Things are even more confusing than usual in QAnon land, where the shuttering of 8Chan in the wake of the El Paso shooting means QAnon believers have lost the one forum where they know “Q” posts his clues.
Without Q to keep them united, QAnon world has become obsessed, inexplicably, with a Santa Claus. As QAnon-watcher Mike Rothschild noted on Thursday, QAnon Twitter has been overwhelmed with tweets about Santa, “Mrs. Claus,” Santa emojis, and believers bragging about belonging to a “permanent nice list.”
The whole thing has turned into a QAnon civil war, with Santa believers tweeting “#IStandWithSanta” and pushing to overturn the old hierarchy of previous QAnon hucksters.
As it turns out, the whole feud has a lot to do with—you guessed it—John F. Kennedy Jr.
In the past, silence from Q has been a boon to rival hucksters. When Q disappeared for a period sometime in early 2018, a mysterious character named “R”—the letter after Q in the alphabet—showed and convinced a chunk of believers that JFK Jr. was not only still alive, but was playing Q in a complicated scheme with Donald Trump to take down the pedophiles of the deep state.
Now, with Q lost somewhere in the ether once again, many QAnon followers are flocking to a QAnon-adjacent Twitter user calling himself “Santa Claus of the United States.”
The Santa account bears a lot of stylistic similarities to whoever’s behind Q. He posts cryptic messages, and is constantly hinting that the world will change dramatically on certain dates (also like Q, none of this has actually come true). He’s also constantly dropping hints that he’s JFK Jr. himself in disguise—a claim that has, naturally, made him a star in the QAnon faction that buys into the JFK Jr. angle.
All of this is accompanied by an avalanche of .gifs from Santa-themed movies, including The Santa Clause and Kurt Russell’s The Christmas Chronicles.
QAnon has always had an element of wish-fulfillment to it, with believers begging Trump on Twitter to make their dreams come true by abrogating the Constitution and throwing Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama into Guantanamo Bay. But this mysterious Santa Twitter person makes that almost childlike aspect of the conspiracy theory even more explicit: fans of the account say things like “Dear Santa,Can we please get just 1 hi profile, DEEP STATE arrest this Christmas?”
Maybe more disturbingly, Santa keeps all his minions in line with a thing called “#PermanentNiceList,” which appears to just be the list of people he follows on Twitter. Fans that Santa follows rejoice that they’re on the list, which they appear to think means they’re being followed on Twitter by JFK Jr.
QAnon believers who back Santa in his various feuds—who call themselves “elves”—ask which other QAnon personalities they should block in order to stay on the list.
“Is there a list we can view the people we are advised not to follow?” one fan tweeted. “I definitely want to stay on the #PermanentNiceList.”
Santa has mobilized his growing army of elves in an attempt to twist around who’s who in QAnon land, urging his fans to abandon prominent QAnon personalities like Michael Flynn in favor of his Santa-themed coterie.
This has provoked a big backlash from some of the more prominent QAnon pushers, who have long seen the JFK Jr. thing as an embarrassing distraction from their otherwise very serious efforts to decode Trump’s hand signs and investigate pizzerias. “Joe M,” a top QAnon guy whose videos explaining the conspiracy theory have been picked up by people as prominent as former pitcher Curt Schilling, has denounced Santa as the leader of a “street gang” and a “thug.”
Naturally, there is also merch to be sold. Whoever’s behind the Santa account sells all kinds of gear with “#PermanentNiceList” on it. For $48, you can get a “Permanent Nice List” sweatshirt. For $20, you can have a cellphone declaring yourself a “Permanent Elf.”
Incredibly, people are actually buying these clothes, then posting about their hauls on Twitter. One Twitter user even claimed to have bought a whole set for her family:
Funny how you and Steve have now quoted the same author, Mike Rothschild! Bwaaahhhh ........
X-VERMINATOR
Funny how none of the Qbers can ever answer a simple question like "Is it true?". . A simple yes or no would suffice. I'll go ahead and assume the article is true given your unwillingness to give an answer or discuss the issue. At this point I just want to know which campfire Qbers are proudly sporting #PermanentNiceList apparel and who isn't. Bwaaahhhh.
Remember why, specifically, the Bill of Rights was written...remember its purpose. It was written to limit the power of government over the individual.
There is no believing a liar, even when he speaks the truth.
. A simple yes or no would suffice. I'll go ahead and assume the article is true given your unwillingness to give an answer or discuss the issue. At this point I just want to know which campfire Qbers are proudly sporting #PermanentNiceList apparel and who isn't. Bwaaahhhh. 
