Big-brain thread on the Qanon phenomenon.

At first glance, it's just a stupid fantasy for boomers and MAGApedes that there are good guys in the American government, not borne out by any evidence or by anything we already know about the inner workings of USG. But falseness never stopped a good narrative.

At the second level, Qanon works because it energizes and mobilizes MAGA people while irritating and annoying liberals. Q people actually talk back to blue checkmarks and libtard politicians, whose reaction is always some variation of "where do you get your balls?"

This means that Qanon needn't be true to be successful. If the Q people knew what we know about the hegemonic power of the enemy, they'd be completely spiritually defeated and never leave their homes. Normies can't hack the long game of building institutions and community.

So, Qanon is therefore darwinistically true, in the sense that behaving as if it were true leads to greater success, regardless of whether it is actually true or not. Of course, that it is so blatantly untrue means that it's a good shibboleth for weeding out the unfaithful.

And obviously, any political movement in the age of mass democracy must by necessity recruit large swathes of mid- and low- IQ normies, even if only as a votebank. They need a narrative separate from the narrative for the movement elite - a multimodal religious system.

And at the third level of analysis, we see why Qanon was actually harmful to the dissident right. While it energized the low- and mid-IQ normie conservative and Trump supporter, it repelled the dissident right's intellectual elite.

Telling a story about a cabal of good guys in the US military who'll start arresting the pedophile satanic elites any day now works for a peasant who just wants to grill, but offends an aristocrat who not only pursues the truth, but also wants to self-actualize in this pursuit.

Nobody becomes a dissident rightist out of pleasure or seeking profit - it's always a heroic narrative that draws them in. "Sit tight and trust the plan while our BEAUTIFUL MILITARY saves us" is patronizing, offensive and downright rude for someone who wants to save the world.

And thus the Qanon narrative is the story of electrifying and giving purpose to the plebeians while alienating and offending the patricians who'd otherwise be on your side.

In other words, the tale of modern conservatism.