 139 RJR Nabisco, 57, 70 Robertson, Pat, 134 Rocheleau, Dennis, 44, 56 Rockefeller, John D., 184 Rogers, Tom, 60, 62 Rohatyn, Felix, 51, 95 Roker, Al, 135 Rose, Charlie, 131 Rubbermaid, 77 SABMiller, 178 Sanchez, Lauren, 174 Sanders, Bernie, 162–63 Sarbanes-Oxley Act (2002), 126 Saudi Aramco, 135 Saudi Basic Industries, 137 scandals inside GE, 92–93 Hudson River PCB pollution, 93, 139, 168 Justice Department subprime mortgage investigation, 165, 225 JW divorce and remarriage, 117–20, 174 Kidder Peabody trading schemes, 54–55 pension fund shortfall, 162 SEC accounting fraud suits and settlements, 126, 147–48, 225 SEC long-term-care shortfall investigation and settlement, 164–65 Schrager, James, 107 Schulman, Dan, 207–11, 220 Schwab, Klaus, 211–12 Scott, MacKenzie, 174 Scott Paper, 71 Seamless, 170 Sears, 165 Securities Act of 1933, 65 Security Capital Group, 137 September 11 terrorist attacks (2001), 7, 82, 113–15, 117, 136–37, 138, 228 Seventh Generation, 212 Shad, John, 39 shareholder capitalism: activism for, 149–52 broad acceptance of, 93–95 Business Roundtable and, 37, 93, 214, 223–24 Covid-19 pandemic and, 221–26 critiques of, 70, 72–73, 84–85, 92–97 Friedman doctrine and, 3–4, 6–7, 35–40, 93–94, 229 GE as the most valuable company on earth, 3, 4–8, 20, 34, 50–51, 58, 68, 79, 90, 113, 137, 162, 195, 226 Golden Age of Capitalism vs., 222, 229 impact in corporate America, 8–13, 175–85, 229 JW denunciation of, 151–52 in JW vision for GE, 2–3, 4–8, 20, 33–35, 52, 68, 151–52 stakeholder capitalism vs., 36, 37, 151–52, 203–20, 231 Welchism and, 8–9, see also Welchism Sharer, Kevin, 106 Sheffer, Gary, 39–40 Siegel, Marty, 54–55 60 Minutes (CBS TV program), 42, 131 Six Sigma, 101, 112–13, 127 Skilling, Jeffrey, 124 Sloan, Alfred, 25 Smith, Greg, 190 Smith, Kyle, 89 Sonnenfeld, Jeffrey, 164 Sorscher, Stan, 89 Southwest Airlines, 190 S&P Dow Jones Indices, 165 Spencer Stuart, 78 Spitzer, Eliot, 109–10, 125–26 Sprint, 169 SPX, 77, 105 stack ranking: Amazon and, 171–74 at Ford, 171 at Microsoft, 171 by 3G Capital, 179 at 3M, 112, 171 Vitality Curve at GE, 4, 44–45, 96–97, 152, 171, 172, 174 at WeWork, 171 stagflation, 18, 25, 33 stakeholder capitalism, 203–20, 231 activism and, 149–52 B Corp movement / public benefit corporations in, 212–13 at BlackRock, 213–14 Business Roundtable and, 26, 214, 222–24 at Chrysler, 216 at Delta Air Lines, 215 employee board representation, 216–17 employee compensation, 207–11, 215–16, 220 executive compensation in, 217–18, 219–20 GE as once-model corporate citizen, 4, 16, 20, 21–26, 42–43, 74, 165 long-term view in, 217–18 minimum wage and, 93, 183, 209, 215, 218, 223 nature of, 12–13 need for, 12–13 at PayPal, 207–11, 215, 220 at REI, 215–16 shareholder capitalism vs., 36, 37, 151–52, 203–20, 231 strengthening antitrust policies, 219 sustainability and good governance in, 205–7 taxation in, 23, 218–19 at Unilever, 203–7, 211, 217, 220 upskilling workers, 216 World Economic Forum and, 211–12 see also Golden Age of Capitalism Stanley, Frederick T., 80 Stanley Works, 77, 83–84, 110 Starbucks, 170 Stephanopoulos, George, 157 Stephenson, Randall, 175 Stiglitz, Joseph, 132 stock buybacks, see financialization (generally); financialization at GE stock market performance, see shareholder capitalism Stone, Roger, 196 Stonecipher, Harry, 87–90, 127, 128–29, 187, 191, 194 Stumo, Michael, 194 Stumo, Samya, 194 subprime mortgage crisis, 8, 137–38, 141–45, 148–49, 150, 165, 225 Success magazine, 91, 132 Summers, Larry, 93–94 Sunbeam Products, 71–72 Sundstrand, 87 Swope, Gerard, 22–23, 43 Symantec, 77, 105–6 Taco Bell, 170 TaskRabbit, 170 taxation: “active financing” exception, 62–63 corporate headquarters in Bermuda, 81–82 decline in U.S. corporate taxes, 63 in GE dealmaking, 51, 61, 62–63 in stakeholder capitalism, 23, 218–19 tax breaks for corporate expansion / relocations, 88–89, 173, 219 tax reduction efforts, 10, 63, 81–82, 88–89, 162, 185, 200–201 Trump and, 200–201 terrorist attacks (September 11, 2001), 7, 82, 113–15, 117, 136–37, 138, 228 Tester, Jon, 190 30 Rock (NBC TV program), 139–40 Thomson, 52, 82–84 3G Capital, 177–82, 206–7 3M, 9, 77, 107, 111–13, 127, 171 Tichy, Noel, 77 Tiller, Tom, 84–85, 107, 116 Time Warner, 175–76 Tim Hortons, 179 TiVo, 60, 62, 77 Today (NBC TV program), 117, 135, 195 Todd, Chuck, 160 “total war,” 34 Trani, John, 83–84, 110 Trump, Donald: The Apprentice (NBC TV program), 121, 134–35, 195 business advisory councils, 199–200 Charlottesville, Virginia white nationalist violence (2017), 199–200 conspiracy theories, 158, 160 JW and, 12, 59, 90–91, 121, 134–35, 158, 194–201, 221 presidency, 12, 166, 169, 188, 197–200, 214 Trump International Hotel and Tower, 7, 59, 119, 121, 195 Tungsram, 83 Tyco International, 124–25 Uber, 170, 226 Under Armour, 182 Unilever, 139–40, 203–7, 211, 217, 220 unions: at Boeing, 88, 89, 128–30 at Chrysler, 216 decline of, 46–47, 49–50 employee compensation and, 46–47, 49 JW opposition to, 11, 46–47, 132 United Auto Workers, 216 United Financial Corporation of California, 66–67 U.S.

Win Every Argument: The Art of Debating, Persuading, and Public Speaking
by Mehdi Hasan
Published 27 Feb 2023

Allow your wit to be a reflection of your own personality. When I interviewed retired lieutenant general Michael Flynn prior to the 2016 presidential election on my Al Jazeera English show, I had no idea he would go on to be national security adviser to President Trump a few months later, or eventually accused of endorsing QAnon conspiracies and promoting martial law! I did know at the time that he was a purveyor of far-right Islamophobic tropes and that he had tweeted that “fear of Muslims is rational.” So I wanted to challenge him on his anti-Muslim remarks and, to be honest, I did not plan on making a joke about them.

…

Phelps, Michael Philip II, king of Macedon Philippics (Cicero) Philippics (Demosthenes) Phillips, Melanie Pillay, Srini Pinker, Steven Piso pitch (of voice) Pitt, William Rivers Plato “play the ball, not the man” Plutarch Poetics (Aristotle) Political Behavior Political Brain, The (Westen) political correctness Politico positive people posture poverty power (of voice) power poses practice amount needed Churchill and Demosthenes and filming yourself and importance of in front of mirror MLK and sound and 4 Ps timing and preemption preparation or homework booby traps and brainstorming and confidence and Gish Galloper and research and role-playing and crucial components of zingers and present, staying presidential campaigns of 1988 of 2008 of 2016 of 2020 presidential debates of 1980 of 1984 of 1988 of 1992 of 2000 of 2012 of 2020 Prince, Erik Pritchett, Lant procatalepsis proof by verbosity put-downs Putin, Vladimir Pynzenyk, Viktor QAnon Qatada, Abu Qatar Quayle, Dan questions booby traps and brainstorming and listening and starting with steelmanning and Question Time (TV show) Quintilian quotes audience and ending with Quran, Holy racism rambling Rambo movies First Blood First Blood Part II Rambo III RAND Corporation Rauch, Jonathan Reading the World (Austin) Reagan, Ronald receipts audience and booby traps and creating your own finding hitting Bolton with how to show physically showing power of timing and using opponents statement and value of Warren vs.

Forward: Notes on the Future of Our Democracy
by Andrew Yang
Published 15 Nov 2021

In the list of suggested links next to the video you’re watching, however, there is often something far more inflammatory, such as a video espousing conspiracy theories. Crackpot videos are featured right alongside videos by professional documentarians, and sometimes it’s the deranged clips that receive millions of views. Conspiracy theories—like QAnon—can gain millions of followers who can even be driven toward violent action and protest. Before the advent of nonstop social media use, if you had some awful ideas you wanted to share, you would have a hard time finding people to listen to you. What would you do? Write a letter to the editor of your local paper?

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Being a publisher would bring with it the civic responsibilities and legal liabilities that any newspaper or television network bears every day. In 2020 major politicians on both sides of the aisle began either calling to or threatening to “repeal section 230.” This has been due to dissatisfaction with Facebook’s and Twitter’s treatment of various types of content. Conservatives complain that conservative-facing content—most recently, QAnon-related posts, calls by Trump that suggested violence, medical misinformation, and now Trump himself—has been singled out for censorship or redaction. Progressives on the other hand argue that hateful and racist language and ideologies have been allowed to spread unchecked on these platforms. The latter concern led to a boycott of Facebook known as “Stop Hate for Profit” in July 2020 that included hundreds of companies like Pfizer, Ford, Unilever, and Verizon.

The Stolen Year
by Anya Kamenetz
Published 23 Aug 2022

That was the rare planetary alignment of Jupiter and Saturn that blazed in the night sky, just to the left of the crescent moon, on the winter solstice of 2020. It gave the world a tiny little reprieve from talking about COVID, stolen elections, or the dawn of American fascism; but it could definitely be read as an omen, if you were into that sort of thing. Jeannie’s laughter got a little more nervous when the neighbor started sending her QAnon memes on TikTok and telling her Tom Hanks was a child molester who left his wife for a porn star. And she was pretty upset when the neighbor told her the vaccine was a Trojan horse, that “Bill Gates is going to implant the mark of the beast into us.” Jeannie worried that lots of her community would feel the same way.

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Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 was just twenty-six seconds long; this was livestreamed on social media, in real time, for hours, by thousands of participants and broadcast by journalists who were themselves trapped inside the building. The mob’s stated intention was to disrupt the final certification of election results. Some Trump supporters were dressed in furs and face paint. Others were heavily armed. They brandished QAnon, Nazi, and Confederate flags. Rioters assaulted both reporters and police officers. One rioter was shot dead by Capitol police. The business of Congress was interrupted as lawmakers fled and hid. The election results were not certified until the wee hours of the morning. “Why are they doing this?”

After the Fall: Being American in the World We've Made
by Ben Rhodes
Published 1 Jun 2021

Compared to the battles of Russia’s past, the actual fighting in Eastern Ukraine was a small endeavor affecting mainly the people there and the few thousand Russians sent furtively across Ukraine’s borders. But there was something brutal and infectious about the propaganda that went along with it. I noticed it at the time. In memes that anticipated American conspiracy theories like QAnon, Russia’s enemies were cast as pedophiles, sexual deviants, and diabolical criminals. This ability to manipulate and mobilize the national psyche while keeping the stakes relatively low represented a breakthrough for Putin, making easy use of America’s unregulated and sensationalizing social media networks.

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That would require an America that came to its senses while recognizing how much had gone wrong. America had helped shape the world we lived in before descending into the cesspool of the Trump years. We now had a government that was busy radicalizing a huge swath of American society, with pockets of the country turning to violent white supremacy or a QAnon conspiracy theory positing that America is secretly run by a cabal of child sex traffickers. At precisely the time that progressive forces around the world were under siege, America absented itself from the defense of the most basic propositions that had once defined it in the eyes of the world: The idea that individuals are entitled to a basic set of freedoms that should be applied equally to all people.

Four Battlegrounds
by Paul Scharre
Published 18 Jan 2023

story_fbid=1425401580994277&id=100005733452916. 143#BlackLivesMatter: Aleem Maqbool, “Black Lives Matter: From Social Media Post to Global Movement,” BBC News, July 10, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-53273381. 143dangerous conspiracy theories: Kevin Roose, “What Is QAnon, the Viral Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theory?” New York Times, September 3, 2021, https://www.nytimes.com/article/what-is-qanon.html; Jana Winter, “Exclusive: FBI Document Warns Conspiracy Theories Are a New Domestic Terrorism Threat,” Yahoo!, August 1, 2019, https://www.yahoo.com/now/fbi-documents-conspiracy-theories-terrorism-160000507.html. 143TikTok: Jay Greene, “TikTok Sale Deadline Will Pass, Though Regulators Will Hold Off on Enforcing Divestiture,” Washington Post, December 4, 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2020/12/04/tiktok-sale-deadline/. 143largest social media platforms are controlled by a handful of companies: Wikipedia, s.v.

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When seventeen-year-old Darnella Frazier filmed Minneapolis police murdering George Floyd, she posted the video to Facebook, sharing the truth of the event and sparking a nationwide movement. Social media has enabled the rise of both transformative decentralized social movements, like #BlackLivesMatter, and dangerous conspiracy theories like QAnon. Despite their democratizing ability to empower individuals, the largest social media platforms are controlled by a handful of companies. Meta (which owns Facebook, WhatsApp, Messenger, and Instagram), Google (which owns YouTube), Tencent (which owns WeChat, QQ, and Qzone), and ByteDance (which owns TikTok and Douyin) dominate the marketplace.

How to Be Right: In a World Gone Wrong
by James O'Brien
Published 2 Nov 2018

Already, a clamour is growing around the idea that arrogant inadequates like Liam Fox and David Davis could somehow have performed much more effectively, if only ‘Remainers’ had stopped pointing out how little they seemed to know or understand about the tasks they had set themselves. In America, the best hope for democracy and truth is that Donald Trump ends up in jail, or at least in deposed disgrace. But even that could present more problems than it solves. The sheer absurdity of what some of his core supporters have been persuaded to believe – the latest nonsense, QAnon, contends that he is secretly leading an international fight against an enormous and omnipotent network of paedophiles – makes me worry at what might follow if the Constitution proves up to the task of removing the sort of president it was designed to resist. Back in Britain, the rise of the mysteriously funded think tank continues apace.

Futureproof: 9 Rules for Humans in the Age of Automation
by Kevin Roose
Published 9 Mar 2021

This kind of automation burrows into our brains and affects our inner lives—changing how we think, what we desire, whom we trust. And when it goes haywire, it can cost us much more than a job. I’ve seen lots of examples of this kind of automation in the last few years, as I’ve covered social media for the Times. I’ve interviewed followers of online extremist movements like QAnon, and I’ve seen how the algorithms and incentives of social media can turn normal, well-adjusted people into unhinged conspiracy theorists. In an audio series I helped report, Rabbit Hole, I examined the ways platforms like YouTube and Facebook have been engineered to use AI to lure users into personalized niches filled with exactly the content that is most likely to keep their attention—and how, often, that means showing them a version of reality that is more extreme, more divisive, and less fact-based than the world outside their screens.

Generations: The Real Differences Between Gen Z, Millennials, Gen X, Boomers, and Silents—and What They Mean for America's Future
by Jean M. Twenge
Published 25 Apr 2023

Younger generations once had more confidence in medicine than older generations did—perhaps they had been disappointed by their medical care less often—but by 2021 that had flipped (see Figure 4.29). Lack of trust for authority figures had reached medicine. Lack of trust allowed conspiracy theories to spread, including rumors of debunked treatments for COVID. In December 2021, an anonymous doctor posted in a Reddit thread about what he called “Q-Anon Casualties” (I will use male pronouns for the doctor from a guess based on writing style and not out of certainty). Families screamed at him that he was “part of the global conspiracy to commit genocide” and insisted that megadoses of vitamin C or hydrochloroquine would cure their loved ones. A 38-year-old COVID patient’s wife demanded that the doctor give him ivermectin (a debunked treatment) and called the doctor ignorant when he refused.

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Right-wing groups such as neo-Nazis and the Proud Boys gained more public attention than they had in years, including at the 2017 Unite the Right Rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in which some marchers chanted “Jews will not replace us.” Later, devotion to Trump caused some to question the severity—and sometimes the existence—of the COVID-19 pandemic and to buy into even stranger conspiracy theories like QAnon. Figure 5.77: U.S. adults’ warmth toward their own political party and the other party, in degrees, 1978–2020 Source: American National Election Studies Notes: D = Democrat; R = Republican. Scale is 0 to 100. Excludes Independents who lean to either party. The combination of extreme polarization and lack of agreement on basic facts had an impact.

Happy-Go-Lucky
by David Sedaris
Published 30 May 2022

I’ve thought of that Ladies’ Home Journal column a lot lately, wondering if marital problems in the seventies and eighties weren’t all fairly basic: She’s an alcoholic. He’s been sleeping with his sister-in-law. She’s a spendthrift and a racist, he’s a control freak, etc. No couple argued over which gender their child should be allowed to identify as; no one’s husband or wife got sucked into QAnon or joined a paramilitary group. Sure, there were conspiracy theories, but in those pre-internet days it was harder to submerge yourself in them. A spouse might have been addicted to Valium but not to video games, or online gambling. I don’t know that one can technically be addicted to pornography, but that’s bound to put a strain on marriages, especially now, when it’s at your fingertips, practically daring you not to look at it.

The Shame Machine: Who Profits in the New Age of Humiliation
by Cathy O'Neil
Published 15 Mar 2022

They ranged from diets of wild-caught sardines and pasture-raised beef liver to raw kombucha. And one woman compared the anti-maskers’ lot to that of Jews under Adolf Hitler. “The bare face is the new yellow star of Nazi Germany,” she said. This line was picked up the following year by Marjorie Taylor Greene, the QAnon-backing Republican congresswoman from Georgia. As the virus spread, a combative point of view became, more and more, the refuge of the politically indoctrinated. One of them, it turned out, worked under Dr. Anthony Fauci, who was heading the government’s effort to control the pandemic. Bill Crews, a public affairs official at the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, was excoriating his own colleagues online.

How Elites Ate the Social Justice Movement
by Fredrik Deboer
Published 4 Sep 2023

Stay grounded; don’t let them push you off the facts of the material benefits of progressive programs. Another reason for focusing on the simple benefits of progressive programs is timely: the American right has been slipping deeper and deeper into deranged conspiracy theories for years. The specific dimensions of the conspiracy theories change—as I write this, the lunacy of QAnon seems to be finally dying off—but the conspiratorial thinking and willingness to entertain totally bizarre claims never dies. Liberals, leftists, and Democrats would do well by responding with an affirmative argument for the programs we champion. You can’t talk a conspiracy theorist out of their theories, and certainly not with logic.

The Decadent Society: How We Became the Victims of Our Own Success
by Ross Douthat
Published 25 Feb 2020

The guy who shows up at the Comet pizza parlor in Northwest DC with a gun because he thinks that prominent liberals are running a pedophile dungeon downstairs, or the guy who parks his truck on the Hoover Dam and demands that certain imaginary indictments be unsealed isn’t just a little bolder and action oriented than the typical “Pizzagate” or “QAnon” conspiracy theorists; he fundamentally misunderstands the meaning and purpose of those labyrinthine theories, taking them as literal claims about the world rather than as what they are for their creators (a sport, a grift, a hobby) and for most of their participants (political entertainment and an odd form of virtual community).

The Loop: How Technology Is Creating a World Without Choices and How to Fight Back
by Jacob Ward
Published 25 Jan 2022

Our video games, chat rooms, and niche pornography were just the profitable eccentricities of a newly connected era. But now it’s clear that what Artis is measuring in conflict zones is taking form here in the United States as we form online groups committed to conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and QAnon. Sacred values and group identity cause us to abandon our critical faculties. In Hamid’s experiments, MRI scans of people angry about a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad or about the occupation of Palestine showed that their cost-benefit centers weren’t lighting up. That would clearly have been true of anyone inside the Capitol building on January 6, 2021.

The Premonition: A Pandemic Story
by Michael Lewis
Published 3 May 2021

The note was short and to the point, and the point was that “the Jasons” wanted Joe to explain how this new biological threat had crept up on humanity, and how the DeRisi Lab had identified it. “My first question,” said Joe, “is who the fuck are the Jasons?” Googling, he found mostly websites promoting conspiracy theories. “Whatever QAnon was back then, that’s what I got,” said Joe. “It was all deep state stuff.” At length he stumbled upon a source that sounded at least faintly credible. The Jasons, it explained, were a shadowy group of scientists and military leaders who met in secret in Washington, DC. “I thought, Hell, I can’t turn this down,” said Joe.

Chaos Kings: How Wall Street Traders Make Billions in the New Age of Crisis
by Scott Patterson
Published 5 Jun 2023

In American politics, the pendulum has swung from one extreme to the other, from Barack Obama, a left-leaning African American and former community activist, to Donald Trump, a far-right president so extreme in his views and behavior that he defied all precedent, to Joe Biden, who is, by disposition and values, Trump’s complete opposite. QAnon, a toxic conspiracy theory embraced by a significant percentage of Trump supporters, is just one example of snowballing swings to the political extreme. Heading into the 2020 election, the Atlantic described the environment as “one of the worst climates of partisan polarization and distrust in American history.”

Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity
by Devon Price
Published 4 Apr 2022

They wanted to make their own worlds predictable, easy to make sense of, small. It began as a way to take charge of their lives, until the number of self-imposed rules they followed spiraled out of control. Some Autistic people end up being radicalized by far-right online communities, which tailor themselves to appeal to lonely, frustrated men.[45] Groups like QAnon, the Proud Boys, and Men Going Their Own Way provide a sense of belonging to people who have persistently been alienated. They offer friendship and a place where it is safe to ask taboo questions and say offensive things without fear of social consequences. These communities also prey on the Autistic tendency to fixate on a narrow array of topics.

Dangerous Ideas: A Brief History of Censorship in the West, From the Ancients to Fake News
by Eric Berkowitz
Published 3 May 2021

An example is the controversy over social media censorship. While Donald Trump’s attacks on Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act, one of the pillars of speech protections on social media, lost momentum with his election loss, the issues exploded anew in January 2021, when Twitter banned him, along with seventy thousand QAnon accounts, following a pro-Trump attack on the US Capitol building. The immediate results were a drop in online misinformation, the migration of extremist content to the web’s darker reaches, and bitter criticism of “Big Tech” and Section 230 from almost all corners. But even if Section 230 survives intact in the short term, the push to substantially restrict online speech may well bear fruit.

Raising Lazarus: Hope, Justice, and the Future of America’s Overdose Crisis
by Beth Macy
Published 15 Aug 2022

At the start of the pandemic, the counseling team quickly switched to telehealth, but that made group bonding harder and rule breaking easier. Some phoned in for therapy while getting their nails done or while test-driving a car. After the election of Joe Biden, patients increasingly gravitated toward QAnon and the Big Lie. “People are getting trapped into conspiracy theories, which ups their anxieties,” Gessendorf told me in May 2021. “They won’t get vaccinated. They won’t wear masks. They don’t think COVID’s real, even the ones who’ve had it.” Occasionally, Nikki went all holler, such as when a COVID denier called her and her colleagues out in a local restaurant during one of my visits.

The Coming Wave: Technology, Power, and the Twenty-First Century's Greatest Dilemma
by Mustafa Suleyman
Published 4 Sep 2023

Since 2010, more countries have slid backward on measures of democracy than have progressed, a process that appears to be accelerating. Rising nationalism and authoritarianism seem endemic, from Poland and China to Russia, Hungary, the Philippines, and Turkey. Populist movements range from the bizarre, like QAnon, to the directionless (the gilets jaunes in France), but from Bolsonaro in Brazil to Brexit in the U.K. their prominence on the world stage has been impossible to miss. Behind the new authoritarian impulse and political instability lies a growing pool of social resentment. A key catalyst of instability and social resentment, inequality has surged across Western nations in recent decades, and nowhere more so than in the United States.

Flowers of Fire: The Inside Story of South Korea's Feminist Movement and What It Means for Women's Rights Worldwide
by Hawon Jung
Published 21 Mar 2023

“I can’t possibly get caught by the police,” Cho boasted in January 2020.108 *Both initially used pseudonyms due to concerns over personal safety, although they would reveal their real names in 2022. Bul is Park Ji-Hyun, and Dan is Won Eun-Ji. †The app, for the same reason, has won many followers worldwide, from pro-democracy activists in Belarus to QAnon believers in the United States. CHAPTER 15 In September 2019, Team Flame broke the first story about Moon’s “Nth Rooms,” confirming the whispers shared among a few on the internet but largely dismissed as urban legends. And the story not only led to the downfall of Moon Hyung-Wook and Cho Ju-Bin but also helped usher in many landmark legal changes by sparking massive grassroots campaigns to push authorities to act.

Waco: David Koresh, the Branch Davidians, and A Legacy of Rage
by Jeff Guinn
Published 24 Jan 2023

Treen, Joe, “The Evil Messiah,” WHO (Australia) (March 15, 1993). Waite, Albert A. C., “From Seventh-day Adventism to David Koresh: The British Connection,” Andrews University Seminary Studies 38, no. 1 (Spring 2000). Wessinger, Catherine, “ ‘Cult’ Is an Inaccurate, Unhelpful and Dangerous Label for Followers of Trump, QAnon and 1/6,” Religion Dispatches (July 19, 2021). White, Robert, as told to Steven Russell, “Ground Zero at Waco: I Was There,” Maxim (October 2000). Winsboro, Irvin D. S., “The Koreshan Communitarians’ Papers and Publications in Estero, 1894–1963,” Florida Historical Quarterly 83, no. 2 (Fall 2004).

Imaginable: How to See the Future Coming and Feel Ready for Anything―Even Things That Seem Impossible Today
by Jane McGonigal
Published 22 Mar 2022

The storylines that we wrote a decade in advance turned out to be pretty much exactly what we saw in the headlines of the real 2020 and early 2021. First the global spread of COVID-19 in early 2020, followed by the historic West Coast wildfires of the summer of 2020 that burned for months and required millions of people to evacuate their homes and relocate. Then, the rise of the QAnon conspiracy movement on social media, which created an “infodemic” of misinformation that COVID-19 was a hoax and vaccines would implant a microchip in your arm. Later, the “unthinkable” power grid failure in Texas that left three million people without electricity or water, blamed on “unimaginable” extreme cold weather that the aging infrastructure was unable to withstand.

Vulture Capitalism: Corporate Crimes, Backdoor Bailouts, and the Death of Freedom
by Grace Blakeley
Published 11 Mar 2024

Roth received a PPP loan of up to $350,000 before donating $250,000 to a super PAC seeking to remove Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell, making him the largest single contributor to the super PAC.21 A set of oil pipeline construction companies located in the same building each received PPP loans of between $5 and $11 million; one of the companies went on to donate $250,000 to a super PAC dedicated to Trump’s reelection.22 In some particularly egregious cases, politicians seeking reelection received donations from companies that had received PPP loans, which were wholly or partly owned by themselves or members of their family. Marjorie Taylor Greene is a far-right congresswoman who has promoted white supremacist, anti-Semitic, and QAnon conspiracy theories and who compared the safety measures introduced during the pandemic to the treatment of Jews during the Holocaust.23 Taylor Greene even called for the assassination of high-level Democratic politicians before entering Congress.24 As a congresswoman, she has been reprimanded for promoting COVID-19 conspiracy theories and praising Vladimir Putin after his invasion of Ukraine.25 The House later voted to remove her from all committee roles.

Spies, Lies, and Algorithms: The History and Future of American Intelligence
by Amy B. Zegart
Published 6 Nov 2021

Joe Sommerlad, “Trump News: President Smears Vaccine Whistleblower as Coronavirus Shutdown Sees US Unemployment Claims Soar to 36m,” Independent, May 14, 2020, https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-news-live-coronavirus-twitter-white-house-press-briefing-us-obama-latest-a9508101.html (accessed June 16, 2020). 137. Aaron Rupar, “Trump’s Latest Coronavirus Meltdown Features QAnon, Accidental Self-Owns, and a Lot of “OBAMAGATE,” Vox, May 11, 2020, https://www.vox.com/2020/5/11/21254398/trump-tweets-mothers-day-obamagate-coronavirus (accessed June 16, 2020). 138. John Bowden, “Trump Lashes Out at Obama in Mother’s Day Tweetstorm,” Hill, May 10, 2020, https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/497057-trump-lashes-out-at-obama-in-mothers-day-tweetstorm (accessed June 16, 2020). 139.

Power and Progress: Our Thousand-Year Struggle Over Technology and Prosperity
by Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson
Published 15 May 2023

In the run-up to the election, Facebook was also mired in controversy because of a doctored video of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, giving the impression that she was drunk or ill, slurring her words and sounding unwell in general. The fake video was promoted by Trump allies, including Rudy Giuliani, and the hashtag #DrunkNancy began to trend. It soon went viral and attracted more than two million views. Crazy conspiracy theories, such as those that came from QAnon, circulated uninterrupted in the platform’s filter bubbles as well. Documents provided to the US Congress and the Securities and Exchange Commission by former Facebook employee Frances Haugen reveal that Facebook executives were often informed of these developments. As Facebook came under increasing pressure, its vice president of global affairs and communications, former British deputy prime minister Nick Clegg, defended the company’s policies, stating that a social media platform should be viewed as a tennis court: “Our job is to make sure the court is ready—the surface is flat, the lines painted, the net at the correct height.

Elon Musk
by Walter Isaacson
Published 11 Sep 2023

Rabbit Holes: Author’s interviews with Elon Musk, Claire Boucher (Grimes), Kimbal Musk, James Musk, Ross Nordeen, Bari Weiss, Nellie Bowle, Yoel Roth, David Zaslav. Drew Harwell and Taylor Lorenz, “Musk Blamed a Twitter Account for an Alleged Stalker,” Washington Post, Dec. 18, 2022; Drew Harwell, “QAnon, Adrift after Trump’s Defeat, Finds New Life in Elon Musk’s Twitter,” Washington Post, Dec. 14, 2022; Yoel Roth, “Gay Data,” University of Pennsylvania PhD dissertation, Nov. 30, 2016. 92. Christmas Capers: Author’s interviews with Elon Musk, James Musk, Ross Nordeen, Kimbal Musk, Christiana Musk, Griffin Musk, David Agus. 93.