Climate Denial Crock of the Week

The "JFK Jr. lives" sect of QAnon used to be marginalized and scattered. But after the Las Vegas QAnon conference included two "JFK Jr. lives" figures and today's gathering in Dallas, it seems they're really coming into their own. pic.twitter.com/QvO2A36GXi

— Travis View (@travis_view) November 2, 2021

Houston Chronicle:

A group of QAnon believers gathered in Dallas last night to await the arrival of John F. Kennedy Jr.

A tweet from Daily Beast contributor Steven Monacelli showed that the believers were gathering at AT&T Discovery Plaza in downtown Dallas around 8 p.m. on November 1, according to Newsweek.

There is currently a large crowd of what appears to be QAnon believers at the AT&T Discovery Plaza in downtown Dallas. A popular QAnon theory recently is that JFK Jr. of the Kennedy family will be making a big announcement at Dealey Plaza by the grassy knoll sometime tomorrow. pic.twitter.com/8L0Lw09wH7

— steven monacelli (@stevanzetti) November 2, 2021

The group was there because of a popular QAnon theory that JFK Jr. will make an appearance before midnight today, November 2, at the infamous grassy knoll to declare Donald Trump as president. 

There is only one problem: JFK Jr. died in when the plane he was piloting crashed in the Atlantic Ocean in 1999.

The very large crowd gathered to see the JFK Jr. reveal himself after his faked death isn’t funny. It’s a deeply worrying sign of how unhinged our political conversation has become from truth. https://t.co/MMCiKu7Mev

— Chris Murphy (@ChrisMurphyCT) November 2, 2021

UPDATE: Daily Beast:

Hundreds of QAnon followers from across the country gathered in Dallas on Tuesday afternoon to witness what they believed would be the reappearance of John F. Kennedy and John F. Kennedy Jr.

The assassinated president and his deceased son never arrived.

Rather than face their disappointment, though, the QAnon faithful quickly pivoted to a new prediction, claiming that the Kennedys and a host of other late celebrities would unveil themselves at a Rolling Stones concert in Dallas later that day.

“Rolling Stones?” said the host of one livestream monitoring the event. “Rolling away the stone!”

The crowd in Dallas represented a splinter faction of a splinter faction within the larger QAnon movement, and one that’s been denounced by some of QAnon’s leading figures as a scheme meant to embarrass QAnon believers. But the willingness of hundreds of people to travel to Dallas from as far away as New York and California demonstrates QAnon’s persistent popularity nearly a year after “Q”—the mysterious figure behind QAnon—last posted.

John F. Kennedy Jr. has long been an obsession for a faction of QAnon supporters, even as their beliefs that JFK Jr. faked his 1999 plane-crash death and will return to run as Donald Trump’s vice president have faced ridicule from other QAnon believers. On Tuesday, the conspiracy theorists were drawn to the site of the Kennedy assassination by claims made by obscure channels on the social media app Telegram with names like “Negative48” and “Whiplash347.”

The channels’ operators had amassed hundreds of thousands of followers online with their predictions, often by using numerology to claim that the members of the Kennedy family would unveil themselves sometime in early November and usher in a restoration of the Trump presidency.

QAnon promoter Michael Brian Protzman, who has more than 100,000 followers with the “Negative48” channel, has used numerology to argue that the Kennedys are descendants of Jesus Christ. On Monday, Protzman met with his fans in Dallas and performed a numerological equation on a fan’s T-shirt with Sharpie. During the celebration, Protzman wore a pin that said “I’m Just a Dumb Ass,” surrounded with numbers referencing his group’s numerological beliefs.