QAnon's heroes are frantically backpedaling from conspiracy theories as they try to stay politically relevant: report

On Tuesday, The Daily Beast reported that prominent figures in the QAnon community — whose adherents believe the United States is secretly controlled by a circle of child-trafficking Satanic cannibal pedophiles — are making a new push to try to tamp down some of the conspiracy theories in an effort to stay politically relevant.

"QAnon now finds itself without a central figure: Trump is out of office; And the anonymous 'Q,' whose clues make up the conspiracy theory movement's basis, has been silent since last December," reported Will Sommer. "Followers of the nonsensical collection of conspiracy theories are now looking for guidance from a diffuse group of leaders in the QAnon movement. And the leaders — some pure hucksters and some pure screwballs — have very different visions for where the coalition should go. For some leaders, it's about reining in the most madcap beliefs. For others, it's about using the momentum that QAnon has built in the GOP world to take over local offices and school boards."

One example is the way that Sidney Powell — the pro-Trump "kraken" lawyer who led a number of harebrained schemes to overturn the election, and who even now claims Trump can be "reinstated" as president — tried to tamp down expectations at a QAnon conference.

"When pro-Trump lawyer Sidney Powell took the stage at a QAnon convention in Dallas late last month, she was wearing a biker vest with a 'Q' patch sewn on the back. And yet, when Powell began speaking, she did the unexpected: she trashed some of QAnon's most cherished ideas," said the report. "According to the worldview held by many QAnon believers, Powell will actually lead the military tribunals at the heart of QAnon lore, imprisoning pedophile-cannibal Democrats in Guantanamo Bay and restoring Donald Trump to power. But at the conference, Powell broke some hard news to the QAnon faithful. 'There are no military tribunals that's magically going to solve this problem for us,' Powell said, to scattered applause."

"Other QAnon promoters at the convention urged supporters to fact-check their ideas before posting them online to QAnon channels — an odd idea for a movement based on amateur sleuths investigating the idea that, say, Hillary Clinton eats children in a Washington pizzeria and Tom Hanks drinks blood to keep his youthful appearance," said the report. "In the place of QAnon's original wild-eyed visions, the Q promoters respectable enough to make it onstage at the QAnon convention promised more modest goals for QAnon. They urged audience members to build up local QAnon organizations and take precinct seats in local Republican groups — far from the vision of a world reborn through violence that sparked QAnon, but one that's likely more achievable for the QAnon movement."

You can read more here.