Hidden symbols

Like the fear-mongers of yesteryear, Q addicts believe that the bad guys announce their malevolence via graphic design. Q folk insist that the diabolists among us use visual symbols to identify themselves, hiding their perfidy in plain sight.

Because that's how you run a proper conspiracy. Evil must always offer that tantalizing glimpse: No nipples, just cleavage.

If you don't know what I'm talking about, look at this tweet from a well-known pastor named David Locke (who obviously has a relaxed attitude toward the ninth commandment):

I suppose it’s “just a coincidence” that the #DemConvention logo turned sideways has the EXACT same design and measurements as another familiar logo. Satanism is alive and well. pic.twitter.com/zkyuNjOxmg

— Pastor Greg Locke (@pastorlocke) August 21, 2020

Locke's brilliant insight reminded me of one of my favorite posts, which appeared in these pages way back in October of 2006:

In the stylized donkey image used by Democrats, the stars point upward. In the stylized elephant seen on all Republican web sites and campaign literature, the stars invariably point down.

The inversed pentacle is widely considered a symbol of black magic.

Here's the difference between Locke and me: I grinned when I wrote that.

Just now, I checked Google images and verified that the GOP elephant now comes adorned with upright pentacles about half the time. In 2006, the pachyderm parade was almost 100 percent infernal. I'd like to think that my humble post forced Republicans to change the design.

In another Cannonfire post published on April 1, I uncovered a "hidden" 666 within the Walmart logo. To see the devil's number, one need merely reverse the logo.

Too bad I'm a liberal with a love of Enlightenment values, because I could have made a ton of money as a preacher or a right-wing conspiracy crank. I can find these Top Seekrit messages all day long.

QAnon addicts love to shout the mindless catch-phrase "DO YOUR RESEARCH!" We hear that commandment primarily from people who don't know what real research entails. Such people have never attended classes at a decent university, have never read a difficult book, have never checked the accuracy of a footnote, have never traced a disputed quotation to its source, have never examined original documents in an archive, have never forced themselves to acquire the kind of proof needed to counter a skeptic. Most importantly, they refuse to question themselves.

Though they are intellectually incapable of scholarship, they are forever telling me "DO YOUR RESEARCH." It's infuriating!

What they do is not research. It's pseudo-research. Like children working out a puzzle in Highlights magazine, they spend hours looking for that hidden duck in the tree -- and invariably, they'll find something. Oooh, scary!

Over the years, many stars of the conspiracy genre have impressed lowbrow audiences by playing the "hidden symbols" game. Jordan Maxwell -- a name that some of you may know -- devoted much of his career to this nonsense. So did noted loon Texe Marrs. Every right-wing paranoid has played this game at one point or another: Milton Cooper, Anthony Hilder, Uncle Alex, all of 'em.

If you've studied the origins of the infamous document known as the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, you'll know that the individual who made the hoax known throughout Russia was a crazed mystic named Sergei Nilus. He did not concoct the fraud (many specialists have tried to identify the forger), but he gave it wings.

Most people don't know that Nilus loved to play the "hidden symbols" game. He was an early master in this field.

In 1909, Sergei received a visit from the Count A.M. du Chayla, an educated fellow not easily swayed by what he called "mystifications." In 1921, du Chayla wrote an account of this visit which offers an invaluable behind-the-scenes look at both Nilus and The Protocols.

At Nilus' command -- "READ!" -- du Chayla sat down with a handwritten version of the document. (This manuscript may have been the original; scholars debate the point.) The young visitor was unimpressed. Nilus declared that du Chayla must be under the influence of the devil, and that he, Nilus, had compiled proof that the Protocols were genuine -- proof which he kept in a special chest.

His "proof" took the form of the "hidden symbols" game.

He opened the chest and I saw amidst indescribable disorder a number of objects made of rubber, some household utensils, insignia of technical schools, even the cipher of the Queen Alexandra Fiodorovna and the cross of the Legion of Honor. On each of these objects his hallucination showed him the "seal of the Antichrist" in the guise of a triangle or a pair of crossed triangles. It was enough for any object to bear on it a figure resembling somewhat a triangle for his inflamed imagination to see in it the sign of the Antichrist and the seal of the Wise Men of Zion. All these observations entered into the edition of the Protocols, published in 1911.

With increasing restlessness under the influence of a sort of mystic terror Nilus explained to me that the sign of the "Son of Iniquity" has contaminated everything, and that it flourishes even amidst the designs and ornaments of churches and in the decorations of the holy ikons. It was midnight. The appearance, the voice, and the weird gestures of Nilus showed that his mind was on the brink of a precipice, and that his reason would at any moment dissolve into madness...

In modern parlance, we might say that Nilus followed the white rabbit. He was the Q of his day.

Will our society ever stop playing the "hidden symbols" game? Why are so many of your fellow citizens idiotic enough to believe that a world-devouring conspiracy would reveal itself through cute visual trickery and graphic design?