{"id":907,"date":"2024-11-12T11:05:08","date_gmt":"2024-11-12T11:05:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/?page_id=907"},"modified":"2024-11-19T15:47:02","modified_gmt":"2024-11-19T15:47:02","slug":"what-ever-happened-to-baby-q","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2024\/section-1-democracy-at-stake\/what-ever-happened-to-baby-q\/","title":{"rendered":"What ever happened to baby Q?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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Harrison J. LeJeune <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Doctoral candidate at Kent State University, College of Communication and Information. His research focus is on critical theories of communication, global media, ideology, and discourse.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Email:\u00a0hlejeune@kent.edu<\/a><\/em>
X: @LeJeuneHarrison<\/a> <\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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U.S. Election 2024<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
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1. Trump\u2019s imagined reality is America\u2019s new reality<\/a> (Prof Sarah Oates)
2. Trump\u2019s threat to American democracy<\/a> (Prof Pippa Norris)
3. Why does Donald Trump tell so many lies?<\/a> (Prof Geoff Beattie)
4. Strategic (in)civility in the campaign and beyond<\/a> (Dr Emily Sydnor)
5. Can America\u2019s democratic institutions hold?<\/a> (Prof Rita Kirk)
6. How broad is presidential immunity in the United States?<\/a> (Dr Jennifer L. Selin)
7. Election fraud myths require activation: Evidence from a natural experiment<\/a> (Dr David E. Silva)
8. What ever happened to baby Q?<\/a> (Harrison J. LeJeune)
9. We\u2019re all playing Elon Musk\u2019s game now<\/a> (Dr Adrienne L. Massanari)
10. Peak woke? The end of identity politics?<\/a> (Prof Timothy J. Lynch)
11. Teaching the 2024 election<\/a> (Dr Whitney Phillips)<\/p>\n\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

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During the 2020 election media cycle, QAnon, an online driven conspiracy theory rooted in the belief that President Donald Trump would usher in a day of reckoning, dominated the liberal news cycle. Alternatively, mainstream Republicans were forced to distance themselves from the QAnon elements of their party, particularly following January 6th<\/sup> and the Stop the Steal campaign. In response to the last election, I predicted<\/a> that despite President Trump\u2019s election loss in 2020, QAnon would persist through the next wave of media savvy far-right political figures. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Q out of favor<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Following January 6th<\/sup> 2021, the QAnon brand had expired in popularity and became something of an embarrassment and liability for the GOP. The mobilizing force that, while useful for galvanizing a previously untapped voter base, had spiraled out of control, and was thus publicly derided. It became politically prudent for the right to retire the Q brand. Consequently, QAnon has been markedly absent from this election cycle. The Q flags and #TheStorm tweets have all but vanished form the spotlight. The question for the GOP therefore became how to continue to harness the electoral potential of the populist right with President Trump as a figurehead while maintaining distance from the signs now associated in the public mind with the violence of January 6th<\/sup>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Contradictions<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The solution has been to embrace the ideologies, conspiracies, and actors of the Q movement into the very core of conservative identity. The 19th<\/sup> century German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel\u2019s dialectic<\/a> provides a way of thinking about historical processes through the lens of how contradictory phenomena push and pull each other to produce new levels of organization. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The 2024 election made clear that mainstream Republican Party and QAnon are not phenomena in isolation but are placed in relation to one another. While both support Trump as candidate, they also share notable differences in their iconography and performance of conservative identity. As such, tensions between the two, particularly after January 6th<\/sup>, lead to what Hegel calls \u201cmovement,\u201d or change. Through contradiction and movement, the two phenomena undergo Aufhbung<\/em>, or sublation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sublation holds three meanings. Firstly, contradictions are negated, such as the retirement of the Q sign and its associated slogans and alternatively, the departure of the \u201creasonable\u201d conservative, with neoconservative stalwart Dick Cheney moving to endorse<\/a> Kamala Harris. Secondly, some aspects of the two phenomena are preserved. Here, the GOP is able to retain a neoconservative economic vision for America, with Trump passing the largest<\/a> corporate tax cuts in history during his previous tenure and promising<\/a> to provide further tax cuts as well as trade war with China. Alternatively, the Q right is provided free reign to inject conspiracy rhetoric into the normal discourse of the Republican Party. Fantastic lies dominated much of the election cycle, with both Trump and his vice presidential pick, J.D. Vance, repeating the conspiracy theory that Haitian migrants in Springfield, Ohio were abducting and eating<\/a> dogs and cats. Mike Pence, who served as a foil to the online right in 2016, was replaced by the internet savvy Vance. Likewise, as Hurricane Milton approached Florida in October, Representative Marjorie Taylor Green, who rose to prominence on the back of Q populism, drew on antisemitic conspiracies to claim that the government was manipulating the weather<\/a> in an attempt to slam the Biden administration\u2019s disaster response and climate agenda.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A new conspiratorial conservativism<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The final meaning of sublation is that through negation and preservation, the phenomena arrive at a new level of more sophisticated, united organization with new characteristics. The party set to take power in 2025 is one that no longer views dealing with conspiracy theories as a distasteful byproduct of mobilizing low information voters, but as a signifier by which to articulate racist, patriarchal, transphobic, and white supremacist ideology to their base. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In 1981, conservative kingmaker Lee Atwater defined his rhetorical strategy<\/a>; \u201cYou start out in 1954 by saying, \u201cN\u2014, n\u2014, n\u2014.\u201d By 1968 you can\u2019t say \u201cn\u2014\u201d that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states\u2019 rights, and all that stuff, and you\u2019re getting so abstract\u2026\u201d During the 2024 election, the rhetorical abstractions of Atwater have (d)evolved to lies repeated by the conspiratorial right. The dogwhistle has become a regular whistle. Repetitions of Haitians eating dogs, trans people grooming and mutilating children, and the government controlling the weather send a clear policy platform to the public; We don\u2019t want you to exist in OUR space.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Vance stated<\/a> that he had \u201cto create stories so that the\u2026 media actually pays attention to the suffering of the American people.\u201d It may not just be the senders who are nonbelievers. Conspiracy theories are not crafted to communicate a fact about the world, but a deeper truth to the audience \u2013 that the Republican Party is in ideological alignment with the most reactionary members of the right. For their audience, the truth of the conspiracy is inconsequential; it enough that their anger and grievances are understood and that the GOP is firmly on their side.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Harrison J. LeJeune Doctoral candidate at Kent State University, College of Communication and Information. His research focus is on critical theories of communication, global media, ideology, and discourse. Email:\u00a0hlejeune@kent.eduX: @LeJeuneHarrison During the 2020 election media cycle, QAnon, an online driven conspiracy theory rooted in the belief that President Donald Trump would usher in a day […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"parent":1004,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-907","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"yoast_head":"\nWhat ever happened to baby Q? - Election Analysis - United States<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.electionanalysis.ws\/us\/president2024\/section-1-democracy-at-stake\/what-ever-happened-to-baby-q\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"What ever happened to baby Q? - Election Analysis - United States\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Harrison J. 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