The fact that the QAnon conspiracy still maintains a sizable following as 2018 comes to a close is truly something to behold. That conspiracy, if your brain has miraculously not yet been fried by the infinite stupidity of the Trump-adjacent internet, revolves around an anonymous message board poster who claims to have “Q” clearance within the federal government and thus access to insider information.
According to Q’s “drops” — daily updates heavy on Tom Clancy military-speak and light on substance — everything is going just fine for Trump, who only gives the impression that he is senile, incompetent, and in over his head in order to lull his enemies into a false sense of security. The Mueller probe is a cover for the real investigation against the international Deep State, an infinitely powerful collection of boogeymen including Hillary Clinton, Hollywood sickos, the Rothschild banking family, the Illuminati, Bohemian Grove, and so on.
The QAnon movement’s real attraction is not its scattered ideology, but its promise of an upcoming apocalyptic event. One day, very soon, every prominent Democrat will be arrested, imprisoned, and possibly executed for crimes ranging from spying on the Trump campaign in 2016 to sacrificing millions of children at the altar of Beelzebub, or something. The imminence of this unprecedented, world-shattering event is the central dogma of the QAnon cult — but every time a date is set, it goes by without incident.
Nothing Can Stop What is Coming #Q#QAnon#D5#anon#TheGreatAwakeing#WWG1WGA#MAGApic.twitter.com/BHezjr3T9M
— 🇺🇸Deplorable Teacher🇺🇸 (@CycloneRacer) December 4, 2018
The latest iteration of this cycle of anticipation and disappointment was slated for December 5. Throughout November, Q claimed that “D5,” for short, would bring the final destruction of the Clintons and the Deep State, predicting “panic in D.C.” and writing that “Nothing can stop what is coming. Nothing.” When George H.W. Bush’s state funeral was set for Dec. 5, Q immediately walked back his prediction and admitted that something did, in fact, stop what was coming: “Postponed. Well-played [Deep State]. Please allow us to counter.” Once non-cultists began mocking the D5 premise in light of this new development, Q denied that anything had even been planned for that date: “The 'blue checkmark' FAKE NEWS Twitter personalities are out in full-force today attempting to push another FALSE narrative that arrests were supposed to occur today.”
First it was #D5 now #D13 We know (THEY) are watching. (THEY) know the dates as well as we. So let's stop pretending there is a date set in stone. No, instead let them think it's a certain day until they have used up all of their cards. Then WE lay down OUR royal flush!!!! #QAnon
— Lorrie-Roseanne Rosebud (@CitizenQ17) December 5, 2018
Prior to that, Q had predicted that the GOP would retain both houses of Congress in the November 6 midterms. The day before the election, Q dismissed the polls that accurately forecast Democrats taking the House: “Polls are rigged and do not capture an accurate snapshot. (SILENT) MAJORITY.” While Q — who absolutely does not believe any of this — seemed hesitant to outright predict a “red tsunami” election, his followers eagerly embraced the notion. Jordan Sather, who runs the popular QAnon YouTube channel Destroying the Illusion, went from smugly predicting that “things are about to get fun” on the morning of Nov. 6 to ruminating on the GOP’s loss on Nov. 7. Sather’s post-midterm vlog is a perfect snapshot of how Q’s followers deal with their leader’s continual failure to predict anything correctly. “With events like this, really maintain your cool ... As we very well know, when you’re in that emotionally reactive state, that shuts down the critical thinking centers of your brain,” he tells his 170,000 subscribers. What he actually means by “emotion,” of course, is the process of reckoning with viscerally uncomfortable truths, and what he means by “critical thinking” is the much less mentally taxing process of rearranging the superficial details of the conspiracy until it once again approaches plausibility.
Just think of how our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ humbled Himself and was ridiculed, mocked, derided, arrested, scorned, whipped, scourged, and hung on a cross in His humility to save all humanity. @realDonaldTrump is a suffering servant. History will justify him. #QAnon#Q
— ABOwarrior⭐️⭐️⭐️ (@ABOwarrior) December 14, 2018
The excitement and fanaticism surrounding the forthcoming Q-pocalypse has a distinctly religious feel, and indeed, many Q believers appear to be evangelical Christians. The person or group behind Q is canny enough to include Bible quotes in its posts, allowing its regurgitated nonsense about Comet Ping Pong and Uranium One to piggyback on Christianity’s long legacy of failed-yet-stubbornly persistent prophecies around the premise that Jesus would eventually return to bring about the Final Judgment. Early Christians expected the Second Coming to occur in the century or so after the crucifixion, which makes sense — the Roman Empire’s destruction of Jerusalem in 70 A.D. and genocidal repression of the Bar Kokhba revolt in 136 A.D. fulfilled a number of Christian prophecies about the End of Days, and the latter event decisively concluded the narrative of Jewish-Roman tensions of which the Gospels were a part. A rational mind might have given in to hopelessness, but after a century of grisly martyrdoms, fanaticism became so thoroughly instilled in the religion that no amount of shifting historical context could snap true believers out of it. The date of the Second Coming, like the date of QAnon’s reckoning, was revised forward.
Been listening to QAnon vids. Mueller has been pursuing HRC & fellow pedopiles, Satanists, all along. And Q’s directing MSM to divert attn away from investigation, indictment of deep state “owned” by Clintons. Mass arrests to come.
— Sugaree🇺🇸🐰 (@sugaree71) December 14, 2018
Just follow the white rabbit!! ;) #inners
Rural Washington County, New York, which voted for Trump in 2016 by an 18-point margin, was once the epicenter of America’s most infamous end-times movement. In 1822, Baptist preacher William Miller applied the “day-year” reading of Biblical prophecy, which hopefully assumes that each scriptural “day” is actually 365 days, to the Book of Daniel. Under this interpretation, the Hebrew prophet’s prediction circa 167 B.C. that the end would come about after 2,300 days didn’t refer to 160 B.C., but 1843 A.D., which was coincidentally just over the horizon in Miller’s lifetime. By 1834, Miller’s prediction had spread throughout Evangelical circles in the Northeast, and by 1840 his theories had tens of thousands of adherents across the U.S. and Canada, many of whom sold their belongings in preparation for their imminent ascension to the afterlife. Miller narrowed the date of the End of Days to sometime between March 21, 1843 and March 21, 1844. When March 22, 1844 arrived, the date was helpfully adjusted to April 18. When April 19 arrived, it was readjusted to October 22, which became known as the “Great Disappointment,” because nothing happened then either.
While the Great Disappointment exposed the Millerites to public mockery and occasionally retaliatory violence, it failed to quash their belief that the end was nigh. Some Millerites continued revising the date every few months into 1845. Miller himself, still believing the rapture was imminent, died in 1849. Like Q, Miller quickly found that his eponymous movement was no longer fully in his control. The most long-lived product of Millerism was the Seventh-Day Adventist movement, which adopted as its foundational belief that October 22, 1844 was indeed an important date, but because it marked the beginning of an invisible process of divine judgment on humanity that will soon enter its 175th year. This belief, which assumes that the infinitely powerful God is slower at tabulating demographic data than early U.S. censuses conducted on horseback, carries with it its own cop-out.
The extant forms of Millerism bear a striking similarity to Q’s refrain of “trust the process,” which posits that the thousands of indictments for Democratic/Muslim/Jewish/Satanic/Hollywood/Illuminati child sacrifice are simply being hidden from view (by Donald Trump, no less, whose every McDonald’s order ends up in a tell-all book) until the time is right. As long as the details are loose enough to be reworked when necessary, even the most plainly psychotic predictions can achieve perpetual life in the minds of true believers.
The next step could be claiming that Trump is waiting to be re-elected before bringing Hillary to the gallows, much like some liberals expected Obama to go full Bernie Sanders in his second term. If Trump loses in 2020, which he probably will, Q believers might conclude that he hid the thousands of sealed pedophile indictments somewhere in D.C. for an intrepid patriot to uncover like Nicolas Cage in National Treasure. The possibilities are endless.
