Memetic Warfare: How the Targeted Propaganda of QAnon Weaponised COVID-19 – Byline Times

Daniel Morrison looks at the Trump campaign origins of the gamified global conspiracy theory which has now evolved into active Coronavirus denialism

The influence of perception is one of the defining features of modern life. Ever sinceThomas Barrattused a nice painting to make Pears Soap more appealing, people have competed to change our minds about things.De Beerscreated the idea that diamonds had something to do with marriage.Edward Bernaysput cigarettes in the hands of marching suffragettes to make them Torches of Freedom.

Political campaigns also employ agencies to influence public perception of their clients. Take the case of Donald Trump, who prior to announcing he was running for President has a chequered reputation nepotistic, a history ofbankruptcies, allegations oftax fraudandopenlybraggedabout sexual assault. His campaign would require the creation of a completely Alternative Reality. One where he was a strong, powerful, righteous hero, on a selfless mission to save the world from the clutches of an evil democratic cabal of deep state operatives.

Step forward curious character called Q, who claimed to be from military intelligence, with inside information on how it was all going to go down.

Lets start by going back to 2016.Roger Stonehad finally succeeded inmakingDonald Trump the Republican candidate for President. Stones whole career (and partnership with Trumps campaign manageerPaul Manafort) had been a long list of dirty tricks, and this job was going to be no exception. And in an election, political propaganda isnt just about building your guy up. Taking the other side down is just as effective. And so he set his sights on the democratic candidate: Hillary Clinton.

Again, with a candidate as qualified as her, it was going to take the creation of an Alternative Reality. And with the advent of the internet, that was easier than ever.

Jeff Gieseawas a digital businessman, pro-Trumpagitator, and associate ofPeter Thielwho, drawing on the ideas ofChuck Johnson, published a paper called Its time to embrace memetic warfare. In context, it was pitched as a way to fight ISIS. In practice, it would become a key part of the Trump campaignsstrategy.

There is now anentireindustryservingthisspace.Psy Groupis anIsraelicompanyfounded byJoel Zamel, which specialised in online perception management, through social media manipulation, influence campaigns, opposition research, honey traps, as well asclandestineon-the-groundactivities.

In April 2016, during the Republican primaries, Trump Campaign offical Rick GatesaskedPsy Group for a proposal. They responded with aquotefor $3,125,000 plus media costs, and promised to make it virtually untraceable.

Three months later,ErikPrincearranged ameetingbetween Zamel, Donald Trump Jr., andGeorge Nader(an emissary for two wealthy Arab princes) in Trump Tower.

The Deep Web that the brochure above refers to, likely refers to Anonymous message boards like4chan. 4chan is a place with basically no rules. Its afascinatingenvironment that gives people a chance to express themselves in a way they never could, forbetterorworse. The tradition that we will focus on here is known as LARPing. The term comes fromLive Action Role Playing, which is where people dress up as characters from a film, book, game or series that they like, and go out and enact the storylines.

Online, however, you dont have to sew a costume and go outside. You just need a keyboard and an internet connection. People would pose as anyone they wanted, including people purporting to be from inside government agencies.

On 2 July 2016, when the FBI was conducting their investigation into Hillary Clintons use of a personal email server, a characterappeared, who will come to be known asFBIanon.

Over hundreds of posts from July to October 2016, FBIanon systematically created and nurtured the idea that there was actually far more going on with the Democratic candidate including occult rituals, and abusing trafficked children. If it had stopped there, perhaps we could consider it to be a LARP/prank. But it didnt stop there. Because a handful of people on 4chan isnt going to be able to make a difference in an election, FBIanon gave the following instructions (over many posts which are edited together here):

The task is this:unleash every meme, image, and horrible story about HRC that you can musterIn order to be effective,you must proselytize For example:Start a website aggregating the images/factsand then try to get it linked to Drudge. Shove the images down every news anchor/journalists throat.Push out to peoplewho you normally would have nothing to do with Why dont youinvade their circles? We should be spreading memesto subs on Reddit.blitz Twitter, Tumblr, and all social media with memes on the Clinton Foundationtonight, the last night of the DNC We need TrumpGen with us, and the meme division blasting the Tumblr tags. Bring up the old methods that /b/ used to use during their Tumblr raidsWere going to wartonight Repeat something often enough and it becomes the truth. Repeat after me: Hillary is evil and will destroy the planet.

Its possible that a passionate volunteer had the same singular devotion to getting Trump in office as Roger Stone. But they also intimated:

More leaks will come. The time is not right yet. Expect an October Surprise.

And when the second leaks did come, they added:

When you are reading Podestas e-mails, remember that the Clintons deal in weapons, drugs, and people. Some terminology in use is far more nefarious than many of you suspect.

This indicated that whoever was posting as FBIanon was working with Wikileaks and/or Roger Stone. Russia hadhackedinto the DNC, and given the contents to Wikileaks, who told the Trump team. Sure enough, a few weeks later, right before the election, Wikileaksreleased20,000 of Clinton campaign manager John Podestas emails.

While it was handy for the Republicans to have the other sides material, there was literally nothing incriminating in there.

But if you change some of the words, andtellpeople its sinister, an Alternative Reality begins to emerge, in which ultimately people are less likely to vote for Clinton.

Pizzagate wasnt their only trick. They also created the story thatSeth Rich was assassinated and a story that other key people in the campaign had anillegitimate child. Its important to keep an eye on the people at the centre of creating these narratives such as Erik Prince,Ed Butowsky,Matt Couch,Sean Hannity,Steve Pieczenik,Jerome Corsi,and Julian Assange.

The influence campaign obviously didnt stop after the election. There was an administration to sustain, and eventual re-election to run for, amid mounting investigations into allegations of corruption.

In late October 2017, the day after Manafort and his associate Rick Gates were indicted, anothercharacterappeared on 4chan, who would come to be known as Q.

There are a few things that set QAnon apart from other Live Action Role Playing on 4chan. The first is that, like FBIanon, it is so dedicated in driving support for a candidate it is functionally indistinguishable from a professional campaign.

The second is that instead of answering questions, itaskedthem. This pointed the narrative outward, into the world.

The third is that it had an oddly specific policy agenda at the outset: attacking the Global Engagement Center a new body devoted to fighting Russian meddling in elections. (It doesnthaveto be a Russian Psy-Op for the people responsible to besympathetictoRussianinterests.)

The fourth is how staggeringlyeffectiveit has gone on to be. Despite having a protagonist as terrible as Trump, it has convinced millions of people that he is quite literally Gods Gift, and broken countless families in the process.

In light of this, its important to examine this and try to understand whats happened. We need to analyse some of the mechanics involved. And what we find when we look under the hood, is essentially an elaborategame. A lot of it seems to boil down to the fact that puzzles are fun.

Over the last 30 years, story telling has taken on a new dimension interactivity. Plots that involve the reader, sending them on a treasure hunt, or asking them to solveriddlesto advance the narrative. They bridge a gap between the fantasy world and the real world, using multiple forms of media to create a Game in an Alternative Reality. So they are known as Alternative Reality Games, or ARGs. They have a relatively brief but fascinatingly rich history:I Love Bees, The Art of the Heist, Last Call Poker, Perplex City, etc.

Thisis not anaccident, it is not acoincidence, and it is not ajoke. This is a ARG-based propaganda campaign infull flight, created by people using sophisticated psychological manipulation techniques. The foundation of a very similar strategy was explicitly articulated in a pitchdeckfromWikistrat, another digital influence company founded by Joel Zamel:

A campaign like this is powerful of course, but its not much use if it doesnt reach the right people. And this is where companies likeCambridge Analytica(orEmerdata, or whatever else has succeededSCL, andGloo) come into the picture. As well ascreatingcampaigns, they use unprecedented volumes ofBig Datato aim content at the right market with surgical precision formaximum impact. And at the end of 2016, CAsigneda memorandum ofunderstandingwithPsy Group

Now were about to understand one of the biggest mysteries of all: how a bunch of hippies in the wellness community came to support Donald Trump. Because remember, this is about building political capital. The right-wing activist Proud Boys and Boogaloos groups are easy, they were already there. The next step is reaching anewaudience, who otherwise would have been unlikely to vote for him, and converting them. The ones who doyoga, wearlinen, and talk about aligningchakrasandcrystals. Who believe the world is ripe for spiritual ascension.

They watch documentaries like Thrive and Gaia Latest. They are people who are prepared to challenge what theyve been told, and like to think for themselves; who dont trust the government, who think banks do have too much power, that the media does lie to us; who are ready to go with one and with all, towards a great awakening.

In other words, this is a platform primed for Q content. And thats exactly whats happened.

Amongst those icons is the International Tribunal for Human Justice. Its a faux court set up in 2015 which functions as a platform for the propagation of various conspiracy theories, including 5G, coronavirus, and the idea that children are being tortured for their adrenochrome otherwise known as Blood Libel.

There was one important step in between though. People dont usually go from zero to Blood Libel in so short a time. They need some sort of a gateway. And on the 4 May 2020, a man calledMiki Willisreleased the infamous film Plandemic whichthrewthe world into chaos and primed the pump for the outbreak of the Conspiracy Narrative Virus. That infected enough people to be able to go on and believe the #savethechildren conspiracy, and then the rest of the Satanic Cabal of Qanon.

It was promoted heavily, and almost exclusively by Breitbart. The idea that the virus was man-made came from a paper published by a think-tank called the Rule of Law Institute. Which was also funded bySteve Bannon.

And thus we now have all the pieces in place for this to wreak absolute havoc with the shared notions of truth and reality we need for society to function. QAnon content was pumped through these channels, and with everyone locked inside it spread like wildfire through these networks.

On top of all that, Russia amplifies it in ways both big and small. Either byhosting the infrastructureof 8kun,amplifyingcontentwithbot networks, creating fake spiritual facebook pages to pepper with propaganda, or broadcasting the Lockdown/QAnon crossover protests.There doesnt have to be collusion for this to have an impact. When the goals align, the effect is the same.

The disinformation machine is a dangerous threat to our democracy. If and when Q goes away, the power to create this phenomenon will remain. We must be prepared.

QAnon is propaganda. And we know whos responsible.

A longer and more detailed version of this analysis by Daniel Morrison first appeared on Medium

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Memetic Warfare: How the Targeted Propaganda of QAnon Weaponised COVID-19 - Byline Times