Correcting Mike Rothschild, Conspiracy Theorist
A Series On Misinformation, Disinformation and Subterfuge
One of the chief disinformation mules peddling falsehoods meant to protect the core QAnon operation, is Mike Rothschild.
Some of his whoppers:
Fiction:QAnon is a fun participatory event.
Fact is January 6th, the culminating event QAnon was built to promote and execute, was in fact not a fun participatory event, leading to multiple deaths on that day and several suicides. Not fun Mike. Not fun at all.
Fiction:Paul Furber was behind Q.
Fact is QAnon was a team process, led by Mike Flynn, that incorporated conspiracies, puzzles, stories, LARP, ARGs, using primarily Fred Brennan’s 8Chan as that was where a strong consumer base of suicide trolling, misogyny, child pornography, already existed. GamerGate users fit naturally into QAnon’s central goals.
Fiction: QAnon wasn’t a Russian Op.
Fact. It’s complicated. Flynn’s objectives are Putin’s objectives, so technically Flynn’s operations are aligned but not overseen directly by Russian leadership. Russia amplified QAnon content just as it does any US produced content supportive of their mutual interest. While Americans ran the majority of QAnon content, it’s accurate to call it a Russian Op because its purpose was to build a fifth column attack supportive of Russia on January 6th.
Let’s look at a recent one.
PizzaGate had factual elements baked into the conspiracy that began as a means of protecting Donald Trump and Jeffery Epstein after a missing person case file for Marisella Pino was given to Lisa Bloom, the lawyer representing two accusers suing the accused pedophiles in 2016 over a 1994 rape at Wexler’s estate. Bloom sold the story to AMI on November 4th.
This girl, who matched the Puerto Rican girl “Maria” in the Katie Johnson deposition, was last seen in Waterbury, CT, on March 20, 1993 outside Nash’s Pizza and Grocery. Maria is Marcella’s mother’s name.
Unlike Mike Rothschild who simply makes up conspiracies to grift off of, I took around six months looking over court documents, news reports, recordings and other media to pull together the process of how the conspiracy began, who created it and what was the intent. I know AMI bought the story because theHill questioned Bloom in December of 2016 and got that as a statement of fact. I know Michael Cohen was on the phone that night to two different execs on
Pizza was added to the core conspiracy the night of November 4th, to discredit the connection of Trump and Epstein to Waterbury CT, and the probable sale of one child to the mob trafficking her to billionaires.
Before Pizza was added, Trump and Sean Hannity were building the conspiracy February 2015, at CPAC, as a cudgel to bash Clinton over his own association with Epstein, albeit with a secret service detail and not partying like Trump himself admitted to.
Epstein was real. So was Trump. And also Nash’s Pizza and Grocery. What wasn’t was pinning everything onto the Democrats and making things as ridiculous sounding as possible, people would discount these PsyOps as nonsense instead of threats.
That brings us to what Mike does, causing people to dismiss threats as nonsense.
QAnon is a core pillar of MAGA Republican values. It was intended to be so after working it’s way up through the rank and file military pulled in by GamerGate, matriculating to podcasts then onto Fox News. The PsyOp funneling system was and is an effective method for radicalization.
Mike of course is dumbstruck and wants you to buy his book as the “foremost expert” on stuff he clearly does not know what he is talking about.
“Probably isn’t real. But, does it matter?”
Yes, Mike, facts & truth matter. As a journalist, I’d think you’d know that. Then again, you were a fashion blogger, so reality isn’t really your thing, is it? 🧐