The Storm is Upon Us: How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of Everything by Mike Rothschild
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

As an introduction to the underground Q community, it is fact-based, with plenty of examples and analysis and extrapolation. In other words, you can pretty much rely on this to give you the history and some of the threads, as far as we can understand them, and what it is.

So what is Q?

Conspiracy theories dressed up in moral outrage that tempt a lot of regular folks that can see that something is very wrong and just want to DO something about it.

Where it goes really wrong is also pretty clear. We all saw what happened on 1/6/21.
But Q has a direct-line to Anti-Vaxxers, anti-maskers, thinking there are mass pedophile rings in the Left, not to mention the Great Jewish Conspiracy, 9/11 Inside Job, FEMA camp concentration camps, microchip tracking devices (other than cell phones), Soros, Soros, Soros, and so much more.

It might have started as something kinda out-there but it absolutely got a lot of perceived legitimacy when Trump began taking on the mantle of being their messiah, listening to the cooky charges of what antifa was doing/planning, spouting key-words that Q posts wanted him to spout to give them a sign, alternative Covid treatments, including the most obvious and wild close-bleach option and Regeneron, and more.

We've seen what happened -- is still happening -- on Facebook and Twitter and more media outlets like Newsmax and Fox and countless blogs. How these kinds of conspiracy talking points have taken over whole governments in several states, how the problem is arguably worse now than it had ever been in the past, and is set to get much worse.

Suffice to say, the problem is real. Disinformation is, after all, a major branch of psy-ops.
We're dealing with massive amounts of propaganda and the continued rise of fascism is a direct result of people feeling scared and feeling the full strength of their moral outrage.

It doesn't matter whether the target of their moral outrage is the real problem. What matters is that they BELIEVE it to be so.

Q and those who use Q to dupe normal folks are THE biggest problem. Using lies and disinformation is only making this problem worse.

We all need to step outside of our echo chambers and actually listen to each other. Not just get outraged. Not just find any excuse under the sun to wail and rail against our perceived enemies. This whole moral outrage thing is really quite absurd. As humans, we're extremely susceptible to witch hunts and mass-momentum of movements. As long as we remain in our echo chambers, we only reinforce those beliefs that are repeated the longest and loudest.

It has nothing to do with the validity of the points. We're perfectly capable of hashing up the whole world without any enemy before us.

As we can see here.

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