• viva_la_juche [they/them, any]
    ·
    4 years ago

    Yeah they're certainly more complex and thats why I mentioned at least on the closer to individual level.

    I went to one of those small town high schools that are pretty much soldier factories and many of the men from my hs ended up in the military and a lot of them developed in to far right/qanon type people. Some of the active people I've met were pretty hardcore in the "we're fighting for trump and country" kind of mindset too. They kind of think democrats hate the troops because they have to be the opposite of the GOP which takes soldier worship to the nth degree.

    I see where you're coming from with the death camp thing but the unfortunate thing about Q followers is the whole thing can be very a la carte. There are a million competing ideas under the banner, it is very far from being monolithic. the thing that holds it together is that the believers have a tendency to be able to hold ideologically inconsistent ideas without suffering a lot of cognitive dissonance. One of the ways they guard against that is saying "thats a deepstate actor spreading bs to make us look bad! so since I know that fema death camps aren't a thing they most be a fake q follower" or something to that effect.

    Generally I think you're probably right but I think with how much they pander to the military it's worth a bit of concern that it could develop into something similar to the cop collaboration in the coming years.