Q is Owen Benjamin

Many of the criticisms aimed at Owen Benjamin were already fired at Q, but because Q has been on the scene for a bit longer, folks have already moved on from those types of criticism. Both Owen and Q pay ample lip service to civic nationalism, the idea that various nations can be unified by a shared legal code. Both have made claims about various conspiracy theories that are dubious at best.

But both are also great boosts to morale. Both get people excited, energized. Both get people realizing that they aren't alone after all, that the feelings of isolation are just that, and that there are a lot of other folks out there who are experiencing the same exact thing.

The major difference between the two is intelligence, and I don't really mean in the sense of being smart or not, though there is some of that, predominantly I mean in that Q is active where Owen is passive, the Q team are working behind the scenes and letting stuff drip out, where Owen is in full public view, trying to work things out and express what is on his mind.

As such, the nature of the demographics between the two audiences is going to vary considerably, and may even be pitted against each other at some point, but they're just two different flavors of the same lite-right political philosophy.

Both Q and Owen Benjamin place a heavy emphasis on rhetoric in their communications, the dialectic is few and far between, and that's where the minor quibble about the smartness on display could be made, in that Owen is not an engineer, he's not a scientist, he's not a scholar, but that's not to say he isn't smart or skilled, it's just not the same category as the Q folks.

When Q digs into dialectic, it's heady legal, surveillance, and "can you connect the dots between these two shady people" type stuff. It's objectively a more intellectually engaging theme of content, which doesn't make it any better, it's just going to appeal to a different category of folks.

You'd still likely enjoy drinking a beer with someone who follows either very closely, but the conversations that you'd have over that beer would vary significantly, and that's ok.

It's easy to want to sit back and be a critic.

"Q said X would happen on Y date and it didn't!"
"Owen said Z didn't happen, and that the world is really ABC!"

The nature of the criticism comes from a dialectic standpoint, which makes such criticism inherently ignorant, because neither are trying to convey information. That's not their primary purpose or intent.

Criticizing them for that would be like claiming soccer players don't know what they're doing because they're not playing by football rules. It's a category error, to cite Vox Day's framing of such a mistake.

Both are doing good work, and while you may disagree with one or both, we cannot undermine and backstab them and think that we're doing anyone any favors. If you don't want to support or follow them, don't, but don't make a big deal out of it either, because the people that care don't matter, and the people that matter don't care.

Instead, at the minimum, at least learn from what they are doing. Learn about how rhetoric works, what the "rules" are, how they go about doing their business, and understand that it's going to be unnatural for folks who are implicitly dialectic in their approach.

They're going to look like they're doing "something wrong", when to really declare something like that so concretely, again, ignores what they're really trying to do. Of course, according to the rules of checker, moving a knight is "wrong", but if folks are playing chess, the rules of checkers no longer apply.

Remember this before you elect to level criticisms or air your disappointments about either.