Vampires, Vampyres, Wampyrs… QAnon
So I’m fascinated with the QAnon movement, which shows more signs of becoming a religion…or a cult…with every passing day. QAnon is, I think, ridiculous, and on some level, literally insane. But I must give credit where credit is due. It is surprisingly inventive. Or, if not exactly inventive, then it is fabulously acquisitive. It gathers up pretty much anything it finds…myths, fairy tales, horror movies, old scary stories of the “creepy pasta,” sort…and incorporates that material seamlessly into itself. It is the very Blob of popular culture.
Case in point: vampires. Lately I’ve been visiting QAnon-oriented sites, just to see what’s happening in that world. And, between the conspiracy theories and anti-vaxx screeds, recently there have been lots of postings about vampires. It seems they infest the New World Order and Satanic Cabal like ticks on a mule deer in March. Here are just some of the titles I’ve seen on Bitchute, which is kind of a Youtube for people who may have been kicked off Youtube: “Satanic Vampire Network Ruling Planet,” “Interview With A Vampire: A Rothschild Insider Tells All - They are Cannibals and Vegans!!!” “Alex Jones…Vampire[s] Are Real.”
I’m at a loss to explain why QAnon-ers should have any interest in Count Dracula and company, but it seems they do. Maybe anything that sounds just a little bit spooky quickly finds a place in their hearts. Anyway, it seems that the members of the Satanic Cabal, when they’re not selling child-slaves to Martians from their bunkers under Washington D.C. pizza parlors (which have no basements), are drinking human blood in order to extend their own lives. Somehow it will give them immortality or something.
Again, to give them their due, the Qanon-ers are producing something interesting here. They are being quite selective. They are picking specific aspects of the vampire mythos to employ. For example, vampire stories have never been entirely clear as to whether vampires themselves are actually dead, or merely mostly dead. The original vampires of Eastern European folklore were, usually if not always, stone cold dead. They just got up and walked around, and drank blood during the nights. But, there are also stories (particularly in the modern versions of the tale) where the vampire is a living creature who drinks blood in order to stay young and beautiful—think, for example, of Elizabeth Báthory, the Hungarian “Blood Countess” who was a real human being, and who apparently really did kill people (or, at least, such is alleged), and whose motivation was at least said (rightly or wrongly) to be that she hoped to retain her vitality by bathing in the blood of virgins.
True or false? Who knows? But that’s the way the narrative goes, and that’s the version of the vampire stories which QAnon Cultists have selected. For them, the model is Countess Báthory, not her countryman, Bela Lugosi.
Anyway, the other choice the QAnon-ers have made is the sophistication, or complete lack there-of, of their vampires. In modern vampire stories, the vampire is often (if not always) a very sophisticated, highly cultured, and quite seductive figure. He is, after all, a well-educated member of the elite. And, rather often, he (or she) is a real romantic. Think Ann Rice’s Lestat de Lioncourt.
On the other hand, particularly in the older versions of the myth, he’s anything but sophisticated. He is a crude hulk, a wandering corpse, decaying gradually (or not so gradually), and rather more like a zombie than seducer. Thus, Max Schreck’s Nosferatu (1922) was rat-like, while, in this century, the vampires of 30 Days Of Night (2007) are bestial and brutal.
In fact, you can see the two different kinds of blood-sucker even in the various incarnations of the world’s most famous vampire, Count Dracula. In Bram Stoker’s original book, Dracula is a bit less repulsive than the average Balkan folkloric vampire (who really was just a walking corpse), but he is still miles away from the proper Victorian gentleman. Physically, if not culturally, he is crude. His hands are “coarse, broad, with squat fingers. Strange to say, there were hairs in the centre of the palm.” And his breath is “rank.” Contrast all that to the same vampire in Francis Ford Coppola’s 1992 production Bram Stoker's Dracula, in which Gary Oldman’s Dracula is deadly but so charming that he actually gets the girl in the end. Or, sort of, anyway.
But QAnon-ers have picked the older version of the myth. At least judging from what I’ve seen, their vampires are of the crudest sort — even when, or particularly when, they come from the world’s elite. Check out, for example, the much doctored photos of Prince Charles in the collage above. King he may someday be, but the QAnon-ers present him as a bloated horror with all the charm of Jabba the Hutt on an off day.
I wonder why? Why have they made crudity so central a part of their narrative? We tend to make our villains caricatures of ourselves. We give them our virtues, but bend them to the shadow rather than the light.
Could it be, perhaps, …maybe…because there is something about crudity that appeals to them? Or something about sophistication which frightens them? Perhaps, indeed, there might be a little projection going on?
Whatever…I’ll leave that to the literary scholars and mental health professionals.
But there is another question, one far more pressing, which concerns me more.
To wit, what does it say about our society that so many of our fellow citizens are so removed from the heavy burden of maturity that they are willing to believe, as God is their witness, that fictional beings…vampires…genuinely exist, and genuinely threaten them?
That I must ask the question does not, I fear, speak well of us.
And the potential answer…
Frightens me more than any vampire possibly could.
Even those from Transylvania.
Or Washington.
*
Until next time.
Onward and Upward.
~mjt
Sources
Bitchute titles
“BREAKING: Satanic Vampire Network Ruling Planet Earth: Alex Jones exposes the Satanic Vampire network ruling over the planet,” https://www.bitchute.com/video/Vfyi2XMLOLo/
“Interview with the Vampire | A Rothschild insider tells ALL - they are cannibals AND vegans!!!” https://www.bitchute.com/video/no1gSP2pe5oj/
“Alex Jones Full Show 12/27/21 Vampire Are Real P1,” https://www.bitchute.com/video/oxj3jXvNh2IP/
Copyright©2022 Michael Jay Tucker
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