August 19, 2020

By Bill Berkowitz

In 2017, QAnon started out in the dark corners of the Internet. Now it has metastasized. You may label it a cult; a twenty-first century political phenomenon; a political movement akin to the Tea Party; a social media sensation that has a huge footprint, attracting millions to its conspiracy-generating machine. One thing is clear: QAnon, which started out as a often laughed at and disregarded message board, is no longer a sideshow; it is going mainstream and is a hugely popular system of far right radicalization. 

With the election of Donald Trump, QAnon began to hits its stride. Large numbers showed up at Trump rallies.  Message boards began filling up with tales from concerned folks that their relatives and friends were enmeshed in the QAnon community. Then came the coronavirus pandemic and all hell broke loose.

Marjorie Taylor Greene’s Republican congressional primary victory in a deeply red district in Georgia, makes it likely that QAnon, the conspiracy-laden pro-Trump movement that labels Democrats as pedophiles and child abusers, will have its first representative in Washington come early January when the new House of Representatives convenes. During her victory speech, Greene called House Speaker Nancy Pelosi “a hypocrite,” and “anti-American.” Greene added: “And we're going to kick that b*tch out of Congress."

Objections to her candidacy by some Republicans during the run-up to the primary appear to have dissolved. Donald Trump called her a “future Republican star,” House GOP leader Kevin McCarthy’s office issued a supportive statement, and according to New York magazine’s Frank Rich, Trump’s most visible House advocate, “Ohio congressman Jim Jordan, helped raise thousands of dollars for her campaign.“

Rich noted that “In addition to the by-the-book racism and Islamophobia, Greene has endorsed the central QAnon premise[s that] … Democrats [are] officiating over a ‘global cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles,’ … Hillary Clinton [is a] murder[er] and George Soros, … a Nazi, [as well as the] a truther theory that no plane crashed into the Pentagon on 9/11.”

But Greene may not be alone as “She is only one of ‘at least 70 Republican candidates’ who ran for Congress this cycle and expressed support for QAnon, in the calculation of Media Matters, with 19 of them on the November ballot,” Rich reported. 

According to Reed Galen, an independent political strategist and co-founder of The Lincoln Project, the anti-Trump organization that’s has run some of the most powerful anti-Trump advertisements thus far in the campaign, “The Trump-Fox News-OANN-Bannon-Limbaugh-QAnon circle of death is designed to do nothing less than confuse, dispirit and depress individual American voters. Given Donald Trump's broad incapacity, his campaign can only win a low turnout, narrowly decided election.“

Conspiracy theories like the ones that QAnon perpetrates are nothing new in American politics. However, the more recent extreme Balkanization of the American political landscape, and communication through social media provide the opportunity for a movement like QAnon to grow, consolidate, and build a solid wall of disinformation around it’s supporters; a wall that fends off doubters and disbelievers. 

As Galen wrote in a CNN column, “History is replete with movements that espouse fundamental non-truths to create a mythology that allows willing recipients to believe that darker forces are at work against them and the nation.”

The Wall Street Journal's Deepa Seetharaman recently wrote that Q-aligned groups have "exploded in popularity" on Facebook and Instagram "since the start of the coronavirus pandemic." NBC's Ari Sen and Brandy Zadrozny reported that "an internal investigation by Facebook has uncovered thousands of groups and pages, with millions of members and followers, that support the QAnon conspiracy theory." 

The anti-face mask movement provides an explicit example. With the research now clear that wearing a mask is essential in fighting COVID-19, there has been an explosion of videos of men and women going into stores and refusing to wear masks. Often the anti-maskers  berate the store greeters, clerks, cashiers and security guards for telling them that the store requires them to wear a mask. Why flaunt their anti-mask-wearing? There are many reasons including securing instant fame and recognition; garnering likes on Facebook and Instagram; receiving positive feedback and positive reinforcement; winning social media adoration, and perhaps, if they are lucky, monetizing their anti-mask videos. 

If you don’t think QAnon has influence, consider Its role in the anti-mask campaign. According to NBC News’ Ben Collins, “While QAnon bubbled on the fringes of the internet for years, researchers and experts say it has [recently] emerged as a sort of centralized hub for conspiracy and alternative health communities. ... [and] while anti-mask sentiment has surfaced in a variety of ways for a number of reasons, viral videos of anti-mask confrontations have become causes for celebration in conspiracy circles, embraced as examples of people taking the fight against their shadowy enemy into the real world.“

At the center of much of the confusion, confrontations, and agitation is QAnon. Erin McAweeney, a senior research analyst at Graphika, a New York-based social media analysis company, told NBC News’ Collins that "The strongest bridge we found between QAnon and non-QAnon communities was spirituality and religion. This content isn't inherently problematic, but people are often most vulnerable when seeking spiritual information online and more susceptible to alternative and extreme views."

Collins wrote that “In a QAnon world, where those enforcing mask mandates are perceived as part of a movement that includes Satanic child sacrifices, that good-versus-evil narrative can provide a strange sort of comfort. Doing the opposite of public health advice can give conspiracy theorists a sense of control. And that conspiracy world can also provide community and maybe even fame.“

CNN’s Brian Stelter recently reported that In a tweet, disinformation researcher Molly McKew argued that TV news "is not doing a good job covering this corrosive conspiracy or explaining it. You can't just call it insane. That doesn't explain why it is cognitive cancer."

McKew told Stelter that “QAnon offers its adherents an addictive alternative reality that requires their participation and, through this participation, draws them into the elaborate architecture of the conspiracy. It exploits the sense that something is broken in our society. But rather than focus on understanding these social fractures and healing them, QAnon instead fixates on the pursuit of enemies and villains described in such extreme terms that any action — either by adherents or by identified champions like President Trump —becomes justifiable. By drawing on the culture and value system, Q adherents have justified violent attacks."

McKew maintained that “the power of the QAnon phenomenon is that it is widespread but invisible unless you are a believer or seek it out — it could be sitting right next you and you have no idea unless you are an adherent. Regular conservatives dismiss it as nothing, and regular people in general have no idea what it is at all. And yet, a significant percentage of Americans — at a rate that seems to be accelerating under coronavirus — believe at least some part of Q is real.

“These beliefs are driving the organization of armed movements and attacks, hampering coronavirus response, interacting with us already in so many ways we don't want to believe. It is a dangerous, fully immersive alternative reality that is inspiring its followers to plan domestic terrorist attacks. It is, in other words, a system of radicalization. QAnon has been supported, amplified, and winked at enough by far-right Republicans — the president and his sons, Michael Flynn, the freedom caucus — that dozens of candidates for office are using it to reach potential voters."

“Politicians see the infrastructure QAnon has built on these platforms. They recognize it as increasing in power and see it as having a political benefit,” said Alex Kaplan, a researcher for the media watchdog group Media Matters for America who has been tracking the increase in QAnon supporters running for Congress. “There are true believers, yes, but many also see pandering to QAnon as a way to cultivate political support. They say, ‘why not use this infrastructure to get some benefit?’ — be it followers or money or votes.”