How close is Donald Trump to the QAnon conspiracy movement? According to the evidence during an election campaign appearance in Youngstown last weekend, the ex-president has practically distanced himself from the crude mythology, as reported by the New York Times and other US media. At least that’s the impression one could get from the musical accompaniment to his speech and the gestures shown in the audience. A spokesman for Trump denied the connection and called it a construct of the “fake news media”.
However, the musical accompaniment to Trump’s speech in the troubled industrial city in Ohio spoke a different language. While the ex-president spoke about the supposed decline of the US, the background music played was virtually indistinguishable from a song called “Wwg1wga,” which is considered a QAnon anthem of sorts. The acronym stands for the slogan of the movement “Where we go one, we go all.” (roughly: “There, where one goes, there all go”). Meanwhile, dozens of people in the crowd raised their index fingers in the air – as a sign for the “1” mentioned in the song’s title. Apparently they were reacting to the played song, which they thought they recognized. Other interpretations pointed out that the gesture was intended to signal “America first”. A Trump spokesman said the song played was called “Mirrors” and was available royalty-free from an online audio library.
However, Trump’s flirt with the conspiracy mythology was not only revealed on the stage in Youngstown. A photo posted to Truth Social last week showed the 76-year-old wearing a Q pin on his lapel; above it the slogan “The storm is coming”. QAnon supporters supposedly understand the “storm” as the moment when Trump regains power, has defeated his enemies, arrested them and possibly executed them live on the Internet. In the minds of QAnon supporters, Trump was already engaged in a battle against satanic, child-trafficking Liberals and Democrats while in the White House. Accordingly, the FBI warns against the movement and sees a growing danger that its followers could become violent.
Federal police and the Justice Department tried to delegitimize Trump in Ohio. “We are a nation that has used law enforcement against the opposing political party like never before,” Trump told the crowd. “We have a Federal Bureau of Investigation that does not allow bad, election-changing facts to be presented to the public.” The ex-president has been feeding the 2020 election fraud narrative for years, although there is no evidence to support it. He tries to portray investigations against him regarding his handling of secret documents and the suspicion of a coup in connection with the storming of the Capitol as illegitimate.
Trump painted Republican candidate J.D. Vance supported the future of the United States in the darkest colors as the midterm elections in early November approached. In Ukraine, the United States could easily “land in World War III.” There is “no more fair press”; the traditional media, some of which criticize Trump, are “really the enemy of the people”. He falsely claimed that freedom of expression was no longer possible, that the US was a country “where crime is rampant like never before” and “where the economy is collapsing”.
Quellen: “New York Times”; “The Guardian”
