Descent into madness

So what else is new?

Melania Trump is a Romanov and is being groomed to return to her rightful throne as Queen of Russia.  But Melania is really Princess Diana in a mask, and she is supposed to become Queen of England, so you see the dilemma.  How can Melania/Diana, or Diana/Melania depending on how you perceive this incredible apparition, be two places at the same time?

These are the kinds of problems faced by Michael Brian Protzman, the anti-Semitic QAnon leader responsible for assembling his followers in Dallas last November to await the second coming of John F. Kennedy…or maybe it was JFK Junior.  It sort of depended on what side of the bed Protzman woke up and which voice he was listening to in his head.  The thing about Melania the Romanov who is actually Diana in a face mask is only the latest raving of this raving lunatic fan of Donald Trump.

Known to his followers as Negative48, Protzman also assured them that the reappearance of JFK, or maybe JFK Jr., would create a situation that will return Donald J. Trump to the White House, where he will be crowned King of Kings. He and his followers parked themselves on the famous “Grassy Knoll” on Dealey Plaza to await this amazing second coming until a downpour sent them scurrying back to their hotels to dry off.

Their disappointment was not in their leader Protzman, however.  Around him a significant QAnon movement-within-a-movement has recently arisen, principally through is postings as Negative48 on Telegram, the far-far-far right wing messaging app.  Early last year, he had 1,700 Telegram followers.  According to an article in Vice, by the time of his November gathering in Dallas, he had 105,000 members on his channel. 

Protzman has treated his followers on Telegram to postings of links to “Europa – The Last Battle,” a 10-part film that makes the anti-Semitic claim that the Jews started World War II in order to provoke the Nazis into giving them a reason to claim Israel as a homeland, plus they started Communism at the same time…or something.  He has also posted links to “Adolf Hitler:  The Greatest Story Never Told” and claimed that if Trump had followed his great example, he would have gotten himself elected.  All of this was before he held an audio chat on Telegram and told his followers that there weren’t actually any Jews at all, that the so-called Jewish Race was really the British and Roman empires combined together across history, and the whole thing was comprised of “criminals.”

A good deal of Protzman’s popularity is apparently attributable to his use of “gematria,” a “bastardized version of numerology,” according to Vice, which is based on “a Jewish system of assigning a numerical value to a name, word, or phrase based on the letters used and inferring some sort of spiritual or mystical meaning behind the phrase.”  How Protzman gets from hating Jews to declaring they don’t exist to using a bent version of Jewish numerology, he hasn’t explained yet, but when he does, you can count on it being a doozey.  Protzman’s central claim is that Jesus married Mary Magdalene and had four children, and among their descendants is JFK, and JFK Jr. is the Archangel Michael, and Donald Trump is the Holy Spirit.  This is apparently where he gets his belief that Trump is King of Kings and will soon be returned to his rightful throne in the White House.  Or something.

Protzman led his followers to the Trump rally in Texas last week where they appeared in red t-shirts emblazoned with photographs of Trump and JFK and JFK Jr. along with red Trump-ties around their necks.  Protzman and his QAnon crowd lined up more than 24 hours before the rally to ensure they would get prime seats in the front of the crowd, and while they were waiting overnight sang the Michael Jackson/Lionel Richie penned anthem “We Are the World.”

I’ve waited and waited to say this, so I’m just going to come out and say it:  You really can’t make this stuff up.

Now Protzman has led his followers back to Dallas where they are holding a second vigil awaiting the return of John F. Kennedy, along with presumably the rightful ascension of Trump to the White House and his crowning as King of Kings.  For this trip to Dallas, Protzman has ordered his followers to cut off all contact with their families.  Followers have sent letters home to their loved ones explaining that they will not be hearing from them again.  At least one family of a QAnon follower told the Dallas Observer that Protzman has been ordering his followers to drink a cocktail containing chlorine dioxide, a chemical disinfectant similar to bleach, from a common punchbowl. 

Protzman recently led his followers on a pilgrimage to the site of the Branch Davidian compound near Waco, Texas.  Last week, he held a Telegram chat claiming that 17 dead celebrities were participating, among them Marilyn Monroe. 

If this is beginning to sound like Jim Jones and Jonestown and David Koresh and the Branch Davidians, that’s because it is.

Two national polls conducted last year, one by NPR and the other by the Public Religion Research Institute, revealed that about 15 to 17 percent of respondents agree with a statement that the levers of power are controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles, one of the key beliefs of the QAnon cult.  NPR found that another 37 percent of respondents did not know whether or not it was true that the Satan-worshiping pedophiles controlled everything in this country.  “It’s totally bonkers,” Chris Jackson, one of those running the poll told NPR.  “Essentially half of Americans believe it's true or think that maybe it's true. They don't really know. And I think that's terrifying that half of Americans believe that could be the case."

This is the ocean that Donald Trump goes fishing in every time he casts a line and claims that he was the rightful winner of the 2020 presidential election.  Yesterday, he lashed out at Mike Pence for saying that “Donald Trump is wrong” about his claim that Pence could have overturned the election for him.  According to Trump, it was “a great opportunity lost, but not forever, in the meantime our country is going to hell!”

Not to worry.  According to his loyal follower Negative48, John F. Kennedy, JFK Jr., Princess Diana, at least one Romanov married to a former president, and Marilyn Monroe are all there to help.