It’s been a rough week for the Proud Boys and followers of QAnon, pro-Trump conspiracy theorists who had anticipated a day of reckoning during President Biden’s inauguration, only to have their dreams dashed when it didn’t materialize.
Both groups had pinned their hopes on former President Donald Trump coming to their rescue but were delivered a cold dose of reality when they watched him board Air Force One with his family and fly away.
Last year, the Proud Boys, a far-right group, declared their allegiance to Trump. In a Nov. 8 post in a private channel of the messaging app Telegram, the group told its followers to attend protests against the election and reiterated, falsely, that it had been stolen.
“Hail Emperor Trump,” the group wrote.
But Trump’s actions and perceived insults over the past two weeks have left his staunchest supporters with egg on their faces.
In dozens of conversations on social media sites such as Telegram and Gab, members of the group have started expressing regret and anger for ever having backed Trump, who they claim talked a good game but didn’t deliver.
“Trump will go down as a total failure,” the Proud Boys said Monday.
In fact, some called him a “shill” and said he was “extraordinarily weak,” according to private messages reviewed by the New York Times.
The group has already demanded its supporters to stop attending events or rallies for Trump and the Republican Party.
It’s a 180-degree turn from unwavering support for the 45th president.
The Proud Boys, led by Enrique Tarrio, at one time offered to serve as Trump’s private militia and celebrated after Trump told them during a 2020 presidential debate to “stand back and stand by.”
Some members made their way to the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 to show their support for Trump and participate in the siege. But when Trump condemned the violence and refused to pardon members, their support quickly turned to anger.
On Wednesday, one of the group’s leaders, Joseph Biggs, 37, was arrested in Florida. Four other members are also facing charges. Trump, for the most part, has looked the other way,
“When Trump told them that if he left office, America would fall into an abyss, they believed him,” Arieh Kovler, a political consultant who studies the far right, said of the Proud Boys. “Now that he has left office, they believe he has both surrendered and failed to do his patriotic duty.”
The Proud Boys aren’t the only ones feeling the presidential cold shoulder.
The man dubbed the “QAnon Shaman,” who showed up to the Capitol shirtless and wore fur and horns on his head, claimed via his attorney that he was “duped” by Trump into taking part in the riot.
Jacob Anthony Chansley, 33, is being held without bail on federal charges in Phoenix. His attorney told the Daily Mail that Trump’s failure to pardon him was a “betrayal.”
“My client is understandably compelled to reconcile the words of the former president with the subsequent actions of the former president,” lawyer Albert S. Watkins said in a statement.
Another QAnon believer said on the Telegram messaging app, “I just want to throw up. I’m so sick of all the disinformation and false hope.”
QAnon is the umbrella term for a long list of internet conspiracy theories that allege the world is being run by a cabal of devil-loving pedophiles who are plotting against Trump while operating a global child sex-trafficking ring. QAnon followers believe that the group is made up of Hillary Clinton, former President Barack Obama, and megadonor George Soros, as well as Hollywood heavyweights Tom Hanks, Oprah Winfrey, and Ellen DeGeneres. They also believe that Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama have a hand in it.
QAnon believes that members of the cabal kill and eat their victims in order to absorb life-extending chemicals from their blood.
The group was convinced that their hero, Trump, was recruited by top military brass to run for president in 2016 in order to break up the gang of ne’er-do-wells, end their control over religion, politics, and media, and eventually bring them to justice.
Online, QAnon’s unidentified prophet had promised that Trump was secretly spearheading a war against the evildoers and that on Inauguration Day, the master plan would come into focus when Trump would corral the alleged cache of morally bankrupt crooks, force them to go before military tribunals, and execute them in a show of force that they called “the Storm.”
Followers who had gone all-in on the idea were faced with a reckoning of their own when nothing that their anonymous prophet had predicted came to fruition.
When Trump left the nation’s capital for Mar-a-Lago, many QAnon backers (including some who had participated in the Jan. 6 riot) began to question if they had been duped all along.
When one QAnon channel on Telegram pushed a new theory that President Biden was “part of the plan,” several followers finally jumped ship, pushing back on a new web of baseless conspiracy theories.
“Just stfu already!” one user wrote. Another said, “It’s over. It is sadly, sadly over.” A third weighed in, “What a fraud!” Following Biden’s swearing-in ceremony, the “Q Research” forum on 8kun was wiped clean by its moderator who claimed that he was “just performing euthanasia to something I once loved very very much,” the Washington Post reported.
Shortly thereafter, the site’s leaders restored the deleted material on the controversial online forum and demanded the moderator’s death.
Though many followers have called it quits, others doubled down and claimed they saw “new coded messages” during Trump’s final appearance as president. Specifically, they note that 17 flags — Q is the 17th letter of the alphabet — flew on stage during Trump’s farewell address from Joint Base Andrews in Prince George’s County, Maryland.
“17 flags! cone on now this is getting insane,” one QAnon follower posted, according to the Post. “I don’t know how many signs has to be given to use before we ‘trust the plan,'” another commented.
Extremist group watchers believe disenfranchised Proud Boys and QAnon members are likely to be recruited to join other fringe organizations. The BBC reported a number of neo-Nazi Telegram channels are looking to “capitalize on the chaos” and have asked their members to see out and convert followers.
