One man, a Venezuelan immigrant, explained that many socialists are literal cannibals.
“Perverts and murderers,” said a woman in Bossier City. Some were familiar with “QAnon”-the name claimed by believers in a host of conspiracy theories centered around an alleged “deep state” coup against Trump and his supposedly ingenious countermeasures, referred to as the coming “Storm,” or “Great Awakening”-but most were not. Through a season of Trump rallies across the country, before the global pandemic forced the president to retreat for a while from the nation’s arenas, I spoke with dozens of Trump supporters who believe that the Democratic establishment primarily serves as a cover for child sex trafficking. Jones is only the second person I’ve met at the rally, so I don’t yet know just how common this perspective is. Photograph by Bruce Gilden/Magnum Photos. Like many of the president’s 14,000 followers waiting for the rally to begin, Jones believes that Trump is on a mission from God to expose (and destroy) the hidden demons of the deep state. That’s what’s drawn Jones here, to the CenturyLink Center in Bossier City, Louisiana, two weeks before Thanksgiving. They love Trump because he makes them feel like insiders even as they imagine him their outsider champion. It’s Möbius strip politics, Trumpism’s defining oxymoron: a populist elite, a mass movement of “free thinkers” all thinking the same thing. Jones, a big, vein-popping, occasionally church-going white man burdened with what he calls an “Islamic” name by his hippie mother, revels in this kind of coded message, a sense of possessing knowledge shared only by a select few. does mean white power-unless you say it doesn’t. The joke worked so well that it became real. It began as a joke-a “hoax” meant to trick liberals into believing that the raised fingers actually represent the letters WP: white power. sign-thumb meeting index finger, three fingers splayed-is a kind of secret handshake. For Trump supporters like Jones, the O.K.