Q-Anon has its lineage, in story or method of execution, in previous conspiracism:
- The pogrom-inciting blood libel myth,
- Alex Jones’ decades of toxic screeds, including how he falsely pretended Sandy Hook was faked until he blamed his "psychosis" for years of giving bereaved parents hell,
- The New World Order scare, regardless of whatever is wrong in international politics, is a fear-mongering overreach, i.e. the “black helicopters” scare.
- The Y2K scare - or at least the idea that bunkers full of beans and guns was the appropriate response as opposed to a lot of meticulous coding,
- The Masonic/Illuminati sensationalism,
- The Protocols of the Elders of Zion which proved to be a satirical plagiarism of a French play.
These theories have been debunked many times over, but they keep coming back with primed audiences and as cited material, however flawed. They have Bond-villain explanations for the world’s problems that simply fall apart, and misdirect people even when there’s a fraction of truth in their core thesis. They’re full of non-sequitur leaps and syllogistic fallacies.
There’s the long trail of completely bogus predictions, reminiscent of the endless Rapture fads that left people sitting on hilltops the next morning, completely unready for another day on Earth. Time after time, Q announces imminent arrests of public figures, such as Hillary Clinton, and others pile on with bloodthirsty execution fantasies. These don’t come true, and people retcon this by saying that the arrest happened and there’s a double or clone or hologram appearing in public - granting these con artists a free pass to make yet more predictions, unaccountable for how many times they’ve been wrong.
