QAnon is Commercial
Where there is a movement, a controversy, or a statement in American politics, there is someone, somewhere who will make a t-shirt out of it.
(July 2020) QAnon followers have found a home on Patreon, one that is more hospitable and profitable than other social media platforms. Patreon is a fundraising platform where donors, or patrons, sign up to give a specific amount every month to access exclusive content. While Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube work to limit the spread, Patreon essentially accepts the conspiracy theorists with open arms. There some are making thousands of dollars every month. [Vision Viral] Google Shopping
Satanic, Pedophilic Elites
To an outsider, the notion that familiar politicians, celebrities and media elites are part of a global child trafficking operation might appear bizarre. But this is a central doctrine of QAnon and is essential to the origin story of the individual or group of individuals who post as "Q."
Stranger still is the conviction that this conspiracy is being operated with the assistance of Satan, literally. Yet this is neither a sidebar nor a fringe to those who follow and interpret "Q."
The details of the belief are truly disturbing. Followers believe that many of the elites literally consume children in a ritual sacrifice
that culminates with the extraction of the adrenal glands in the form of "adrenochrome" which they consume to extend their life and vitality.
Brushing aside these beliefs as lunatics misses the point - and the danger of QAnon. Mainstream religions have beliefs that are every bit as odd (eg. the doctrine of transubstantiation - the notion that the communion wafer becomes the literal flesh of God is believed, to some degree, by over a billion Catholics).
The "Q" movement tends towards violence and terrorism becomes the believers are not lunatics - they act on a sincere but deeply misguided conviction that innocent and defenseless children are being horrifically abused.
President Trump's Role in History
QAnon shares many elements of Biblical prophecy specifically end times prophecy. This is the belief that the world exists on a predetermined timeline, and that events will unfold according to a sequence of supernatural events.
This manifests in the belief that President Trump came to power via a hidden coup against the globalist cabal, and is on a mission to overthrow the New World Order.
In this cosmology, previous presidents were mere puppets and collaborators with the hidden forces. Trump is leading a final mission against these elites and members of the deep state.
Anti-Catholicism
Adherents to QAnon generally believe that the Vatican is part of the secret cabal that traffics children for abuse around the world.
A subset of the cult that self-identifies as "Christian Patriots" believe the Pope and the church are Satanic.
To the secular world, this might seem outrageous, but is consistent with a long lineage of anti-Catholic bigotry in the United States that goes back to the waves of Irish and Southern European immigration in the late 19th and early 20th century.
President Kennedy addressed this directly during his candidacy in 1960.
For while this year it may be a Catholic against whom the finger of suspicion is pointed, in other years it has been, and may someday be again, a Jew-- or a Quaker or a Unitarian or a Baptist.
In a series of posts from 2018, QAnon adherents claimed secret and sinister connections between the Vatican, the Rothschild family, and Reptilian symbolism.
Anti-Semitism
While rarely explicitly anti-semitic, many of the symbols, references, and enemies of the cult are.
For example, many of the conspiracy theories revolve around the Rothschild family, which has been code for a global Jewish banking conspiracy almost since Mayer Amschel Rothschild established his banking business in the Free City of Frankfurt in the 1760s.
Q adherents have a particular obsession with the global banking elite, especially George Soros (also known as "++"). This is another well documented anti-semitic trope, which would be easily recognized by any of the violent supremacist groups in the United States and abroad.
The notion of a "global cabal" that engages in abuse of children is functionally identical to the "blood libel" that was the pretext for pogroms from the middle ages to the 20th century, genocide in WWII and murders of individual Jews in the 20th century.
While it cannot be said that Q followers are all anti-semitic, it shares many specific beliefs with some of the most violent and dangerous anti-semitic elements around the world, it functions as a gateway to radicalization and even domestic terrorism.
COVID-19
Belief that COVID-19 is an instrument of social control.
Several sub narratives speculate on the origin of the virus. For example, the claim that the virus was the result of a tainted batch of children's blood that the world's celebrities drink to stay young. (see also, adrenochrome)
In other contexts, COVID-19 is a "shore story" (a story told to obscure the true nature of events) given to mass media when a public figure has been arrested for pedophilia. For example, when Tom Hanks revealed he had tested positive for COVID-19 in Australia, Anons promoted the falsehood that he was arrested, and jailed for child trafficking so extensively that multiple fact-checkers published refutations.
End Times Prophecy
There is a significant overlap between the belief that we are living in the "end times" according to the Apocalypse of John (commonly known as the Book of Revelation). It appears there are overlaps between Q adherents and followers of other, non Q related social properties that focus on Biblical prophecy and apocalyptic events. For example, approximately a quarter of membership of the Hal Lindsey Bible Prophecy Today group are also followers of Q entities.
While obscure in secular circles, Hal Lindsey's book, The Late Great Planet Earth, was the top selling non-fiction book of the 1970s. Lindsey claimed that the Bible promised that the Soviets would invade Israel (the so-called War of Gog and Magog), leading to a one-world government led by the Anti-Christ. This was all to occur before the millennial.
Of course, these events did not occur and the Soviet Union no longer exists. However, Lindsey remains a prominent figure in prophetical Christian circles, and his books and papers with revised narratives are taken as seriously and literally as his forty year old best seller was at one time.
Q, in many ways, is a form of dispensationalist eschatology - the removal of the corrupt order, the punishment/death of the unrepentant and a coming golden age of the just King. The belief in a literal Satan and the need to overcome him is also shared.
(August 2018) Religious Christians might describe the world as being under the control of Satan. Non-religious patriots might say it has been under the control of an evil cabal of self-centered narcissists who intend to bring on destruction and chaos so that they can more easily centralize greater power under their own control in the aftermath. [End Times Prophecy - "Who is Q"]
QAnon Symbols
