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QAnon: Unapologetically Preposterous Yet Remarkably Persistent [1]

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Date: 2023-03-27

Last week, a volcanic controversy involving a Korean pop star erupted on Social Media: Why was Chaeyoung, a member of the K-pop group TWICE, wearing a QAnon T-shirt during the group’s performance at MBC's Music Core? (Some say it was the fault of the group’s stylist who selects the group’s clothing.) On perhaps a more disturbing note, there are now questions about links between Twitter CEO Elon Musk and QAnon. It appears Musk has positively responded to several of the Twitter user and QAnon influencer KanekoaTheGreat’s tweets.

Conspiracy theories have been around forever, but with the rise of twenty-first century social media, conspiracy theories can go viral and spread more rapidly than at any time in history. Now, nearly six years since its emergence, it’s once again worth examining QAnon.

Once fringy conspiracy theories, propagated by a mysterious figure known as Q, and embraced by conspiracy-addled followers, QAnon believers are still fringy, and now including members of the Republican Party. Where once you worried that your aunt in Omaha, your sister in Portland, or a cousin in Amarillo might fall prey to QAnon conspiracies, now Republican Party politicians are hopping on board.

Jacob Chansley, the so-called QAnon shaman of the January 6thinsurrection, who was sentenced to 41 months in prison in November 2021 after pleading guilty to obstruction of an official proceeding, is now considered by some conservatives to be a political prisoner. According to Greek Reporter’s Tasos Kokkindis, Elon Musk recently tweeted “Free Jacob Chansley,” to his 130 million followers. In another tweet, Musk claimed Chansley “was falsely portrayed in the media as a violent criminal who tried to overthrow the state and who urged others to commit violence.”

MyPillow CEO Mike Lindell, “a vocal election fraud conspiracy theorist … had given out special promotional codes to at least 17 ‘QAnon-supporting shows and figures,’ including one that describes itself as reporting on ‘Qanon Posts, Qanon News, Qanon Related Prophesies,’” The Daily Beast’s Kelly Weill recently reported (https://www.thedailybeast.com/mypillow-gave-promotional-deal-to-qanon-shows-report). Weill noted “The promotional codes represent a significant profit-sharing deal. The shows receive at least 25 percent of all sales linked to a promotional code, [according to] Media Matters.”

Will Sommer, a political journalist for the Daily Beast, has been doggedly reporting on QAnon since its inception. Reviewing Sommer’s new book Trust the Plan: The Rise of QAnon and the Conspiracy That Unhinged America (Harper, 2023), Jacobin’s Luke Savage wrote (https://jacobin.com/2023/03/qanon-outlive-donald-trump-far-right-conspiracy-theory-review): “Q is a new and radically postmodern species of right-wing politics, capable of transcending the boundaries of nation and culture. And it’s not going away anytime soon.”

In his review of Sommer’s book, The Huffington Post’s Matt Shuham noted (https://www.huffpost.com/entry/will-sommer-trust-the-plan-qanon-interview_n_641098b7e4b00c3e607036ca): “At its heart, QAnon asserts that a satanic, pedophilic ‘cabal’ made up of Democratic politicians and media and financial elites controls the world, and that former President Donald Trump is waging a secret war against them. The movement anticipates ‘The Storm,’ or the moment when the tides will turn for Trump and his supporters, and the cabal will be overthrown and either killed or imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.”

Shuham pointed out that while QAnon has experienced some serious setbacks, including predictions that have not materialized and the failure of Stop the Steal to install Trump, Q, “is very much alive, most visibly in Republicans’ obsession with targeting trans people.” In fact, many Q followers ran for office, and at least three congressional representatives, have been elected to public office. Former President Trump has used his platform, Truth Social, to indicate his embrace of some of the core beliefs of the Q movement.

In an interview with Nine to Noon, Sommer said that “The pandemic functioned as really a big recruitment vector for QAnon.”He noted that when “you have people all over the world who are looking for answers about something that is unprecedented in modern history; people are losing their jobs, they're suddenly thinking, how do I get any sort of agency over this.And for some that was, rather than facing the complex sources of the pandemic, it was blaming someone like George Soros or Bill Gates.”

Sommer said that in Trust the Plan, he followed “a family whose son gets into QAnon. This father who reached out to me said, ‘how do I get my kid out of this?’ His son was in his 20s and gets deeper and deeper into QAnon, he doesn't really come back, he divorces himself from society, and just spends all his time online, he thinks he's fighting to save children.”

According to PRII Report based on a 2021 yearlong survey: (https://www.prri.org/research/the-persistence-of-qanon-in-the-post-trump-era-an-analysis-of-who-believes-the-conspiracies/)

“Across the year, one in four Republicans (25%), compared to 14% of independents (14%) and 9% of Democrats identify as QAnon believers. Nearly half of Republicans (47%) who most trust far-right news outlets like One America News Network or Newsmax are QAnon believers, along with one-quarter of Republicans who most trust Fox News (26%) or do not trust TV news (26%). Fewer (18%) of Republicans who most trust mainstream media outlets like CNN, MSNBC, public television, or broadcast news are QAnon believers.”

For some of us, it is perhaps too easy to dismiss the addled nature of Q conspiracy tropes and be lulled into a belief that QAnon will fade over time. Indeed, there have been numerous stories of former Q-followers who were disaffected as The Storm failed to materialize and other predictions failed. But QAnon at the very least has cultivated the ground for a new wave of anti-Trans, anti-Gay, anti-abortion, anti-woman and racist culture wars that have been unleashed in the United States.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/3/27/2160468/-QAnon-Unapologetically-Preposterous-Yet-Remarkably-Persistent

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