Kansas Crimson

The fallout from the New York jury’s conviction of Donald Trump on 34 felony counts last Thursday, May 30, continues. Trump’s team continues to insist that the guilty verdict will help him, but that’s nonsensical on its face: if guilty verdicts are so helpful, why has he moved heaven and earth to keep the many other cases against him from going to trial? And why are he and House speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) calling for the Supreme Court to overturn the convictions?

As political consultant Stuart Stevens put it: “I worked in five presidential races and helped elect Republican governors or Senators in over half the country. I have never heard anything more transparently desperate than a party trying to spin that there is some non-MAGA pool of voters who can't wait to vote for a convicted felon.”

On Friday, Morning Consult conducted a poll to gauge how voters were reacting to the guilty verdict. It showed that 54% of registered voters approved of it, while only 34% disapproved. Perhaps worse for Trump was that 49% of Independents and 15% of Republicans thought he should end his campaign. A Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 10% of registered Republican voters and 25% of Independents said that his conviction made it less likely that they would vote for him for president.

Then, on Saturday, there was what Danny Westneat of the Seattle Times called a plot twist. It turns out the state of Washington has a law on the books that prevents felons from running for office. But because a candidate has to be certified to be on a ballot before they can be challenged, the issue can’t be resolved until Trump officially becomes the Republican Party’s presidential nominee at the July convention. Westneat asked, “Republicans: You sure you want to go down this road?”

On Sunday, Trump appeared on Fox and Friends for his first interview since his conviction. The interview was heavily edited, suggesting his comments were problematic in some way, but what was there was still bad enough. He repeated his plans to fire generals who refuse to do his bidding and to deport immigrants by using local police to round them up. Notably, considering his own looming sentencing, he claimed he never said “lock her up” about Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, a claim that reporters on social media promptly shredded with video clips of him doing exactly that.

Media figures are puncturing Trump’s image. The verdict buried a story by The Apprentice producer Bill Pruitt, who is now free of a nondisclosure agreement, explaining how he and others created an illusion that Trump was a successful businessman and alleging that Trump used the n-word on set. On Saturday, an image circulated on social media of Trump leaving Trump Tower and waving as if to a crowd, but there was no one there.

Also on Saturday, top sports talk host Colin Cowherd pushed back on the idea that the trial was rigged, telling his listeners: “If everybody in your circle is a felon, maybe it’s not rigged. Maybe the world isn’t against you.” “Donald Trump is now a felon,” Cowherd said. “His campaign chairman was a felon. So is his deputy campaign manager, his personal lawyer, his chief strategist, his National Security Adviser, his Trade Advisor, his Foreign Policy Adviser, his campaign fixer, and his company CFO. They’re all felons. Judged by the company you keep. It’s a cabal of convicts.”

Cowherd went on: “[Trump’s] trying to sell me an America that doesn’t exist.” “Stop trying to sell me on ‘everything’s rigged, the country’s falling into the sea, the economy’s terrible,’” he continued. “The America that I live in is imperfect. But compared to the rest of the world, I think we’re doing okay.”

This morning, Robert Faturechi, Justin Elliott, and Alex Mierjeski of ProPublica reported that Trump’s businesses and campaign committees have funneled significant financial benefits to at least nine witnesses in the criminal campaigns against Trump, often at crucial moments in the legal proceedings. The pay of one campaign aide doubled; another got a $2 million severance package that barred him from cooperating with law enforcement. The daughter of one of the campaign’s top officials was hired onto the staff and is now the fourth-highest-paid employee, with a salary of $222,000. Payments to the companies of certain witnesses dramatically increased.

Faturechi, Elliott, and Mierjeski note that it is not uncommon for bosses to find themselves defendants, complicating their relationship with employees who might have witnessed alleged crimes. In such cases, lawyers advise the defendant not to provide any unusual benefits or penalties, to avoid the appearance of witness tampering.

Trump’s attorney, David Warrington, sent ProPublica a cease-and-desist letter saying that if the outlet and its reporters “continue their reckless campaign of defamation, President Trump will evaluate all legal remedies.” He demanded that ProPublica kill the article, keeping it from publication.

And then, this afternoon, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York Damian Williams, along with the U.S. Department of Labor and the State Department, unsealed an indictment charging Weidong Guan, also known as Bill Guan, the chief financial officer of the global news outlet The Epoch Times, with using the outlet to launder at least $67 million. The Epoch Times is affiliated with the ultraconservative Chinese anticommunist religious group Falun Gong and supports Donald Trump and other right-wing U.S. politicians with both press and cash. It was a major promoter of Dinesh D’Souza’s film 2000 Mules that claimed the 2020 presidential election was stolen. A voter depicted in that film sued for defamation, and just last week the distributor settled with the plaintiff, issued an apology, and stopped distributing the film.

The allegation that The Epoch Times is a money-laundering operation comes on top of yesterday’s story by Joseph Menn in the Washington Post, reporting that the editor of another media site that pushes disinformation from both the far right and the far left, The Grayzone, has worked for Russia’s Sputnik as well as taken money from Iranian government-owned media. One of the people who retweets Grayzone stories is Senator Mike Lee (R-UT).

In the middle of all this bad news for MAGA Republicans, it felt like desperation today when the House Oversight Select Subcommittee on the Coronavirus Pandemic tried to resurrect Covid conspiracy theories against Dr. Anthony Fauci. Fauci was director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) from 1984 to 2022, serving under seven presidents. President George W. Bush awarded him the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the highest civilian award in the U.S., for his work on combating the global AIDS epidemic.

Fauci’s position as NIAID director put him at the center of U.S. attempts to grapple with Covid-19, and for his work on developing a vaccine, Trump awarded him a presidential commendation. But first QAnon and then MAGA Republicans centered him as a villain who either started or covered up the pandemic, or forced people to mask or to get vaccines they told their supporters were unnecessary or even dangerous. QAnon conspiracy theorist Ivan Raiklin and convicted January 6 rioter Brandon Fellows were seated behind Fauci today; Fellows made pouty faces when Fauci was describing the death threats he, his wife, and his daughters have endured.

Video creator and political commentator Michael McWhorter noted that Raiklin has made dramatic threats of violence against those he considers members of “the Deep State” and that he should have been nowhere near Fauci. McWhorter also noted that the two men were likely invited to the hearing and that it would be useful to know who invited them.

Committee member Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA), who has skipped seven of the last ten hearings and who has expressed sympathy for QAnon in the past, attacked Fauci by saying he should be prosecuted: “You know what this committee should be doing? We should be writing a criminal referral because you should be prosecuted for crimes against humanity,” she said. “You belong in prison, Dr. Fauci.” For all the nastiness, the hearing turned up nothing.

Later, Greene told Manu Raju of CNN that Speaker Johnson should shut down the government over the Trump verdict and prosecutions. “We're literally a banana republic. So what does it matter funding the government? The American people don't give a sh*t.”

While MAGA Republicans are insisting that a Manhattan jury’s conviction of Trump means that President Joe Biden has weaponized the Department of Justice and that they must take revenge, the trial of Biden’s son Hunter on federal gun charges, brought by a Trump-appointed U.S. attorney whom Biden kept on, started today. Former top Justice Department prosecutor Andrew Weissmann noted that Biden is “living the rule of law…in the most personal way. He is not telling DOJ to stand down…. He is not pardoning his son…. He is living what it means to have a rule of law in this country…. If you want to know if he believes it, you can actually see what is happening with his own son.”

If you, against your better judgment, decided to go prowling around the darkest corners of the internet to try and understand what the most conspiracy-minded weirdos are up to these days, there’s one term you might expect to see but probably won’t: QAnon.

It’s amazing, in retrospect, how quickly the way we view the online far right can and must evolve. Those of us like myself who keep an eye on these spaces don’t really have a choice in the matter; if you want to attempt to stay in touch with an inane, writhing mass of ever-evolving conspiracy theorist beliefs and ultra conservative dogma, you need to recognize the fundamental shifts in what these people believe and how they’re applying their beliefs.

Not that I would blame you for wanting to stay as far away from this kind of weaponized hate as possible, for the sake of your own mental health, but with the election looming in November it’s something I don’t feel I have the luxury to ignore. Or in the simplest terms: When the next Jan. 6 happens, I would prefer to have an idea of what kinds of insane beliefs are driving it.

So I lurk, and watch what people are saying in some of the worst corners of the internet, in the hopes of understanding what is driving them.

In 2024, “QAnon” as a relevant online concept is largely dead, and in truth it’s been dead since probably late 2022. The conspiracy theorists who called themselves Anons? They’re still there, but they’ve now been nudged and coerced in new directions, absorbed by other groups that are considerably more dangerous and mobilized than the vague idea of QAnon ever was. The online far right has grown less colorfully zany, and more banal in its casual embrace of racism and violence.

So, let’s take a step back to explain, as much as anyone possibly can, where QAnon sprang from, why it dissolved and where those people have now gone.

How QAnon Began, Flourished and Withered

The central tenet of the QAnon conspiracy theory was the belief that the world is secretly run by a Satanic cabal/Deep State of left-wing cannibalistic pedophiles and child traffickers, and has been for hundreds or thousands of years. This “cabal” surrounds normal, virtuous citizens on all sides and is presumed to control every aspect of politics, global infrastructure, international governments, higher education, popular culture and entertainment, mass media and even worldwide charities and nonprofits. As is pretty much always the case with cults that believe in an invisible enemy, the cabal is somehow both all-powerful and all-knowing, but also something that can be defeated by the good guys or “white hats” if you simply watch enough YouTube videos and buy enough merch. These kinds of direct contradictions crop up constantly, bolted on to a particular strain of evangelical Christian mysticism that essentially falls back on “if God is for us, who can be against us?”

Information about the evil cabal or Deep State was delivered via communications–anons love to call any message “comms,” because they fetishize militaristic language, among other things–from “Q,” a mysterious online presence purported to be a high-ranking U.S. government official with access to secret, classified information. Originally starting on fringe imageboards 4chan and 8chan, Q passed along this information via extremely vague, prophetic sounding “Q Drops,” which were then interpreted by online influencers who quickly built up their own cults of personality as what were essentially the high priests of this particular cult. The objects of worship are twofold: Q himself, and Donald J. Trump.

QAnon flourished during the Trump years, particularly because the Trump administration offered enough plausible deniability for believers to claim he was waging a secret war against “the cabal” on their behalf while in office. Every news headline was assumed to have secret importance—a story like that container ship blocking the Suez Canal in 2021 took on mythic status among Anons as a “secret operation” thwarting the Deep State. Any time Trump did something that directly contradicted or undermined these beliefs, the Q influencers were always there to desperately rationalize how this was all “part of the plan,” and people just needed to have faith. It didn’t matter that the likes of Q constantly promised events that never came to pass, such as the arrest and execution of people like Hillary Clinton or Bill Gates. The only immutable belief was their certainty of victory in the end.

Joe Biden’s victory in the 2020 election led to fracturing of the already disjointed group, as various Q influencers veered off in different directions. Some claimed that the “fake election” was just another part of the Trump master plan, while others cast Trump as the aggrieved party with an election stolen away from him by the omnipotent power of the Deep State.

Is he a master tactician, or a victimized martyr? He can’t be both.

The Jan. 6 Capitol riot helped further tear the Anon community apart, due to the lack of a cohesive central narrative they could all immediately glom onto, exacerbated by the fact that Q’s own posting went silent during this humiliating period. Anons and Q influencers were left having no idea how to feel about the most crucial issues facing them.

Were the people who stormed the Capitol that day patriots who are to be praised and feted, or “antifa plants” meant to make Trump’s supporters look bad? Did Trump slink out of Washington D.C. with his tail between his legs, or make a tactical retreat while secretly retaining the full powers of the presidency? If Trump is still the secret president, then is he to blame for the Biden administration’s policies? Is Biden omnipotent, or doddering? The weight of the contradictions became too much for even many Anons to bear.

The result of this crushing array of disappointments and concrete deadlines coming and going was increasing disenchantment among the Anon community, and they began to drift away from the influencers and Q drops that they once took as gospel. Q himself, writhing in embarrassment, disappeared and went silent at this stage, seemingly unable to rationalize the failed predictions and assurances any further. Around the same time, many journalists researching QAnon’s origins became increasingly convinced that Q’s most likely identity had been the owners and operators of the message board all along, Jim and Ron Watkins. With that suspicion floating around, Q faded into the background.

The Q account attempted a comeback in June and November of 2022, only to be met with an apathetic shrug from its former adherents. Devotees noted that the language and cadence of the posts seemed to have changed, while Q influencers, fresh off 18 months of narrative shaping of their own, led the charge in branding the new Q drops as suspicious.

The new Q drops of Nov. 2022 in particular had a clear goal of convincing Americans to vote in the midterm elections of that year, which was an extremely difficult sell. How could it not be, when those in the Q influencer and grifter movement had spent the last two years convincing their audience that all American elections are corrupt, fake “theater” designed to keep them subdued and placid while the Deep State power brokers wield true power behind the scenes?

As it turns out, when you convince enough people that their vote doesn’t count, it’s very difficult to then persuade them to go vote when election time comes around.

In this way, Q’s attempted return in 2022 ended up being foiled by the very conspiracy theorist mindset that he helped to amplify and establish. Recognizing that it wasn’t going to work this time, the account went silent again and has not posted since.

Where Did the Anons Go?

If this story had a happy ending, it would involve those who saw themselves as “Anons” crawling out from the underside of a digital log, blinking at the surprisingly bright sunlight, and considering the possibility that everyone they looked to for guidance had been lying to them for the last 8 years. Families would be reknit; therapy would probably be attended. Some lives would be repaired as people realized they’d been exploited by political demagogues or grifters. No small amount of embarrassment would be had.

This is not what happened. The Anons fleeing from the world of Q were looking for safe harbor where they could continue receiving the same potent daily infusions of fear and anger they had been nurtured by, and the white/Christian nationalist web community pounced on the opportunity to scoop up a huge influx of ready-made converts.

There had always been racists and bigots of various kinds in the world of Anons. But oddly, outright racism or xenophobia was rarely at the heart of Q’s specific agenda. Q’s message had been more of a sensationalized, fantastical libertarian and economic one, where the government, Deep State and “global elites” were the prime boogeymen rather than those of specifically different ethnicities or skin tones. Q and the Anons who followed him would often act as if their movement had no racial basis at all, and was instead in defiance of the made-up global cabal of radical leftists. I even wrote as much in 2021 in observing the Anon community:

The funny thing about QAnon is that the racists are sort of there as a side effect rather than a primary goal. The smarter Q influencers realize that they can cast a wider net and attract more malleable minds if they claim that Trump and Q are looking to improve the world for people of all races, faiths and creeds.

As a result, the Anon community would often hold surprisingly scattered, diversely strange beliefs rather than marching in lockstep with traditional ultra conservative viewpoints, and they would often hesitate to embrace white nationalist or outright racist talking points. Most Anons, for instance, would have characterized their enemies as being like Hitler, rather than, you know, admiring Hitler themselves.

But as these former Anons were scooped up or fell into the camps of far-right, ultra-racist grifter influencers—think the likes of Nick Fuentes or Charlie Kirk—the tone of the sites they were operating on, such as Gab, Parler and Truth Social began to noticeably change. People who would formerly have been shouted down for using racial or ethnic slurs steadily appeared more emboldened. There was less of a wink-wink, nudge-nudge aversion to openly stating racist opinions, or wishing violence on entire groups.

Broad references to the nefarious plans of “the Jews” or “the blacks” became more common in my observations. No longer were these kooks talking about weather machines, or fluoride in the drinking water, or aliens impersonating public officials. Now they were talking about buying rifles and practicing for the upcoming societal collapse they see as a welcome chance to put their new bloodlust into action. There was no longer any need for these former Anons to act as if their movement was free from racial bias, because now they had become welcome in a community that was proudly affirming its own racism on a daily basis.

This is a far more dangerous predicament for the rest of us to be in. Events like the 2016 Comet Ping Pong Pizzagate shooter now have the potential to be much more common. The former Anon next door who used to spend his time scanning the sky for chemtrails or clutching healing crystals may now be spending it making bomb threats to a local library for hosting a drag story time, or emptying hundreds of AR-15 rounds at the rifle range, fantasizing about the day when he’ll be morally justified in turning that weapon against imagined “looters” in the coming dystopian collapse.

The significance of these people preparing to take more concrete and violent action should not be overlooked. At its core, QAnon was not a movement built around actually translating many of its beliefs into action, beyond the “action” of getting those people to open their wallets to con men. The key Q belief was that the “white hats” led by Trump were secretly in control, that the glorious coming Storm was always perpetually on the horizon, when everything in American society would be fixed by the punishment of the bad guys. The average Anon believer never had to genuinely think they would be taking much of an active role in all this—they were just supposed to “educate themselves” through their online “research” and prepare for the coming revolutions that unnamed white hats would lead.

The far-right militia types that these Anons have now fallen in with, however? These guys aren’t content with just wielding ideological power over a collection of suburban dads and uncles.

The Proud Boys of the world want to put those weekend warriors to work against American minorities and their other chosen scapegoats. There was no shortage of Anons in attendance on January 6th, but by and large these people were the ones in goofy costumes, gym shoes and American flag paraphernalia stealing souvenirs from the floors of Congress, rather than the more organized members storming the building with riot gear, combat boots, masks and zip ties, looking for specific targets.

Back in 2021, we were fortunate that the flood of Anons hadn’t yet been genuinely militarized and mobilized, or else who knows how much more effectively they might have achieved their goals that day. Going on four years later, their beliefs are based on fewer imagined absurdities, and more abject hatred. This implies a much more capable, organized movement than the one that previously believed that Donald Trump would be their savior.

If there’s any silver lining here, it’s that radicalizing people to this extreme degree does tend to bite you in the ass in its own way, when the ingrained, nonsensical beliefs become too strong for right-wing politicians to control. Case in point: You would think that the average former Anon’s slavish devotion to Donald Trump himself might be stronger than ever at this point, but a genuinely significant portion of the former Anon community has actually come to despise Trump in the last few years, seeing him as a traitor to his race who isn’t virulently conservative or racist enough to meet their new standard. They basically learned their conspiracy theory talking points too well.

If you warp a former Anon’s worldview enough, even the most sensible political positions lack the kind of voter-alienating extremism they now demand. Trump, for instance, still seeks credit for the development of the COVID-19 vaccine, and because they were radicalized against those vaccines, many former Anons believe that Trump is complicit in some sort of medical genocide against Americans. Likewise, they look at Trump’s ongoing support of Israel and condemn him for it—not because they empathize with Gazans—but because they were so successfully infused with antisemitism that they want Trump to have no association with Jews of any kind and can’t understand his most basic attempts to court Jewish voters as a demographic.

In the same way, many former Anons condemn Trump’s attempt to strike any kind of middle ground on abortion, even simply saying that he wouldn’t universally ban it, because they insist that makes him an abortion supporter. It’s one of the grand ironies of our modern political age: These people were probably in the top 1% of Trump supporters in terms of their slavish devotion to him, but they’ve never actually understood that Trump has more or less no ideology of his own, and simply says whatever he thinks will benefit him most at any given time.

Are these desertions likely to actually impact election results in 2024? It’s impossible to say, with a uniquely unpredictable and illogical internet niche, but it’s fascinating to watch what an entire group believes get turned on its head. So too is it impossible to predict how the former Anons might react to a Trump loss or victory in November, but thanks to the new crowd they’ve found themselves joining, I’m distinctly afraid to find out.

Suffice to say, they’re no longer just waiting on their computers for the likes of Donald Trump to come along and save them. Now they intend to do it themselves, with all the delusion and potential violence that could entail.

KUTradition wrote: ↑Wed Jun 05, 2024 2:05 pm GOP plans aggressive ‘weaponization’ investigations in wake of Trump conviction

House Speaker Mike Johnson vowed to use House oversight powers and other measures to target jurisdictions pursuing prosecutions of the former president.

KUTradition wrote: ↑Wed Jun 05, 2024 2:05 pm GOP plans aggressive ‘weaponization’ investigations in wake of Trump conviction

House Speaker Mike Johnson vowed to use House oversight powers and other measures to target jurisdictions pursuing prosecutions of the former president.

It can be a crime to burn a Pride flag, depending on the circumstances, Colorado Attorney General Phil Weiser said on Wednesday after the state Republican Party issued a call to do just that in a series of anti-LGBTQ messages.

The Colorado GOP drew criticism and condemnation this week when its chairman, Republican congressional candidate Dave Williams, distributed an email to supporters with the subject line "God Hates Pride" that featured a prominent graphic reading "God Hates Flags" to mark the start of Pride Month, an annual celebration of the LGBTQ community.

Several Republican candidates denounced the state GOP's message, including Valdamar Archuleta, the president of the Log Cabin Republicans of Colorado and the presumptive GOP nominee in the heavily Democratic 1st Congressional District.

Saying the email "went too far and was just hateful," Archuleta on Tuesday said he was rejecting the state party's official endorsement, though he added he still plans to support the Republican ticket.

In response to critics, the Colorado Republican Party posted on X: "Burn all the #pride flags this June."

State residents might want to think twice before taking that instruction literally, Weiser, a Democrat and Colorado's top law enforcement officer, told Colorado Politics.

“Colorado is at our best when we honor our nation’s credo of e pluribus unum, out of many, we are one," Weiser said in an emailed statement. "Any attack on a member of the LGBTQ community is disgusting. If such actions, including burning Pride flags, take the form of vandalizing property, harassing individuals, or causing physical harm to others, they can even be a crime."

He added: "By taking part in the Hate Free Colorado coalition, our department is focused on fighting such crimes and supporting victims.”

Williams questioned Weiser's interpretation of the law in a series of text messages to Colorado Politics late Wednesday.

"Free speech a crime? So the AG thinks it’s okay to burn an American flag but pride flags are off limits?" Williams said.

"The tweet was meant to be a written or verbal act of defiance, but we wouldn’t let the AG’s unconstitutional opinion deter our Free Speech right to do it if we wanted to."

Williams denied that the party was "advocating damaging someone’s property," adding: "We would only advocate for people to legally and peacefully exercise their Free Speech rights."

KUTradition wrote: ↑Wed Jun 19, 2024 9:03 am poor, poor matt gaetz

PHILADELPHIA, Miss. — Even in a decade marked by hatred and violence, what happened here on a sultry June night 60 years ago shocked the nation for its brazenness.
Amid Freedom Summer, a daring effort to register Black Mississippians to vote, three young civil rights workers came to town. It was a perilous time. Black churches were being torched throughout the South. Segregationists remained defiant.