Thursday, February 21, 2019

Decoding the Qanon Psyop: Putin does the Nostradamus Hustle

Authors note: Around a year ago (when QAnon was still an obscure internet phenomenon) I posted several extensive pieces on the Something Awful Forums about this topic. These articles have proven quite prescient and the article below is an improved and expanded version of that material.

If you are to any degree active on (politically oriented) social media these days it is a virtual certainty that at some point you have encountered Qanon material. Much hay has been made of the bizarre claims and weird otherworld that Qanon devotees have created for themselves, and while many have tried to explain the phenomenon I feel that existing efforts to that effect have focused their attention on the wrong aspects. To that end I am presenting in this article an argument that Qanon is a weaponized form of a long existing type of occult scam (what I have dubbed a "Nostradamus Hustle") and I will further argue that the most likely culprit behind this psyop is Russian intelligence*.

*That is not to say that it is Russians doing most of the grunt work of writing or interpreting Q posts, rather that they are the source of the structure/purpose and funding for this psyop.

The Nostradamus Hustle is a type of scam that in my pre-reform days (when I was still very much a cultist traveling in fringe groups and ideologies) that I fell for repeatedly- that is why I am so familiar with the specifics of how it operates. (Understanding why I was taken advantage of by this type of scam was actually a topic that I spent considerable time focusing during my recovery.) It is my belief that once understood the format and utility of this type of scam becomes easily recognized, and further that spreading awareness of the particulars of this scam is one of the best things that can be done* to inoculate the public against it.

*at least right now in the hell-timeline we all seem to stuck in.

The Nostradamus Hustle functions by 1.) creating a stylized form of gibberish that contains disjointed words and phrases, and then 2.) convincing people* that secret/arcane information that indicates how future events will turn out can be had by decoding your gibberish. Once these two preconditions have been met the manipulator can steer his audience towards a desired end** by carefully manipulating the narrative that emerges from decoding the gibberish. In the case of Nostradamus he accomplished this task through the use of quatrains; whereas in the case of the people behind the Bible Code they essentially use a mathematical formula that transforms the Torah into a word search, and in the case of HalfPastHuman (the people behind the infamous WebBot that was very popular during the height of the 2012 doomsday fad) they generate complete gibberish that is claimed to be the result of an algorithm that tracks changes over time in how people use language online. Let us consider a sample of each, starting with the Bible Code.

*vulnerable marks

**in every case except Qanon this desired end has been "give me your money".

From Wikipedia:
The Bible code (Hebrew: הצופן התנ"כי‎, hatzofen hatanachi), also known as the Torah code, is a purported set of secret messages encoded within the Hebrew text of the Torah. This hidden code has been described as a method by which specific letters from the text can be selected to reveal an otherwise obscured message. Although Bible codes have been postulated and studied for centuries, the subject has been popularized in modern times by Michael Drosnin's book The Bible Code and the movie The Omega Code.
Many examples have been documented in the past. One cited example is that by taking every 50th letter of the Book of Genesis starting with the first taw, the Hebrew word "torah" is spelled out. The same happens in the Book of Exodus. Modern computers have been used to search for similar patterns and more complex variants, as well as quantifying its statistical likelihood.


As you can see above the Bible Code is nothing but pseudo-mystical nonsense created by applying a simple mathematical formulae to the Torah and then basically doing word-finding exercises and trying to extrapolate meanings from there. A variety of scam artists have found ways to financially profit from this over the years, most notably Michael Drosnin.

Next up we consider the Web Bot project. From Wikipedia:

Web Bot is an internet bot computer program whose developers claim is able to predict future events by tracking keywords entered on the internet. It was developed in 1997, originally to predict stock market trends.[1] The creator of the Web Bot Project, Clif High, along with his associate George Ure, keep the technology and algorithms largely secret and sell the predictions via the website.


Internet bots monitor news articles, blogs, forums, and other forms of Internet chatter. Words in the lexicon are assigned numeric values for emotional quantifiers such as duration, impact, immediacy, intensity, and others. The lexicon is dynamic, and changes according to shifts in emotional tension, and how humans communicate those changes using the Internet. As of 2008, there were about 300,000 keywords in the lexicon, along with emotional context,[2] which are fed into a computer-generated modelspace.
The operators of Web Bot interpret the bot's results and make a report called the "ALTA report" available on their website to paying subscribers. ALTA stands for "asymmetric language trend analysis".[3] Many believe the predictions are pseudoscientific and too vague to be meaningful.[4] Despite this, the creators have made many claims after the fact that their reports have predicted important events.
Below is a sample of a very old ALTA report:

These areas also indicate that [revenge assassinations] will be taking place over the latter third of
2010 and throughout most of 2011 at a planetary level as those [thought/presumed (to be) guilty]
of ['murdering' terra] are themselves [punished] by some very {ed note: probably justified}
[unbalanced persons]. Note that there are pointers for a [wave of assassinations] that seemingly
are being [engineered], and whose target will be [Jesuits] and other [jewish/zionists minions] of the
[church (of the sorcerers - aka roman catholic papists)]. That this area is buried within the [oil
volcano] side effects is unusual. There are extensive cross links over to TPTB entity. Within the
termination points here, there are many pointers to [attempts (some successful, some not)] against
the [gangs] of the [banksters (aka -rose protected, and stone buddy boys)]. At least one of the
successful [executions] is indicated to be [within sight/smell of] the [oil volcano].
The [oil volcano] sub set continues to gain data in support of the [ill winds] area, and still is gaining
support for those sub sets indicating that 1.289+ billion people will [perish] as a direct result of the
[ill winds] and the [oil volcano]. This area also continues to be tied into the [israeli mistake] sub set
in the Terra entity, the Populace/USofA entity, and the GlobalPop entity.
Noting that the [oil volcano] was created by the [zionist funded, crown owned British Petroleum
(same group that paid the CIA to put the Shah of Iran into power in 1953 among other crimes
against humanity)], it remains to be seen whether more of the [sticky dirt] of the [planetary
poisoning] will yet come to rest on the [shoulders] of the [israelis] as events progress through the
[torments of Summer] and into the [tortures of Fall, 2010].
Against the [officialdom claims] of a [cleaned well, ready for use] to be [available/accomplished in
August], the data suggests that this [claim] will also be [exposed] as [hollow] and [duplicitous] by
mid August as [nefarious (geologic) manipulation] comes [to the surface] of the [public
consciousness]. {ed note: this area is tied into the Populace/USofA entity and SpaceGoatFarts
entity by cross links that terminate in the 'big gains' of public awareness for the woo-woo
community starting in July.}
In the [ill winds] sub set newly acquired supporting layers are several indicating that in at least one
instance the [ill winds] will be so [dense/heavy] that they will be [stopped (at the) base] of a
[mountain range]. This is indicated to create a [lake of death air] at the [base of the mountains] in
what is also described as a [v-shaped (half vesica) depression]. This is not a box canyon as there
is egress to and from this area, but for the [heavy winds] the [depression/hollow] will form an
[atmospheric-lake bed].
This [lake of death air] has a major [road way] that comes over or through the [mountains], and
descends into an area that is currently [lush] with [plants]. The data shows that the [plant and
animal life] of the [region] will also die, along with [many humans] who will either be [trapped] in
the [lake of death air] or will unwittingly [travel into it]. Further the data shows the [heavy death air]
is so [toxic] that [even worms] will perish under it. This is but a single instance of thousands of
detail layers about the [ill winds] and their effects on the planet.
The basic outline of the Nostradamus Hustle is also evident here: invent some form of gibberish that you control and then manipulate the narratives that emerge to steer your marks towards a desired end.

An important concept to note here is that the mastermind/director of a Nostradamus Hustle must be extremely tuned in to their your marks- in point of fact reading the crowd is the more relevant (and rarer) skillset that separates a successful Nostradamus Hustle from the endless sea of wannabe's that never get any traction. Clif High is particularly skilled at this and that is why the Web Bot has swung from initially being targeted at stock investors to later profiting handsomely off the 2012 doomsday paranoia* to focusing almost exclusively on Bitcoin in recent years. (Credit where credit is due, Clif High knows a group of vulnerable marks when he spots them.)

*the Web Bot actually contributed so much doomsday hysteria in various occult communities that it was outright banned from discussion in places like .

As demonstrated in the above examples the general format of the scam is pretty straightforward- create a bunch of gibberish (doesn't really matter how, it just matters that your gibberish creates disjointed phrases) and then convince people somehow that your gibberish contains actionable information about future events. Once you've gotten enough people to buy in you can basically keep the scam running more-or-less indefinitely so long as you pay constant attention to your audience and always feed them exactly what they want to hear. The primary downside to this particular scam is that it requires an all-consuming focus on your audience; you can't simply half-ass things or just throw things out in the proper format. You have to continuously expend significant effort to keep prodding your audience into going along with giving you money, and in order to do that your audience has to be being told what they want to hear. (Thus Web Bots shift from stocks to 2012 doomsaying to Bitcoin)


A timeless classic with Russian Dressing.


The evidence that leads me to conclude that Q Anon on is a Russian intelligence is complicated; in the first place I've never seen a Nostradamus Hustle conducted purely for propaganda/radicaliztion purposes without any significant attempt to acquire financial gain or public attention*, the psychological toolkit required to successfully run this scam basically only appears and individuals who would use this scam for some sort of personal gain. Running a Nostradamus hustle is a pretty all-consuming affair, at least one individual operating the scam must be extremely tuned in to everything their audience of suckers is saying or doing in order to keep the scam running. In the second place I've never seen a Nostradamus Hustle that seemed designed specifically to drive compaction cycle's among Narrativists- while Narrativists are a frequent target audience for this sort of scam, it's usually just to relieve them of their money. This is the first time I have observed a Nostradamus Hustle that was seemingly set up just to provide a venue for a huge number of Narrativists to compact over and over. (Normally people running this scam try to avoid compaction cycles to the extent possible because they has a strong tendency to shrink their customer base.)


*There is a variety of Qanon merch available but this was a later development that only occurred once the psyop was already very widespread/succesful.

I also think that the selection of first 4chan and now 8Chan to operate this scam on only make sense if it's a Russian intelligence operation. Despite common perceptions; it is actually much easier for a small group of individuals to manipulate consensus on the 'chans then people realize. (e.g. project Chanology was launched via a campaign of creating false consensus on 4chan that was engaged in by the hacker group Marblecaek.) I believe that Russian intelligence operatives are hanging around Q Anon threads and strategically posting to drive the conversation in a desired direction*, I believe this is why they probably switched from 4chan to 8Chan. Once Q Anon started to pick up steam it was getting too much attention on 4chan for the manipulators to handle, so they switched to the much lower traffic 8Chan in order to make their task easier.

*Russia also seems to either control or at least influence several of the most prominent Qanon interpreters.

Among the stronger pieces of evidence for a Russian origin of the Q Anon psyop is the way in which various Russian assets were deployed and initially spreading and supporting Q Anon material. For example we have this December 2017 video from Russia Today:




Also known Russian asset Jerome Coursi was the first media figure of any influence to pick up on Q Anon, and although you later turned on the movement he was the psyops biggest initiall booster:



Whatever else one might wish to say about the Qanon psyop- it does require a pretty sophisticated understanding of American politics to execute properly. It seems quite clear now that it's primary function is to enable a huge and diverse group of Narrativists to psychologically live within their personal inner narrative  in an environment where they are practically drowning in (perpetual) narrative dysphoria. Under any context having this many people be this disconnected from reality for any appreciable period of time would cause significant disruption in the affected population. Under present conditions it is highly likely to continue driving the emerging wave of violence that we are seeing play out at present*.

*Qanon is like a strong and sustained wind blowing on a bonfire. It keeps increasing the flame and heat the longer it goes on until eventually the bonfire escapes the fire ring.

Personally I don't think there is any specific endgame or specific goal for the Q Anon scam, I think they are just going to run it as long as they can to keep driving compaction cycles and keep Americans radicalizing. Eventually the scam will probably come crashing down once Mueller indicts Trump, and when that happens their are going to be a great deal of extremely furious and confused Narrativists who will be extremely amenable to adopting any new radical Narrative (particularly one that provides an outlet for the violent rage they will be feeling at that point) that appears within the right-wing media echosphere. In essence even once the Q Anon scam falls apart, Russian intelligence will still profit handsomely because it will still be very easy for them to just insert whatever desired narrative (or perhaps even another Nostradamus Hustle) into the same audience.