Identity Of Q Revealed?

[ZiprHead]

After the identity of 'Q' may have been revealed in a documentary, QAnon followers are calling it 'fake news'

Documentary filmmaker Cullen Hoback thought he had caught Ron Watkins in the finale of the HBO docuseries "Q: Into the Storm."

Watkins, the former administrator of the platform where the creator of the QAnon conspiracy theory posted, told Hoback, "It was basically three years of intelligence training, teaching normies how to do intelligence work. It was basically what I was doing anonymously before, but never as Q," Watkins said, but immediately tried to backtrack on the statement, adding: "Never as Q. I promise. I am not Q."

"Ron had slipped up," Hoback said in the episode. "He knew it, and I knew it — and after three tireless years of cat and mouse." By saying he was "anonymously" involved with the QAnon world, Watkins appeared to leak that he may have been acting as "Q," the anonymous figure who ran the theory with messages on 8kun, owned by Watkins' father.

 

[ideologyhunter]

What? It's not Barron?

 

[Loren Pechtel]

What? It's not Barron?

I'm actually surprised it wasn't someone in Moscow. I figured it for a Russian op.

 

[Patooka]

I'm more worried about the fuqwits who believe it than the priq who initially thought it up.

 

[lpetrich]

There is an interesting issue about Qanon, now that Q has been silent for six months. Some people have compared Qanon to a religious movement, and Lindsay Beyerstein notes a further similarity.

Lindsay Beyerstein on Twitter: "Hey, religious studies friends, are there any overarching theories about why ages of revelation tend to close in religions?" / Twitter

Hey, religious studies friends, are there any overarching theories about why ages of revelation tend to close in religions?

I don't know the technical term for this, but it seems like a lot of religions that begin with purportedly historical prophecies/revelations/miracles end up "closing the books" at some point and saying that that age is over and we have to go by the texts/the institutional church

Many observers have treated QAnon as something akin to a new religious movement. Now that "Q" has gone silent and Ron Watkins has brought down the curtain on the Q drops, it seems that Q's age of revelations has ended.

And now it's a common refrain of QAnon believers that what they got out of the teachings was the transformative awareness of the hidden reality behind appearances, and the fellowship with other believers.

QAnon believers are trying to figure out how to live in a post-revelation world, carrying on the "teachings" of Q and trying to apply them without his direct guidance.

jacob on Twitter: "@beyerstein this often happens ..." / Twitter

this often happens when the first generations of charismatic leaders or founders--the ones who introduced the new religion into the world, including revelations--pass away. Then the movement mainstreams (if it survives) and in so doing loses its initial charisma

the more it has to adapt to the surrounding society in order to survive, and the more it reflects on its own revelatory founding, the less it has need of continuing revelatory practice, at least in the way it originated. The idea of revelation doesn't go away, it adapts

 

[lpetrich]

Malaclypse on Twitter: "@beyerstein I’d start with Weber and the inherent difficulties of “passing down” charisma." / Twitter

I’d start with Weber and the inherent difficulties of “passing down” charisma.

Also, new prophecies tend up upset apple carts, which once a church has leaders with power, threatens that power.

LB:
Like how Joseph Smith's wife tried to say that God talked to her, too, and women should get multiple husbands. And everyone was like, "Shut up, that's not a thing."

Dilan Esper:
the interesting thing is Mormonism has a theoretically open canon and that has served it well (it allowed for the polygyny ban, changes to the Temple rituals, and ending race discrimination in the priesthood). The religion might not have survived if there were no new revelations.

LB:
The Catholic Church has a kind of escape clause where the pope is usually just a guy, but if necessary, he can speak Ex Cathedra on matters of faith and morals, like an ad hoc mini-revelation.

DE:
yeah, but it's a lot more hemmed in, both by tradition and by texts.

As far as I know, the Prophet of the LDS can contradict even their Holy Scripture and they just add it to the Doctrine and Covenants and it becomes the word of God.

Nick:
One analysis might be that prophecy/revelation doesn't go away per se, but it either carries enough momentum to head off in its own direction or gets shut down.

Continuous revelation is a way to manage those impulses without fragmentation or outright suppression.

 

[lpetrich]

Dr. Gretchen Koch on Twitter: "@beyerstein This religious studies person ..." / Twitter

This religious studies person would not characterize QAnon as a religious movement and/or expect it to follow the patterns of such. It's more a community of conspiracy theorists, a big distinction given that conspiracies are about *worldly* authorities.

LB:
There's a lot of outright religious stuff in QAnon, too. It's a retread of a lot of fundamentalist Christian tropes with slogans like "God always wins." It's not just about Trump and the pedophiles.

The Great Awakening is a religious idea, not a worldly one. And the most fervent QAnon believers think that they are literally on a holy mission to redeem the world through political violence.

GK:
It would be really surprising if QAnon *didn't* have religious elements. What you're saying, though, is that it references religious beliefs that have been around for a very long time; not that QAnon is a new religious movement (or, fundamentally, a religious movement at all).

LB:
Qanon is selling a religious awakening to an alternative reality culminating in a divinely-ordained orgy of "cleansing" political violence. That's different from the fundamentalist traditions it's borrowing from and fundamentally a religious belief.

GK:
The Wayfair child trafficking conspiracy theory (e.g.) was about the absurdly high prices Wayfair listed for items like cupboards, assumed to contain children, and SKUs apparently matching to some Russian site. I don't think religious framing helps our understanding of this.

LB:
But that's just one facet of the bizarre and baroque Qanon belief system. The child trafficking stuff is designed to attract normies by seeming worldly and "rational." The real action in QAnon is the Great Awakening and the Storm.

GK:
If you say so. The question was originally about the functioning of revelations in new religious movements and my background suggests that this inquiry won't shed any light on how QAnon works, since it operates primarily by fomenting fear of institutions here on Earth.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯

LB:
But by that argument, you could say that the Ghost Dance wasn't a new religious movement because it was primarily interested in ending the Westward expansion of settler colonialism and uniting Indigenous Americans in a new era of prosperity and peace.

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

IMO, qanon is like an extension of the john birch society cult, replacing its namesake with Q. JBS is christian nationalist, politico-religious, and very conspiratorial. To ignore the significant religious aspects of the cult is to seriously underestimate how propaganda plays on religious themes to influence politics.

 

[untermensche]

...The Great Awakening is a religious idea...

It started as the real day in the real world that Hillary and all the Democratic pedophiles, like Tom Hanks, would be arrested by Trump and sent to Guantanamo for trial.

The non-believers would be awakened to the truth.

And we would move forward to that day when America was great again.

The connection of Q to Trump and the lack of any criticism of Trump is an interesting feature of the Q belief system.

But like all prophesies that don't come true the prophet changes the prophesy into some other thing after the failure.

Now it is some religious idea.

Nothing about arrests and trials of pedophiles.

 

[lpetrich]

 QAnon mentions the hypothesis that there is more than one "Q".

QAnon's Mysterious Leader 'Q' Is Actually Multiple People
noting
Style analysis by machine learning reveals that two authors likely shared the writing of QAnon's messages at two different periods in time. | OrphAnalytics SA
noting
OrphAnalyticsQAnon2020.pdf

The analysis was done by cluster analysis on the text, to find out which messages ("Q drops") are most like which other messages.

The QAnon messages do not cluster by size, but they do cluster by time, and those clusters are related to the messages' publication sites. The two clusters:

• 4chan - 2017 Oct 28 to Dec 1
• 8chan / 8kun - 2017 Dec 1 to 2019 Feb 13

The second cluster has a steady drift across its extent over time from near the first cluster. "According to our experience, this slight drift is similar to that observed for an author who regularly follows a format that he imposes himself."

The authors did a comparison test, using Alexander Hamilton's 51 chapters of the Federalist Papers. His writings clustered a sizable distance away from the QAnon ones, and the QAnon two clusters were easily recognizable.

Home | OrphAnalytics SA
also has
QAnon is two different people, machine learning analysis shows | Press release | OrphAnalytics SA
The second cluster extends to the last message, on 2020 Nov 13.

The next step is to contribute putting a name on QAnon by comparing these signatures to those of the usual suspects,” says Roten. “To do that, we gather and cure written material from these persons to compare it with Q messages.” Recent investigations point to a handful of potential authors behind Q messages, most notably the owner of 8chan forum Jim Watkins. “Tracing back the history of QAnon is important. It could help to understand how and why a baseless and outlandish theory, initially destined to a few isolated hackers, ended up having such a broad social and political impact.”

 

[lpetrich]

Ron Watkins, with QAnon ties, says he's running for Congress in Ariz.

Ron Watkins, the man whose bulletin board sites hosted the postings that launched the conspiracy theory QAnon — and who some pegged as the author of the cryptic writings — announced that he was running for Congress in Arizona.

Watkins, in a video posted online Thursday night, said he was aiming to unseat Tom O’Halleran in District 1, whom Watkins called “the dirtiest Democrat in the D.C. swamp.”

He has recently posted pictures of himself in Arizona, though it is not clear whether or not he lives in that state.

Watkins said he was motivated to run by what he considered a 2020 election stolen from President Trump — a claim Trump's supporters have amplified despite a lack of any evidence of any significant voting irregularities.

“We must fix elections from inside the machine,” he said on his video.

Watkins spoke about his campaign in stark terms, painting himself as someone willing to stand up to keep the nation from falling apart.

“If we don’t follow our beliefs and the founding principles of our nation, it will crumble,” he said. “This must stop now.”

 

[Don2 (Don1 Revised)]

Gets outed as possibly Q. Decides to run for Congress. That is a brilliant way to make Nazi lemonade from lemons. Imagine how many Qarens he can trigger to vote for him, how much press he can get...

 

[ideologyhunter]

It won't turn out to be Michael Savage or Ted Nugent. It'll be a thirty-something dildo living in mom's basement, with a Nazi fixation and a subscription to Guns and Ammo.

 

[Shadowy Man]

Gets outed as possibly Q. Decides to run for Congress. That is a brilliant way to make Nazi lemonade from lemons. Imagine how many Qarens he can trigger to vote for him, how much press he can get...

How soon before Q endorses him for Congress?

 

[lpetrich]

Ron Watkins called Rep. Tom O'Halleran “the dirtiest Democrat in the D.C. swamp.”

According to the ideology scores at govtrack.us he is one of the most conservative Democrats in the House. 2019-20: 0.50, 2017-18: 0.49

I then checked on how much he spends on his campaigns, and he isn't in the top 10. He raised about $3 million, while by comparison, Nancy Pelosi raised $27 million.

So that claim might be some Trumpian overuse of superlatives.

 

[Loren Pechtel]

Ron Watkins called Rep. Tom O'Halleran “the dirtiest Democrat in the D.C. swamp.”

According to the ideology scores at govtrack.us he is one of the most conservative Democrats in the House. 2019-20: 0.50, 2017-18: 0.49

I then checked on how much he spends on his campaigns, and he isn't in the top 10. He raised about $3 million, while by comparison, Nancy Pelosi raised $27 million.

So that claim might be some Trumpian overuse of superlatives.

He's a dirty "Democrat"--he votes too far right!