'We are Q': A deranged conspiracy cult leaps from the Internet to the crowd at Trump's 'MAGA' tour - 2018-08-02

'We are Q': A deranged conspiracy cult leaps from the Internet to the crowd at Trump's 'MAGA' tour August 2, 2018, Isaac Stanley-Becker, Washington Post

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"Tampa rally, live coverage," wrote "Dan," posting a link to President Trump's Tampa speech in a thread on 8chan, an anonymous image board also known as Infinitechan or Infinitychan, which might be best described as the unglued twin of better-known 4chan, a message board already untethered from reality.

The thread invited "requests to Q," an anonymous user claiming to be a government agent with top security clearance, waging war against the so-called deep state in service to the 45th president. "Q" feeds disciples, or "bakers," scraps of intelligence, or "bread crumbs," that they scramble to bake into an understanding of the "storm" — the community's term, drawn from Trump's cryptic reference last year to "the calm before the storm" — for the president's final conquest over elites, globalists and deep-state saboteurs.

What Tuesday's rally in Tampa made apparent is that devotees of these falsehoods — some of which are specific to faith in the president, others garden-variety nonsense with racist and anti-Semitic undertones — don't just exist in the far reaches of the Web.

Wikipedia cite:

{{cite news | first = Isaac | last = Stanley-Becker | title = 'We are Q': A deranged conspiracy cult leaps from the Internet to the crowd at Trump's 'MAGA' tour | url = https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2018/08/01/we-are-q-a-deranged-conspiracy-cult-leaps-from-the-internet-to-the-crowd-at-trumps-maga-tour/ | work = Washington Post | date = August 2, 2018 | accessdate = August 26, 2019 }}