“Now that Donald Trump, the Messianic figure at the center of QAnon conspiracy theories, is out of office, the group's disillusioned followers are being targeted for recruitment by right-wing extremists and white supremacists …
“Instead of changing course, they are just moving the goalposts. Some are looking forward to a prophesied return of President Trump on March 4. The conspiracy movement's dogma includes Trump freeing them from an evil global cabal – including Democrats, Hollywood elites, and 'deep state' operatives -- which control our lives.”
– Elizabeth Neumann, former official in Trump administration's Department of Homeland Security
According to Neumann, some followers of QAnon appeared to wake up after President Biden's inauguration. "Joe Biden gets sworn in and you started seeing chatter online, 'I've been conned. This has all been a scam.' And they were out. Which is great. That is rare for radicalized individuals."
But others, says Neumann, are struggling, making them far more vulnerable to new conspiracies.
(Elizabeth Neumann. “Former DHS official: Right-wing extremists and white supremacists targeting QAnon followers for recruitment.” 60 Minutes Overtime. CBS News. February 19, 2021.)
Other radical groups have been posting guides in online forums on how to approach a disheartened QAnon adherent, making it clear that you don't want to make fun of their ideology, you don't want to be too direct about your white supremacist views. “You want to be empathetic."
And, QAnon has also made inroads in Republican politics. Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, a first-term congresswoman from Georgia, has become the most prominent QAnon-affiliated lawmaker in the country. (Ms. Greene, who posted in support of QAnon on social media, has said she regrets her posts, but continues to promote many QAnon-supported conspiracy theories.) Elected Republicans at the state and local levels have also expressed support for QAnon.
(Kevin Roose. “What Is QAnon, the Viral Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theory?” The New York Times. February 04, 2021)
“Drops” are what QAnon followers call Q’s posts. There have been nearly 5,000 of them so far, and most take the form of a cryptic coded message. Many QAnon followers use “Q Drop” apps that collect all of Q’s posts in one place, and alert them every time a new post arrives. (One of these apps hit the top 10 paid apps in Apple’s App Store before it was pulled down for violating the company’s guidelines.) They then post these drops in Facebook groups, chat rooms for the Discord chat app and Twitter threads, and begin discussing and debating what it all means.
Who participates in this political movement/social community?
Twitter removed more than 70,000 QAnon-affiliated accounts after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot. And some YouTube videos explaining the tenets of QAnon garnered millions of views before they were taken down last year. And that’s just the content that is explicitly pro-QAnon. There are likely millions more people who believe in QAnon-related conspiracy theories.
Kevin Roose of The New York Times says …
“It’s a more diverse group than you might imagine. The earliest adherents were mainly far-right Trump supporters, but in 2020, the movement expanded its reach to include health-conscious yoga moms, anti-lockdown libertarians and evangelical Christians. Unlike the stereotypes of extremist movements, QAnon doesn’t appear to be primarily dominated by young men, or people experiencing economic pain. There are Harvard graduates and Wall Street executives who believe in it, as well as people with less elite pedigrees.”
(Kevin Roose. “What Is QAnon, the Viral Pro-Trump Conspiracy Theory?” The New York Times. February 04, 2021)
Some people have compared QAnon to a massive multiplayer online game, because of the way it invites participants to co-create a kind of shared reality filled with recurring characters, shifting story lines and intricate puzzle-solving quests.
Adrian Hon, a game designer who has written about QAnon’s similarity to alternate-reality games, says that believers “open a fascinating fantasy world of secret wars and cabals and Hillary Clinton controlling things, and it offers convenient explanations for things that feel inexplicable or wrong about the world.”
Followers congregate online to decode the latest Q posts, discuss their theories about the news of the day, and bond with their fellow believers. The Atlantic has called it “the birth of a new religion.”
Ben Collins – who covers disinformation, extremism and the internet for NBC News – suspects QAnon’s influence will continue because it has become somewhat mainstream in the Republican Party. The group gained so much power because the Trump administration benefited from it, he says.
“That's why Donald Trump would not denounce it,” he says. “It was a really powerful tool for hatred of his enemies. That is not the case anymore.”
Q followers believed the military was going to stop the inauguration of President Biden on the orders of former President Trump and arrest supposed members of the "deep state."
“They really did believe this, and a lot of people were looking forward to it. And then, you know, it didn't come,” he says. “It sounds disgusting that they would think like a mass execution would be a big present to them, but that's what they really believed.”
And Now, Alt-right and Militias Seek Q Members
“QAnon is really ripe territory for recruitment,” said Jessica Reaves, editorial director of the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism. At the heart of that crossover, Reaves told The Daily Beast, are shared conspiratorial beliefs between QAnon followers and other militant sects.
Some QAnon fans have eagerly taken up teachings from the anti-government “sovereign citizen” movement, members of which falsely claim to be emancipated from the U.S. and its laws.
Anti-Semitism—itself often grounded in conspiracy theories – is a common theme uniting QAnon believers and Christian nationalists. Members of wildly anti-Semitic “Christian Identity” movement have also eyed QAnon as a potential poaching ground, an observer of the movement noted on Twitter.
“Have at it boys,” one member of a Christian Identity-heavy Telegram wrote of a QAnon group, encouraging fellow travelers to prey on the adrift crowd. “You want recruits and to spread our message? Hop in.”
(Kelly Weill. “The Far-Right Feeding Frenzy on QAnon Leftovers.” Daily Beast. January 27, 2021.)
“Have at it” they surely will. After all, the Proud Boys pledged allegiance to President Donald Trump after he told the group to "stand back and stand by" during the first presidential debate. Asked to condemn white supremacists, Trump instead named a militant white supremacist group and issued a call to arms. He, as president, essentially gave them a shoutout … and on January 6, they answered that call with a violent insurrection at the Capitol.
Five people died or were fatally injured during the riot: one was a Capitol Police officer, and four were among those who stormed or protested at the Capitol. At least 138 police officers (73 Capitol Police officers, 65 Metropolitan Police Department officers) were injured, including at least 15 who were hospitalized, some with severe injuries.
It is likely that we will continue to see violent efforts to disrupt the Biden administration in the next four years. Members of paramilitary organizations call themselves “patriots,” yet the extremists openly advocate for and commit violent attacks to intimidate and coerce.
Mary B. McCord, formerly a Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General for the National Security Division in the Department of Justice, says …
“If local law enforcement officials fail to act, the threat must be addressed through other means. State attorneys general who have the authority to prosecute criminal cases should step in and bring the cases that local law enforcement agencies fail to bring. Where their state laws do not give them general criminal enforcement authority, the law should be changed.
“Federal prosecutors should go after private militias using existing federal criminal laws that prohibit the use of firearms, incendiary devices, or paramilitary techniques, or traveling interstate with firearms or incendiary devices, intending to use them in a civil disorder. Those who facilitate or fund such activity should be investigated, too.”
(Mary B. McCord. “Op-Ed: What it will take to fight the threat of violent right-wing militias.” Los Angeles Times. January 26, 2021.)
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