A couple of weeks ago, I posted a comment about how I’ve been able to persuade a few friends to walk away — actually they were more like disguted, rapid back-ups — from the Q Anon delusion. Some respondents encouraged me to write a diary about what I did. I just found a really good article that I think would help the process a great deal, so here’s what I’ve been doing.
Mainly, I’ve been using the powerful feeling of revulsion. In the paper Why Disgust Matters, on the NCBI website, researcher Valerie Curtis discusses the innate origins of this strong emotional-behavioral reaction and how it has been extended beyond aversion to pathogens to also apply to socially toxic elements.:
It [disgust] arose in our animal ancestors to facilitate the recognition of objects and situations associated with risk of infection and to drive hygienic behaviour, thus reducing micro- and macro-parasite contact. Sometime in our evolution towards human ultrasociality, disgust took on an extended role—providing a motive to punish antisocial behaviour and to shun the breakers of social rules.
There are few things in our American society that we’ve been more conditioned to find repugnant than Hitler’s Nazism. Just saying the word Nazi is enough to make the majority of Americans’ upper lip curl into a sneer as a whisper of disgust immediately courses through their bodies. It often makes us move our heads backwards, and I’ve even seen people literally take a step back.
The grotesque Q Anon propaganda IS exactly the same set of lies that underlay the Nazi movement. QAnon is rebranded Protocols of the Elders of Zion crap. It an article entitled QAnon is a Nazi Cult Rebranded by Dr. Gregory Stanton, the founding president of Genocide Watch, begins his case for this with this powerful paragraph:
A secret cabal is taking over the world. They kidnap children, slaughter, and eat them to gain power from their blood. They control high positions in government, banks, international finance, the news media, and the church. They want to disarm the police. They promote homosexuality and pedophilia. They plan to mongrelize the white race so it will lose its essential power.
Does this conspiracy theory sound familiar? It is. The same narrative has been repackaged by QAnon.
Since I’m a Social Studies teacher, as I began reading the early on Facebook postings from friends about QAnon, at first I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. The full blown crazy was just starting to come out since the narrative was slowly bing fed to people, one lie at a time, but the relationship of the QAnon narrative to the Protocols of the Elders of Zion was clear. (If you’d like to learn more about the Protocols, the link goes to the Holocaust Museum’s page about them.)
Being a bit older, my Father fought in WWII, and being interested in history, I’ve been both personally and professionally interested in what happened in the early 1900’s leading up to Germany’s march into mass madness and genocidal national policies. Over the years, I’ve often asked myself how could seemingly decent, good people fall for such bizarre and indecent crap? And, like I suspect many of us in this community have asked themselves, I’ve wondered if it could ever Happen Again, here in the US? Finally, I’ve wondered what would I choose to do if it ever did start happening, here?
I never really expected that it would — but there, in some of my dear friends’ Facebook postings, I was seeing threads from the Protocols of the Elders of Zion! And, I found myself actually confronted with having to make a decision: Do I stay silent to preserve the friendships, or do I Speak UP?
I’ve been choosing to speak up, and I’ve been using our commonly shared revulsion for all things Nazi to wake friends up to the truth that QAnon = Nazism, rebranded. And, it’s been working! The already present Nazi disgust gets paired with QAnon, and my friends have backed up emotionally and mentally. That step back is critical. It gives them the opportunity to have a different perspective from outside of the rabbit hole they’d been falling into.
Now, do I think this approach would work with people who are not fundamentally decent people, people who are already White Supremacists or confirmed racists? No, I don’t. But, for a very large segment of those who are falling into the cult, they initially got hooked because of a desire to help others. For example, the Save the Children thread is the entry point for many, many of the women.
I’ve been using my own cut-and-pasted things from various sources, but Stanton’s article hit’s it straight on, in the first paragraph, and provides an excellent, concise argument. I plan on using his article to start the process. Once I see the back-up and the revulsion working, then I know it’s time to care for my friend’s ego. Realizing you’ve been duped is a big ego hit, so I focus on how cleverly the diabolical Q was to appeal to their very real and decent desire to help others.
At that point, I usually get peppered with a bunch of “Yeah, buts ...” as my friend coughs up the researched proofs that the Q crap was/is/was real — the toxic stuff that really has infected their heart and minds. They are waffling at that point, and I view each of their “Yeah buts ...” as a gift. They are asking me to help rid them of the lies inside.
This is where I’m ready to use traditional kinds of persuasive argument techniques such as, “I can understand why that may have made it seem real, but … facts, bit of truth, facts, and more of how QAnon = Nazism.” I usually finish off by directing them to authentic groups where they truly can make a real difference to Save Children.
Antifa corollary: Antifa is often one of the “Yeah buts ...” I explain where the Anti-Facists ideology came from. I usually voice this as, “Hey, that’s a good question, and there’s a reason why whenever QAnon comes up in conversations, so does the topic of Antifa.” Then, I play to their view of themselves as being a researched based person and give them the Smithsonian article about the Anti-Fascists over time.
I also share with them that I don’t agree with either the far left or the far right, nor do I agree with their framing that it’s either an Us or Them time to decide. It isn’t. There are all sorts of places to stand on policies and ways to use our democratic traditions and institutions that don’t involve either ancient anti-semitic, delusions or violent reactionary responses to those delusions. Number One of which is Voting, right now, and doing so based on the policies (or lack thereof) of candidates in conjunction with consideration of their characters.
Innoculation Efforts: I have also seen that posting articles like QAnon is a Nazi Cult Rebranded helps prevent others from curiously looking into the QAnon rabbit hole and falling into it.
At a later point, a couple have asked me who I think Q actually is. I honestly share that I don’t know, but that if I had to guess, that I think the Q-stuff started out within discussions between members of Nazi Movement on some obscure websites, and as it took hold a bit, it was taken over by some of the best of the best cyber-spooks in Russia. I ask them who they think Q is, and they reluctantly agree that I’m probably right, and in those moments, I can see my friends’ desire to have a better world with leaders who truly want to right the world’s wrongs. Now, that’s where I see some commonality we can build on, together.
I doubt that this approach with everyone, but it’s a start. I thought I’d offer it up to begin a discussion on what’s to be done with the millions who have fallen for this dangerous cult and how you may be Standing Up to say Never Again. Thank you for reading.
