Category: TNTseries

The Qronicles: Biolabs, and JFK conspiracy is back. This time he’s moonlighting as Donald Trump!

Posted on by Walter Einenkel

The Qronicles is a series that will collect some of the news, videos, and general mis/disinformation roiling around the conspiracy world of QAnon. You can cringe, you can laugh, but these folks are organizing and showing up at the polls!

WelQom back! (YAYYYYY!!!!!) It’s time for some Qronicles! The QAnon world is always busy because conspiracy theories need water, webs, roots, and a boatload of manure to grow. You need to trim those offshoots that didn’t work out and move the goalposts all the time. If you didn’t constantly tend to it, your massively outrageous conspiracy theory would die on the vine. Just ask QAnon toe-dipper Robert “RJ” Regan of Michigan, who blamed the media after he made a strangely triple-offensive remark concerning his daughters, the Big Lie, and sexual assault. There are benefits to keeping QAnon folks frothy with mystery and the dopamine-inducing empty epiphany. 

Related: JFK’s return didn’t materialize. Now QAnoners drink from a communal bleach punch bowl—literally

Related: JFQ Jr. announces Senate run

Related: QAnon Chronicles: Somehow, the JFK Jr. conspiracy crew got even weirder

First up is Ukraine. We discussed in the last Qronicles that QAnon’s conspiracy theories of Donald Trump and his secret war against all that is evil in the world had folded the invasion of Ukraine by Russia into the grand design. The narrative is that there are secret biolabs—wait, stop. These biolabs aren’t secret, they are well known and have published information that pretty much anyone can see. Shut up! There are biolabs, and they are secretly making bioweapons! Ukraine is making bioweapons? No, dummy! Dr. Anthony Fauci is making bioweapons with the help of Hillary Clinton and George Soros! It’s New World Order shit, daddy-o! They are going to begin controlling the new world from Ukraine!

That’s why Vladimir Putin is invading Ukraine? Exactly. Remember how all of those Ukrainians and Americans in Ukraine testified and released evidence that Donald Trump attempted to get Ukraine to dig up dirt on Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden? Totally! He was impeached for that. But isn’t this the New World Order that can control the government, make it seem like Joe Biden is the actual president while the real president is playing golf in Florida, and hold the occasional rally? Didn’t they let Hunter Biden’s laptop get into the hands of Fox News and those folks?

Yup. They’re depraved!

It’s weird how QAnon folks seem to be arrested for things like child abuse and child pornography, and the conservative party they’re tied to seems to be filled with those kinds of cretins. Forget about all of that logic! I said biolabs!

Russia’s early struggles to push disinformation and propaganda about Ukraine have picked up momentum in recent days, thanks to a variety of debunked conspiracy theories about biological research labs in Ukraine. Much of the false information is flourishing in Russian social media, far-right online spaces and U.S. conservative media, including Tucker Carlson’s show on Fox News.

This hogwash was recently parroted by former Democrat Tulsi Gabbard on Sunday, March 13. It has also received the now-common (and always profitable) libertarian wing of journalism’s seal of “We’re just asking questions.” Represented by folks like Glenn Greenwald and Michael Tracey, these are usually once somewhat respected anti-establishment journos who have found a lucrative financial niche in maintaining their anti-establishment bonafides while pretending not to notice that the right-wing-o-sphere makes up an extraordinarily large part of the media landscape. This allows them the chance to make a lot of money speaking to (mostly) men who, while they’re not against gay marriage and may even know some Black folks they call friends, do feel like capitalism has let them down. But they aren’t willing—or are too narcissistic—to put the blame on the systemic inequalities in our society and the need to make changes to deal with them. This makes them feel like they’re getting left further behind, and they’ve cornered themselves in a shame circle shaped like a penis.

Here’s an offshoot of this Ukraine conspiracy theory, care of VICE: Some QAnonites believe that Dear Leader Trump has long been telegraphing the secret mission now being undertaken by both himself and Putin! Specifically, his strange pronunciation of “China.” Even more specifically, some QAnoners believe the code-cracking is that Shpyl'chyna is the “Chy-na” Trump has been saying all these years—while also talking about the global superpower China at the same time. (12-dimensional chess and all that.)

The Ukrainian “chy-na” is in fact just part of the name of what appears to be a village on the outskirts of Lviv. In Ukrainian, it is called “Шпильчина,” but on Google Maps, it’s referred to as “Shpyl’chyna.” Unfortunately, this is a bad transliteration: The ‘y’ is meant to represent a very soft ‘i’ sound that’s hard to transliterate, because it’s rarely used in English.

English, shminglish! Let’s get back to John F. Kennedy!

After JFK, his son, and his wife failed to materialize—in fact, even Trump didn’t show up and technically he is alive—Michael Protzman, the originator of this JFK-based conspiracy theory, just dug in deeper. The people that stayed are very easily described as a cult. In fact, this Q-offshoot group has worried many of its adherents’ friends and family members. 

Michael Protzman aka -48 told his online followers after the rally that it wasn’t Trump on stage, It was JFK because of his height. He brings people on stage so you can see it’s not him. pic.twitter.com/Pt9VWyrz9L

— 2022 Karma 🌻🌻 (@2022_Karma) March 13, 2022

So Trump was wearing a John F. Kennedy suit? Wow. That had not occurred to me. Does this mean Donald Trump has always been dead and JFK has always been Donald Trump? Maybe it has something to do with an island. QAnon folks love a secret rich guy island where nefarious things happen. (Unless it’s Donald Trump hanging with well-known sexual predator and human sex trafficker Jeffrey Epstein.)

Speaking of John F. Kennedy Jr.: That guy—Vinnie Fusca, the one that some QAnon folks believe is actually JFK Jr. openly hiding at events—has decided to try and cash in on his cult celebrity. He’s looking to run for Senate in his home state of Pennsylvania. I mean, I thought he lived in Manhattan, or at least on the secret Joe Biden island with Michael Jackson and Princess Diana. It’s hard to keep up.

If you haven’t heard, gas prices are rising. Some people believe it’s inflation. Some people believe it’s fossil fuel interests using the invasion of Ukraine and “supply chain” issues as cover for gouging prices for higher profits, and some people think it’s President Joe Biden’s fault. However, some people in the land of Q believe that Biden is at fault for the higher gas prices but that he isn’t really president, and that Donald Trump is still in control of everything. But the gas issue, that’s Biden’s problem. Not Trump. Something about waking people up. Try to keep up.

Trump is still president but definitely don’t blame him for high gas prices. We got the news from this genius. pic.twitter.com/LuftMs2Hmd

— Davram (@davramdavram) March 3, 2022

Then there is the fear of being “digitiled.” What, you say, is that? It’s not technically a word, but as we can see in the clip, it’s a word now!

Asked a member of the trucker convoy what issues were important to her. Her answer was… interesting. pic.twitter.com/q7UDZHNxSE

— The Good Liars (@TheGoodLiars) March 7, 2022

It kind of seems to sound like what it is. How that might happen to this lady, be it by wearing a mask or by getting an injection, is unclear. I mean, I suspect her car has Bluetooth and she has a phone that sends occasional signals to and from satellites by way of cellular towers. Hopefully she never needs a pacemaker or any other such medical monitoring device as that would surely count as being “digitiled.”

And finally, there’s this.

This woman at the Trucker Convoy explained to us what covid19 REALLY means. pic.twitter.com/6XGRK1qcFr

— The Good Liars (@TheGoodLiars) March 14, 2022

The Gematria thing: It’s a numerology tool of sorts. Hebrew Gematria is much more involved and has the mysticism of being of “ancient” lineage. Unfortunately, Hebrew Gematria doesn’t get anything resembling the number of the beast. However, Simple Gematria does count “corona” as 66. It also counts my name as 154. According to numerology nation, this is a good sign for me! I’m in! COVID-19 is the Antichrist! Wait ... Oh, right, the surrender sheep thing. In Hebrew, “ovid” means “worker.” Ovid was a very famous Roman poet who lived from around 43 BCE to 17 CE. Maybe she meant “ovis?” “Ovis” is the Latin word for “sheep.” But this person with the very patriotic get-up must have missed the debunking of this “theory” done almost two years ago. The “19” code for “surrender” is not a thing.

So let’s fix it and call COVID-19 COVIS-surrender-in-202? I put the question mark there since we want to leave open the ongoing end of times date. Maybe it should be 20 just in case we end up in the next decade before the Clintons and Obamas finally take over the world and drink everybody’s baby blood.

Before we laugh too hard, remember: QAnon isn’t fringe. The most far flung aspects of the ideas may be fringe but they’re just the logic conclusions being reached by people who are having their ideas reflected back at them by pretend legitimate media outlets like Fox News. In turn it is the fountain from which all the right-wing news takes its propaganda cues these days. As the two views photocopy each other in an endless cycle, reality fades further and further away until the conspiracy has to be real otherwise what else will they have?

I’ll tell you one thing: People like Laura Ingraham will be richer—that’s for sure.

QAnon has a lot of funny wacky beliefs but I think important to remember the core of it is a day of the rope-style mass murder fantasy https://t.co/DdnKnykTfK

— ryan cooper (@ryanlcooper) March 10, 2022

‘When everything looks hopeless, you are the hope’: Rep. Jamie Raskin

Posted on by Rebekah Sager

Rep. Jamie Raskin, a Maryland Democrat representing the state’s 8th Congressional District, is a thoughtful and devoted arbiter of democracy. In other words, he is truly one of the rare politicians who, lucky for us, is on our side. 

I spoke with Raskin on the day the House reauthorized the Violence Against Women Act, which helps in the battle he’s fighting on behalf of missing and murdered Indigenous and Black women through his work as chair of the U.S. House Oversight Subcommittee on Civil Rights and Civil Liberties

In addition to $1.5 trillion in funding, the measure includes a “tribal title,” a provision that gives tribal courts jurisdiction over crimes committed by non-Native offenders—sexual assault, sex trafficking, stalking, and child abuse, as well as obstructing justice and assaulting tribal law enforcement officers. 

Raskin told Daily Kos that the panel on missing and murdered women of color catalyzed people’s attention to the problem. He says the next steps are to assure that “law enforcement resources go to every level of local and regional and tribal governments to bolster their ability to respond to people who go missing,” and he added that “the Biden Justice Department is going to be seriously focused on this issue.”

Raskin says his dedication to political life began at home. He grew up in a family of what he calls “intense political activists and intellectuals,” adding, “it was sort of the air I breathed as a kid.” 

Raskin’s maternal grandfather was a state legislator in Minnesota, spending his days, Raskin says “solving people’s problems.” 

“So when I decided finally to run for the state Senate, I was in my early 40s. I thought a lot about my grandfather and what he did and how he did it.” And indeed much of what Raskin does in his daily political life, outside of being a member of the House select committee investigating the events of Jan. 6, leading the impeachment drive of former President Trump in the Senate, and the plethora of other committees he sits on, is work on the concrete needs of his constituents—getting people their passports, resolving visa problems, procuring people’s lost Social Security checks, getting people their PPP money or VA benefits—in essence, he says, “figuring out how to get government-funding to lots of needy entities.” 

He admits that these small wins offer momentary satisfaction when there’s a stalemate at the national level for new legislation. Which immediately brought to mind the John Lewis Voting Rights Act and why it’s so hard to get it passed. 

“Voting rights legislation is a direct threat to the GOP's cynical and governed and governing model today. The GOP is a minority party and a shrinking minority party. Hillary beat Trump by three million votes. Joe Biden beat them by seven-and-a-half million votes, and they thrive on voter suppression and the use of a bag of tricks involving anti-democratic maneuvers like gerrymandering of our congressional districts, the use of the filibuster to thwart voting rights legislation, right-wing judicial activism, and even manipulation of the Electoral College,” Raskin says. 

He added: “What we're suffering from today is not democracy. It's a series of anti-democratic impediments to majority rule. That's the struggle we're in today. It's a race between the clear will of the majority and the manipulation of these levers of anti-democratic power.”

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Raskin also focuses much of his work on the environment, calling the nation’s thinking on this issue “obsolete.” 

“I think we need to recognize this as a universal political imperative. If our brains were bigger and we had greater collective cognitive intelligence, we would all be focused on this front-of-mind centrally in terms of everything we're working on. But we're not and we continue to be dragged back into wrestling with monsters and ghosts from the 20th century like racism and authoritarianism,” he says. 

On Dec. 31, 2020, just days before a violent mob stormed the Capitol, Raskin lost his son Tommy to suicide. He chronicles the suicide in his book Unthinkable: Trauma, Truth, and the Trials of American Democracy, published in January of this year. 

“It would be my own attempt at a personal answer, a labor of love and a way to respond to all those people who told me, in such fine-grained detail, about the love and the crises in their own families, about their grievous personal losses and their incremental triumphs, and about the desperate fears they have for our nation’s future and the most cherished hopes they have for what America may still become in a world of so many frightful dangers,” Raskin told The Washington Times about the book. 

In response to his son’s death, Raskin says he’s working on several bills that directly deal with mental health services. One is a bill asking for funding from the Department of Health and Human Services to give grant funds to state, county, and local governments nationwide to beef up behavioral services in schools. 

“We need to make sure that there is funding in the schools for enough behavioral service health service workers such that they can begin to address the crisis. But we are, you know, the behavioral and mental health staff are overwhelmed everywhere across the country, and we have huge workforce shortage problems. So that's something that we need to deal with,” he says.

In light of so much darkness in Raskin’s life and what he’s faced in his years fighting Republicans, an attempted coup, and a failed twice-impeached U.S. president, it’s a miracle that Raskin stays as upbeat and engaged as he is. How does he do it? 

“My dad always used to say that when everything looks hopeless, you are the hope. It's incumbent upon all of us to help bring some optimism and light to young people. It's a generation that itself is bringing a lot of hope. I mean, they are beyond racism and sexism and antisemitism and immigrant-bashing.  So, we derive a lot of hope from young people.” 

Raskin’s father Marcus G. Raskin was a Juilliard-trained pianist in addition to being an author, philosopher, and co-founder of the progressive think tank Institute for Policy Studies

So, it’s no surprise that Raskin’s hope comes from the arts. 

“We need to restore culture and music and drama and humor to a central place in what we do. Politics cannot just be about grim news, coups, and insurrections; it's got to be about the kind of social future we're looking for.”

The Good Fight is a series spotlighting progressive activists around the nation battling injustice in communities that are typically underserved and brutalized by a system that overlooks them.

Editor’s Note: Rep. Raskins congressional district was misidentified and has been corrected.