Caitlin Johnstone calls QAnon a propaganda construct designed to manufacture support for the status quo among people who otherwise would not support it.
By Caitlin Johnstone
CaitlinJohnstone.com
The U.S. president has moved from tacit endorsement and evading questions on the toxic QAnon psyop to directly endorsing and supporting it, telling reporters “I don’t know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate,” and saying they’re just people who love their country and don’t like seeing what’s happening in places like Portland, Chicago and New York City.
Asked about the driving theory behind QAnon — that Trump is waging a covert war against a satanic pedopheliac baby-eating Deep State —Trump endorsed the idea but reframed it by saying that he’s leading a fight against “a radical left philosophy.”
“If I can help save the world from problems, I’m willing to do it. I’m willing to put myself out there,” Trump said in response to the query. “And we are actually. We’re saving the world from a radical left philosophy that will destroy this country, and when this country is gone, the rest of the world would follow.”
Of course, Trump did not claim to be fighting any satanic pedovores, because he is doing nothing of the sort. Nor is he fighting the Deep State; despite all the virulent narrative spin he’s been a fairly conventional Republican president in terms of policy and behavior in all the usual depraved and disgusting ways, and has done nothing of note to stand against the unelected power Establishment known as the deep state. He absolutely has been brutalizing protesters in places like Portland and attacking socialism in places like Venezuela and Bolivia, though, so he can indeed safely admit to that.
The disingenuous nature of Trump’s endorsement hasn’t done anything to dampen the excitement and enthusiasm of QAnoners online, though.
He basically confirmed the movement. We, together with the US military, are the saviors of mankind.
What an incredible time to be alive. pic.twitter.com/O5O6rt5TAE
— Sokrates (@Sokrates_17) August 19, 2020
I write against QAnon periodically for the exact same reason I write against the plutocratic media: it’s an obvious propaganda construct designed to manufacture support for the status quo among people who otherwise would not support it. It presents itself as an exciting movement where the little guy is finally rising up and throwing off the chains of the tyrannical forces which have been exploiting and oppressing us, yet in reality all it’s doing is telling a discontented sector of the population to relax and “trust the plan” and put all their faith in the leader of the US government.
Exploiting Important Truths
And that’s exactly what makes QAnon so uniquely toxic. It’s not just that it gets people believing false things which confuse and alienate them, it’s that it’s a fake, decoy imitation of what a healthy revolutionary impulse would look like. It sells people on important truths that they already intuitively know on some level, like the untrustworthiness of the mass media, that the official elected U.S. government aren’t really the ones calling the shots, and that we need a great awakening. It takes those vital, truthful, healthy revolutionary impulses, then twists them around into support for the U.S. president and the agendas of the Republican Party.
And now literally any time I speak out against Trump doing something self-evidently horrible like orchestrating the extradition of Julian Assange or assassinating Iran’s top military official, I get QAnon adherents in the comments section telling me to “relax” and “trust the plan” because this is actually a brilliant strategic maneuver against the deep state. Any argument against any longstanding evil Fox News Republican agenda that Trump advances has a widely promulgated explanation for why it’s actually good and beneficial among the QAnon crowd.
A healthy impulse to fight the power is twisted into support for the most unconscionable aspects of the ruling power Establishment. You see healthy impulses twisted and corrupted like this all the time, all across the political spectrum. The healthy impulse to fight racism and bigotry is twisted into support for the warmongering, oppressive and exploitative Democratic Party which is nothing but destructive toward the populations it pretends to protect. The healthy impulse to defend the helpless and fight tyranny is railroaded into support for acts of regime change “humanitarian” interventionism.
How You Can Be 100% Certain That QAnon Is Bullshit
"Here are three reasons you can be absolutely, 100 percent certain that it’s bullshit:" #QAnon #WWG1WGA #Q #MAGAhttps://t.co/qAxdiItXFO
— Caitlin Johnstone ? (@caitoz) May 26, 2019
The fact that people need to be deceived by their healthy impulses in this way is a good sign; it means we’re generally good people with a generally healthy sense of which way to push. If we were intrinsically wicked and unwise their propaganda wouldn’t hook us by telling us to fight tyranny, defend children and tell the truth — it would hook us using our cowardice, our hatred, our greed, our sadism. People are basically good, and propagandists use that goodness to trick us.
But good will and good intentions aren’t enough, unfortunately. Even intelligence, by itself, isn’t enough to save us from being propagandized; some fairly intelligent people have fallen for propaganda operations like QAnon and Russiagate. If you want to have a clear perspective on what’s really going on in the world you’ve got to have an unwavering devotion to knowing what’s true that goes right down into your guts.
Most people don’t have this. Most people do not have truth as a foremost priority. They probably think they do, but they don’t. When it comes right down to it, most people are more invested in finding ways to defend their preexisting biases than in learning what’s objectively true. If they’ve got a special hatred for Democrats, the confirmation biases that will give them leave them susceptible to the QAnon psyop. If they’ve got a special hatred for Trump, they’re susceptible to believing he’s controlled by some kind of Russian government conspiracy. There are any number of other directions such biases can carry someone.
Only a humble devotion to truth that is willing to sacrifice any worldview or ideology to the uncompromising fire of objective reality allows anyone to skillfully navigate through a world that is saturated with disinformation and propaganda. Sincerely put truth first in all things while doing your best to find out what’s actually going on in our world, and eventually you’re guaranteed to free yourself from any perceptual distortion.
Caitlin Johnstone is a rogue journalist, poet, and utopia prepper who publishes regularly at Medium. Her work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking her on Facebook, following her antics on Twitter, checking out her podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following her on Steemit, throwing some money into her tip jar on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of her sweet merchandise, buying her books “Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone” and “Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.”
This article was re-published with permission.
The views expressed are solely those of the author and may or may not reflect those of Consortium News.
Please Contribute to Consortium News
on its 25th Anniversary
Donate securely with 
PayPal here.
Or securely by credit card or check by clicking the red button:
In terms of pedophiles and/or sexual abuse of children I wonder about Epstein and Maxwell’s operation which some have claimed to be an Israeli Mossad honeypot, perhaps with some element of the CIA also involved. What do you think about that possibility? (I’ve wondered if some of our politicians, perhaps even Trump, are being blackmailed via clandestine videos of their sexual “fun”, hence controlled to do the Israeli Zionist bidding?)
I’m reminded of how the Congress in unison clap like trained seals when Netanyahu speaks to them, and are more than happy to give Israel anything it wants, as well as protecting it from international law. In addition to the power of the Israeli lobby, might blackmail also play a role?
I would be interested in your assessment of QAnon in this regard?
A really good assessment of this bizarre organisation.
Caitlin’s strong enjoinder to believe that “Only a humble devotion to truth that is willing to sacrifice any worldview or ideology to the uncompromising fire of objective reality allows anyone to skillfully navigate through a world that is saturated with disinformation and propaganda” is critical these days with the huge amount of fake information that is swirling around in social media.
I don’t want to unnecessarily criticize Caitlin but I suggest that she should have applied this principle when discussing the Australian Government’s total support of the international policies of the US. I criticised this in the relevant article she recently wrote in Consortium News, which was patently incorrect.
Ask Caitlin to take a deeper look at what is happening in Australia, please.
Yada Yada.
Nothing can stop what’s coming.
Did you even read the article? Trump is doing nothing about the elitist satanic cabal. Thats the point of the article. Because he is one of them. Trump’s day to day actions are very public, he sounds like he barely has any clue about what Q-anon even is other than that the q-tips seem to like him. Q is a psych op designed by the CIA to discredit and lump together truthers and Trump supporters; two groups of people who normally wouldn’t necessarily associate. Not only that but it most importantly is a huge blow to the ritual abuse survivor community who have seriously been advocating to be taken seriously for decades and now they can all get called Trump nuts which disenfranchises them even further.
Well done! Excellent article. “Q” is finally being exposed.
Ok, we can all go back to sleep!??
It’s like we’re a long-time victim of domestic violence. We just keep accepting the abuse and somehow holding on to some faint hope that our abuser still loves us, and knows best, and it will somehow change and get better, and it’s all for the best in the long run. And we can rationalize and excuse every beating for those emotional needs. As Hedges has pointed out, it’s very much the relationship between a master and a slave. There is optimism for Biden and top cop Harris, but it will just be another blow to progressive change, and time to take our medicine from the masters again. The ever-worsening income inequality and poverty guarantees that our education and acumen will fade away to a zombie-like I.Q. level. Heck, we’re already there.
I doubt that Trump, etc., give much thought to QAnon. Trump essentially brushed the issue aside, making a predictable comment about “I’m sure they love this country” (since they’re hard right wingers). My impression is that Trump really isn’t interested in whatever their cause might be.
Beyond that, there is no revolution today, and no revolutionary impulses. People are both scared and pissed, and sometimes act out. The population is factionalized by class, race, and political ideologies that are often rooted in ignorance. This is an era of high anxiety among the bourgeoisie, the middle class. The US isn’t about democracy, and all those lofty ideals. It is a capitalist entity, and the unavoidable fact is that Western capitalism has slowly been collapsing for years.
“a humble devotion to truth … allows anyone to skillfully navigate through a world that is saturated with disinformation and propaganda”
I’m sorry, I can’t believe this, and I’m surprised the author does. A ‘humble devotion to truth’ is as likely to get you killed or imprisoned. Ruthless short-sightedly self-interested amorality allows you to successfully navigate the world, if success means wealth and social acceptance.
Its a secular religious cult. Like Big Religion that twists our search for spiritual truths into a money making scam by getting people to believe false and confusing dogma that keeps them in a zombie state arguing with other religions about how many angels can fit on the head of a pin while they have their hands in your pockets. But just accept “God’s plan” even if you don’t understand. Same crap, different nus.
And like the liberals’ cult of middle class superiority, praising the noble servants of the corporate state, utterly turning their backs on those “working brothers and sisters” who get phased out of the job market.
I think it is this : The Wave (1981) see: youtube.com/watch?v=TJQCIYs0eiI
Thank you Caitlin Johnstone for this wonderful piece.
I’d like to say it is more the exception than the rule, but it seems most people have outsourced their thinking to pundits and social media sources they blindly forward on with not a second’s introspection as to the three fundamental rules of passing on gossip. Is it true? Is it fair? Is it necessary? Thank you, Caitlin, for being one of the exceptions as you continue to bear witness to the truth. May more awaken!
QAnon is everything Ms Johnson says it is, but it also represents something else.
And that is the propensity in a large portion of American society to embrace far-out, quasi-religious nonsense.
We see this in many aspects of American society. Scientology. The old John Birchers. .The POW/MIA Movement. Evangelicals who stand on hillsides waiting for the Second Coming.
There is a bad gene strain in America, which I believe came over with the crazed Puritans, functioning almost as a virus.
The QAnon and Russiagate propagandists of the world thrive because citizens have willingly outsourced their thinking to pundits and social media postings that they can forward on without thought. If only the truth could “go viral” as easily as the lie. Thank you, Caitlin, for your continued diligence to seeking the truth.
Thank you Caitlin, it’s truly time for the vast majority in this country to turn off their TV”s and do some research while there’s still time!
I did not know this QAnon thing was still around. The truthseeker is well versed in history. Those knowing truth as it smacks them in the face understand the cheap shots dumped on the President daily for four years now and the “soft” coup that has taken place, or attempted. It takes a strong constitution to put up with this crap. The CIA’s “conspiracy theorist” meme along with the awful P.R. shown to Julian Assange are two more fights that are ongoing. The issue for me is it is taking so long to resolve these things.
You are 100% correct that q-anon is indeed a psych op designed to make people who wouldn’t normally support the status quo or Trump’s dim witted actions do so. Like how they look the other way while Trump has associated with Epstein, but instead focus on Clinton. The whole gang is a bunch of perves and if not pedophiles themselves, then pedophile supporters. Just like the term “conspiracy theorist” was itself a CIA psych op, so is the term “satanic panic”. Why is it that an unreasonable amount of people suffering from the psudo diesease “false memory syndrome” have memories of satanic ritual abuse and a large majority of such cases happened from the mid 80s to early 90s? Q-anon is also designed to discredit those reports.