Timothy Charles Holmseth is a former journalist – possibly ‘journalist’ – and current promoter of QAnon conspiracy theories who claims, for instance, to be the sole journalist authorized to represent the (fictitious) “Pentagon Pedophile Task Force”. On his website, you can find multiple ‘reports’ with titles like “WAR REPORT: PRESIDENT TRUMP SHINES WHITE HOT SPOTLIGHT on CIA EXPLOITATION of JESUS CHRIST (TRUMP SHOWS YOU THE CIA HOLLYWOOD PSYCHOLOGICAL OPERATION of PASSION of the CHRIST-SOUND of FREEDOM-THE RESURRECTION) [BOB UNANUE] [CHILDREN CHAINED NAKED to BEDS by NAVY SEALS]” or “SPECIAL NATIONAL SECURITY SERIES: JUDICIAL TERRORISM in AMERICA (THE EPSTEIN COUP) – HILLARY CLINTON TORTURE AND CANNIBALISM LAWSUIT U.S. COURT DOCUMENTS THAT WERE SUPRESSED BY BIG TECH HAVE GONE VIRAL!!!!!”, and we hope readers will excuse us for not bothering to wade through it all to look for some kind of thread in the incoherent hot mess of hysteria and paranoia that constitute Holmseth’s reports. The strands of standard QAnon mythology are at least readily apparent: Yes, there is a lot of Clinton Body Count stuff, and everyone Holmseth can think of (except, notably, Donald Trump), including fellow QAnon sympathizers like Alex Jones and Michael Flynn, are allegedly involved – it’s really a fine illustration of that sort of conspiratorial thinking where every piece of information, regardless of what it says or how it apparently contradicts anything Holmseth has said elsewhere, is interpreted as being evidence for an always expanding conspiracy that is simultaneously getting more and more desperate in its attempts to silence him through PSYOPs.
Holmseth is particularly famous for spreading false and insane claims of child abuse. In June 2020, Holmseth and the group calling themselves the Pentagon Pedophile Task Force (PPTF) – according to the febrile fantasy of Holmseth, the PPTF “was created through the Donald J. Trump White House, per Presidential Executive Order, and operates through United States Army Intelligence Support Activity”, but in reality it has, needless to say, no connection whatsoever to any US governmental agency – got some attention (went viral) for spreading false claims about tens of thousands of children being held hostage and tortured in New York City; according to Holmseth, some secret recent US military operation rescued 35,000 “malnourished, caged and tortured” children who were kept for the purpose of extracting adrenochrome from tunnels beneath Central Park and other unnamed U.S. cities. His reports even features audio clips of unidentified people claiming, without evidence, that they know medical workers who treated those children. The story contributed to the popularization of the hashtag #SaveTheChildren among QAnon dingbats. And of course, by co-opting a trademarked name for the child welfare organization Save the Children, conspiracy theorists made work dedicated to the actual welfare of children (rather than conspiratorial fiction) harder to accomplish, among other things by redirecting users who are searching for the child welfare group to abominable QAnon nonsense. Eventually, social media companies took action against the QAnon use of the hashtag, which predictably led the conspiracy theorists to conclude that those social media companies were part of the coverup. So it goes.
Holmseth’s delusions extends to his own person. According to himself, Holmseth is “a human trafficking victim of the State of Minnesota. Holmseth became a political prisoner after he was kidnapped by State of Minnesota four times. Holmseth was charged with publishing evidence and information about Jeffrey Epstein’s child procurement operation. Holmseth was locked in a private for-profit detention center and tortured by his captors.” In reality, Holmseth has been arrested multiple times and incarcerated for violating a lifelong restraining order after systematically failing to control himself from harassing his victims or posting threatening and defamatory commentary online. (According to himself, he has also later been kidnapped and imprisoned by deep state forces after uncovering baby sales arranged via Ukrainian Embassy in DC). And he has a long history of filing frivolous and nonsensical lawsuits against any and every state or federal institutions alleging … well, it’s rarely entirely clear neither to us nor to the courts (nor, we suspect, Holmseth himself, who evidently has a tenuous grasp of reality), but the lawsuits generally seem to have something to do with alleged international pedophile rings that he claims are behind his previous arrests.
Yes, it is very dumb. But Holmseth has, disconcertingly, been a major influence on more violent and materially dangerous segments of the QAnon community, such as Alpalus Slyman and Cynthia Abcug, and a quick check online reveals that he has a large number of fans among people with (usually) undiagnosed schizophrenia and bots.
Diagnosis: No, we can definitely not rule out that Timothy Charles Holmseth’s brand of lunacy is of the kind that we don’t generally like to cover in our Encyclopedia. Still, it is a mark of the times that he nonetheless has been able to achieve a remarkable level of influence. There is, apparently, lots of similar … thought patterns going around, and certainly not sufficient resources to meet everybody’s needs.
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