How I Got Sucked Into the Alternative Universe of QAnon

Source: Slate

Along with everyone else online who spends too much time wallowing in political news, I spent my Tuesday morning reading about QAnon, the operatic pro-Trump conspiracy theory that, like some sort of derangement-inducing fume, has been gradually leaking from the internet’s boggier corners into real life, including a recent televised Trump rally.

Then I made the mistake of tweeting about it.

For those not caught up: QAnon is an elaborate fantasy, wherein our president is secretly working with special counsel Robert Mueller to purge a powerful deep state cabal that has exercised criminal control over the United States, and the wider world, for decades. In this sprawling story, the Russia probe is actually a clever ruse meant to distract the country while Mueller’s team conducts an investigation that will eventually sweep up thousands of villains from inside and outside the government, including figures like Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. The entire saga has been driven by an anonymous poster (or group of posters) named Q, who claims to be a high-level government official and drops gnomic clues on message boards like 8Chan that followers then sweatily parse. Like Pizzagate, it involves a child sex trafficking ring, controlled by possibly satanic Democrats. Some versions also mix in retro nuttery about the JFK assassination and the Federal Reserve and the Bilderberg Group and false flags. It’s like if you Vitamixed every lunatic idea that grew out of America’s fringes during the past 60 years and poured the puree into a MAGA mug.

What makes QAnon a little a different, and little bit scarier, than many of the conspiracy theories Americans have latched onto through the decades, is that it’s fundamentally authoritarian (like Joseph McCarthy’s raving about communist infiltration of the government, but more surreal). QAnon believers aren’t fearfully scouting for black helicopters. They’re waiting for the sitting president to deliver their country from evil by rounding up his political opposition. Adherents have taken to jubilantly counting up the sealed indictments federal authorities have filed lately because they see them as a sign that a mass wave of arrests is coming. At Trump’s Wednesday night rally in Tampa, Florida, a shocking number of attendees showed up with QAnon T-shirts and signs. These people are all but asking for a strongman to seize control of the country—which is the thought I shared on Twitter:

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https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2018/08/qanon-how-i-got-sucked-into-its-alternative-universe.html