Trump Embraces QAnon Conspiracy Theories

Donald Trump is, finally, openly embracing the wacko QAnon conspiracy theory. Tuesday, on his Truth Social platform, he reposted an image of himself wearing a Q lapel pin overlaid with the words “The Storm is Coming.” For QAnon looons, the “storm” refers to a Trump final victory, when he will regain power and his opponents will be tried (and probably executed) on live television.

At a JD Vance campaign rally on Saturday, Donald Trump spoke over QAnon-themed background music while his supporters raised their right index fingers to the sky in a creepy salute. Sure, it might mean “We’re Number 1” or “America First,” or signal the “One Way” of Christian Nationalism, but The Daily Beast’s Will Sommer, author of a forthcoming book on QAnon, tweeted that it could symbolize the QAnon rallying cry ‘Where we go one, we go all.’”

That rally music?  It was either the QAnon anthem “Wwg1wga” or a copyright-free clone of it. Trump had used it in a video on his Truth Social last month.

More:

“Trump openly embraces, amplifies QAnon conspiracy theories,” David Klepper and Ali Swenson, Associated Press

“Trump asks QAnon to stand back and stand by,” Phillip Bump, Washington Post

“Trump’s Gone Full QAnon. There’s No Point in Denying It Anymore.” Jared Holt, Daily Beast

“What’s with the creepy one-fingered salute by Trump supporters?” Imogen Champagne, Crikey.com.au

“Is Trump fans’ ‘weird’ one-finger salute at rally a QAnon tribute?” Gustaf Kilander, The Independent via Yahoo News

“Trump’s Latest Rally Was Even Weirder Than Usual,” Chas Danner, New York Magazine

“Trump’s New Recruits: He’s embracing the QAnon conspiracy theorists,” Tom Nichols, The Atlantic

Update:

“Trump Endorsed QAnon Because He’s Stuck,” Juliette Kayyem, The Atlantic

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Cult-Like Online Conspiracy Theory Groups

Dr. Janja Lalich explains the cult-like nature of many online conspiracy theory groups, how people get caught up in them, and what can be done to help those who have fallen into them. A Wired video.

Related:

“Why people believe Covid conspiracy theories: could folklore hold the answer?” Anna Leach and Miles Probyn, The Guardian

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QAnon Isn’t a Conspiracy, It’s a Religion

Why are Qanon True Believers impervious to facts? As prophecized, after 2020, Qanon became a cult, wholly based on belief, and you can’t argue with religious faith.

And this Cult of Q is growing. A recent poll by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Interfaith Youth Core found that 15 percent of Americans say they think that the levers of power are controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles, a core belief of QAnon supporters. 15 percent of Americans, 30 million people, means QAnon has more followers in America than Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism combined.

More:

“QAnon Now as Popular in U.S. as Some Major Religions, Poll Suggests,” Giovanni Russonello, New York Times

“Understanding QAnon’s Connection to American Politics, Religion, and Media Consumption,” Public Religion Research Institute

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iPhone 6S Breaks Sales Record

Many New Yorkers faced a serious dilemma last month: Join the crowd to see Pope Francis or stand in line to buy an iPhone 6S at the Apple Store?

Many chose the latter. Frenzied fanboys and fangirls lined up early outside Apple Stores in San Francisco, Sydney, Syracuse, Singapore, Colorado Springs, Chicago, London, and Rancho Cucamonga. In Palo Alto, a robot stood in line and bought an iPhone. Sales of 13 million broke a launch weekend record.

So is the phone any good? Who cares. Ooh, rose gold!

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Image (“Apple Store, after a 1900 trade card by Tom Browne“) by Mike Licht. Download a copy here. Creative Commons license; credit Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com

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Cults of Silicon Valley

“In 2015, cults are being discovered and rebranded in Silicon Valley as a way of modeling the twenty-first century corporation. ‘You should run your startup like a cult,’ one of Silicon Valley’s most successful investors, Peter Thiel, advises …. For Thiel it is the very excesses of cultish sociality, that have typically been proscribed and demonized, that make it useful for business. ‘Taking a merely professional view of the workplace, in which free agents check in and out on a transactional basis, is worse than cold: It’s not even rational,’ Thiel argues, working to transform the cult from a social model typically associated with irrational, decadent, violent excess to what Thiel argues is the most rational way to model a startup business.”

— “Cults at Scale: Silicon Valley and the Mystical Corporate Aesthetic,” Kate Losse, DisMagazine.com

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Apple’s True Believers

“As everyone knows, the world-religion of the educated and prosperous in the twenty-first century is Apple, with its Vatican in Cupertino and its cathedrals in the light-filled Apple Stores that draw pilgrims gripping iPhones and iPads like rosaries. Apple’s flock is secured against heresy by censors who rule the online App Store; only applications with Apple’s imprimatur are allowed on an iPhone. Programmers risk excommunication—with all their works condemned to being listed in an Index of Prohibited Software—if they violate canon law by bypassing Apple’s banking system or ignoring its infallible doctrine.”

— “Faith and Works at Apple,” Edward Mendelson, New York Review of Books blog

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