The Q Terror
Graphic by Arola Oluwehinmi
On November 2, 2021, hundreds of people gathered in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, TX for a meet-and-greet. However, this was no ordinary gathering to meet a movie star or rock singer: it was to meet John F. Kennedy, Jr. The gathering was sponsored by a group of citizens who believed that JFK Jr. would reappear and become president of the United States following Donald Trump’s resignation, pending his own reinstatement as President. In reality, JFK Jr. died in 1999 in a plane crash off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard. JFK Jr. never appeared to meet the crowd of supporters.
So what made a group of citizens travel from all over to Dealey Plaza just to stand around? They were all supporters of an internet conspiracy theory: QAnon. QAnon is a “big tent” conspiracy that encompasses many groups, beliefs, and contradictions, but the root of the theory holds that the world is under the control of a pedophilic cabal of Satan worshippers. Supporters have idolized Donald Trump, who they believe is on a divine mission to defeat the Cabal. The conspiracy began on 4Chan, an anonymous message board, when a poster named “Q” posted a series of messages that claimed Hillary Clinton would be arrested immediately. “Q drops,” as they are dubbed, continued into 2020 until “Q” went silent, but the QAnon movement has continued to sustain itself.
As a “big tent” conspiracy theory, QAnon has grown to include and recycle old conspiracy theories, adding to its complexity. Its core tenets of Satanists ruling the world and child-sex trafficking rings have existed for decades and are not novel conspiracies, being rooted in phenomena like the “Satanic Panic” of the 1980s. That hasn’t stopped QAnon from developing new theories as well; in response to the 2020 Beirut blast, some supporters accused the Rothschild family, a wealthy Jewish family involved in banking, of perpetrating the explosion. QAnon has supporters in many communities, including law enforcement, veterans, anti-government extremists, wellness gurus, celebrities, and has even found support in Congress; but it lacks a specific organizational structure. While following the words of “Q” religiously, the community does not have a distinct hierarchy but does create an ecosystem that enables members to reinforce their worldview and generate an affinity for committing violence.
DIAGNOSING THE THREAT OF Q ANON IN THE UNITED STATES
While the absurdity of some of QAnon’s claims and actions may make it appear as if its supporters are few and far between, polling data reveals a much different picture of support for QAnon in the United States. A Civiqs poll from September 2020 asked about belief in the QAnon conspiracy; 33 percent of Republicans polled said they “believe that the QAnon theory is mostly true” while 23 percent of Republicans say that some parts of QAnon are true, and 13 percent say it is not true at all. In that same poll, 72 percent of Democrats answered that QAnon is not true at all. However, pollsters have found it difficult to accurately measure support for QAnon due to its extensive collection of beliefs. A poll from the Public Religion Research Institute instead measured agreement with individual statements that aligned with QAnon beliefs. Of those polled, 15 percent agreed that the government and media are run by Satanist pedophiles, 20 percent agreed that “there is storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites,” and 15 percent agreed that “American patriots will have to resort to violence.” All of these statements are nonunique to QAnon and have roots in other conspiracies. Words like “storm” are veiled references to Christian eschatology, a key ingredient to QAnon, and engaging in violence are common themes with far-right militias and extremists.
QAnon’s unique environment that permits and even encourages violence is also what has brought it to the attention of mainstream media and to the attention of law-enforcement agencies like the FBI. There have been at least 22 recorded incidents involving QAnon supporters and violence since 2018, with the first recorded incident taking place when a man barricaded himself in a self-made armored car on the Hoover Dam. During the aftermath of the 2020 general election, some QAnon supporters planned an attack on a ballot center in Philadelphia. However, there are incidents that predate 2018 that can be linked to QAnon. Parts of the 2016 Pizzagate incident, when a man fired shots at Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in D.C. after reading false reports of child sex trafficking, can be linked to QAnon’s hyper fixation on pedophilic politicians. This uneven timeline makes it difficult to truly assess the extent and timeline of QAnon’s engagement in violence.
Another part of the QAnon threat that makes it difficult to measure completely is its adoption by militia groups. In a recent assessment, the Department of Homeland Security emphasized “‘conspiracy theory-fueled violence’” as a growing national security threat. Party to this threat are armed groups engaging in anti-lockdown protests as well as anti-vaccine rallies, both communities QAnon has seeped into. Data appears to indicate that support for QAnon related theories like “Stop the Steal” is linked to higher participation in armed protests with 65 percent of these protests taking place at or around government buildings. In other words, QAnon is motivating citizens to take up arms and threaten government institutions.
Some militia groups have fully embraced QAnon. The First Amendment Praetorians paramilitary group, founded by Robert Lewis, provides security to “patriotic and religious events across the country.” According to Lewis, they are establishing a network of camps to train citizens for the “coming revolution.” The FAP is just one iteration of a far-right group being founded on QAnon’s theories. Another armed group, American Contingency, warns about Marxists and a left-wing conspiracy to undermine Donald Trump, urging Americans to take up arms.
There are many more groups under the QAnon umbrella, bearing a variety of names and having varying levels of belief. Groups like the Three Percenters and Oath Keepers, with their own iterations from state to state, are all part of a section of the American right that is motivated to act violently by belief in conspiracy theories over elections and secret political cabals. According to data from the ACLED, these far-right groups have been involved in five “battles,” three events involving explosions or remote violence, and eight incidents involving violence against civilians. The data continues to show that the QAnon conspiracy has leapt off the web pages and become a tangible threat to domestic peace and security.
Q ANON: INTERNATIONAL THREAT
QAnon, however, is not constrained to the borders of the United States and has slowly gained an international audience. In Australia, QAnon content has been circulating since around 2018 but skyrocketed amid Australia’s lockdown in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. Australia is the fourth-highest producer of QAnon related content, according to the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, behind the United States, Canada, and the UK. Like in the United States, QAnon has also bled into and helped spread other conspiracy theories, such as anti-vaccine and 5G-related conspiracy theories; in one poll from Essential Media, 12 percent of Australians said that COVID-19 was being spread via 5G towers.
QAnon is not only an Anglophone issue either. Data from the UK-based “HOPE not hate” organization revealed that the Qlobal-Change telegram group, a German language Telegram channel, increased its membership from 20,000 in February of 2020 to 122,000 by October 2020. The information shared in these chat groups mainly focuses on American politics but also shares anti-coronavirus information from other Telegram groups. Another key aspect of the German QAnoners is their connection with far-right groups, with the ambiguity of the QAnon movement allowing extremist groups to share their views and theories, such as the Reichsburgerbewegung, or Reich Citizens’ Movement.
Beyond Europe and the United States, QAnon has planted seeds in other major countries. In Japan, QAnon content is translated and subtitled for audiences. However, this community is relatively substantial compared to the QAnon community as a whole, with these translation accounts being the most popular. Japanese QAnoners have developed their own lexicon and theories, many revolving around former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn. The same story is taking place in Brazil, with many QAnon accounts creating theories around Jair Bolsnaro, Brazil’s president, akin to theories around Donald Trump.
So how did QAnon go global in less than five years? One theory comes from Michael Kelly of the New Yorker, who wrote in the 1990s about “fusion paranoia” wherein two distinct groups recognize a common value and result in a sharing of ideas. For QAnon, this came with the wellness movement, which found a mutual fear over government restrictions of speech, assembly, and movement in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Both groups also had a mutual fear of forced immunization. This helped QAnon grow quickly in a country like Australia.
QAnon’s vague constitution also makes it particularly well suited for growing in all kinds of online environments. The broad ideas that QAnon encompasses can result in a “conspiracy mentality,” which psychologists argue can alter the way someone processes information and generates understanding. Thus, a member of the QAnon movement can begin to see non-existent connections between other movements, ideologies, and conspiracies which only expands the labyrinth of conspiracy. In short, QAnon is able to spread by festering in communities that share at least one similar belief, which is not difficult for a movement as broad as QAnon, and its own supporters can sustain its growth by propagating new theories based on unrelated events.
THE FUTURE OF Q ANON
In 1993, Samuel P. Huntington, a well-renowned professor at Harvard, published “Clash of Civilizations,” arguing that in the post-Cold War world, religious identities would become the source of conflict and Islam would become the greatest threat to western hegemony. After 9/11, Huntington’s theories gained even more traction, but his doomsday prediction of war between the West and Islam has scarcely panned out, with the withdrawal of the United States from Afghanistan marking an end to any semblance of a real war between the two.
However, the clash of civilizations has not ended but taken on a new form. That form is the “Q Terror,” a new-age threat to the United States and the whole world. The Q Terror represents more than just the individual issue of QAnon, but also the rise of armed right-wing groups, domestic terrorism in the United States, and misinformation online. QAnon is the tip of the iceberg of this new conflict. Whereas Huntington argued religion would be the source of conflict, the Q Terror has revealed that hyperpolarized political identity, founded on baseless lies and online rumors, will be the source of conflict. There may not be a shooting war, but a quiet conflict with some violence that will be fought over two realities: what is real and the fictitious truth that conspiracy theory misinformation has created. Perhaps it is not a clash of civilizations, but rather a clash of realities.
It is easy to remain unconvinced of this threat, despite the alarm bells being sounded by think tanks and institutions like the Department of Justice. Terrorism often conjures up images of Islam in Americans’ minds. That is what makes the domestic terror threat so dangerous. Militias and home-grown extremists do not have a single flag or a Jihadi John. There is no ISIS equivalent in the United States. QAnon and its association with far-right militias are best described as a primordial soup, weakly bound together by a few core beliefs, but free to act independently. This framework only threatens to accelerate right-wing violence and white supremacist violence, not to mention its disaggregation in general making it difficult to fight against.
However, this war over reality is not unwinnable; despite the magnitude of the Q Terror now, it can be snuffed out before any more harm is done. This requires a multi-prong approach, with the first involving a crack-down by law enforcement across the world on any violent plots that can be linked to conspiracy theories, through online monitoring, and open-source intelligence collection. As a recent example, a girl in France was kidnapped by QAnon supporters that believed she was being abused by her relative and attempted to rescue her. Incidents like these must be stopped before they happen, both as a matter of public safety but also recognizing that allowing these incidents to happen adds oxygen to the fire of QAnon.
The bigger question of the Q Terror is how to bring its supporters back from the ledge. One way is removing disinformation before it can be accessed and spread, especially on outlets like Twitter or Facebook. It also requires locating the more niche online channels and social media platforms supporters use. Partnership with government entities in investigating this is crucial. As the United States is the largest producer of QAnon content, much of which sustains international Q groups, ending the spread domestically can stymie the growth and sustainability of international QAnon movements.
Lastly, however, there is a communication issue. At its core, the Q Terror represents a breakdown in discourse. We have become hyper fixated on factionalism in our modern age and this has accelerated the growth of the Q Terror. Loyalty to the tribe and hatred of the Other has made it difficult to engage in conversations that would normally reveal the truth about QAnon’s lies. Instead, both sides have retreated to their own groups where there is a strong, positive feedback loop.
Alexis de Tocqueville wrote in his book Democracy in America that “If men are to remain civilized, or to become so, the art of associating together must grow and improve in the same ratio in which the equality of conditions is increased.” The Q Terror has turned this on its head. We no longer practice this art of association, and therefore our democratic society has become substantially weaker. We must learn to engage with our neighbors again, both online and offline. Only then can we begin repairing our society and moving away from QAnon and conspiracy-riddled politics. Besides the threats of violence, the greatest threat the Q Terror poses is to the very fibers of our democracy, making it imperative that we work towards repairing our interpersonal communication in a democratic society.