signalmankenneth
Verified User
These are not educated people by any means?!!
CNN —
If I was trying to blend in, it wasn’t working.
It was October 2020 – the height of Covid – and I was one of the only people wearing a facemask at a meeting in a drab windowless hotel conference room in Scottsdale, Arizona.
One attendee, dressed in some kind of elaborate costume, directed a disapproving grunt my way.
We listened as speaker after speaker explained that Trump was certain to win the 2020 presidential election – then just weeks away – in a landslide. Anything less would be a sign the Democrats had cheated.
If that happened, warned a man from the podium, we may need to take matters into our own hands. Political violence, he argued, wasn’t all that bad – American history had been shaped by it after all.
A little more than two months later that man would take part in an attack on the US Capitol. He is now serving an 11-year prison sentence.
The other man – the one in costume who had grunted – would soon achieve global infamy. His painted face, and his headpiece made of animal horns, would land him on the cover of newspapers all around the world. We’d all come to know him as the “QAnon Shaman.”
Some of the people in that conference room talked tough, but, I thought, maybe that’s about all they would do.
It wasn’t. And we now know what happened next.
That’s what concerns me most about the moment we are in now in the United States.
The conspiracy theories didn’t go away. They’ve proliferated thanks to a sophisticated, relentless campaign. A surge of alternative social media sites, so-called “free speech” platforms like Trump’s Truth Social and the video streaming platform Rumble have cropped up. There’s also been an explosion of online MAGA influencers and video streamers, some with millions of followers.
All of them are pushing the same conspiracy theory: The 2020 election was stolen, and the only way Trump can lose in 2024 is if it is stolen again.
This is false, of course. Not least since polls show Trump and Harris neck-and-neck.
In the middle of this growing MAGA misinformation-industrial complex: an affable pillow salesman.
https://www.cnn.com/maga-misinformation-trump-conspiracy-theories/index.html
CNN —
If I was trying to blend in, it wasn’t working.
It was October 2020 – the height of Covid – and I was one of the only people wearing a facemask at a meeting in a drab windowless hotel conference room in Scottsdale, Arizona.
One attendee, dressed in some kind of elaborate costume, directed a disapproving grunt my way.
We listened as speaker after speaker explained that Trump was certain to win the 2020 presidential election – then just weeks away – in a landslide. Anything less would be a sign the Democrats had cheated.
If that happened, warned a man from the podium, we may need to take matters into our own hands. Political violence, he argued, wasn’t all that bad – American history had been shaped by it after all.
A little more than two months later that man would take part in an attack on the US Capitol. He is now serving an 11-year prison sentence.
The other man – the one in costume who had grunted – would soon achieve global infamy. His painted face, and his headpiece made of animal horns, would land him on the cover of newspapers all around the world. We’d all come to know him as the “QAnon Shaman.”
‘Stop the Steal’ hasn’t stopped
The Scottsdale event I had wiggled my way into in 2020 was “QCon,” a meeting of QAnon enthusiasts who were still fringe. Trump feigned ignorance about the movement and refused to denounce it. “I don’t know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate,” Trump said at the time.Some of the people in that conference room talked tough, but, I thought, maybe that’s about all they would do.
It wasn’t. And we now know what happened next.
That’s what concerns me most about the moment we are in now in the United States.
The conspiracy theories didn’t go away. They’ve proliferated thanks to a sophisticated, relentless campaign. A surge of alternative social media sites, so-called “free speech” platforms like Trump’s Truth Social and the video streaming platform Rumble have cropped up. There’s also been an explosion of online MAGA influencers and video streamers, some with millions of followers.
All of them are pushing the same conspiracy theory: The 2020 election was stolen, and the only way Trump can lose in 2024 is if it is stolen again.
This is false, of course. Not least since polls show Trump and Harris neck-and-neck.
In the middle of this growing MAGA misinformation-industrial complex: an affable pillow salesman.
https://www.cnn.com/maga-misinformation-trump-conspiracy-theories/index.html
