The horizon is not so far as we can see, but as far as we can imagine

Why QAnon Resonates

QAnon posits that there is a conspiracy of pedophiles in the deep state, including celebrities, politicians, and bureaucrats who oppose Donald Trump. Supposedly, Trump is in a struggle with them.

The specific QAnon allegations have, so far, turned out to be false.

But it still resonates, and the reason why isn’t complicated.

It’s because, while it’s wrong in the specifics, it’s right in the generality.

Jeffrey Epstein ran an island where underage girls (not pre-pubescent, but below the age of consent) were procured for important men. I haven’t been able to find a full list of visitors, but a partial list includes Trump himself, Bill Clinton, Thomas Pritzker (the executive chairman of Hyatt Hotels), Kevin Spacey (unlikely to have slept with underage girls, I’d think), comedian Chris Tucker, Prince Andrew, Les Wexner (ex CEO of LBrands, worth over $7 billion), modeling executive Jean-Luc Brunel (a modeling exec, not a customer, but claimed to be a procurer), ex-New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson, former Maine Senator George Mitchel, Harvard physicist Lawrence Krause, Woody Allen, Kenneth Star (attorney), and Alan Dershowitz. (Source one, Source 2.)

The current US attorney general represented Epstein in 2007 and got him a plea deal.

What’s interesting about that plea deal is that it happened because Jim Acosta, the prosecutor was told he belonged to intelligence and to leave it alone.

Sounds pretty deep state to me.

There are also strong claims that Epstein also worked for Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency.

What’s shocking about Epstein isn’t that he got away with it so long, but that with a blackmail list like the one he must have had, that he was ever taken down.

It is clear is that some of the most powerful people in the world (and the full list must be much, much longer) were in Epstein and his handlers’ power; he had the goods on them.

What also seems almost certain is that at least a part of the deep state was running Epstein and using him to blackmail important people.

Now, the idea that Donald J. “Grab Them by the Pussy” Trump is crusading against pedophiles is ludicrous. But is it far-fetched to think that many of his opponents in the deep state (and many of his supporters) are deeply dirty, and are involved in blackmailing powerful people after setting them up with underage girls?

Close to a sure thing.

QAnon is wrong on the details, wrong on the “sides,” but right that the state is deeply corrupt, deeply evil, and involved in deeply disturbing acts. And, of course intelligence agencies are blackmailing politicians–including politicians in their own countries.

As the saying goes, even paranoids have enemies, and yes, Virginia, the deep state was, in at least one case we know of, apparently protecting a ring for providing men with underage women and then (almost certainly) blackmailing them.


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49 Comments

  1. Plague Species

    But the specifics are very important because, otherwise, it takes what is generally true, that the global elite prey upon the unwashed in many ways and sex slavery is just one hideous way, and misapplies it as disinformation. This is standard operating procedure for intelligence services the world over. Which intelligence services are behind QAnon? Surely we can determine who and what truly comprises QAnon. Right? What if it’s the American Deep State? How can this be explained and reconciled by those who continue to believe the American Deep State opposes Trump?

  2. GlassHammer

    I disagree, I think it resonates with Americans for these reasons:

    1. Reality has become unbearable so any means of escape is welcomed.

    2. It appeals to their ego/self worth because it tells them that despite how the world sees them, despite how little value they may have, they have the forbidden knowledge, they know what is true and because of that they deserve respect and attention.

    3. There is a cottage industry monetizing this thing and actively marketing it to people.

    4. There is no barrier to entry and you can participate for free if you wish.

    5. It’s an online community and people are lonely/hurting.

  3. Effem

    I don’t believe there’s any evidence Trump was ever on Epstein Island.

  4. Dan

    One correction, Ian:

    Bill Barr wasn’t Epstein’s attorney. But his father, Donald Barr, was a former OSS (precursor to the CIA) agent and headmaster of the prestigious Dalton School, where Epstein got his first real job as a math teacher in the 1970’s. Of course, at the time, Epstein was a college dropout with absolutely no qualifications. He was similarly allowed into the world of Wall Street finance with no qualifications or good reason a few years later when he was given a job as a floor trader for Bear Stearns.

    Epstein had a whole mess of lawyers for his 2007 plea deal, including: Alan Dershowitz (who now spends most of his time on Twitter or Tucker Carlson Tonight furiously “doth protest too much” denying he ever touched any girls on Epstein’s island), Jay Lefkowitz, Gerald Lefcourt, Jack Goldberger, Roy Black, Guy Lewis and former Whitewater special prosecutor Kenneth Starr.

  5. Ché Pasa

    Nah. This Q-Thing does not resonate with more than a very few Americans, and you should note that. It’s too freaky-wild to be widely believed, but that’s kind of the point, isn’t it? Get a few Q-Geeks wound up and see what happens.

    Nice. Right? Watch mayhem ensue.

    Given the nature of social media, it’s easier to disseminate disinformation than it ever was, and the Q-Thing is epic-level disinformation.

    On the other hand, our rulers — very much including the Trump regime — are monsters.

    Making it a matter of one faction of these monsters being the Ultimate Evil while another faction is fighting them to the death (Godzilla vs Rodan-esque) is bullshit. They’re all monsters and they’re fighting among themselves to see who will profit the most from predating on or wiping out the rest of us.

    Given the nature of these things, Q will devolve into something even crazier before burning out. And then there will be another Great Reveal of the perfidy of Our Rulers.

    All meant to mask what’s really going on for as long as possible.

    Most people just ignore it. They have more pressing matters to attend to.

  6. bruce wilder

    Stephen Hawking, the physicist, visited the island, for what that is worth.

    Trump had a connection with Epstein and Epstein’s first accuser thru Mar-a-Lago. I do not think Trump has ever visited the island.

    “Visiting the island” is a narrative hook into the imagination.

    I think rich people regularly abuse and exploit poor people they do not even know for lots of boring and mundane goods and services. Many rich people also like to be served by pretty people. Heck, I like it. And, rich people do trade money for sex, both openly and less openly. The idea of personally taking advantage of underage girls (or boys) crosses some sort of line, I guess. It is sordid.

    And weirdly (to me), it can be protected by the hierarchies of social and public power. Most of us have little or no personal experience of the airy hierarchies of great financial and social and political power. Epstein seems to have swam there like an agile eel. He was fun at parties apparently, whatever that may mean. And, for reasons I have never seen explained, had a great deal of money to spend and give away, though he promised more frequently than he delivered which is always true.

  7. edmondo

    Really? You all think Jeffrey Epstein is dead? LOL. I’m not mentioning any names but you might want to try looking for him on a kibbutz in an unnamed Middle Eastern country. I suspect Ghislaine will be next to “eat a batch of bad clams” once her home video collection is secure.

  8. “Now the idea that Trump “grab them by the pussy” is crusading against pedophiles is ludicrous.”

    How so? If you’ve seen the TV series “Mad Men”, you know men were freer to grope women in ways that today would be considered sexual assault. But how many of the 50’s gropers would not have been disgusted by pedophiles?

    Even if it’s mostly true that, as Trump’s own sister says, Trump lacks principles, that doesn’t dictate that Trump not feel revulsion against child trafficking.

    In fact, I vaguely recall that, from year 1 of the Trump presidency, there was a big increase in prosecution of child traffickers, but don’t quote me. This should be a matter of fact, that can be had via googling.

    Also, revelations (real or otherwise) about child trafficking and it’s connection to the Deep State go back a lot further than Trump. The “Franklin Cover Up” comes to mind, as well as the fact that the Washington Times had a front page, headline story
    “Homosexual prostitution inquiry ensnares VIPs with Reagan, Bush”, which wasn’t followed up. Not even with a retraction, AFAIK.

    Gee, I wonder why?

    There was a video that came out, a few years ago, by I believe a Dutch banker, who credibly (I thought) described ritualistic murder of a child. (I don’t remember if it also involved sexual abuse.)

    Your scope of argumentation is quite narrow….

  9. Plague Species

    Okay, this has gone far enough. We can’t have common unwashed citizens murdering mob bosses. I know this is a world upside down, but this is beyond the pale. I can see it now. Defense attorneys are going to jump on this precedence and claim the QAnon defense. “Your honor, my client pleads not guilty on account that he was brainwashed by QAnon into believing he had to rape the plaintiff because she was a deep state asset and that Donald Trump would defend him after executing his, my client’s, heroic duty to rid the world of the Satanists.”

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-07-23/qanon-conspiracy-theory-anthony-comello-francesco-cali/11337398

    A man charged with killing an alleged New York mob boss was deluded by internet conspiracy theories and thought he was helping US President Donald Trump defend democracy, his attorney has said.

    Anthony Comello is charged with murdering Francesco “Franky Boy” Cali, an alleged leader in the Gambino crime family.

    In court papers filed on Friday, attorney Robert Gottleib said Mr Comello was gripped by an irrational belief that Mr Cali was part of a “deep state” that secretly controls the US.

    “Mr Comello became certain that he was enjoying the protection of President Trump himself, and that he had the President’s full support,” Mr Gottlieb wrote in court papers obtained by The New York Times.

  10. Stirling S Newberry

    I was not aware of the law of physics that say you only can have underage sex on one particular island.

  11. Ian Welsh

    Sigh.

  12. GlassHammer

    “Sigh” – Ian

    This was going to be a difficult topic.

  13. krake

    Plus, Americans are prone to denatured antisemitism. Q, metropolitan globalism, Blue Helmets, Walmart camps, yellow fringed flags, sovereign citizens, Bircherism, the old greenbacker goldbuggers, modern goldbuggery – this all starts in white nationalist, anti-semite and falangist hidey holes, and percolates out along the ley lines of rightist conspiracism. It all starts off about Jews. Then, as it widens out in audience, the code-phrasing takes over.

    Satanic mercantile and artistic elites in league with demons, stealing Christian children for their vital essence? That is straight antisemitism from Russia, the Pale, Ukraine, Lithuania and Germany. No alterations, exactly the damned same.

    ——

    Look at the tolerance Z gets, even the support. I mean…

  14. krake

    …or, Edmondo, above…

  15. S Brennan

    Ian;

    I had read that Trump shared a flight with Epstein from Fla to New Jersey back in 1997 [a one off with another couple]. That Trump and Epstein parted ways [and was banned from Trump properties] when in 2003-4 Epstein started hitting up on an underage female at one of Trumps clubs. Pretty thin gruel and if Epstein had anything on Trump surely he would have used it at that point…but if Stirling has proof otherwise…

    Now Ian, if Stirling has provided you with proof that Trump visited Epstein’s Island…that’s definitely cause for impeachment, you should bring that forward…and I am shocked that the DNC would use phony Russian bullshit* when they had such a valuable card up their sleeve. That doesn’t make any sense at all.

    So let’s put Stirling’s card on the table, if it’s genuine, the DNC should start impeachment NOW, TODAY, THIS SECOND. If Stirling’s card is genuine, which will be a first, I will support the impeachment.

    *https://consortiumnews.com/2020/08/21/ray-mcgovern-catapulting-russian-meddling-propaganda/

  16. Hairhead

    brennan: the Dems can only accuse/charge Trump with something they haven’t done themselves. Dems having being on Pedo Island means they can’t charge Trump with that, as there will be (justified) blowback. The reason they harp on the Russian connection is that every other corrupt and criminal, unconstitutional thing that Trump has done is something that multiple Dems have done also. Charging Trump and uncovering his crimes would lead to the uncovering of their own.

    Remember, Al Capone was undone, not for assaults, blackmail, bribery, extortion, theft, etc., but for income tax evasion.

  17. Chiron

    If Epstein and Maxwell runned a blackmail operation for a intelligence service the most interesting question is “who are their targets?”. It seems that was Coast Liberals and some Europeans like Prince Andrew, back in the early 90s there was the Franklin Scandal about Pedophilia ring going as high as the Reagan/Bush White House, the targets of that operation are powerful Republicans.

    QAnon is a psyops targeting boomers conservatives, carefully avoiding mention a certain country in the Middle-East who could pull off such a operation on the US ruling class and come unscathed from any criticism.

    My theory is that there is a war inside the Zionist establishment and is getting very ugly, if Netanyahu loses political power is likely that him and his son are going to prison, even Liberal Zionists are tired of Netanyahu and Likud. The Democrats can’t keep supporting israel when the country is run like a Nazi caricature of Jews. So what Netanyahu did? He exposed part of a Mossad or AMAN (Military intelligence) to get rid of part of the US elite that doesn’t like him while QAnon is there to ensure Boomercons that everything is fine and Trump is their hero.

  18. S Brennan

    Hairhead; I am asking Ian to show his card, not a hand waving argument from a third party.

  19. krake

    It’s not a standard antisemite trope, no. It’s the Joooooooz doing it.

    You people deserve Trumpism.

  20. Willy

    They used to say that rape isn’t about the sex, but about the power.

    Now it’s all about the democrats.

    I knew a guy who could perceive human truths better than almost anybody else. I judged him that way because his predictive powers about human situations was absolutely amazing. He was the type who could lose many battles but always still seemed to win the war. I also judged him to be a high functioning psychopath. He was really good at manipulating peoples perceptions but and rarely ever spoke in direct truths.

    He knew that everybody is “cut from cloths”. He knew that most ‘normal’ people, when faced with emotionally painful truths, want closure right now so that they can escape that pain right now. He knew this because the only emotionally painful truth of any kind which he could ever feel, only ever involved himself being powerless in some situation. Everything else was irrelevant. And so his clarity of thought in what for others, would be intolerably chaotic situations.

    I really wish that normal people could better understand this, instead of always having to complexify things just so they might feel better, right now. Simply judging people by their fruits seems beyond them.

  21. C

    QAnon resonates because, rather than suppressing information, modern censorship seeks to overwhelm limited cognitive bandwidth with many plausible-but-difficult-to-falsify alternatives.

    The strategy depends fundamentally on the existence of an ever-willing cadre of foot soldiers with the ever useful combination of first rate ego, third rate intellect, and ample time to burn fluffing for status in whatever sub-culture is most hospitable to their particular mental pathology.

  22. Zachary Smith

    As the saying runs, even paranoids have enemies, and yes, Virginia, the deep state was, in at least one case we know of, apparently protecting a ring for providing men with underage women and then (almost certainly) blackmailing them.

    The blackmail has been a great success. The ongoing screwing of the Palestinians is one example: Another:

    https://www.zerohedge.com/political/hillary-clinton-gave-ghislaine-maxwells-nephew-very-powerful-position-state-department

    Alexander Djerassi, the son of Maxwell’s sister Isabel, went from working on Hillary Clinton’s 2008 Presidential campaign, to a “very powerful and prestigious position” within the state department, working under Clinton in charge of the Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs. He returned to Clinton’s 2016 campaign, according to the Beast.

    “Secretary Clinton gave Alex a job in one of the most sensitive areas of Obama’s executive apparatus,” an anonymous source told OK!. “The fact Alex Djerassi, fresh out of college, was put in charge of the State Department’s Bureau of Near Eastern Affairs, covering the Middle East, was an interesting move.”

    Just an opinion, but I’d wager QAnon is something created by Big Intelligence to divert attention from both the highly successful Blackmail and the ongoing Deep State operations against Trump.

    Just because Trump is a corrupt, ignorant, and lawless jackass doesn’t mean RussiaGate wasn’t a big fraud from the very beginning.

    But as they say, God must love stupid people because he made so very many of them. The gullible QAnon suckers buy into the entire package of BS, and this provides cover for the real things going on.

  23. DMC

    Look at the flight logs. The Clintons and Trump both show up 30 to 40 times. Look at the relationship between Epstein and Ehud Olmert. Consider that Epstein went from an obscure private school teacher to managing the fortunes of billionaires. Note how he spread his wealth around especially at MIT. Note further how he made profits for those billionaires and yet no one could ever say that he actually made any investments. Word around the campfire was that they came from international money laundering for the nation that must not be named. Note who Ghislame Maxwell’s father was and the Fate he met when he became more trouble than he was worth.

  24. DMC

    Look at the flight logs. The Clintons and Trump both show up 30 to 40 times. Look at the relationship between Epstein and Ehud Olmert. Consider that Epstein went from an obscure private school teacher to managing the fortunes of billionaires. Note how he spread his wealth around especially at MIT. Note further how he made profits for those billionaires and yet no one could ever say that he actually made any investments. Word around the campfire was that they came from international money laundering for the nation that must not be named. Note who Ghislame Maxwell’s father was and the Fate he met when he became more trouble than he was worth.

  25. Bruce

    Oh when, oh when will assholes stop being assholes? Pretty please.

    But they give us our allowance so let’s not do anything drastic.

    Everyone still believes in capitalism, that it has the wherewithal, with the right manegement, to improve lives.

    This is a fairy tale.

    Assholes can take advantage of situations, but it does not mean they create every situation.

    Republicans say “all we can have is shit sandwiches.”

    Democrats say “shit sandwiches are just as good.”

    Leftists say “we hate shit sandwiches but we have to eat them.” (It’s not like we have the power to strike or withhold our labor or anything.)

    Leftists are more to blame than anyone. When is the last time you saw an ad critical of capitalism? Are leftists prohibited from buying ad time?

    Here’s an example:https://youtu.be/I53PvVyjNno

  26. nobody

    I strongly suspect Q-Anon is astroturfed as a preemptive defense against the risks of major Republican figures being publicly connected to Epstein.

    It’s much easier to make the GOP’s meat puppet voters to ignore allegations of child abuse by Republicans if the field has already been prepared with a constant drumbeat of ‘Democrats abuse children.’ Any accusations of child abuse by Republicans can then be dismissed, by both the hand-wringing so-called centerists in the media and the meat puppets, as ‘both sides bad, therefore, vote GOP.’

    All fabricated Republican accusations of Democratic malfeasance ultimately boil down to a deliberate strategy to obscure Republican malevolence as a matter of ‘both sides bad.’

  27. Hugh

    If you want to talk class, the rich and elites against the rest of us, the lower 80% and the top 20%, I am with you. I find the Deep State deeply superfluous. There is intra-ruling class jockeying and infighting, but surprising solid unanimity among them in looting and using us.

    Sexual exploitation is just one predictable element of the much more pervasive inequality inflicted on us.

    Also a couple of articles on Trump-Epstein. Like a lot of people in New York’s trendy upper crust, it’s pretty clear Trump knew what Epstein was and was not upset or outraged about it.

    https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/08/what-the-unsealed-epstein-documents-reveal-about-trump.html

    https://www.vanityfair.com/news/2019/07/how-trump-kept-tabs-on-jeffrey-epstein

  28. krake

    See?

    Jooz jooz jooz jooz jooz.

    They can’t help themselves.

  29. S Brennan

    “Look at the flight logs…Trump..show[s] up 30 to 40 times”

    No DMC, that isn’t how it works, unless you are a NYTimes/WaPo reporter, when you make an accusation[s], you are obligated to provide the evidence. Telling somebody to spend time tracking down your wild ass accusations is presumptuous pretense nobody here is your servant.

    You provide proof that “Trump shows up 30 to 40 times Epsteins flight logs”
    =====================
    And no to Hugh;

    It’s not Trump’s job as a private citizen to lead an investigation into Epstein. It’s enough that Trump publicly made an issue of it in a puff piece back in 2002:

    “I’ve known Jeff for fifteen years. Terrific guy,” Trump told New York Magazine that year for a story headlined; Jeffrey Epstein: International Moneyman of Mystery. “and many of them are on the younger side. No doubt about it — Jeffrey enjoys his social life.”

    That brushback is a lot more than others did…a lot more. Certainly more than anyone in the media, politics or law enforcement did.

  30. Hugh

    Shorter SB, Trump good –no matter what.

  31. Dan

    @krake,

    No one here has made “the Jews” a monolith except for you. This is about elite machinations. Seemingly every large “group” (nation-state, religion, etc.) has an elite. The elite’s interests are not the same as those of the masses, though they (the elite) make them out to be. And the elite’s machinations may be quite fruitful for a good percentage of the masses – for a time anyway.

    David Ben-Gurion said in 1938: “If I knew it was possible to save all the children in Germany by taking them to England, and only half of the children by taking them to Eretz Israel, I would choose the second solution.” The Zionist movement then went to work blocking Jewish emigration to other countries, including the U.S. The narrative, of course, is that the countries themselves didn’t want “the Jews” because, you know, “the Jews” are universally despised because we horrible gentiles are born with an “antisemitic”* gene or something.

    In April of 1963, Ben-Gurion wrote in the NY Times: “Jews are in truth a separate element in the midst of the peoples among whom they live – an element that cannot be completely absorbed by any nation – and for this reason no nation can calmly tolerate it in its midst.”

    David Ben-Gurion was not some obscure figure. Is he someone you’d want speaking on your behalf? The question is rhetorical, because he and his ilk intend to, whether you like it or not. And that’s par for the course with all elites, Jewish or not.

    So every time someone calls out Jewish malfeasance, perhaps it’s not such a good idea to circle the wagons on behalf of “the Jews.” What may seem to you to be a protective measure is in fact playing right into your elite’s hands. And that is by design. As it is for all of us vis-a-vis our elites.

    *The term “antisemitic”makes no sense as it’s commonly used to refer only to discrimination against Jews, even though Jews make up a minuscule percentage of Semitic peoples. It’s almost as if it was intentionally hijacked to serve a given end. A number of Jewish writers have attempted to “explain” to us how this came to be. Take them at their word, I guess…

    Controlling the narrative is where it’s at.

  32. Willy

    We just had the Conway debacle, the latest in dozens of recent Trump debacles, where it became painfully obvious how all of the Conways know how messed up Trump is for his own disloyal (not to mention their country), and finally had to exit their situations despite all the lucrativeness. Yet Qanons just keep on Qanon’n.

  33. S Brennan

    Quoting one of Hugh’s sources that “prove” that Trump was responsible for Epstein’s crimes:

    ========================

    “So far, the documents’ revelations about the current U.S. president are not damning — nor do they “totally exonerate” Trump, as some of his supporters are claiming on Twitter. Here’s the new information we’ve learned about Trump and his ties to Epstein, who is awaiting trial on sex-trafficking charges. Giuffre Said Trump Did Not Abuse Her or Other Underage Girls, to Her Knowledge…

    In a partial transcript of her deposition on November 14, 2016, Giuffre is asked to identify errors in statements attributed to her by reporter Sharon Churcher. Giuffre put check marks next to a handful of claims on a list, indicating that she took issue with them. She put a check next to this statement: “Donald Trump was also a good friend of Jeffrey’s. He didn’t partake in any sex with any of us but he flirted with me. He’d laugh and tell Jeffrey, ‘you’ve got the life.’”

    Giuffre was asked to explain what was wrong with the statement.

    A: “Donald Trump was also a good friend of Jeffrey’s.” That part is true. “He didn’t partake in any” of — “any sex with any of us but he flirted with me.” It’s true that he didn’t partake in any sex with us, but it’s not true that he flirted with me. Donald Trump never flirted with me. Then the next sentence is, “he’d laugh and tell Jeffrey, ‘you’ve got the life.’” I never said that to her.”

    Q: When you say “he didn’t partake in any sex with any of us,” who is “us”?

    A: Girls. Just —

    Q: How do you know who Donald Trump — Trump had sex with?

    A: Oh, I didn’t physically see him have sex with any of the girls, so I can’t say who he had sex with in his whole life or not, but I just know it wasn’t with me when I was with other girls.”

    She added that she knew Trump through her work at Mar-a-Lago, and her father would chat with him when they saw each other. But she said she could not recall ever being with Trump and Epstein at the same time, or seeing Trump at any of Epstein’s properties. She only knew about their relationship because “Jeffrey told me that Donald Trump is a good friend of his”

    ====================

    So according to Giuffre, the accusations against Trump, that that a reporter attributed to her, were lies, Trump didn’t do anything wrong but, according to Hugh’s source, that doesn’t “totally exonerate” Trump because…well..like…you know…because..ah well..like…you know.

    Hugh your blathering banalities that blissfully bubble forth have all the substance of a vacuum.

  34. Hugh

    Apparently I hit a nerve with the Trumper SB. Another link:

    “The two were close enough that in 1992, Trump had a man named George Houraney organize a ‘calendar girl’ competition at his Florida Mar-a-Lago resort under the assumption that there would be a group of V.I.P.s present. In reality, it was just Trump and Epstein, according to Houraney, who says he showed up with ’28 girls.'”

    and

    “Trump himself has previously been accused of inappropriate behavior surrounding beauty pageants that he helped run. He’s been alleged to have sexually harassed contestants including via barging into dressing rooms just because he felt like it. Eventually, he was caught on tape bragging about his supposed freedom to commit sexual assault, leading credence to those allegations and the many others against him of sexual harassment and assault. Most recently, author E. Jean Carroll came forward with a story of Trump sexually assaulting her in the 1990s.”

    https://bipartisanreport.com/2019/07/10/party-with-only-trump-epstein-28-girls-leaked-to-ny-times/

  35. Joseph Wolz

    The Q phenomenon becomes much easier to understand once you realize it’s not a set of conspiracy theories but rather a kind of messianic cult. It’s a New Religious Movement being born from conspiracy theory.

    I figure they’ll get disappointed like the Millerites and become some kind of weird sect like 7th Day Adventists of Jehovah’s Witnesses or they’ll become something like ISIS.

  36. krake

    Dan,

    Peddle that “antisemitic’ is a nonsense word because Jews aren’t the only semitic people” garbage to the rubes, eh?

  37. Dan

    @krake,

    The rubes? Interesting word choice. I count myself among them.

    I’d gather many of my fellow “rubes” – we are not a monolith, incidentally – would understand the obvious. The obfuscation is prepared and largely devoured by the learned classes. Themselves, of course, not a monolith.

  38. Eric Anderson

    In Russia we have a saying, “you don’t drain the swamp, the swamp drains you.”

  39. krake

    Dan,

    I don’t personally care what your internet claims are or are not.

    If you are going to amplify the old tropes of antisemitism, Christian Identity, and other conspiracies, in a gods be damned post about the ripped-right-from-the-blood-libel Q cult, you are what you are.

    I’m tired of leftists, so-called, diving head first into this stink pit, because they’re too myopic to see where it all ends.

    Those of us who’ve been through this our whole lives know what that stink foretells. If you feel the need to amplify the first, ninth or latest iteration of the “let’s not call it antisemitism, because Arabs are semites, too’ legerdemain, you’re broadcasting what you are.

    At least have the decency to out yourself all the way, like Z, or the Q cultists, eh?

  40. bruce wilder

    The Q phenomenon becomes much easier to understand once you realize . . .

    it may be more about influencing the audience looking on, those soi disant sane people wondering how those other people could possibly get caught up in such nonsense.

    having the nutty people on display for ridicule is useful for disinformation purposes in other words.

    we’ve just gone thru 2 years of Russiagate, based in large part on the Steele dossier, much of which was as ridiculous and salacious as QAnon. not that long ago, the U.S. invaded Iraq supposedly looking for WMD and because Saddam Hussein had supposedly aided the 9/11 hijackers.

    anyone who has perused any of the “fact checker” features that have proliferated know that the authors of these fact checks often have very elastic concepts of what constitutes a “fact”.

    the articles that have been written about Epstein’s doings are not always scrupulous about describing what can be verified from testimony or documents. right here in the OP, Ian, whose integrity I do not doubt, has written a sentence that seems to assert Trump visited Epstein’s island, a “fact” I do not see that anyone has verified. As Hugh has correctly pointed out, Trump is hardly one of the “good guys” — his expressed attitudes are piggish and some past behavior reprehensible. But, that’s not evidence of sex with a minor or paying prostitutes to pee on a hotel bed — and still lots of people claim to find those possibilities “plausible” and choose to “believe” them, disregarding and disparaging attempts to verify allegations.

    it is concerning. there’s a loss of trust in the assertions of elites, whether of politicians speaking as officers of state or journalists supposedly reporting events or forming judgments and opinions from a point-of-view. that loss of trust from a history of betrayal blends seamlessly into losing one’s grip on reality, apparently.

    do facts matter? i tend to think so, but i am one of those people who is never quite certain. about most things, i do not imagine i “know” much. i enjoy a compelling story. but, if it is supposed to be a “true story” i like it better if the story is not substantially distorted and convenient facts made up to serve the narrator’s ideological druthers. that turns out to be a minority perspective in 2020

    it is appalling to consider how careless of facts and eager to manipulate by means of a good story, politicians and journalists are. so much is going wrong in the U.S. and with the world because the compelling story was based on a pack of lies, and the arguable truth could not get a hearing. we are in the COVID hell now because Fauci and others lied about the importance of face masks. why did they do that? and why can that 80 year old corrupt fool hang onto his job? what is wrong with us? why isn’t Colin Powell ashamed to show his face?

  41. Dan

    krake, impugning my character rather than dealing with the facts. Par for the course.

    I will now “out” myself. krake, please let me know if I’m doing this right…

  42. Martin

    This is the clearest, most accurate, most direct thing I\’ve ever read on Epstein. Worth mentioning that the CIA/Mossad must have given him the money (our taxes) that allowed him to live like a billionaire.

    I appreciate this piece. I\’ll bet Q does, too.

  43. Eric Anderson

    And in news we all already knew — Q is a 4chan tech geek incel basement dweller:
    https://twitter.com/HW_BEAT_THAT/status/1297621478293168132

    Regular Zarathustra.

  44. Willy

    Probably the same guy who stole a facebook picture of an attractive young black man so they could spread Trump propaganda. Even though the photo’s owner has protested vociferously and obviously using his real name, the twitter account has thousands of likes. Reality simply doesn’t matter any more for them.

    With people believing whatever the hell they want to these days, it’s a regular sociopaths paradise.

  45. different clue

    If I understand this post correctly, Ian Welsh is telling us that Qanon has grown so fast because the establishment narrative is seeming intelligence-insultingly fake and counter-explanatory to more and more people. So they look for something else. Some of them have found Qanon and go with that.

    Canadian writer Jeff Wells used to have a blog where he wrote about various power-political and power-cultural things and stuff, including recreational pedophilia among rich powerful people and also ritual pedophilia and ritual sex-torture sessions among some of those people. But he also wrote about many other things besides. And many of his posts contain “statements of fact” would could be bunked, debunked or rebunked by people paid full time to do so.

    Mere citizens like me are not paid full time to do so. All we can do is spend some of our meager time-resources reading some of this stuff for free and for our own brain-expansion or whatever our reasons might be. If anyone here wants to read any of the Jeff Wells material, it is still right up-there on the Interwebs. Here is the link.
    https://rigint.blogspot.com/

    About the word “antisemitism” , I read somewhere that until the mid-1800s jewbaiting was called jewbaiting and jewhating was called jewhating. But such behavior was considered tacky and uncultured among the more refined social classes of Europe and maybe even Germany. So a German jew-hater-baiter who wanted some respect for his hater-baitering decided to rename it “antisemitism” to make it sound like a modern respectable intellectual philosophy-system. That’s what the suffix “ism” was supposed to connote. That’s what I’VE read.

    So perhaps anti-jew hater-baitering could be renamed ” antijewism”. Antijewism . . . antijewite . . . antijewitic.

  46. The Q nonsense and Russiagate nonsense both started during the 2016 election. They both include, as a basic article of faith, that there is a sector of the Deep State that is morally upright.

  47. Feral Finster

    Re: Epstein.

    If we take the official story as true – every single person in the federal justice system, from Attorney General Bob Barr all the way on down to the lowest Bureau of Prisons flunky mopping latrines in a lockup in Alaska – everyone knew that, out of all the inmates in the federal correctional system, Epstein was the one inmate most obviously at risk of murder or suicide.

    Jeffrey Epstein is dead. Let that one sink in.

    Again, even if we take the official story as true – considering Epstein’s high profile friends, either the intelligence agencies, with all their surveillance powers and evident disregard for the Bill of Rights, either knew of Epstein’s proclivities and did nothing, or they didn’t know, which means that they are really really clueless.

    Again, let that sink in.

    And that’s just what you gotta wrap your head around if you believe the official story with all its absurdities and contradictions. Frankly, it is easier to believe Warner Brothers cartoon shorts featuring a talking rabbit than the official Epstein story.

    And that leads to some really disturbing suppositions.

  48. Feral Finster

    QAnon is but the old NESARA scam, updated to feature Trump instead of Clinton.

    If Q were who he claims to be, he wouldn’t need to drop vague clues. The targets of the supposed investigation all have internet, and they would already know what they are alleged to have done, so none of this would need to be kept secret from them.

  49. different clue

    Why was Epstein dumm enough to come back to America where the Deep Nazi state could grab him and kill him? Did he think his rich and powerful clients were his friends?

    Well . . . he found out differently. When he had outlived his usefulness to them they pinned him in place so they could kill him at leisure and dispose of him like a bag of the garbage he always was.
    Bye bye Jeffie.

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