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Comment by vkou | Hacker News Reader

It has also destoyed families. I know people whose parents have gone down the QAnon rabbit hole, and the outcome is absolutely insane. They can't have a 20 minute conversation without the vast pedophilic conspiracy in Washington intruding (Because the parents cannot understand why their children could possibly be acting in accord with it.)

Another one of my friends can't even see his mother, because she doesn't believe that coronavirus is real, and is actively refusing to get her symptoms tested.

Edit: It's interesting to see how this is not a popular opinion to express here. Do folks disagree with me about this being a bad thing? Do folks actually think there's an iota of value in the Augean pile of QAnon crap? Do they think that this madness elevates the level of discourse in their society? Are they made uncomfortable by a mention of a human-scale anecdote of the observable harm that this movement is inflicting?

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Speaking as someone who deals with a fair amount of this in their extended family, I honestly think a blind spot the human race has is a struggle to believe this can really get "that bad".

I've had relatives (now deceased) who were way down the rabbit hole, long before the whole QAnon thing, and given the sort of destructive effects it has on their life, to me - it's in the same bucket as alcoholism or addiction. It did the same sort of things that joining a "cut ties" cult like scientology or 7th day adventists did; you'd lose friends, spouses, even your job, etc.

None of this is a new phenomenon - it's just, people don't join the moonies or hare krishna anymore - they join weird internet cults now like QAnon.

(In my case, we essentially lost a family member who went on a deep-dive into anti-semitic nationalism back in the 60s.)

> It's interesting to see how this is not a popular opinion to express here.

I've noticed that random comments which go against the shibboleths of the -- for lack of a better term -- 'orange man good' narrative can be subject to strange downvoting behavior.

Some of the posts that get hit by this, such as yours, are so innocuous that I'm not convinced that the targeting is organic as opposed the effects of some strongly opinionated s---head with a botnet and nothing better to do with his time.

I haven't (and won't) downvote you for expressing an opinion I disagree with - but I do disagree with you.

Whether or not there is value in QAnon is beyond me. There is value in people being able to say what they want, even if it is baseless, or disturbed, or hateful. One example that comes to my mind is the Rotterham child rape scandal[1], which, were it not printed in the most reputable newspapers world wide, would sound like something out of the QAnon fantasy. Even worse than this scandal itself, which is saying something given that this scandal describes an organization of men raping children for decades with the tacit knowledge of local police and city government, is the fact that there are many similar occurrences in the UK. That is, this is not a one off horrific event, but part of a terrible and disturbing pattern.

Why I bring this up as an example, is, that it seems to me part of the problem the UK has in getting the organized rape of children under control, is an unwillingness to speak about it and be open about it. The UK is so determined to control speech and avoid offending people that they kept secret the organized rape of hundreds if not thousands of children across their country for decades. I would much rather err on the side of allowing people to indulge in dark, even if absurd, fantasies (e.g. QAnon) than forbid or punish people for going public with imperfectly firm accusations (as happened in Rotterham - victims and their families reported the ongoing sexual abuse and rape to the authorities through the many years it was ongoing and the authorities ignored them for fear of being offensive[2]).

The organized sexual abuse of children clearly does happen. Sometimes the government is intimately involved. For example the case with Jeffrey Epstein. It's worth it to let people talk about it and make accusations. Sometimes disturbed people will go too far and make baseless claims. That's not ideal, but preventing people from making anything but perfect accusations leads to a culture where horrible crimes are covered up for fear of not having enough evidence. I think it is a better balance to let mean people say mean things and expose whatever evidence there may be of things as soon as possible.

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rotherham_child_sexual_exploit...

2 - https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/police-ignored-child-s...

The horrors in Rotterham weren't exposed by conspiracy nuts, though. It was exposed by real investigative journalism and law enforcement work.

That's the whole point here: it's not that bad things don't happen, it's that this fact is not sufficient evidence for other bad things happening.

The suppression here is of baseless conspiracy theories about child abuse because they're baseless, not because they're about child abuse.

The victims in Rotterham went to the police and were turned away because the police considered what they were reporting to be potentially offensive. You're right that it wasn't exposed by conspiracy nuts, but that's because it was a real thing and the people with flimsy evidence were ignored. That it wasn't exposed by people with flimsy evidence is my point. In a different context and with different laws they would have the circulated the story and it would have gained attention, credibility, and scrutiny. There is a reason why "Grooming gangs" are common in the UK compared to the US. I think the suppression of speech is one of those reasons.

It's basically gaslighting to praise the work of the government by saying "It was exposed by real investigative journalism and law enforcement work". Absolutely not. Multiple victims reported it to the government and were turned away. The government and journalists ignored it for decades. That's hardly "real investigative work". The government and journalists managed to detect the organized rape of hundreds of children after only 30 years!

The other reason to bring up Rotterham is to point out that conspiracies like this aren't purely fantasy. Sometimes the government is involved in the organized rape of children. Prohibiting people from talking about the possibility because you feel their evidence is insufficient is not a trade off I think should be made.

> to point out that conspiracies like this aren't purely fantasy

You're doing it again!

You can't justify belief in a baseless conspiracy theory by saying that some other vaguely related thing was true! You can't. The logic doesn't work.

And it's expressly harmful, because now that "justified" belief can be weaponized to hurt your political enemies. Stop it.

I don't think it's appropriate to say things like "Stop it". Please do me the courtesy of not treating me like a child and acting like you are instructing me.

The QAnon conspiracy is about pedophiles in government. The Rotterham scandal is about pedophiles enabled by government. The Epstein case is a mix of pedophiles and government. It's not crazy to suggest that pedophiles are mixed up with the government. We have multiple contemporary cases of this happening now.

Furthermore, it is exactly the tendency to censor speech which enabled the Rotterham scandal to endure for so long. Because people were censored for fear of causing offense hundreds of children were raped and victims were ignored. That's an extremely relevant example to a case where people are saying we must not permit people to talk about offensive things.

This makes no sense.

Trump has several claims of rape against him, has been known to be on Pedophilia flights and private trips with Epstein and walked in on pageant changing rooms and other things.

If QAnon was about pedophilia, it would be about pedophilia. BUt its not.

It's really about projection. Make enemies of people with baseless claims so they believe its true.

Sad really.

He's using your desire to not be censored to fill your desire for hate. And anyone who disagrees with your hate violates your freedom to talk about it. Everything you don't believe in is fake news.

It's a reality distortion field.

Since you can't even spell Rotherham, I'll not give much weight to your analysis of the reasons behind the police failure there.

Since you evaluate arguments based on the spelling of proper nouns from foreign places I'm afraid I can't bring myself to care about the esteem with which you regard my analysis.

It's not just any foreign place is it? It's the foreign place you've been spouting off about so authoritatively

Odd, that in a conversation about balancing the benefits of free speech with the harms of it, and when discussing the example of an organized conspiracy of child rapists acting in the UK with the tacit consent of the government for decades, you've chosen to fixate on a minor spelling error.

> It's not crazy to suggest that pedophiles are mixed up with the government.

Yes. It. Is. Because that suggestion requires evidence, which Q Does. Not. Have. Rotherham is not evidence for Q. Epstein is not evidence for Q. Rotherham and Epstein existing in history are not a license to make shit up about democrats and pretend it's the truth.

I've not said Epstein and Rotherham were evidence for Q. I've said they're examples of pedophiles intermixed with governments and examples of where holding high standards for what is appropriate to say resulted in the rape of innumerable children.

My point is not "Because Epstein therefore Q" but rather "We should allow speculation and conspiracies, even hurtful, hateful, or baseless, because the alternative is restricting what people can say, and such restrictions enabled and perpetuated some horrible crimes of a similar nature that happened recently."

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