Qanon believers grapple with doubt as Trump era ends
see new coded messages in the Inauguration Day’s events. Some followers noted that 17 flags – Q being the 17th letter of the alphabet – flew on the stage as Trump delivered a farewell address. ‘‘17 flags! come on now this is getting insane,’’ said one post on a Qanon forum devoted to the ‘‘great awakening’’, the quasibiblical name for Qanon’s utopian end times. ‘‘I don’t know how many signs has to be given to us before we trust the plan,’’ one commenter said.
Over thousands of cryptic posts since 2017, Q, Qanon’s unidentified online prophet, had promised that Trump was secretly spearheading a spiritual war against an elite cabal of child-eating Satanists who controlled Washington, Hollywood and the world.
Believers in these false, rambling theories had counted down the hours waiting for Trump to corral his enemies for military tribunals and mass executions in a show of force they called ‘‘the Storm’’.
But yesterday, as reality dawned, Qanon promoters scrambled to spin the truth of Trump’s loss or shift the goal posts of a deadline four years in the making.
Some of the most notable figures in Qanon’s online universe said they were having a change of heart. After Biden’s inauguration, Ron Watkins – the longtime administrator of Qanon’s online home, 8kun, who critics have suspected may have helped write Q’s posts himself, a charge he denies – said on Telegram that it was time to move on.
‘‘We need to keep our chins up and go back to our lives as best we are able,’’ said Watkins, who in recent months had become one of the loudest backers of conspiracy theories suggesting Biden’s win was a fraud.
‘‘We have a new president sworn in and it is our responsibility as citizens to respect the Constitution regardless of whether or not we agree with the specifics,’’ Watkins added.
– Washington Post
When Amanda Gorman stepped up to the inauguration ceremony podium she was little known and barely tall enough to see over the microphones.
By the time she bowed her head six minutes later the youngest inaugural poet, by far, had mesmerised a global audience of millions and laid claim to a literary stature that she could never have anticipated even a few weeks ago.
Late last month the inaugural committee got in touch with Gorman, 22, to say that Jill Biden had seen her give a reading at the Library of Congress. The soon-to-be first lady wondered if the former National Youth Poet Laureate might compose a work and perform it at the inauguration.
That poem, The Hill We Climb, had its first public airing immediately after President Joe Biden’s inaugural address.
Wrapped in a yellow coat and with her braided hair pulled under a bright red band, Gorman stood in front of the Capitol, smiled and with calm deliberation greeted ‘‘Mr President, Dr
Biden, Madam Vicepresident, Mr Emhoff, Americans and the world’’.
Then she began to recite lines full of pain and hope that she had completed in a late-night writing session on January 6, the day that Trump supporters stormed the building behind her.
Her voice had a propulsive intent and her words were brought further to life by her fluttering hands that swooped and jabbed as she delivered her lines. The poem opened with an image of despair: ‘‘When day comes we ask ourselves, where can we find light in this never-ending shade?’’ However, swiftly Gorman reached for a more uplifting mood: ‘‘And yet, the dawn is ours before we knew it. Somehow we do it. Somehow we’ve weathered and witnessed a nation that isn’t broken but simply unfinished.’’
Laced within, lay wry humour. Americans are ‘‘the successors of a country and a time where a skinny black girl [she pointed at herself], descended from slaves and raised by a single mother, can dream of becoming president, only to find herself reciting for one’’.
Gorman was brought up in Los Angeles, and attended a private school in affluent Santa Monica but her mother is a teacher in struggling Watts.
– The Times