QANON GOES MAINSTREAM

When Marjorie Taylor Greene was elected to represent Georgia's 14th Congressional District, most observers wrote it off as an aberration. Her victory was considered a fluke, and not terribly impressive, since she ran unopposed in one of the country's most conservative districts. Posing as an openly committed devotee of QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory, was so far off center that few expected her beliefs to be consequential, even in our unstable political environment. Who could subscribe to conspiracy theories blended with so-called inside information from an anonymous government official posing as "Q"? Conspiracies like: The federal government has been infiltrated by a satanic, child trafficking ring peopled by Democrats, deep state denizens, and Satan worshipping pedophiles and cannibals; the believe in an adrenochrome conspiracy, spreading the theory that the blood of kidnapped children is being harvested by liberal elites for a drug called adrenochrome, which is actually extracted from the pituitary gland, which offers a psychedelic experience, and holds the promise of immortality for those who take it; the assertion that Covid vaccines are part of Bill Gates' plan for mind control; that the furniture company Wayfair is smuggling trafficked children in its cabinets; that California's wildfires are not natural, but are caused by Jewish space lasers, and so on. QAnon's premise is that we can't trust the people in power; we can't trust the information we've been given; and the only way to save society is to destroy its institutions. Its philosophy is that our hunches can be as or more correct as what we know through reason or evidence. Nobody would believe all this, right? Wrong! What started as an online obsession for the far-right fringe has grown beyond its origins in the dark corners of the internet. Kathryn Olmsted, a U.C. Davis history professor who specializes in the subject, suggested that "what is different now compared to other conspiracy theories in the past is that now there are people in power who are actually spreading the conspiracy theory." The handwriting seems to have been on the wall for some time. During the 2020 election cycle at least two dozen QAnon converts ran for congressional seats. Aside from Marjorie Taylor Greene, only one other candidate was successful: Lauren Boebert, in Colorado's 3rd District. Both of these are up for reelection next year. However, undeterred, QAnon supporters are already counting on the GOP's embrace of the conspiracy theory, and throwing their hats in the ring for a seat in Congress in 2022. Estimates are that, thus far, 19 converts are already poised to run. All but one on the Republican ticket. One independent in Nevada is running under the "Patriot Party of Nevada" banner. Five of these are competing in Florida. What is gradually becoming clear, is that the QAnon conspiracy is no longer the property of a lunatic fringe. In 2020, Time Magazine declared "Q" one of the 25 most influential people on the internet. In March of 2019, "QAnon,: An Invitation to a Great Awaking," a book written by twelve anonymous QAnon followers, peaked at #2 on Amazon's list of best selling books. A December, 2020 NPR/IPSOS poll found that one in three Americans believed in some of the key tenets of its ideology. And the American Enterprise Institute reported that 29% of Republicans surveyed agreed that former President Trump has been secretly fighting a group of child traffickers. The emergence of QAnon can not be dismissed as yet another conspiracy theory, or be relegated to simple expressions of our well documented history of "anti intellectualism. (See Richard Hofstadter, 1963). It is much more than that. The FBI has identified QAnon as a potential terrorist threat.The American University produced a report that revealed a "growing, violent threat from [the] QAnon movement to public safety and democracy," specifying: "creating and amplifying cultural and political divisions; introducing and spreading disinformation and anti-Jewish conspiracy theories; and mobilizing and motivating extreme violence." In keeping with the movement's philosophy, which elevates hunches and conspiracy theories over scientific evidence, converts have been manipulated to trust that their beliefs need not change in response to evidence. This makes us more susceptible to conspiracy theories, science denial and extremism. (Andy Norman, "The Case of America's Post-Truth Predicament," Scientific American, May 18, 2021.) As Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. aptly observed: "Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity." Or, to quote the 19th century teacher and philosopher Amos Bonson Alcott, "the ignorance of once ignorance is the malady of the ignorant." We have a lot of work to do before this anomaly undermines our already fragile democratic system. Theo Wierdsma