How a QAnon splinter group became a feature of Trump rallies
Julie McDaniel can’t say for sure who started it. It might even have been her.
McDaniel was in the front section at a Trump rally earlier this month in Youngstown, Ohio, when the former president started wrapping up his speech by playing an instrumental score embraced by followers of the QAnon online conspiracy theory. She felt moved to raise her right hand and point to the sky — to God, she said. Soon everyone around her was doing it, too.
“It was spontaneous, it was it was like the domino effect,” said McDaniel, who also attended Friday’s rally here in Wilmington, N.C., coming from her home in the Chicago area. She objected to news coverage that condemned the gesture, with some comparing it to a Nazi salute. “It was an amazing, amazing moment, when you have the unity that everybody is there, and not only in this small group that was on the floor, but other people were doing it,” she said.
The group on the floor was an offshoot of the QAnon community called Negative48, a name that they say stands for the opposite of evil. They’ve become a fixture at Trump’s rallies this year. Numbering about 100, they can be spotted by their lanyards sporting as many as 16 commemorative buttons from each rally they have attended. Or see them wrap their arms around each other to sway to Elvis Presley’s “Suspicious Minds” blasting over the loudspeakers. Or lining up to take selfies in front of the stage with their leader, a man in American flag pants named Michael Brian Protzman. [Continue reading…]