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by
Will Sommer
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January 2 - January 14, 2024
This wasn’t about policy debates or even culture wars—Trump supporters who signed up for QAnon were joining a biblical struggle between good and evil.
They described themselves as divine warriors given a task from God to target specific people they saw as devils on the earth: Obama, for example, or billionaire Democratic donor George Soros.
For years, these people had been primed with fantasies of the Storm, promised the violent executions of their political opponents and the installation of a Trump dictatorship. Now, as Pence stepped inside the Capitol, all of that was slipping away.
What happens when a portion of a country buys into a mass delusion?
Support for QAnon rises among more conservative groups. Twenty-seven percent of white evangelical Christians in the AEI poll, for example, said QAnon’s claims were at least mostly correct.
QAnon is a dark dream about sanctioned violence against political and cultural enemies.
It threatens to undermine democracy, laying the groundwork for an authoritarian takeover justified on the grounds that Democrats and other liberals are child-eating pedophiles. How, QAnon believers ask, can we coexist with people like that?
Then Q repeats “Mockingbird” in reference to October 30, 2017—the day Q has promised believers Clinton will be arrested.
The first test of Q’s predictive powers came just two days after the initial posts appeared, the day Clinton was supposed to be arrested. But rather than ending that day in a prison cell, Clinton signed copies of her campaign memoir in Chicago.
Every permutation of QAnon to come would have Trump at its core, the god-emperor who would solve their problems.
QAnon emerged in 2017 as a coping mechanism for Trump voters troubled by his stalled presidency.
QAnon believers started showing up at Trump rallies in the spring of 2018, just months after Q’s first posts.
A senior Trump campaign official said the campaign tried to avoid bringing up QAnon at all—to avoid “pissing off the crazy.”
For Anons, Trump is a figure of messianic proportions, sent to destroy the pedophile cabal, usher in a thousand-year peace, cure diseases, and absolve their debts.
“QAnon would not have existed in its present form but for Facebook,” DiResta said.
For years, the companies found it easier to ignore QAnon than to be accused of censorship.
QAnon was near death when the coronavirus arrived.
The fear and anger that surround pandemics have always made fertile ground for conspiracy theories.
In medieval Europe, fear of the Black Death inspired widespread violence against Jews, who were blamed for propagating the disease.
After a Christian charity set up a field hospital in New York’s Central Park for overflow Covid patients, QAnon personality Timothy Charles Holmseth claimed the tents were really being set up for a far different purpose. The pandemic was a cover for military attacks on the cabal hidden deep underground in their pedophile bases, Holmseth explained. Once the battles were over, the rescued “mole children” would be rehabilitated in those Central Park tents.
Contrary to what Hofstadter wrote, his critics said, conspiracy theories have been a powerful force in American politics and culture since before the country’s founding, all the way back to the Salem Witch Trials.
“an explanation of historical, ongoing, or future events that cites as a main causal factor a small group of powerful persons, the conspirators, acting in secret for their own benefit against the common good.”
NESARA wasn’t just an amateur economic theory, Goodwin told her followers—it was a bill for restructuring the entire world. NESARA would eliminate credit card debt, mortgage payments, and the Federal Reserve.
Some research suggests that people with Manichean worldviews who see the world as more black-and-white are more likely to support conspiracy theories. Other factors that indicate a tendency toward conspiracism include preferences for strict hierarchies, holding a dark view of human nature and higher distrust of other people, and viewing the world as a jungle where “the strong dominate the weak.” Conspiracy theory believers often display obsessions with the sufferings of their own identity group—their religion, their race, their country—at the hands of sinister outside groups.
As a way of seeing the world, conspiracy theories offer their believers a chance to feel smarter than the average person, giving them a sense of agency or at least understanding over events that often seem totally out of control.
They often seem angry about the state of the world and their place in it. Conversely, they get a special pleasure in the knowledge they think Q has shared with them, reveling in the secrets that set them apart from the average person.
Watching QAnon spread in her family, Amanda thought of a nature documentary she’d seen about a tropical fungus that takes over insects’ minds and spreads by exploding out through their bodies.
NESARA and QAnon both fall into a category of political or religious movement called millenarianism: the belief that a utopian world is right around the corner.
QAnon can seem focused on the present, with followers litigating the meaning of 8chan posts or Trump’s hand gestures. But its goal is a utopian one: the post-cabal world that follows the hyperviolent Storm, often with a NESARA-style economic utopia attached.
“Leave it to a bunch of women at a divorce law firm,” Picazio said.
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 “disillusionment”
Republicans could have a McCain moment of their own with QAnon, Kinzinger thought, if only they could summon a small bit of bravery.
As a former member of the military who rose to become a three-star general, Flynn had sworn an oath to defend the Constitution. But as the QAnon crowd cheered, Flynn seemed to endorse the idea of replicating the Myanmar coup in the United States. “No reason,” Flynn said. “I mean, it should happen here. No reason.”
“The only way is the military,” the video stated, over video of spec-ops soldiers, fanning out in a field with their rifles drawn. The crowd of hundreds stood up and applauded. They loved the video’s message: only a fascist takeover of the government could save America.
believe Biden stole the election from Trump. If Republicans think elections aren’t legitimate, then it’s more likely that they’ll support any measure to take power. American democracy will enter a death spiral.
