Tim Stewart and Scott Morrison go back a long way — 30 years to be exact. The two met at their local Baptist church in Sydney’s Maroubra, with the men’s wives (Jenny and Lynelle) becoming best mates.
The two couples remained close. Morrison’s ascension to the prime ministership in August 2018, however, marked a transformative moment in the lives of the two men. Stewart’s embrace of the fringe QAnon conspiracy theory became more and more pronounced as the movement gained in numbers and political influence under US president Donald Trump.
Stewart’s standing in the Australian and international QAnon community grew exponentially. Unrestricted on Twitter, the Morrison family friend became a leading figure, with his spiritual pronouncements on the “Great Awakening” and the “coming of the storm” — end of days concepts that would mean the end of the all-powerful secret group of satanic paedophiles that runs the world, as QAnon has it. (Q is said to be an anonymous senior figure in the former Trump administration providing clues to followers via the dark web’s 8chan (since rebranded as 8kun) message board.)
By late last year, Stewart had disappeared far down the rabbit hole of the fast-spreading conspiracy movement that a year earlier had been classified by the FBI as a domestic terror threat in the US. The FBI cited instances of planned and actual QAnon-linked violence, most of it driven by baseless accusations of satanic paedophile activity.
In the run-up to the US elections of November last year, Stewart’s growing status in the QAnon movement was confirmed when he and his son appeared as special guests on Patriot Transition Voice (PTV), a leading QAnon site in the US. PTV is hosted by two QAnon stalwarts known as Duncan and Steve (no surnames are used). The then YouTube-hosted platform promoted the quintessential QAnon mashup of God, freedom and patriotism, with frequent homages to Donald Trump as the Il Duce strongman figure at its centre.
It was in this mix that Stewart, using his Twitter persona “Burn Notice” under the Twitter handle @BurnedSpy34, was welcomed as Aussie royalty. A QAnon identity known as “Bear” — first name Scott — paid tribute to Stewart as the great Twitter sage of the Awakening.
“When I first started my Twitter account I was following [Tim Stewart] and I just got this vibration of what an amazing human being this person was,” Scott said. “I sent him a message saying ‘I don’t know who you are but something tells me you are supposed to help me with this ascension that’s coming’.
“He has done more for me and [my wife] in terms of spirituality and enlightenment and ascension than anybody on this planet and I am forever grateful,” Bear rounded out.
Stewart, under his “Burn Notice” Twitter identity, attested to “how much awakening is occurring”. “The awakening is profound,” he said, “and by that I mean the sensitivity to what God’s doing and a sensitivity to other people and spiritual connections worldwide.”
The 90-minute session, hosted on YouTube, has since been deleted. Crikey has kept a copy, which you can watch here — if you dare. (Watch just the highlights, below).
PTV has since moved to new online platforms that have become home to alt-right conspiracies like QAnon: a platform known as Gab has replaced Twitter, and PureSocial Network has replaced Facebook. Calling itself the home of “unbiased, smart” media, PureSocial publishes an alternative universe of ideas: “the truth” on the 2020 US election; the “most important vaccine video you will ever share”; a finding that 94% of COVID-19 deaths are linked to “underlying conditions”.
Patriot Transition has been keeping the QAnon dream alive. Last month it organised a rally in Dallas, Texas — the “For God and Country Patriot Roundup” — giving a platform to key Trump supporters including former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn and Trump lawyer Sidney Powell, a leading proponent of the false vote count conspiracy. Flynn argued that there should be a Myanmar-style coup in the US to reinstate Donald Trump, while Powell collected more funds for her pro-Trump not-for-profit organisation “Defending the Republic”.
At the beginning of this year, Stewart, using a new Twitter name, tweeted his support for the storming of the US Capitol in which QAnon adherents played a prominent role. He has since been silenced on mainstream social media platforms, though there is evidence that his son, Jesse, has migrated to the alt-right Gab channel.
Stewart’s move to the extremes has become increasingly uncomfortable for the prime minister.
Crikey understands the Morrison and Stewart families were originally intending to holiday together in Hawaii at the end of 2019, before Stewart’s QAnon links became known via The Guardian, Crikey and Twitter.
It is not, after all, a good look to have Australia’s leading QAnon figure just one step away from The Lodge — especially when newly installed US President Joe Biden has ordered more action on QAnon and other conspiracy movements.
It’s worth noting that the friendship between Morrison and Stewart predates the Qanon stuff by decades.
It is tragic for Morrison to have used the words “Ritual Abuse” in the much needed apology to victims and validate the Qanon nonsense in the process. My feeling is this is less sinister than implied and more a case of stupidity coupled with incompetence. The effect unfortunately is the same.
Guilt by association is a very popular trope used by the media on both left and right. I have several friends who’ve gone alt-right during lockdown. One even sent me a video supposedly showing Hunter Biden in bed with Obama’s kids while smoking crack. The woman concerned is University educated FFS!!
We know Morrison is incompetent. This is misguided loyalty to a friend is just more of the same.
Trump & Morrison nose rubbing buddies. This goes deeper than you think.
I guess we agree.
My point was that stupidity and incompetence may have led Morrison to debase the office of PM out of loyalty to a friend. If that is the case it is still very very bad but par for the course – the same as many of his tone deaf pronouncements and his on going lack of leadership.
My complaint is that unless the “deeper than you think” part is properly ruled out we are just playing in the same field as the media smears that destroyed Corbyn in the UK – friend of terrorists, supporter of the IRA, anti-Semite… all confected via guilt by association.
It’s an entirely different issue if Morrison was actively supporting Qanon as some sort of sop to Trump. That would be properly sinister.
Morrison has had ample opportunity to call them out. He still hasn’t named them as the organisation of concern. Weasel words from him. Slippery as usual. I would not put it past Morrison to believe in this conspiracy. He believes a miracle of god won him government & he believes he has healing hands. His evangelical style talk is not reassuring. He is a greedy, incompetent man who like Trump will grasp at anything that promises to deliver him power. Take off your rose coloured glasses. The man is dangerous.
Morrison never says anything positive or negative he just uses weasel words and never actually says anything.
Incompetent and a compulsive and habitual liar, but doesn’t he have and media minders around him with enough sense to tell him to disown Stewart loudly and publicly?
And what about Jenny and Lynelle – did they refuse to answer questions from 4Corners, or were they banned from doing so? I would love to hear their thought on Tim and Jesse. to compare with those of the rest of the Stewart family…
From 4C it appears Lynelle was removed from her role last year.
I always feel sorry for people who open up to the media. There will now be nasty consequences as the News Corp machine starts digging for dirt.
I watched the Four Corners program on ABC last night, having already read the Guardian Australia and Crikey stories at the time they were written.
The only new information I gleaned was from Stewart’s own family, who had no hesitation in disclosing the dangerous liaisons between (our) PM and his mates – and of course those great photos from Kirribilli House and Hawaii.
I actually commented afterwards that Morrison appeared to have been less surly about the printed word than he is about the television program.
Regardless, we should ALL be very concerned as some of us have well been, since the initial reporting on this matter.
Morrison has yet to actually name QANON as the organisation he thinks is dangerous. He has not done that. Still sending out messages to cult followers with his sneaky use of language. We need him to actually name QANON.
Yes, if they get any further out of control we might even see some governments, ours included, forced to act as if they thought black people’s lives matter as much as white people’s lives. Which is manifestly not the case at the moment, don’t read the words, see the action.
Anti vaxers are a huge concern- they have got totally out of control.
BLM is a valid movement.
Sneaking your paranoia onto one of my comments is not appreciated.
Get help. You are further down the rabbit hole than you think.
There are inner circles of inner circles and overlapping circles of overlapping circles. The subsections of those circles will never tell anyone anything of the above. They are above the laws because they make the laws as need be. In courts etc., we swear on the bible believer or not.
There is an unwritten clause when becoming a witness for Christ/God that you may do, lie, steal, cheat etc when doing the work of God for the glory of God and Jesus Christ through the holy spirit.
So if you have sworn to God and Jesus for their glory with the holy spirit within, that will override a court of man when swearing on a bible. Sorry but that is the truth.
Once that indoctrinated, the belief is absolute. How do structures deal with absolutes when there are none in most people’s world views. An absolute world view is not rational. But then they will go one step further and say “our absolute world view may not be rational but we cannot know the mind of god”.
The good old grand plan.
We swear on the bible in court to tell the truth. We are captured apparently by the fear and condemnation of God.
With all of the corruption and coercion that’s gone on under Gods churches watch, carried on by courts or the lack there of; I’m not surprised we live in the world we do in 2021.
All you have to do is believe that you have been chosen to do god’s work and knock away any knockers and you’re good to go. Rationalise it any way you want even if you end up being found guilty.
Guilt by association makes Scomo pretty ripe with his exclusive religion but I don’t particularly like this angle.
I would prefer to see his religion called out for deliberately alienating its members from the outside world and what it means to have a prime Minister with these views.
Scomo is such an opportunistic political survivor he won’t mention anything that reveals his personal thoughts which I suppose is fair enough.
righteousness
the quality of being morally right or justifiable… this is what drives him and emboldens him, yet what is most stark is his lack of ethic and moral justification unless your god is ultimately profit motive and staying in power..
The unfortunately deluded fool that is the subject of this article borrows heavily from his religious vocabulary, it’s a shame to see the term “awakening” championed by nutters, [ typically Scomo sprinkles his speeches with “motivational marketing, religious ” terminology]
Awakening is a good way to describe what could happen when more people realise that privatisation has made a small group very wealthy and the rest with a significantly lower standard of quality of life.
Not because of privatisation itself, more that standards, regulation, transparency and power has shifted away from the people so it is far harder to govern equitably now.
“Beam us up scotty, planet QAnon is uninhabitable”.
A report came on CNN just now, indicating that the Q cult is seen as actually physically (not just mentally) dangerous by the FBI in the US: https://youtu.be/mTqkygZ-Zsg