The Genius of Q

I first heard about QAnon not from /pol/, but from the gravelly-voiced Phillip Adams on Australian public radio’s Late Night Live. For a public broadcaster, any right-wing phenomenon is almost by definition a conspiracy, but as always with communists,[1] no term ever means its plain meaning, so “conspiracy” here simply means the working of human will in history. As such, I ignored Adams’ take on Q, but one thing stood out to me: he couldn’t articulate its basic ideas in the slightest. I put it down to Haidt’s observation that the right understands the left better than vice versa,[2] and promptly forgot about it.

While Adams does indeed understand little of the right, it turns out that he couldn’t explain Q because Q is basically retarded. And yet Q has had far stronger impact on the broader culture than the radical right has in the time since. There is a genius to Q—a retarded genius. It behoves us to understand it.

I will give you the punchline up front and then work up to it: the genius of Q is that it creates a myth. This is something the radical right has done exceptionally poorly, and in this way, we oddly resemble orthodox Marxists—we should note what kind of influence orthodox Marxists exercise today. The radical right is concerned above all with truth. Our ideas will win not because they are popular, not because they help you sleep at night, but because they are true. The “alt right” has often been noted by Christians as a rather un-Christian phenomenon,[3] but this emphasis on truth bears a distinctly Christian stamp. This is indeed a great strength, but it is also a weakness.