Editor’s Message

QAnon is becoming a threat to the country with it fantasy and conspiracy theories and false predictions.

It gained momentum over the past three years and has developed into an extremist religio-political ideology.

QAnon takes popular cultural artifacts and integrates them into an ideological framework. It has been a security threat in the making.

When the Covid-19 pandemic landed in the lap of the country, it played an important role in popularizing the QAnon movement. Facebook data since the start of 2020 shows QAnon membership grew by 581 per cent—most of which occurred after the US closed its borders last March as part of its coronavirus containment strategy.

As social media researcher Alex Kaplan noted, 2020 was the year “QAnon became all of our problem” as the movement initially gained traction by spreading Covid-related conspiracy theories and disinformation and was then further mainstreamed by 97 US congressional candidates who publicly showed support for QAnon.

The essence of QAnon lies in its attempts to delineate and explain evil with false information. It’s about theodicy, not secular evidence. QAnon offers its believers comfort in an uncertainage as the movement crowdsources answers to the inexplicable.

QAnon is the master narrative capable of simply explaining various complex events. The result is a characterized by a sharp distinction between good and evil that is non-falsifiable.

No matter how much pure evidence journalists, academics, and civil society offer as a counter to the claims, belief in QAnon as the source of truth is a matter of faith and has been since “Q” the anonymous began the movement in 2017 by posting a series of wild theories about the Deep State.

The year 2020 finally gave QAnon what it always wanted – theoretical respect. As Travis View, a conspiracy theory researcher and host of the QAnon Anonymous podcast recently wrote: “Over the past few months … the QAnon community was recognized in a way its followers could have only fantasized about two years ago.”

Trump, lawyers Sidney Powell and Lin Wood, and QAnon “rising star” Ron Watkins have all began actively inflaming QAnon apocalyptic and anti-establishment desires by promoting voter fraud conspiracy theories.

Complications in the final result of the presidential contest, finally fed into a pre-existing belief in the invalidity of the election—and fostered a chaotic environment that led to violence.

The storming of US Capitol saw the culmination of what had been building up: the “hopeium” in QAnon circles that some miracle via vice president Mike Pence and other constitutional witchcraft would overturn the election results.

QAnon followers are now faced with the end of a Trump presidency and the fear of what a Biden presidency will bring.

We now are long passed the point of simply asking: how can people believe in QAnon when so many of its claims fly in the face of facts? The attack on the Capitol showed the real dangers of QAnon followers.

Their militant and anti-establishment ideology—rooted in a quasi-apocalyptic desire to destroy the existing, corrupt world and usher in a promised golden age—was on full display for the whole world to see.

Who could miss the shirtless man wearing a fur hat, known as the QAnon Shaman, leading the charge into the Capitol rotunda?

What happens now? QAnon, along with other farright actors, will likely continue to come together to achieve their insurrection goals and the QAnon-inspired violence as the movement’s ideology will continue to grow in American culture.