Mike Pence deletes tweet of him with police officer who's wearing a Qanon badge - Polidicks

https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/salvadorhernandez/mike-pence-deleted-picture-qanon-florida Vice President Mike Pence on Friday tweeted, and then quickly deleted, a picture of himself and a Florida sheriff’s deputy wearing a QAnon conspiracy patch on his uniform. The picture was similar to other posts when Pence travels across the country, but one of the deputies greeting the vice president just outside of Air Force Two could be seen wearing a prominent red patch on his chest with the letter “Q.” Minutes after BuzzFeed News reached out to the White House and Pence’s office regarding the picture, the tweet was deleted and reposted, but this time without the image with the QAnon patch. QAnon is a conspiracy theory that sprung from 4chan, claiming that, among other things, President Trump is trying to save the world from a global pedophile human trafficking ring that involves high-ranking politicians and Hollywood figures. The conspiracy, which has evolved and encompassed a wide range of baseless theories, circles around a figure identified as “Q,” who claims to be a high-ranking US official and who posts obscure statements that followers try to interpret as some sort of information drop to the president’s supporters. An official at the Vice President’s Office told BuzzFeed News the image was deleted from Pence’s account after the patch was pointed out to staff. The official added that the image was taken down so as not to draw attention to the baseless conspiracy theory. The deputy in the picture was identified as Sgt. Matt Patten, a decorated 27-year veteran in the Broward County Sheriff’s Office in Florida. Local law enforcement officials assigned to high-profile duties, such as visits from the president and vice president, are vetted for security reasons, and the assignments are often seen as a reward and honor for officials with distinguished and lengthy careers. Previous social media posts by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office show that Patten was a member of the department’s Office of Homeland Security in 2015. He was also awarded a Sheriff’s Foundation Medallion the same year for providing anti-terrorism training to the SWAT team. Neither Patten nor the sheriff’s office immediately responded to BuzzFeed News’ requests for comment.

What world do we live in where people take 4chan posts as actual evidence?

Wowee that's hilarious

Man I wonder what else is in store for us in the next episode of Real Life

I've been trying to find what the other patch means, the one with the crossed axe/labrys and scythe. I feel like it's necessary info to figure out whether this is a cheeky prank on the VP or something sinister.

The Era of Misinformation

When did that start, WW1? Medieval witch hunts? Great Fire of Rome?

i think it means sheriff

Trump wouldn't have deleted it. This is why I'd rather have Pence as president.

So, which is worse, that a murdercult responsible for multiple terrorist attacks is infiltrating American law enforcement, or that the VP of the US knows this is bad enough to cover up, but won't do anything to stop.

that's a police officer?! he's wearing like full fucking military gear!?

And you're now aware of the increasing militarization of American police over the last decade or two. Though to be fair if there is any time when local police should be well-protected and well-geared, it's when they're involved in protecting the Vice-President. But the fact that cops from a Sheriff's office even have that gear to begin with is a wakeup call to Americans.

The military industrial complex always needs new customers.

The internet brought us into the Information Age. Social media brought us into the Mis-information Age.

Those are SWAT. they're wearing green shirts and green body armor.

I wouldn't trust an officer, police or SWAT, with a cult's badge on him.

Not really, it's for the protection of our leaders. Heavily armed individuals around leaders isn't just an America thing.

i'd be fucking terrified if a Sheriff is wearing a Qanon badge.

Ive been reading the thread as quran and was very confused by some of the posts here

Want to start a rumour on /pol/ that Qanon is a way of infiltrating 4chan to support the Quran subliminally to fracture the qanon base and cause infighting?

How is it a cult? It's a shitpost, lmao. It's like having a FP patch on officer. From my perspecive, as a reservist, we were allowed our own patches as long as it didn't impact regs. I'd actually say it's fine, as long as the officer in question didn't display prejudice one way or another, which I guess is their job. It actually speaks to the professionalism of the Florida PD and Pence that they'd delete this photo, knowing it would be used politically. I.e. how is this news other than to moan about the current administration?

qanon is a lot more than a shitpost to many people

I guess I don't know, but I've always seen it as bored anons randomly shitposting about events. Whoever does it is only right like 40% of the time, a logical person can see it's someone just stating their opinion about what's gonna happen in a week, or bullshitting what will happen in the future (like any 'oracle').

Just because a fucking nutjob believes an anon shitposting and uses it to excuse his atrocity, doesn't mean it's less of a shitpost... Humans wanting to do fucked up stuff have always found justification somewhere, afterall.

It started as shitposting - in fact it's been heavily rumored it was started by left-leaning 4channers to intentionally try to make far-right lunatics look as stupid as possible. The problem is it worked so well that it's legitimately fanning the flames of hatred country-wide. There is already a not insignificant percent of the baby boomer demographic who believes Alex Jones is gospel truth - it didn't take much for many of them to become legit believers in Qanon.

Look at how pizzagate ended. At some point treating it as "just a shitpost" is just naive, even if it started as that. The spread of conspiracy theories in general is dangerous.

QAnon is basically what Pizzagate evolved into once the spotlight was shone on it after fucknut walked in with a rifle. When that happened, for a lot of people the spell was broken or they were otherwise driven away from actively believing in and engaging with the Pizzagate conspiracy because it was now getting law enforcement scrutiny. Everyone else who didn't leave? They doubled down on the conspiracy, and Q has since taken over Pizzagate and made it but a single part of the giant Q conspiracy theory. The idea is that there is a (((globalist))) pedophile (there's pizzagate) leftist elite illuminati cabal within the US government and other major western powers, and Donald Trump, Jeff Sessions, and Robert Mueller were all secretly working together to take the system down from within and burn the corruption to the ground. Any minute now, every minute now, QAnon believers have been waiting for the news that the battlements are aflame and a majority of Congress (mostly perceived-corporate-whore Democrats but also corrupt/insufficiently-MAGA Republicans) has been arrested and the holy Trump-Sessions-Mueller trinity is moments away from playing their hands in reshaping America into a utopia as envisioned by disillusioned and thoroughly gullible (if not mentally ill) boomers who don't understand why everything went to shit under their watch. And then Trump fired Jeff Sessions right after the midterm and the Q-predicted red wave didn't happen, which broke the spell for a few and made the rest double down even harder and encorporate that reality into the conspiracy theory. And it's worth noting that the QAnon debacle is predicated on crazy boomers interpreting Q's cryptic (and meaningless) posts, so the real "blame" for QAnon beliefs lies with the community itself, not whoever is posting under Q, because they basically read the Ouija board of bullshit and decide for themselves that, making up an example, today's message mentions a "Scott" and "Glauber Rocha" (a famous and now-dead Brazilian film director) between several lines of other nonsense with no context means Scott Pruitt is a Brazilian double agent or whatever the fuck. It's a crowdsourced madness cult.

An interesting theory I heard about Pizzagate and QAnon was comparing it to other murdercults. These people think Trump is their messiah and during the election run they were basically expecting him to do absolutely everything and make all their dreams come true, then when that doesn't happen there's basically three possible outcomes: if he lost the election then they would likely go full Jonestown and go out with murder/suicides because their Messiah was denied, but since he won the election there were two possibilities, either the spell is broken, or they have to resort to even more insane conspiracy theories to explain why their Messiah is supposed to be in charge but doesn't appear to actually be fulfilling any prophecies. Essentially they're the same as any other doomsday cult.

Feels like some communist symbol to be tbh.

digital misinformation era