Members of Michael Protzmanā€™s conspiracy cult abandoned their families and spent their life savings to follow him to Trump rallies around the country.

  • chatterbox@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    From the article:

    Mullinax said that in recent days someone in her group had claimed Protzman ā€œwas taken outā€ but she dismissed that.
    She did however claim that the person who died was in fact just one version of Michael Protzman, ā€œthe evil versionā€ and that the good Michael Protzmanā€”who is in fact JFK Jr. in a maskā€”is still alive and well.

    Justā€¦ Wtf.

    • Nepenthe@kbin.social
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      1 year ago

      You know, between multiple mental illnesses, some of them terminal, I thought I couldnā€™t even tell what was raw dogging who anymore. But it turns out Iā€™m handling reality pretty well, actually.

      Edit:

      When [the reappearance of zombie JFK] didnā€™t happen, Protzmanā€™s conspiracies simply changed, and over the next 18 months he would alter and change his predictions to suit his needs and keep his followers on board. Ultimately he claimed that he was in direct contact with former President Donald Trump and that Trump was in fact JFK Jr. in disguise.

      So Itā€™s JFK Jr. wearing a Protzman mask and also moonlighting as Donald Trump, but only the evil one (Protzman) died, who repeatedly prophesied his hated good twinā€™s return for Evil Reasons, but then they both just stayed in hiding anyway to fuck with everyone.

      You ever been assassinated so hard that your personality splits into two separate corporeal beings who are at secret war with each other, and then you return, ageless, from the grave to lead the opposite political party from the one you believed in, but you have to do it in a fat suit, communicating solely through numerology, while your evil self rides a dirt bike? Iā€™d watch that.

  • acronymesis@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    ā€œShe is missing birthdays and holidays for this. She truly believes this is all real and we are the crazy ones for trying to get her to come home. But she wonā€™t, I donā€™t believe she will ever come back from this. We are in mourning.ā€

    We truly have a sickness in our society. Sure would be nice if certain politicians - who are quick to blame mental health issues for our societies woes - could focus on things like the Qanon Qult tearing apart families rather than, oh, you know, the gays.

    • CeruleanRuin@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      Cults are nothing new. But the big media outlets arenā€™t helping anything by avoiding using that c-word for this phenomenon. It is undeniably a cult, and it needs to be called that.

      • acronymesis@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        I mean, hell, we can forget the ā€œc-wordā€ and we still have this huge issue with foreign (and even domestic!) bad actors stirring shit up with disinformation campaigns in our society. When will our government acknowledge it and actually fucking DO something??

        • CeruleanRuin@lemmy.one
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          1 year ago

          One can only conclude that they havenā€™t because a significant proportion of the government is just as compromised by it - or finds it useful.

  • minnow@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    He was a grifter and a threat to society. Iā€™m not going to say Iā€™m happy heā€™s dead, but Iā€™ll sure nod along when other people do.

    (I mean, Iā€™d have preferred he live and work to undo the damage heā€™s caused, but Iā€™m not an idiot)

    • CeruleanRuin@lemmy.one
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      1 year ago

      What do you expect from people who were brainwashed since childhood to believe that a two-thousand-year-old philosopher would resurrect anyone who repeated his memes?

      Step 1) Be indoctrinated into an irreconcilable belief at an age when your brain is still forming.

      Step 2) Have every aspect of the world outside your circle telling you that what you were raised to believe is gobbledygook.

      Step 3) Ignore everything your senses and basic reasoning would tell you. Your logic centers and cognitive dissonance detectors were broken long ago.

      Step 4) Adopt new gobbledygook whenever the old gobbledygook gets stale. Rinse, repeat.

      • PhoenixRising@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        Doesnā€™t matter with these people. Theyā€™ll say that itā€™s really Hunter Biden in prison and Trump is wearing a DeSantis mask. Reality has no place in their world.