Cuon Rigdelection

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Cue is a kind of new age religion. It's occult, but it's not just occult. Socu really pulls from a number of different sources. You've got classic eighties conspiracy theories and moral panics like the satanic panic. So none of the individual elements of cuanon are new. But they're combined and packaged in a way that is fairly new,. Because it adds the participatory element to it. And and reading about the things that are being done to you that you have no owr to stop. Cu makes you part of the war. Cue gives you a way to fight back.

Michael Shermer speaks with Mike Rothschild, a journalist specializing in conspiracy theories, about QAnon and its followers.

On October 5th, 2017, President Trump made a cryptic remark in the State Dining Room at a gathering of military officials. He said it felt like “the calm before the storm” — then refused to elaborate as puzzled journalists asked him to explain. But on the infamous message boards of 4chan, a mysterious poster going by “Q Clearance Patriot,” who claimed to be in “military intelligence,” began the elaboration on their own. In the days that followed, Q’s wild yarn explaining Trump’s remarks began to rival the sinister intricacies of a Tom Clancy novel, while satisfying the deepest desires of MAGA-America. But did any of what Q predicted come to pass? No. Did that stop people from clinging to every word they were reading, expanding its mythology, and promoting it wider and wider? No. Why not?