I'm a stay-at-home mom and housewife. To the naked eye, I look like the average woman driving around in a grocery-getter car with three car seats in the back. However, I have a secret. Well, it's not a secret to people that know me, but if you saw me on the street, you might assume I'm a "normie."
That's what conspiracy theorists call the population that doesn't subscribe to the practice of questioning the government. I've been a long-time lurker on a popular website that got a lot of attention during the election and post-election fallout. I was on the site when mainstream media labeled sites like thedonald.win and patriots.win as "hate groups" and "insurrectionists."
I watched as news anchors took snippets of posts and aimed them like arrows, designed to make the poster look violent and crazy. Q? Well, I'm not so sure I'd label myself a Q follower. I don't even know where to go on the web to find the infamous Q drops.
But what I find on these sites is quick, usually accurate information from all over the globe. Whoever these other conspiracy-minded individuals are, they have their fingers on the pulse of current events, and they miss nothing.
They're the only ones reporting on the election audits, the vaccine reactions, and news about a Swiss diplomat falling to her death from her seventeenth-floor apartment in Tehran, Iran. Naturally, it led to Clinton-esque assumptions.
This forum, which has a nostalgic old-school chat room feel, allows free speech and conversation. Sure, I've scrolled the comments of disagreements and watched as the parties became heated, but no Facebook god came out of my screen and slapped on a banner with a blurred filter over it. The followers, who often refer to each other as patriots, also predicted the vaccine passport issue early on in the pandemic.
They were called "crazy" by MSM for that one, but I digress…
Now that conservatives are being annihilated from social media, there's been a slow trickle of people coming to sites like these. These are not extremists, white supremacists, or Nazis like CNN would have you believe. They're people with different opinions and fully formed thoughts that weren't handed to them through the TV.
The massive cultural divide isn't going anywhere; that much is clear. Facebook and Twitter are doing their best to stamp out any flames set by the free thinkers with their fact-checked banners and virtue signaling "I got vaccinated" profile picture frames. Don't look at the man behind the curtain, and certainly don't question the fact-checkers, lest you look like a Trumpie!
Then, there's the FBI. Oh, those guys… Not only are they calling conspiracy theorists "domestic terrorists," but they're also wasting time hunting down grandmas that might have been at the Capitol on January 6 and harassing people about a laptop that they claimed was never stolen at one point.
So, who are these people that the powers that be want everyone to fear? They're working-class men who work hard for their paycheck. They're people of color who are tired of the programmed divide between people. They're moms who are worried about what's being taught in schools and the prospect of their biological female daughters playing full-contact sports with trans female athletes. They call BS on BLM and point out the hypocrisy of their mission and actions. But perhaps most importantly, they're the people that live without fear of judgment. They see what's coming down the culture pipeline and aren't afraid to stand up for their beliefs in the face of ostracism.
It's interesting to be a fly on the wall, lurking in the corners of a chat and watching the discourse develop. I regularly don't post on social media my political beliefs, and I rarely comment. Still, I follow the stories and validate the information on my own (which isn't what everyone should be doing anyway?). Conspiracy theorists have gone underground. Most don't support Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter, and who can blame them?
There's a culture war going on, and they, or rather "we," don't have the ammo to fight back on those platforms alone. With accounts being shut down left and right, freethinkers are forced to have alternate social media accounts and utilize lesser-known sites. The narrative pushes us out inch by inch, laughing at Christian values and turning away from any act of violence inflicted on a white person.
A war? Yes, it's a calculated move to silence anyone willing to speak out against the leftists' plans for our country. It's coordinated with news outlets, politicians, and big tech. It's not hard to find evidence of such manipulation. Still, the vast majority of people are so accepting of what the talking screen tells them; they may as well be asleep, letting the government navigate their daily lives.
I didn't set out to become enthralled in the chatter of Q followers. Still, here I am, asking questions, examining the narrative, and not falling for the messages my liberal arts degree tried to indoctrinate. I'm not saying you should jump on the train and start scouring the news for hidden messages from a mysterious government insider, but maybe turn off the TV. What conclusions can you draw from the facts if you don't have mockingbird journalists chirping in your ear?
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About the Author:
Breanna Leslie is a freelance writer, author, and editor from West Virginia. She has been published in Harness Magazine, Future Female Leaders, Motherscope, and a handful of literary publications. She’s dedicated to publishing honest work that doesn’t bow down in the face of censorship.