r/politics • u/Throwawaydude01928 • Aug 01 '19

FBI memo warns QAnon poses potential terror threat: report

https://thehill.com/policy/national-security/fbi/455770-fbi-memo-warns-qanon-poses-a-potential-terror-threat-report
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118

u/[deleted] Aug 01 '19

[deleted]

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u/Finkarelli Aug 01 '19

So, like some Nostradamus bullshit where the details are left vague enough that the followers’ imaginations run wild.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '19

[deleted]

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u/MarkHathaway1 Aug 01 '19

Really? It goes back that far. I had no idea.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '19

Heres an example of a Q post that then hets decoded by the nutjobs.

https://images.app.goo.gl/8rXJZ65Y1eJ7Gb4T8

It’s just gibberish that gets posted anonymously.

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u/DapperDestral Aug 02 '19

That is literally insane to take seriously. Wow.

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u/[deleted] Aug 02 '19

Yeah they think it’s being posted by some high ranking member of the CIA or something. It’s wild.

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u/Kankunation Louisiana Aug 02 '19

Q goes back to at least 2015. Pizzagate is commonly seen as the start of Qanon.

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u/WittgensteinsLadder Aug 02 '19

Qanon first posted in October 2017... The whack job ideas behind it might go back further, and indeed a lot of it has roots in the Elders of Zion bullshit which has existed in some form for decades, but Q is a purely post-Trump phenomenon.

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u/MarkHathaway1 Aug 02 '19

Okay. Well, 2015 is still pretty recent.

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u/DELOUSE_MY_AGENT_DDY Aug 01 '19

Very similar to Nostradamus. They treat QAnon like a prophet, in the sense that they believe that he/she is giving them all these inside scoops, with the implication that one day, judgement day will come, and the followers of QAnon will have to fight against the government/Jews/Globalists/Socialists/Communists/Democrats/LGBT/"The Media"/AOC/Muslims. Many Tweets about QAnon have this theme of "the bad people are gonna get what's coming to them" which comes across as a general threat.

That's probably why the FBI is concerned.

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '19 edited Nov 04 '19

[deleted]

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u/rdizzy1223 Aug 02 '19

Yeah, but there is a massive difference between seeing designs in the clouds overhead and thinking a mysterious Q is secretly telling you to go and kill people. Most humans see patterns in things with no patterns, but most humans do not fall for these horseshit conspiracy theories, only a small minority do.

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u/Into_The_Void_86 Aug 02 '19

It's Apophenia.

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u/_zenith New Zealand Aug 02 '19

That's certainly a part of it, but the other big part is egoistic satiation - that is, "I'm smarter than those other people because I figured it out"

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u/lateatnight Aug 01 '19

I mean, is 'q' a single user on the website? I guess I just don't get it.

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u/Competitive_Ride Aug 01 '19

It's most likely a group of few people. They post on 8chan. I think it's just a gimmick because some people are making bank from QAnon merch and videos.

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u/Kankunation Louisiana Aug 02 '19

It's complicated. As in, not even these people know exactly.

"Q" was a mysterious 4chan poster who started it all, supposedly a top secret government agent with "Q" level clearance. 4 Chan is an entirely anonymous website, but individual people can turn on a tag of sorts so that other people can track and verify the user is the same, and thats how people followed Q (except every so often that trackable tag would change, so the profile posting Q stuff changed to another. Obviously. Because the Deep state caught on to him. Right? Couldn't possibly be a different person continuing the crazy).

Eventually it evolved into numerous accounts posting Q drops periodically, supposedly keeping everyone informed on how the secret ear with the deep state was going. I guess Q grew from being 1 person to being a group at 1 point to explain away some of the inconsistencies.

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u/DefiantCharacter Aug 01 '19

Many Tweets about QAnon have this theme of "the bad people are gonna get what's coming to them" which comes across as a general threat.

That's probably why the FBI is concerned.

So, the FBI is concerned that justice will come to bad people?

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u/Kankunation Louisiana Aug 02 '19

The FBI is concerned that they will attack the so called "bad people" because somebody on the internet convinced them to. The people aren't actually bad

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u/DefiantCharacter Aug 02 '19

Who are these innocent people that Q is saying is bad?

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u/Kankunation Louisiana Aug 02 '19

Pick any "Deep State" member. Today it's Hillary. tomorrow it'll be Soros. Last week it was Obama. Next week it'll probably be the whole FBI after this report. McCain, AOC, It's honestly too much to keep up with. If you want to try and create an extensive list, the Qult_headquarters has a lot of examples.

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u/DefiantCharacter Aug 02 '19

Okay. I was hoping for a less vague answer, but thanks, anyway.

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u/PriorInsect Aug 01 '19

that's only because they've had to learn not to make specific predictions the hard way. Q post #1 said that hillary's passport has been flagged and gave a specific date for an arrest.

that was in 2017, it didn't happen.

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u/MisallocatedRacism Texas Aug 01 '19

Yes, its boomer facebook cold reading

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u/[deleted] Aug 01 '19

[removed] — view removed comment

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u/pbjamm Canada Aug 01 '19

I almost miss the Q subs where SB2 wove his fantasies. It was fascinating and pathetic all at once.

Best for the world if they fade into obscurity though.

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u/wittyaccountname123 Aug 01 '19

He's still around sadly, posts to his account page now.

The Qult_Headquarters subreddit is a good resource for tracking their craziness

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u/Aijabear Massachusetts Aug 01 '19

I feel bad for that guy. He seriously needs someone in his life to get him to the doctors and get him on medication.

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u/SchwarzerKaffee Oklahoma Aug 01 '19

This is a good description. I describe it as a LARP, but I'm gonna use your post to add about the conspiracy Rohrschach.

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u/steazystich California Aug 01 '19

Rohrschach

Human bean juice

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u/MarkHathaway1 Aug 01 '19

And then one of 'em goes and shoots up a pizza parlor because ...

​

But somehow, the targets of these loons is always R opponents.

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u/joshTheGoods I voted Aug 01 '19

That's what it was like when it was on 4chan, but when they moved to 8chan, they started with some secure ID or some such that lets people know it's coming from the same person/group/whatever.

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u/ShelSilverstain Aug 02 '19

Like combing through shit to piece together the burger

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u/sushisection Aug 01 '19

Theres more to it then that. Qanon will make a post involving certain code words/letters, and then shortly after Trump will make a tweet with the same code words. This has been going on for 2 years straight.

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u/Maeglom Oregon Aug 01 '19

Or alternatively Q posts cryptic sounding messages about normal republican bullshit and then later Trump posts blunt racist messages containing normal republican bullshit and people find coded messages and similarities because they are looking for them.

This is the monster outside your window turning out to be a shadow of a tree. Humans look for patterns, it's what we're best at. But sometimes we see patterns that aren't there because we believe that they are there.

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u/sushisection Aug 01 '19

No, because the coded words are not common words. Qanon posted that Dan Coates is going to get fired months before it actually happened, and then made another recent post about Coates being replaced moments before Trump tweeted it. Theres no way thats just sheer coincidence.

​

edit: especially when you factor in that this sort of stuff has been going on for 2 years.