IdleRich
IdleRich
There's a DeLillo interview where he says something about the modern conspiracy theory - the interview was published in 2010, iirc - being less about the theory and more about it being a statement of protest and dissatisfaction. It's not the actual narrative, it's that it disagrees with the official one.
I think that that is what I subconsciously believed, and that is definitely the case a lot of the time, but it can't be the case with the guy who attacked Paedo Express or... well, this
Wright, armed with a rifle in a black armored truck, blocked the Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Bridge over the Colorado River at the Hoover Dam, where the Arizona and Nevada state lines meet. According to the Arizona Department of Public Safety, when authorities arrived Wright was standing next to the vehicle with a sign that read, "Release the OIG report," known as a prominent demand of QAnon followers.
Or this...
Cecilia Fulbright, 30, was arrested in Waco, Texas, after two drivers reported being chased by another driver, and one reported being repeatedly rammed by another vehicle, the Waco Tribune-Herald reported. Officers said Fulbright told them afterwards that she believed the driver whose car she hit was a pedophile and that she was rescuing a young girl from being trafficked, the paper reported. Her blood alcohol level at the time was more than double the legal limit.
Two of Fulbright’s acquaintances told Right Wing Watch that she had become deeply absorbed in the QAnon conspiracy theory, including talking about how Trump was “literally taking down the cabal and the pedophile ring” and that she continued to describe herself as a follower of QAnon even after her arrest.
There are numerous ones about parents who have been ruled unfit and had their children taken away mentioning Q-Anon as justification when they get arrested trying to steal them back, but I see that as slightly different in that they no doubt wanted the kids back anyway and the conspiracy just provided a bit more justification.
But the guy who blocks the dam and demands the release of some non-existent document (the impossible demands I was talking about above) is clearly a true believer in something that only exists within Q-anon. That's what I was trying to get at above I think, there seems to have been a shift with green-crayon types previously being defined as against the prevailing narrative, whereas now they seem to be very much for a particular alternative narrative. To use the terminology of types of freedom, it seems that there has been some sort of movement from negative tin-foil-hattery to positive tin-foil-hattery. A group whose members were once defined by their extreme scepticism is now made up of ardent believers.