On 9/24/2022 8:55 AM, Technobarbarian wrote:
"Trump Team Sends Enforcers Into Rally Crowd to Shut Down QAnon Salutes
– Says They Are Not Security But ‘Guest Management’"
Staffers for former President Donald Trump sent “guest management” — with shirts that had “security” printed on them — into a rally crowd to enforce a ban on the QAnon salutes that got so much attention last week.
The political world has been buzzing about that strange rally scene last
week in which Trump’s supporters performed a one-finger salute during a trance-like portion of Trump’s speech scored to dramatic music.
Trump held another rally in Wilmington, North Carolina Friday night,
where Correspondent for PBS NewsHour Lisa Desjardins spotted some of
those salutes — and the aforementioned “guest management” technicians.
In an extensive thread on the rally, Desjardins posted video of the
crowd, and noted “And this happened again – though less widespread.”
Ms. Desjardins then confirmed the meaning of the salute — and the reason for its decreased prevalence.
“Confirmed w people at Trump rally who held 1 finger up that they meant
it as a symbol of QAnon’s “Where We Go One We Go All” and further…
Security staff here fanned out and told people to take down their
fingers. That is a reason why – maybe main reason – we saw fewer,” she wrote.
[snip]
LOL So now they're stage managing the audience participation portion of the performance because it's getting a little too real.
TB
"How a QAnon splinter group became a feature of Trump rallies
An offshoot of the extremist movement called Negative48 is thronging
Trump political events, causing tensions with the former president’s team.
By Isaac Arnsdorf
September 26, 2022 at 6:00 a.m. EDT
WILMINGTON, N.C. — Julie McDaniel can’t say for sure who started it. It might even have been her.
McDaniel was in the front section at a Trump rally earlier this month in Youngstown, Ohio, when the former president started wrapping up his
speech by playing an instrumental score embraced by followers of the
QAnon online conspiracy theory. She felt moved to raise her right hand
and point to the sky — to God, she said. Soon everyone around her was
doing it, too.
“It was spontaneous, it was like the domino effect,” said McDaniel, who also attended Friday’s rally here in Wilmington, N.C., coming from her
home in the Chicago area. She objected to news coverage that condemned
the gesture, with some comparing it to a Nazi salute. “It was an
amazing, amazing moment, when you have the unity that everybody is
there, and not only in this small group that was on the floor, but other
people were doing it,” she said.
The group on the floor was an offshoot of the QAnon community called Negative48, a name that they say stands for the opposite of evil.
They’ve become a fixture at Trump’s rallies this year. Numbering about
100, they can be spotted by their lanyards sporting as many as 16
commemorative buttons from each rally they have attended. Or see them
wrap their arms around each other to sway to Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds” blasting over the loudspeakers. Or lining up to take selfies in
front of the stage with their leader, a man in American flag pants named Michael Brian Protzman.
The FBI has warned that extremist movements such as QAnon — which
loosely revolves around the baseless belief that the world is secretly
run by Satan-worshipping child sex traffickers — is likely to motivate
some people to criminal and violent acts. The ideology has already been implicated in multiple crimes, including several people arrested in the
riot at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, and a recent murder in Michigan.
But the Negative48 group rejects such characterizations.
“Some people call QAnon a cult, but I like to spell it cult with a Q, Q-U-L-T, because it’s hard to find people that are on our same page,”
said group member Kelly Heath from Georgia. “It’s a strange story.
You’re not going to hear about it every day. It’s like saying that God’s coming, the world is changing, and we need it to change. There’s bad
people that run the world, and they do bad things to kids, and it’s
ugly.” Heath said the group included members who were themselves victims
of sexual abuse as children.
Kelly Heath at a rally for former president Donald Trump in Wilmington,
N.C., on Sept. 23. (Madeline Gray for The Washington Post)
As long as there have been Trump rallies, there have been roadies who
follow him from city to city. Some have called themselves the “Front Row Joes,” like Saundra Kiczenski, who Trump called up to the stage in
Anchorage in July because he liked her shirt covered with his face.
Friday’s rally in Wilmington, N.C. was her 69th. Richard Snowden said
the Wilmington rally would probably be his last, capping 80 events in 28
states across seven years. During his speech that night, Trump called
out a few women from North Carolina who he said had been to 92 rallies,
earning them a special invitation to Mar-a-Lag."
[snip]
"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/09/26/trump-qanon-rallies-negative48/"
#45's rallies remind me of religious revival tent meetings and
the Grateful Dead. The Dead had a lot of "Dead-heads" following them
around the country too.
TB
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