Several recent diaries have focused on the QAnon threat that America faces, including “Genocide expert Gregory Stanton shows QAnon using the exact same conspiracies the Nazis used”, “QAnon cultists spreading false claims that are consuming resources needed to fight wildfires”, and “Nazis love Trump”. Trump and his fellow Republicans are attempting to hold onto power by backing QAnon’s conspiracy cult, and most of the current conversation about this is understandably focused on the November election.
After the election, though, the QAnon cult will still be there, regardless of who wins the presidency. QAnon will still be attempting to recruit more followers and it will still be harming America, with actions ranging from overwhelming 911 dispatchers with fake calls to promoting fake COVID-19 cures to armed standoffs and even killings. And QAnon followers will include millions of Americans and at least one member of Congress, maybe more.
QAnon’s belief system is much like that pushed by the Russian tsar’s secret police in the early 20th century, and by Nazi propaganda of the 1930s — and both of these were in powerful nations that soon sank deeply into disaster. The United States faces a similar future if QAnon continues to prosper here.
In “Is QAnon the Most Dangerous Conspiracy Theory of the 21st Century?”, the New York Times’s Charlie Warzel said:
I don’t think that there are easy solutions. Adrian Hon, an alternate reality game designer whom I interviewed, said that people don’t stop playing the game until it stops fulfilling a need. They’re not going to stop playing it because you tell them the game is stupid. You have to give them a reason to stop wanting to play the game. You don’t end things like QAnon without giving people valid reasons to turn away.
So what should we do about QAnon? How do we defend the United States against a cult of dangerous game-players? How do we convince QAnon followers to spend their lives in a better way?
Steven Hassan tackles this question in “Trump's QAnon followers are a dangerous cult. How to save someone who's been brainwashed”. Hassan knows cults from the inside: formerly a Moonie (a member of the late Sun Myung Moon’s Unification Church), he became an anti-cultist, eventually founding the Freedom of Mind Resource Center and developing the BITE theory of cults’ mind control. “BITE” is short for Behavior control, Information control, Thought control, and Emotional control.
Hassan says your first priority should be to protect yourself from the lure of QAnon. If you’ve done that but know relatives or friends who are falling under QAnon’s sway, Hassan suggests the following guidelines for approaching them.
- Engage with them. Keep positive, don’t flee, and connect as best you can.
- Don’t judge them. Don’t use words like “cult” or “conspiracy theory”; they’ll just shy away. (So don’t send them this diary, as it says both “cult” and “conspiracy”.)
- Appeal to their conscience, reason, and sense of integrity. QAnon is partly about “research”, so talk about the importance of researching all sources, not just those of QAnon believers.
- Then, suggest other information sources, such as reliable sources on child trafficking, a common QAnon theme.
- Build trusted allies by helping other non-infected family members and friends engage with the QAnon victim. The more time the victim spends outside the QAnon bubble, the better.
Hassan concludes:
Now that QAnon is becoming a global phenomenon, with Trump and others in positions of power promoting it, there’s a lot at stake. As we approach the presidential elections, Russia and the Christian right are promoting QAnon theories, while the cult’s leaders are calling for followers on Twitter to prepare themselves for an armed civil war. We have to be vigilant and do what we can to learn about the dangers of QAnon so we can protect ourselves and those we care about — as well as our democracy — from this cult.
We must be vigilant after the November election as well. Even if Trump loses, this cult is not going away and it will continue to pose a threat to our country. As Adrienne LaFrance wrote in “Nothing Can Stop What is Coming”:
In his classic 1957 book, The Pursuit of the Millennium, the historian Norman Cohn examined the emergence of apocalyptic thinking over many centuries. He found one common condition: This way of thinking consistently emerged in regions where rapid social and economic change was taking place — and at periods of time when displays of spectacular wealth were highly visible but unavailable to most people. This was true in Europe during the Crusades in the 11th century, and during the Black Death in the 14th century, and in the Rhine Valley in the 16th century, and in William Miller’s New York in the 19th century. It is true in America in the 21st century.
Millerism was eventually undone only by the Great Disappointment of October 22, 1844 when, contrary to William Miller’s prediction, the world did not end — and offshoots of the Millerite cult still survive today. The QAnon cult will not go so quietly, and we all need to do our part to help contain and eventually defeat it.
