Protocols 2020, Nothing New Under the Sun

I think I've only mentioned QAnon a few times in my Twitter round-ups. I was hoping to not have to talk about it directly at all because it's clearly a few light years past absurd. 

But this is 2020 and Mafia Mulligan's America, so I guess I have to at least once, since it sounds like it's going to affect the election. I keep hearing that it's spreading to more and more people, including lately "suburban women" (which means those coveted suburban white women voters, I imagine) because of the exploited and abducted children angle. 

Cory Doctorow had a memorable thread on this yesterday that sums up the reality:

In 1903, Russian antisemites published a pamphlet called the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, purporting to reveal a secret Jewish cabal that secretly controlled the world's governments, using its leaders as puppets.

This power allowed them to kidnap Christian babies and use their blood in secret, mystical rituals. The Protocols were wildly popular, and prompted endless rounds of vicious, bloody, genocidal pogroms.

Henry "No Jews or Dogs Allowed" Ford and Charles "Lucky" Lindbergh LOVED the Protocols and paid to have them translated into English and distributed across America. They also founded a group dedicated to protecting Hitler from "American aggression" called "AMERICA FIRST."

Hitler also loved the Protocols. Mein Kampf heavily plagiarised it. Nazis worshipped Hitler as a living god who had unearthed a vast conspiracy and would have a day of reckoning, a gathering storm that would wipe wickedness from the Earth.

Is any of this sounding familiar? You know, like, are there boomers in your life in red hats who worship Trump as a god because he's discovered a deep state cabal of baby-kidnapping, ritual-killing evildoers led by a Jewish billionaire named Soros?

If you're lucky enough that this isn't ringing bells, it's because you haven't yet encountered the idiocy that is Qanon. But last month, a group of neo-Nazis waving Q signs LITERALLY STORMED THE REICHSTAG.

Take it away, genocide historian Gregory Stanton: "The world has seen QAnon before. It was called Nazism. In QAnon, Nazism wants a comeback."

 It may literally take cult deprogramming to bring people back from this.

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Gregory Stanton is the founding president of Genocide Watch, the founder of the Cambodian Genocide Project, and the founder of the Alliance Against Genocide. Dr. Stanton was Research Professor in Genocide Studies and Prevention at George Mason University, Arlington, Virginia, and the James Farmer Professor of Human Rights at the University of Mary Washington.