QAnon High Priest Was Just Trolling Away as a Citigroup Tech Executive | Hacker News Reader

QAnon High Priest Was Just Trolling Away as a Citigroup Tech Executive

bloombergquint.com

36 pointsmrtedbear56 comments

> Gelinas raised thousands of dollars on Patreon each month, posting updates using his pseudonym, QAppAnon.

> A few months into the Trump administration, Gelinas changed his party affiliation to Republican, and this spring he contributed $200 to Trump’s reelection efforts—his first-ever political contribution, according to federal disclosures.

Why am I not surprised at all, raking in thousands of dollars all in self-service and then gives a tiny amount to the candidate he claims to adore...

On a separate note I had no idea that this FEC website [0] existed or that this info was so easily accessible. Like it doesn't completely shock me, I figured you could find out who I've donated to if you wanted to look but I never thought it would be this easy and they also have datasets you can download... If I didn't already have too many side-projects that I'm working on then I'd love to heatmap out this data by zip code for donations to party/candidate or play with the data in some other way. It's quite fun to throw in your company name and see who gave how much and to where.

[0] https://www.fec.gov/data/receipts/individual-contributions/

Who here has actually read these “QAnon” posts? Any thoughts?

I've never read any, mainly because everything I've read about them leads me to rate their likely veracity as somewhere considerably below the writings of Erich von Däniken, Graham Hancock, and Jim Marrs.

Yeah. I don’t understand the massive cross-platform banning of what amounts to some random political commentary/conspiracy. I found the most recent post[1], seems benign enough:

    January 15, 2020:
    1. USA CHINA Phase I deal executed [China bad day]
    2. Impeachment articles released by Pelosi _walked [delivered] to Senate [attack v POTUS?][coordinated/planned for a specific day?]
    3. 1st C19 case lands @ Seattle-Tacoma Airport [attack v POTUS?]
    Mathematical probability [same day][natural vs controlled?]
    WHO BENEFITS THE MOST?
    Evil surrounds us.
    Q

[1] https://8kun.top/qresearch/res/10957492.html#10957834

I think that's only benign if you've got your nonsense detectors calibrated properly. If you're a paranoiac, that's candy.

You can ask yourself why was Unity2020 banned as well.

> random political commentary/conspiracy

> seems benign enough

Shouldn't these be evaluated in the context of the actual real world consequences of this conspiracy theory?

It's because time after time people have committed violent acts like showing up at the pizza place in dc with guns, but many more claims to be violent in the future.

The general consensus is that it's a psyop run by some intelligence agency.

It's far too wild, bizarre and creative to be from an intelligence agency. I've followed it off and on for a few years and there's just no way that any pentagon boardroom dweller could have thought up half of this shit.

Also, whoever qanon is, they don't understand cryptography and were unable to figure out PGP, based on some old posts on 8chan before that site went down. I assume it's just the work of some masterful troll

You may be correct, but you also have to remember that a HUGE amount of the US's intelligence has been outsourced and contracted. Maybe that has pulled back some since Snowden (I have no idea), but there are still hundreds of thousands of contractors working on behalf of US military, intelligence, etc.

They're more accessible than content at bloombergquint.com.

It's a good example of the Nostradamus effect. Just make more and more vague predictions until one of them ends up true. Confirmation bias leads people to only remember the ones that came true, even if the rate of successful predictions is low.

Never followed it on a daily basis but come across them once in a while. Most are pretty in line with mainstream right wing commentary just more vague and hyperbolic. Then you've got some crazy claims. But these too seem to be sourced from what's already out there, rather than strictly original. In fact many of these posts just link to stuff on Twitter.

As far as I'm concerned it's just somebody very into politics with a peculiar writing style and a penchant for fantasy.

I really despise articles that claim that since someone posted on a website that has other questionable content, they must therefore be complicit. 4chan/8chan/8kun by nature are for "fringe" content, whether that be harmless conspiracy theories or actual bad actors.

We will never break free of the social media conglomerates with the current pattern that fringe content migrates to new websites first, but then these sites are slandered before regular people migrate there.

Because I read the article, I know that the guy who got fired did not merely post on 4chan, but actually created his own Q-related website devoted to pushing the violent, treasonous, slanderous conspiracy theory into the mainstream. I enjoyed reading and understanding this article, and highly recommend that anyone who wishes to express an opinion about it do the same.

Yes, thanks for saying thst. His actions according to the article were a lot different than he just had a quirky website.

The article mentions stuff totally unrelated to Q that also happens on these chan websites. As far as I can tell this is what the parent comment was talking about.

The fact that Q only took off thanks to 3rd party aggregators only strengthens this point.

QAnon scares me. But the persecution is scary too. That Gelinas was hunted down and made to lose his job. That Facebook is dismantling a movement with millions of followers, a small country, with the push of a button. At that scale, being given a deadline to move off platform seems fairer.

Facebook should've acted sooner and Gelinas should've know better. Maybe this qanon non-sense will finally go away.

People that lie and defame anonymously should be hunted down. You have no right to such a behavior in civil society.

I think it's way more complicated than that. First you have to make a distinction between public and private persons. And then there is also the distinction between maliciously defaming someone, and passing on things you heard in good faith.

If you heard that your neighbor Bob is a creepy pedo, then warning other people is frankly natural. If you dislike Bob and make up a rumor about him that should be illegal.

For powerful public persons the balance is different. The benefits of being able to freely discuss them starts outweighing the harm they suffer from false allegations.

That's my current thinking anyway.

And then there is also the distinction between maliciously defaming someone, and passing on things you heard in good faith.

No, there isn't, morally or legally.

If you make defamatory statements, it doesn't matter whether you made them up or simply heard someone else say them and are just passing them along. It's still defamatory, and that's how US law treats such statements (and how it has always treated defamatory statements).

Truth is the defense to a defamation lawsuit, not "a little bird told me."

TLDR: unless you actually know that Bob is a pedo because you witnessed his crimes or he has been convicted, don't defame Bob.

I didn't see it myself but my wife Alice did.

That doesn't change anything.

Okay anonuser123456...

> You have no right to such a behavior in civil society.

That's the justification used in every society that oppressed.

"Civil" seems like the mantra used by one side to demand control and censorship today when in the past, it was the other side.

"Within days, Citi had put him on administrative leave and his name was removed from the company’s internal directory. He was later terminated. “Mr. Gelinas is no longer employed by Citi,” the company says in a statement. “Our code of conduct includes specific policies that employees are required to adhere to, and when breaches are identified, the firm takes action.”

To me this is the most shocking part of the article. If there was no issue with his performance at work, his personal politics and beliefs should not be weighed in the continuation of his current and continued employment. To me this becoming the norm is chilling and echo's in my mind as 1984 becoming a work of non-fiction.

Violent treasonous political cults do not currently constitute a protected class, oddly enough.

You missed the point entirely. A bad guy was nailed this time, great. But he wasn't kicked out because he was a bad guy, he was kicked out because he was a liability to the corporation. The mechanisms for outing and booting out this guy works just as well against people you support, like union organizers or whistleblowers or even simply those whose politics doesn't line up with the interests of the business.

The sword doesn't care who wields it or who it cuts.

Union organizers and whistleblowers should and in many cases already do have protections specifically encoded into law. Far-out political cults that routinely slander and threaten violence against their opponents do not serve a particular purpose in the workplace and thus have no similar protections. This guy’s employer correctly pegged him as an embarrassment that had the potential to harm their bottom line and showed him the door. That’s how the labor market under capitalism works.

The mechanisms for outing and booting out this guy works just as well against people you support, like union organizers or whistleblowers or even simply those whose politics doesn't line up with the interests of the business.

Union organizers and whistleblowers have specific legal protections because they are deemed not to be engaged in political activities but in legal activities (like organizing a union or revealing fraud or criminal activity).

Businesses are otherwise mostly free to terminate workers over their political beliefs unless the business operates in a state which includes political affiliation as a protected class (like California, but notably not New York or New Jersey).

There are people with specific legal protections. Amazon and Google would seem to be in jeopardy potentially for firing union organizers. Because so many Republicans and/or businesses support right to work laws (firing for any or no reason) this is a consequence. Since that guy became a Repub., it's reasonable to assume he supported that and never thought it would impact him in that way. So think about that everyone who thinks unions and work rules have no point.

Indeed, but we've addressed that by making it illegal to fire an employee for union organizing or whistleblowing, not by breaking the sword.

In the general case, the societal value of having this sword around is recgonized.

To be clear I was not advocation for the removal of the banks right to remove him and certainly not arguing for the government to have the ability to step in. Just highlighting that I personally believe it is a bad path we are trudging along.

I am not inferring that their politics or cult like leanings are acceptable, but if he is not bringing it into the workplace then I find the practice reprehensible. At one time this was done to people of other belief systems / political leanings (communist in the US as an example). At some point in the future a different social contract will exist and items like this set a precedents for the same to be done to them. I am against it no matter what their belief system is.

You absolutely still can be fired in the United States for publicly identifying as a communist. Hell, you can be fired for merely demonstrating against police brutality.

In most of the United States you can be fired for absolutely no reason whatsoever except the boss wants to.

Yup

There are protected classes of worker, but the burden to prove the firing was due to protected reasons is on the worker.

I am in no way arguing that you cannot, just making the observation that social contracts change and a secondary and personal point that I find the practice detestable. I do not want someone to loose their livelihood because I disagree with them on their personal ideology and I certainly don't want to loose employment because someone disagrees with me on my personal belief system. The US communist witch-hunt is a great example because McCarthyism led to a good number of people who where not communist but where still undesirable to the current (at the time) social contract, being blacklisted by just throwing a communist label on them, which resulted in their lives and livelihood being destroyed.

As a further note on this, I am of the opinion that loosing ones security and safety net pushes them further to the fringe. I think this is a problem with modern society no one is listening, everyone is pushing when they should be pulling as pushing moves them in a direction contrary to the results one is seeking.

Personally, I can understand Citi, they are now getting associated with a right wing conspiracy theory, which cause violence throughout the world.

Would you say the same if he was a member of ISIS but hadn’t committed any terrorist acts yet? It’s no different.

If they have not committed a crime or aided in a crime, I personally don't have an issue with it as if they have not committed a terrorist act they are by definition not a terrorists. Lets move the hypothetical situation a little what if they are not a member but are sympathetic to the grievances that ISIS has (not all of them are unfounded)? Are they guilty of fire-able ill thought at that point? I don't argue that this guys ideas are savory nor those of ISIS my point is there is a lot of ideas that people from all walks of life find unsavory. I am sorry but I just fundamentally disagree with cancel culture, which to me this is a byproduct of. To me the harm is greater than the cure.

If you take an active position to promote lies and conspiracy in your personal life, why would your employer not reasonably believe you would do so at work?

There is a difference between legitimate political opinion and promoting false conspiracy. Note that most of these conspiracies are defamatory in nature. Also, QAnon borders on calling for the violent overthrow if the government. It's narrative literally calls for it.

So no, not out of bounds for an employer to terminate. Nothing 1984 here.

> To me this becoming the norm is chilling and echo's in my mind as 1984 becoming a work of non-fiction.

I think the real chilling thing here is your attack against freedom of association while ironically complaining that the world is becoming more like 1984. Sure, like all rights freedom of association has its limits, especially around protected classes and unions in the business world. But should the government really step in and force me to continue to employ a holocaust denier just because he makes me a lot of money? Should the government really stop me from kicking out a dude dressed in a KKK outfit from my store?

I am not advocating for the government to step in, if anything I believe their is overregulation of certain business relationships (not all). I was making the personal observation that I do not like the practice and that the pendulum always swings back the other way.

Banks are hyper-conservative. General knowledge that a bank continues to employ a conspiracy theorist can have negative consequences for their bottom-line because the actual business sector a bank operates in is "trust," and being perceived as employing the easily-duped raises trust questions.

I don't understand why society is so hell bent on punishing people for thought crimes. To the extent that they make trouble for corporations, in effect forcing their hand, into the position of separating that person from their livelihood. Society is a social contract and the baseline of that contract is we engage with people where we align and we disengage where we do not. Specifically in a capitalist society one of those strong alignments tends to be on the area of productivity. So alienating an individual from one of the areas that they actually align will tend to push them further into the fringe and worse yet they may become productive in that fringe.

My issue is belief systems like the one this person possesses tend to flow from a few underlining fountains and they are fear, a feeling of marginalization, true mental illness or a traumatic experience and as a society as a whole, we should use reason to get to the underlining issue and fix it not cast them out and further limit our ability to actually remove the fountains that these ideas come from. It is worth noting again, I am not advocation for Citi to not have the right to dissociate nor am I advocating for the government to step in. Rather trying to highlight this new culture we are forming of "I don't want to hear you and if I do I want you punished" is directly related to the fact that both sides are radicalizing.

Further on a similar but tangential note, but directly a product of this effect, academia used to be a safe haven for diversity of thought, imagine if in their time, Nash or Turing (to a certain extent it was on Turing) would have faced the same academia establishment of present day but applied their societies contract onto their thought. We would certainly lost valuable and productive work that they did. Modern Academia still preaches the dogma of diversity of thought and ideas that was a hallmark of being the torch bearer of free thought of academia since the enlightenment. Now it has transformed into the arbitrator and filter of what is enlightened thought. My only observation is that, where we are heading is a dangerous path. I don't know each personas political leanings on this site but it worth noting no matter which side, almost half the population disagrees with you. It may not feel that way due to ones local social climate as well as ones choice of online engagement but that is the reality. It is also worth noting that QAnon is a fringe element and while almost certainly right wing do not represent the majority of the right wing the same can be said for Antifa or NAMBLA not being representative of the left. I bring this up because this is the core of my problem here, it is trickling into everything.

At this point I feel a need to note, that while the above paragraph will certainly cast me as a right winger, I contend that I am not. I consider myself to be a liberal in the classical enlightenment sense. I hold views across the spectrum and most of them would be considered left of center. I generally don't get into my political views but I think it is important in these times to specifically spell it out, as a great many immediately dismiss an argument if they mentally tag it as dogma from the other side.

I'm curious where you perceive academia as not a safe haven. What academics have been excluded for "wrong think?"

I will provide the following as it sums up the issue better than I can.

https://heterodoxacademy.org/political-firings-left-leaning-...

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