I WISH AMANDA MARCOTTE WERE RIGHT, BUT THE RISE OF NEGATIVE PARTISANSHIP TELLS ME SHE ISN'T

At Salon, Amanda Marcotte assures us that Trumpist movements will struggle in the post-Trump era:

... the election results have sent these groups reeling. All of them have spent the past four years growing their ranks and orbiting around Trump, convinced that he was a savior figure who would crush their perceived enemies.

For believers in QAnon, that belief manifested in a fantasy that Trump was going to round up all the members of the "deep state," their imaginary shadowy conspiracy of Democrats, Hollywood celebrities and progressive activists that they believe both secretly runs the world and is also a network of Satan-worshipping cannibal pedophiles. Trump, they told themselves, was secretly organizing "the storm" to round up and destroy this sinister global conspiracy.

But since Trump's election, Q — a user account that started on 8chan and drifted over to 8kun after 8chan was disbanded — has fallen silent.

It fell silent for a while. But Ben Collins of NBC News now reports that one of the principal conspiracy theories fueling Trumpist anger over the election -- the belief that election software made by Dominion Voting Systems generated fake votes for Joe Biden -- originated with QAnon.
o reports of this movement's death are exaggerated.
Marcotte writes:

Q believers haven't given up the faith yet, of course. But without guidance from its leader, the QAnon community is adrift and very likely to fracture into competing and antagonistic splinter sects, as is common in these kinds of communities.

But why would that necessarily happen? In America today, and for years before the rise of Trump, the glue keeping right-wingers together has been negative partisanship. They're united by how much they hate Democrats. And now a Democrat will be in the White House. He'll be the one overseeing the rollout of a coronavirus vaccine (QAnon now overlaps quite a bit with the anti-vaccine movement). His victory has been praised by celebrities. So Q's enemies are still in place and gaining power and influence. Why would the movement's members fight one another when they still have us to fight?

Marcotte takes comfort in a schism between two factions of the Proud Boys. I'm glad that's happening. But despite the alarm I expressed in my last post, the violent factions of the Trump coalition have been less of a problem than the plain old Republicans -- and new voters -- who hate us and vote to destroy us.

It's true that there weren't enough of them in 2018 when Trump wasn't on the ballot. But that energy won't disappear altogether just because Trump is no longer in office. It's likely to attach itself to another figure. (Marjorie Taylor Greene? Donald Trump Jr.?) And if no new figurehead is as satisfyingly heroic as the movement's original demigod, hatred of us will still unite them.

And speaking of hatred, did I mention Bill Gates? The crazies still think he wants to use a COVID vaccine to microchip us. He'll be in the news as vaccines emerge next year, and for good measure, he has a book on climate change coming out in February.

The Q folks will find plenty of reasons to keep on hating once Trump is gone.