What I found out from talking to people involved in reducing QAnon’s harm is hard, but unavoidable: there’s no guaranteed way to dissuade a QAnon believer. “The reality is that we don’t really know what really works or if anything does work to get someone out of QAnon,” Dr. Joseph M. Pierre, a University of California, Los Angeles, psychiatrist who has studied QAnon, told me. For one thing, QAnon apostates almost never leave the movement because of treatment from a therapist or psychiatrist, according to Pierre. Instead, people who walk away from QAnon often describe experiencing a personal
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