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Since Jan. 6, the pro-Trump Internet has descended into infighting over money and followers 

Far-right influencers and QAnon devotees are battling over online audiences in the power vacuum created by Trump’s departure from office 

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Donald Trump speaks as his supporters gather for the Save America March event that stretched from the White House to the Washington Monument on January 6. (Matt McClain/The Washington Post)

By Drew Harwell

January 3, 2022 at 7:00 a.m. EST

The far-right firebrands and conspiracy theorists of the pro-Trump Internet have a new enemy: each other.

QAnon devotees are livid at their former hero Michael Flynn for accurately calling their jumbled credo “total nonsense.” Donald Trump superfans have voiced a sense of betrayal because the former president, booed for getting a coronavirus immunization booster, has become a “vaccine salesman.” And attorney Lin Wood seems mad at pretty much everyone, including former allies on the scattered “elite strike-force team” investigating nonexistent mass voter fraud.

After months of failing to disprove the reality of Trump’s 2020 presidential election loss, some of the Internet’s most popular right-wing provocateurs are grappling with the pressures of restless audiences, saturated markets, ongoing investigations and millions of dollars in legal bills.

The result is a chaotic melodrama, playing out via secretly recorded phone calls, personal attacks in podcasts, and a seemingly endless stream of posts on Twitter, Gab and Telegram calling their rivals Satanists, communists, pedophiles or “pay-triots” — money-grubbing grifters exploiting the cause.

The infighting reflects the diminishing financial rewards for the merchants of right-wing disinformation, whose battles center not on policy or doctrine but on the treasures of online fame: viewer donations and subscriptions; paid appearances at rallies and conferences; and crowds of followers to buy their books and merchandise.

But it also reflects a broader confusion in the year since QAnon’s faceless nonsense-peddler, Q, went mysteriously silent.

Without Q’s cryptic messages, influencers who once hung on Q’s every “drop” have started fighting to “grab the throne to become the new point person for the movement,” said Sara Aniano, a Monmouth University graduate student of communication studying far-right rhetoric and conspiracy theories on social media.

“In the absence of a president like Trump and in the absence of a figure like Q, there’s this void where nobody knows who to follow,” Aniano said. “At one point it seemed like Q was gospel. Now there’s a million different bibles, and no one knows which one is most accurate.”

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The cage match kicked off late in November when Kyle Rittenhouse, acquitted of all charges after fatally shooting two men at a protest last year in Kenosha, Wis., told Fox News host Tucker Carlson that his former attorneys, including Wood, had exploited his jail time to boost their fundraising “for their own benefit, not trying to set me free.”

Wood has since snapped back at his 18-year-old former client, wondering aloud in recent messages on the chat service Telegram: Could his life be “literally under the supervision and control of a ‘director?’ Whoever ‘Kyle’ is, pray for him.”

The feud carved a major rift between Wood and his former compatriots in the pro-Trump “stop the steal” campaign, with an embattled Wood attacking Rittenhouse supporters including Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.); Flynn, a former national security adviser to Trump; Sidney Powell, Flynn’s attorney; and Patrick Byrne, the Overstock founder who became a major “stop the steal” financier.

Each faction has accused the opposing side of betraying the pro-Trump cause or misusing the millions of dollars in funds that have gone to groups such as Powell’s Defending the Republic.

Wood has posted recordings of his phone calls with Byrne, who can be heard saying that Wood is “a little kooky,” and Flynn, a QAnon icon who can be heard telling Wood that QAnon’s mix of extremist conspiracy theories was actually bogus “nonsense” or a “CIA operation.”

Life amid the ruins of QAnon: ‘I wanted my family back’

Beyond the infighting, both sides are also staring down the potential for major financial damage in court. A federal judge last month ordered Wood and Powell to pay roughly $175,000 in legal fees for their “historic and profound abuse of the judicial process” in suing to overturn the 2020 presidential election. And Powell and others face potentially billions of dollars in damages as a result of defamation lawsuits filed by Dominion Voting Systems, which they falsely accused of helping to rig the 2020 race.

To help cover their legal bills, the factions have set up online merchandise shops targeting their most loyal followers. Fans of Powell’s bogus conspiracy theory can, for instance, buy a four-pack set of “Release the Kraken: Defending the Republic” drink tumblers from her website for $80. On Flynn’s newly launched website, fans can buy “General Flynn: #FightLikeAFlynn” women’s racerback tank tops for $30. And Wood’s online store sells $64.99 “#FightBack” unisex hoodies; the fleece, a listing says, feels like “wearing a soft, fluffy cloud.”

Their arguments increasingly resemble the performative clashes of pro wrestling, said Mike Rothschild, a conspiracy theory researcher and author of a book on QAnon: full of flashy, marketable story lines of heroes conquering their enemies. The drama, he said, gives the influencers a way to keep their audiences angry and engaged while also offering them a chance to prove their loyalty by buying stuff.

 

Trump supporters at the U.S. Capitol grounds in Washington, D.C. Not long after, scores of pro-Trump protesters breached the fence line and the Capitol building itself. (Michael S. Williamson/The Washington Post)

QAnon is “the easiest money that you could possibly make if you don’t have a conscience, but there’s only a certain number of people you can fleece. It’s not a renewable resource,” said Rothschild (who has no relation to the famous banking family targeted in antisemitic conspiracy theories).

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“The fact that they’re all mad at each other, that’s all a byproduct of the fact that they’re just desperate for money, and there’s only a certain amount,” he added. So now, he said, the us-vs.-them argument for many QAnon influencers is: “They’re the pedophiles, the Freemasons, the illuminati. I’m the truth-teller. I’m the one who’s trying to save the world.”

QAnon reshaped Trump’s party and radicalized believers. The Capitol siege may just be the start.

Although Trump is only indirectly connected to some of the increasingly personal battles, many of them show clear signs of his playbook: winning attention and overwhelming the enemy through constant, uninhibited attacks. And the animosity has begun filtering down to mid-level influencers with smaller followings, who have become divided on the basis of their loyalty to the warring camps. Some have begun marking their allegiances on Telegram with special emoji in their usernames: Three stars, for instance, means you’re on team Flynn. (His opponents haven’t agreed on a symbol yet, though some have used the three stars as a punchline.)

QAnon’s credibility didn’t exactly climb when its long-heralded promise — that Trump’s long-secret war against a Satan-worshiping “deep state” would culminate in a righteous apocalyptic battle known as the “storm” — collapsed last January. As Joe Biden entered the White House, Trump took refuge in Palm Beach, Fla., and most of Trump’s enemies were left unvanquished.

Many believers have sought since then to distance themselves from the QAnon name, which they’ve called a “moniker created by [them] to attack us,” though Q is still their central prophet, devotees still call themselves “anons” and the theories remain the same.

Fans of Flynn have argued that, in his caught-on-tape conversation, he was merely disavowing the QAnon media creation, not them, leaving the sanctity of Q intact. On Telegram last month, Wood said that while “Q speaks truth” in the fight against “pedophilia and satanic rituals,” the broader QAnon movement is “likely a Deep State operation.”

But the movement has far from evaporated. Dozens of candidates who have boosted QAnon talking points are running for Congress this year, including Ron Watkins, the longtime administrator of Q’s favorite message board, 8kun, (who, as one unproven theory argues, was perhaps once even Q himself.) And Q-inspired offshoots are promoting anti-vaccine propaganda and other bizarre theories: One group in Dallas has camped out for weeks awaiting the second coming of President John F. Kennedy’s long-dead son.

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The power vacuum has played out as Trump and his allies have fought not only an investigation into pro-Trump rioters’ storming of the U.S. Capitol but separate inquiries into his family business. And Trump himself has had to go on defense. After he promoted coronavirus vaccines as having “saved tens of millions of lives worldwide,” some of his most ardently supportive online communities pushed to brand him a traitor.

 

Members of the pro-Trump mob in the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6. The shirtless “QAnon Shaman,” Jacob Anthony Chansley, was sentenced in November to 41 months in prison. (Saul Loeb/AFP/Getty Images)

In an anonymous poll posted to QAnon-boosting Telegram channels asking whether Trump’s receipt of a booster shot made them comfortable getting vaccinated, 97 percent of the more than 19,000 votes said no. Andrew Torba, the head of Gab, a social network popular with the far right, posted that Trump’s promotion of “his biggest ‘accomplishment,’ the death jab,” was “so cringe.”

With Facebook and Twitter banning many Q-related accounts, much of the QAnon discussion has played out in the past year on social media platforms popular with far-right sympathizers. But even those online communities have found themselves in conflict with one another.

In posts to his 3 million Gab followers, Torba has criticized Gettr, launched by Trump’s longtime aide Jason Miller, and Rumble, which Torba said was run by “Canadian blockheads” pushing “the establishment right’s second subversion attempt of the true alternative tech movement.”

Torba has also shared clips of conspiracy theorist Alex Jones saying he would “declare war” on Trump over his support for vaccines. Jones — facing his own financial pressures after a judge ruled in November that he must pay damages to families of children killed in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which he falsely called a hoax — has recently started hawking a membership-only video series for “navigating the apocalypse” for $222.75.

Sidney Powell group raised more than $14 million spreading election falsehoods

Even beyond QAnon, many in Trump’s orbit appear eager to settle scores and wage long-running feuds. Trump confidant Roger Stone, pardoned by Trump after his 2019 conviction on a charge of lying to Congress, invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination on Dec. 17 after being subpoenaed as part of the House probe into the Jan. 6 riot.

But two days later, on Telegram, he claimed that former Trump adviser Stephen K. Bannon — an old foe he accused of lying about him during the 2019 trial — “gave the order to breach” the Capitol “to curry favor” with an uninterested Trump. (In his next post, Stone advertised his online fundraising auction, in which he’s offering autographed rocks for $50.)

The cage match, coupled with months of pro-Trump prophecies falling apart, appears to have worn down some QAnon promoters. One influencer who recently voiced some exasperation with the “annoying” Wood-vs.-Flynn drama, “SQvage DQwg,” said he was considering leaving Telegram and his roughly 50,000 followers “if nothing happens publicly before the end of this year. The time is now. We are tired. Exhausted. Hold the Line doesn’t have the same meaning anymore.”

But many of the fights still show the tried-and-true signatures of modern-media storytelling: the bitter rivalries and gossip that online audiences often can’t help watching.

“It’s become almost like reality TV, and what makes great reality TV is conflict,” Aniano said. “Conflict creates great content. And these people are content creators, if nothing else.”

Complete coverage: Pro-Trump mob storms Capitol building 

The Attack: Before, During and After

A sprawling investigation: What we know so far about the Capitol riot suspects

Six hours of paralysis: Inside Trump’s failure to act after a mob stormed the Capitol

Profiles of three involved in the attack: A horn-wearing ‘shaman.’ A cowboy evangelist. For some, the Capitol attack was a kind of Christian revolt.

Video timeline: 41 minutes of fear from inside the Capitol siege

The Jan. 6 committee: What it has done and where it is headed

MORE ON THE JAN. 6 INSURRECTION

HAND CURATED

• Facebook groups topped 10,000 daily attacks on election before Jan. 6, analysis shows 

January 4, 2022 

 

 

Since Jan. 6, the pro-Trump Internet has descended into infighting over money and followers 

January 3, 2022 

 

The Attack: Before, During and After with key findings 

October 31, 2021 

By Drew Harwell

Drew Harwell is a technology reporter covering artificial intelligence and the algorithms changing our lives.

So many are dying, over 800,000 now, far more than all those lost in American wars altogether, and yet there are still more people proudly risking their lives for nothing. Here is yet another. So Many losses to the Republican Party, needlessly. “There is a way that seems right to a man, but in the end it leads to death.” Prov 14:10

The way of a fool seems right to him, but a wise man listens to advice. Prov12:15

I like this Op-ed but I don’t see how we will make the attackers accountable.

Opinion: How to get real accountability for Jan. 6 

 

Supporters of then-President Donald Trump gather at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021. (Jose Luis Magana/AP)

 

By E.J. Dionne Jr.

Columnist |

Today at 9:00 a.m. EST

The Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol was an attempt, through force and violence, to overturn the will of the majority expressed in a free and fair election. In a well-functioning democratic republic, its anniversary would engender a commitment across party lines to protecting and enhancing our system of self-rule.

At the moment, we do not live in such a republic. One of our two major political parties refuses to face up to what happened. Worse, the Republican Party has been using Donald Trump’s liesabout the 2020 election as a pretext to restrict access to the ballot box in many GOP-controlled states and to undermine honest ballot counts by allowing partisan bodies to seize control of the electoral process.

It is important to understand Jan. 6 as a political event and not be misled by a desire to sweep our divisions under a rug woven of well-meaning wishful thinking. While condemnations of the bloody aggression initially crossed party lines, most Republican politicians either retreated into silence bred by fear of Trump or set out to minimize the assault on police officers and the vandalizing of public space as a “protest.”

Capitol Police officers Harry Dunn and Aquilino Gonell: The government we defended last Jan. 6 has a duty to hold all the perpetrators accountable

The violence of Jan. 6 was not in the service of some great cause. The deaths of Capitol Police officers, the beating of others, the degradation of the Capitol, and the terrorizing of officials and staff were all rooted in one man’s selfish indifference to the obligations of democratic leadership. Trump provoked the attack on the counting of electoral votes because he hoped to rig an election. How fitting that he recently gave his “complete support” to Hungary’s strongman, Viktor Orban.

In their shared version of politics, authoritarian bosses don’t let mere citizens get in their way.

White House gives preview of Biden’s Jan. 6 anniversary speech

White House press secretary Jen Psaki on Jan. 5 gave a preview of President Biden’s January 6 anniversary speech which will highlight truth of what happened. (The Washington Post)

 

 

The tell as to how much Trump has corrupted his party is its embrace of a wholly new position on federal guarantees of voting rights.

One of the most deeply honorable aspects of the history of the Republican Party was its commitment to universal suffrage after the Civil War — which at the time meant the full enfranchisement of formerly enslaved Black Americans.

Against the wishes of a Democratic Party then suffused by racism, the GOP pushed through the 14th and 15th Amendments, authorizing use of the federal government’s power to protect civil and voting rights. A century later, the Republican Party was also pivotal in passing the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

These days, mimicking the reactionary Southern Democrats of old, Republicans sound the tocsin of “states’ rights” in opposing a repaired Voting Rights Act and the Freedom to Vote Act, which is designed to fight the voter suppression and election subversion that lie at the heart of Trumpism.

It’s this inversion of history that makes all the more ominous a new argument being advanced to block the democracy bills. The idea is that because Republicans now oppose what they used to support, Democrats, in the name of “bipartisanship,” should abandon their commitment to protecting voting rights and ballot access and settle for reforms that affect only what happens after ballots are cast.

This would include reforming the Electoral Count Act of 1887, whose weaknesses in defining how Congress and the vice president should act in counting electoral votes were exposed by Trump’s machinations.

Of course we should reform the Electoral Count Act, and the House commission investigating Jan. 6 could well propose doing so. But there is little point in having a nice, orderly count of the electoral college votes if the elections that produce its members (and those in the House and Senate) are marred by efforts to make it more difficult for citizens to vote and by the systematic exclusion of some groups from casting ballots.

The fact that Republicans oppose federal voting guarantees is no reason to give them veto power over bills aimed at repairing abuses their fellow partisans are enacting at the state level. Imagine if Republicans in the Reconstruction Era had said: “Oh, gee whiz, Democrats won’t support the 14th and 15th Amendments, so let’s give up on equal rights in the name of bipartisanship.”

Civil War- and Reconstruction-era metaphors are, alas, entirely on point when it comes to Jan. 6. It’s no accident that some of the criminals who invaded the Capitol waved Confederate flags. Now, as then, we are witnessing violent efforts to undercut advances in democracy and reactionary schemes in many states to impede access to the ballot. The struggle again divides our political parties, though their roles have reversed.

Accountability for the events of Jan. 6 must be legal but also political. At issue is whether we are the democratic republic we claim to be. A Congress that refuses to enforce the equal rights the insurrectionists rose up to reject would be capitulating to some of the worst impulses in our nation’s history.