Followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory have been long-suffering in waiting for some (actual) evidence to confirm the existence of the elusive ‘Q’, or some confirmation or proof from official (ie. Trump-connected) sources. So, many were excited in October last year when a rather senior retired military man, General Paul E. Vallely (Major General, USA, Ret.), was quoted on a radio show as saying that the ‘Q drops’ (the sporadic, cryptic internet posts by QAnon) were based on information gained from a group of military intelligence specialists:
QAnon [uses] information that comes out of a group called ‘The Army of Northern Virginia.’ This is a group of military intelligence specialists, of over 800 people that advise the president. The president doesn’t have a lot of confidence in the CIA or even the DIA (Defense Intelligence Agency) as much anymore. So he relies on these real operators – most of them are Special Operations type of people. This is where ‘Q’ picks up and gets some of their information, as I understand it.
Paul Vallely was no mere grunt: he retired in 1993 as deputy commanding general, Pacific Command, so he’s definitely no random internet dude with an opinion. In the decades since he retired though, he has gone on to work in far-right think tanks and appear as a pundit on right-wing chat shows – and, not surprisingly, is a fan and defender of Donald Trump (and a promoter of some related conspiracy theories like Birtherism).
So for many QAnoners, this was a big deal – a guy who is likely plugged into senior military circles, and also the orbit of the Trump administration, saying Q’s information was not only legit, but from intelligence sources connected to the president himself. There is just one – rather synchronistically hilarious – problem for QAnoners, which I’ll have to give a little background on first.
Last month here on the Grail I wrote about a new YouTube documentary that had gone viral (now over 13 million views), exploring many of the conspiracy themes covered by Pizzagate and QAnon, Out of Shadows. The documentary spent substantial time discussing both government mind control operations, as well as Satanism, and tied the two together through Michael Aquino – an occultist, political scientist, and U.S. military intelligence officer who, after leaving Anton LaVey’s Church of Satan, formed his own order, The Temple of Set.
Out of Shadows points out that Aquino “wrote a paper called ‘Mind War’, and ‘Mind War’ was about psychological operations against populations, including the American domestic population, using Satanist techniques and tools.”
Michael Aquino did in fact write the paper mentioned. The mind-blowing part, in the context of this post, is that he was asked to write it by the commander of his unit (and who thus has a co-writing credit on the paper)…Paul Vallely (his name is misspelled in the cover credit).
Furthermore, it’s worth noting – especially in light of my previous warnings here on the Grail that the QAnon conspiracy theory could conceivably help smooth the way for an armed takeover of the U.S. government – that in December 2013, Vallely told a Tea Party group that he would be willing to lead a military coup against the Obama administration:
Speaking to a Tea Party group late last year, retired Army general and Fox News pundit Paul Vallely insisted that he doesn’t want to see a revolution take place…but if a revolution does happen then he will be happy to lead it.
Vallely reminisced about how he once discussed plans to “surround the White House and surround the Capitol building” with 250,000 marines, adding that “it’s going to take physical presence” to make elected officials heed their demands.
“I’m not inciting a revolution but we’ve got to get more physical and stand up and protest,” Vallely insisted. “I don’t want to be criticized for starting a revolution, but I’d certainly head it if we had to. We all love a good fight if it’s worth it, right?”
All these strange links got me thinking. Seeing as the dominant QAnon narrative – that Q drops are a secret way of informing the public that Trump is the literal saviour of the world, taking down the evil cabal of Satanist paedophiles that currently run the show – is based on only tidbits of suggestive evidence and links, I thought I’d put forward a counter-narrative – similarly backed by just suggestive evidence and links, because hey if that’s the standard of proof needed…
What if there is a secret, far-right group consisting of an association of white supremacists, Nazis, mobbed up millionaires, and generally fascist-leaning RWNJs – and QAnon is a psy-op they created to build an army of useful idiots, who would help spread their message so that eventually a large portion of the population would be compliant when the American putsch goes down?
If it is a psy-op designed by the Order of Trump, it explains the president’s regular retweets of QAnon-aligned Twitter accounts, and his sometimes curious use of the number 17 (Q is the 17th letter of the alphabet, so QAnoners get excited about anybody mentioning it as a ‘code).
It would explain why the senior presidential advisor has a life-long association with white nationalism. Why the president talks about there being “very fine people on both sides” when talking about the violent protests against a neo-Nazi march in Charlottesville, Va. The reason for the constant dog whistling and other odd moments over the past four years (Hail Hydra!)…
It explains the rise of huge number of Facebook groups pushing for a second civil war in America, Trump ally Roger Stone threatening political violence and civil war if something happened to the president, Michael Cohen’s suggestion that “there will never be a peaceful transition of power” if Trump loses the upcoming election, Alex Jones and his Infowars crew constantly jonesing for a civil war, and Trump’s tweets urging people in Minnesota, Michigan, and Virginia to ‘liberate’ themselves (“Trump’s tweets pushed many online extremist communities to speculate whether the president was advocating for armed conflict, an event they’ve termed “the boogaloo,” for which many far-right activists have been gearing up and advocating since last year.”)
It provides a possible reason Trump is courting the worst of the American military, and QAnon is inspiring gung-ho mercenaries (though it’s worth remembering Trump also has Blackwater founder Erik Prince in his corner as well). Why militias now turn up in support of local sheriffs, and armed protestors are now intimidating lawmakers. And why the Republican party is continuing to select QAnon supporters as political nominees.
Okay, I’m going a bit over the top. This is all very unlikely to be true…I’m free associating between a lot of crazy ideas. I’m just saying though, if QAnoners want to believe in a narrative based on fairly flimsy evidence and a network of random connections, mine is probably more likely than a lying narcissistic man-baby being selected to save the world from an evil cabal of Satanic paedophiles – who since being arrested have been let out on day release with ankle monitors. (Not to mention that the good guys decided to release hints about what was happening to the public through 4Chan, but in cryptic clues so that they didn’t give the game away, but also hoped people would solve the clues anyhow…wut?)
The problem is, it now doesn’t need to be true for the consequences to arise. The likes of Trump, Roger Stone, Alex Jones, Paul Vallely and QAnon are at least peddling and promoting aspects of these scenarios, so that we do now have the ‘boogaloo’ movement primed for armed action, and millions of QAnoners who are absolutely gagging to view Obama being lynched on pay-per-view. The tinder is dry, and the fuel load is high.
So what happens when someone lights a match?
