THE CO NSPIRASPHERE

NOEL ROONEY looks at the uneasy post-election political landscape in the USA and wonders what will now become of the biggest conspiracy theory of the Trump years...

Q AFTER DONALD

A lot of people have no doubt been speculating on what might happen to QAnon, and their cryptic prophet, if the Donald is forced out of the White House. Will the already fissiparous community break up without the focal point of their devotion? Well, now that Trump has reluctantly acknowledged that Biden won the election (even if he hasn’t quite brought himself, at the time of writing, to actually concede) we are poised to find out.

It seems unlikely that the secret war against the Deep State can go on with its leader confined to Twitter, premature election campaigns and reality TV. But Q has been so signally centred on Trump that it is very hard to see an alternative figurehead. And in any case, if Trump is about to be evicted, is the Q clearance patriot leaving with him?

We will have to wait for Q’s thoughts on the matter. The Q drops went dark the day before the election, and did not start up again until 10 days afterwards, when their main focus was, unsurprisingly, on cheerleading the efforts to see, or believe in, election fraud. There is a new slogan: nothing can stop what is coming (which makes for an even clumsier abbreviation than WWG1WGA, though that hasn’t hindered its adoption). But there is not much of substance, and certainly no indication about Q’s future in post-Donald America.

Q’s period of silence coincided uncannily with the departure of Ron Watkins from his post as moderator of 8-Kun, the platform Q has been using since the demise of 8-Chan. Perhaps Ron saw the writing on the wall (not a diffcult task since rumour has it that he put it there) but there are plenty of voices in the Conspirasphere claiming that he and his father have had some kind of bust-up over the Q content that, it is alleged, they have been writing ever since they acquired it from Paul Furber. Ron says he has quit in order to pursue a career in carpentry, however, and we wish him well. At least in his new vocation he has more of a chance of hitting the nail on the head.

Q’s is not the only hiatus consequent on the election of Joe Biden. In the days leading up to polling, the US media and the Democratic Party were very busy telling stories about probable Russian interference in the process. Those voices have fallen instantly silent now that Joe has won. A jaundiced observer might be forgiven for thinking that the whole Russiagate 2.0 thing was a conspiracist hedge against the unlikely prospect of the Democrats losing; otherwise it’s hard to see how a story that had so much traction could simply die (to quote the late, great Max Wall) “like a louse in a Russian’s beard”.

The Chinese have got off pretty lightly too. Back before the interminable count, a number of media outlets reported US intelligence effectively saying: if Trump wins, it’s the Russians; if Biden wins, it’s the Chinese. Perhaps the right-wing media, and the alt-right version of it, are too busy with the minutiæ of election fraud to bother for now; the alt-right, in fact, are so busy with the application of Benford’s Law that they have even forgotten to big up the prospect of imminent civil war. There was one story doing the rounds that the Chinese government is shutting down the social media accounts of people speculating about US election fraud, but this singular tale fits so ill with the public and government perception of China that no one has bothered to repeat it.

And talking of China, whatever happened to all those stories (and indignant refutations) about Hunter Biden? Some in the Conspirasphere probably feel that the mainstream media, and the social media giants, did such a good job of suppressing the story that it’s not worth trying anymore. On the other hand, it’s Hunter, and the boy just can’t help himself. The chances of Joe getting through four years without his son blotting the Biden copy-book are even more remote than the probability of 139,000 late postal votes allegedly coming in 100% for the Democrats in Michigan (that would be Benford’s Law in operation, apparently).

Which brings up an interesting point. One might expect the right to mutter about fraud when their candidate loses, and to offer what appears to be evidence to support their complaint. But stories about election fraud have been appearing in places that are not exactly known as alt-right- or Trump-friendly. Wouldn’t it be deliciously ironic (if terrifying in real-world terms) if the election result the majority of Americans wanted to see was fatally undermined by skulduggery of the Democrats’ own making? The US electoral system has never looked robust, of course; real anomalies and instances of fairly widespread malpractice seem to accompany every election. But this would be a very delicate time for the clearly jury-rigged system to collapse under the weight of reluctant investigation.

Before we bid farewell to President Don, we should perhaps applaud him for what appears to be one positive aspect of his term. Trump is the first US president in an extremely long time (there are respectable historians who will tell you ever) who has not committed the military to a new conflict somewhere in the world. So maybe on this particular issue (for which much of the world has breathed a four-year sigh of relief) Donald really did have those schemers in the Deep State biting their little fingers.

The Q drops went dark the day before the election

SOURCES: www.dailydot.com/debug/qanon-election2020-8kun-ron-watkins/; www. conspiracy.news/2020-11-15china-censors-netizens-debatealleged-us-election-fraud.html; www.informationclearinghouse.info/55867.htm