These Democrats believe Kamala won the election – in an alternate universe
It's 4am on election night and things are not looking good for Kamala Harris.
Donald Trump has already won the key swing states of Georgia and Wisconsin and is well on his way to seizing Pennsylvania, at which point the election will be called in his favour.
But all might not be as it seems. According to a growing number of spiritually-inclined Democrat supporters, 4am on Nov 6 2024 is the moment the universe 'split', leaving us on an alternate timeline where Mr Trump is president.
In reality, they claim, Ms Harris was installed in the White House, and it is only a matter of time before we all collectively realise our mistake and jump back to the 'correct' timeline.
Psephologists may cast doubt, but for thousands of self-described witches and mystics on TikTok, the evidence is incontrovertible.
Known as the 4am Club, the movement is founded by Gia Prism, a self-styled psychic medium and healer, and has been described as the 'Left's QAnon'.
Videos of '4am clubbers' on social media have garnered hundreds of thousands of views, featuring mostly young women describing their uncannily similar experiences on election night.
Around the time the clock struck 4am, people across America claim to have woken up with a sinking feeling that Mr Trump would win the presidency.
'It wasn't just a feeling, we had a shared mystical experience that night,' said Ms Prysm in one of her videos. 'We had the same dreams, we had the same visions, we heard the same songs, we heard the voices of our deceased loved ones.'
TikTok user heartmeggieheart, a tarot reader and astrologer, described her experience as an 'energy shift'.
'I asked myself where am I? What world am I in?' she said. 'I'm not saying this to be delusional or give myself false hope, but it just felt temporary.'
One TikTok user claimed their two-year-old son woke up and screamed 'no' at 4am. 'He has no political awareness,' they clarified.
Another described experiencing a 'disturbance in the force', while a third recalled waking up at 2am MT – chalking up her prescience to time difference.
For Ms Prism, who describes herself as a 'portal to the other side' and sells psychic predictions online for as little as $7 (£5.20), this made 'perfect sense'.
But for many others, she said, election night served as an 'awakening call', catapulting them on a 'spiritual journey'.
Some have reached for a scientific rationale for their collective experience, arguing that the idea can be proved by a theory that all possible outcomes of quantum measurements are physically realised in different, independent universes. Therefore, it is rational to believe that in at least one, Ms Harris swept to victory.
Kelley Daring, whose 4am Club videos have racked up hundreds of thousands of views, said: 'Alternate timelines absolutely exist, not as fantasy, but as a fundamental structure of reality. One that science is beginning to brush the edges of, even as it struggles to fully translate what mystics have known for millennia.'
The movement has been ridiculed by Trump supporters, who have dubbed their beliefs 'Harris hallucinations' and 'Democracy with a side of astrology'.
Charlie Kirk, a Right-wing activist, cast the fringe movement as emblematic of the Democrats' inability to come to terms with their loss.
'This is only the most outrageous outgrowth of the Democrat delusion,' he said. 'The base of everything they believe is a war on reality.'
Joseph Uscinski, a professor of Political Science at the University of Miami who has written several books on conspiracy theories, said: 'These sorts of groups have existed forever – there are all sorts of bizarre beliefs out there.
'It used to be much harder to find them if you weren't looking. Now, because of social media, it's very easy to find them. That doesn't mean that they are more persuasive or growing bigger.'
Conspiracy theories in modern American politics tend to be associated with the Right. In 2016, the Pizzagate theory, which claimed a cabal of satanic paedophiles linked to Hillary Clinton operated a global child sex trafficking ring out of a Washington DC pizza restaurant, fed into the QAnon movement, which falsely claimed the subsequent election was rigged.
Currently, the idea that Jeffrey Epstein, the paedophile financier, had a client list that he used to blackmail powerful figures is tearing apart the Republican party.
But unlike these theories, which mostly circulated via male-dominated online message boards on 8Chan and Reddit, the 4am Club is almost exclusively made up of women drawing on their 'female intuition' and the 'divine goddess' for their insights.
Some followers have even dismissed criticism of the movement as evidence of misogyny.
'Being mocked taps into old, ancient wounds: the burned witches, the institutionalised oracles, the silenced wise women,' said Ms Daring. 'The ridicule isn't just modern, it's ancestral. But we are meant to hold the line, even when it shakes.
Cynics might scoff. But as Ms Harris weighs up her next political move, she may consult her crystal ball, as well as her advisers.
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