Category: Personal

Last week, I wrote an article on this blog that sought to explain why so many people are suddenly sharing posts about sex trafficking and pedophilia on social media platforms. In summary, one of the main reasons for this surge is that Qanon conspiracy theorists are seeking to bring more people into their cult by spreading innocent-seeming ideas and hashtags such as #save the children. (A lot of people found my piece helpful, and it reached ten thousand views within a few days – if you haven’t read it yet, click here).

Within 30 minutes of sharing this article on Facebook, I received an angry public comment and series of private messages from a childhood acquaintance who I’ll call “Brett,” who I haven’t spoken to in at least 15 years. As it turns out, Brett is a full time Qanon “researcher” who makes his living from Youtube videos, Patreon donations, and selling Qanon merchandise. While Brett’s initial Facebook messages to me were somewhat intense, demanding that I retract my “shit” article, we ended up having a lengthy, mostly-polite discussion that lasted at least 8 hours of back and forth messages over the course of a few days. While it’s hard to summarize our entire conversation, which was both wide-ranging and involving highly technical Qanon terms and jargon, I’ll attempt to summarize a few key lessons that I learned below. [A few days ago, Brett’s Facebook account and associated Facebook group were suspended by Facebook as part of their crackdown on Qanon-promoting accounts. While I do not begrudge Facebook’s desire as a private company to crack down on the spread of harmful information on their platform, one side effect of this is that I am no longer able to access the messages he had sent me, and am forced to rely on memory. I have tried to reconstruct his point of view as fairly and accurately as possible.]

Arguing with a Qanon believer is like trying to hammer water

Growing up, I was enrolled in Christian apologetics courses, and later spent 8 years doing debate in high school and college. Suffice to say that I enjoy arguing back and forth on a variety of topics, so long as the person on the other side is willing to stick to their guns and actually argue back. For that reason, arguing with Brett was deeply, deeply frustrating. I asked a number of key, crucial questions about Qanon that are actually pretty straightforward, and rather than answer them, Brett would deflect to another topic or bring up an unrelated issue.

At the very outset of our conversation, Brett claimed that I should not judge Qanon on the basis of some of its followers, but rather judge it by its source–the 4500+ “Q-drops” that serve as the holy scripture for Qanon. I was excited by that, because I had read a lot of these Q-drops and most of them are garbage: they’re reposts of news articles, prophecies that are so vague so as to be applicable to anything, or are easy to disprove using basic logic. As I tried to get Brett to respond to each of these debunks of the Qanon holy text, he wasn’t able to answer, and instead just would default to standard Qanon catchphrases like “disinformation is necessary”, “do your own research,” and “I can’t explain it for you.” (But that was the whole reason I wanted to hear Brett’s point of view! He should be able to explain these things if he truly believes them, in much the same way that a paid Christian pastor should be able to address hard passages in the Bible.) For example, the very first Q posts stated as a bald fact that Hillary Clinton would be arrested “between 7:45 AM – 8:30 AM EST on Monday – the morning on Oct 30, 2017.” Of course that didn’t happen, but when I asked Brett to explain the discrepancy, he simply said “think for yourself.” Another Q-drop claims that North Korea is not being run by Kim Jong-Un; of course there’s no evidence that’s true. Other Q-drops are incredibly anti-Semitic; to those Brett had no response. For a complete breakdown of hundreds of Q-drops that are easily proven false, click here. Suffice to say that asking Brett to directly explain Q-drops was an exercise in futility.

In our discussion, I also asked Brett about the violent acts that Qanon followers have committed, from tearing families apart, to kidnapping children, to multiple murders, to attempts of assassinations and domestic terrorism. Brett claimed to me that Qanon is inherently peaceful and that followers “police their own”, such as arguing against the crazies in Qanon who believe that JFK Jr. is still alive despite his 1999 plan crash. (Interestingly enough, he himself at one point believed that JFK Jr. was alive!). But to any objective observer it’s impossible to ignore the violence–verbal, physical, and ideological– that is inherent in Qanon. Ultimately, Qanon’s denial of the violence in their movement is an application of the “No True Scotsman” logical fallacy. No matter how many crazy acts of pain and violence Q’s followers inflict on others, Brett and others like him will simply say, “oh they weren’t REAL Qanon followers.” Interestingly enough, Brett declined to denounce such acts of violence committed for the sake of his cause. I told him, ‘hey I’m a Christian and I regularly denounce people in my religion who are in the wrong,’ but for Brett it feels like that is not an option. Perhaps the ultimate reason for that is that Qanon is, at its heart, an inherently violent cult that longs for mass murders under the guise of “justice”. Which brings me to my next major point.

Q keeps prophesying specific events, and they keep not happening…but that doesn’t bother Qanon believers

One key issue I tried to pin Brett on was the timeline for all the prophecies that Q keeps predicting as part of Donald Trump’s secret war against cannibals and pedophiles, but none of them have come true. Brett told me to expect a “crescendo” in the coming months, and I tried to ask him exactly what he means by that. (Most Qanon followers believe that any day now Obama, Hillary, and a host of other Americans will be jailed and executed in Guantanamo Bay for their supposed crimes.) Brett kept being vague about what this “crescendo” would look like. I asked him if hypothetically Donald Trump were to tomorrow declare martial law and start killing these Democrats for “treason”, if that would make Brett happy, if that would be the long-awaited “Storm.” Brett flatly avoided that question, but a cursory look at his page shows that he longs for this type of violent, totalitarian justice to be wrought upon Democrats. “We just want our country back,” he said in a recent post. To me that’s the scariest part that Qanon has revealed–just how many Americans are ready and indeed excited for mass killings of other Americans if they’re opposed to Trump! Even now I routinely see people I know on Facebook talk about the “treason” of liberals, for which the only just penalty is execution by the State.

Ultimately, given that Qanon started off with an easily provable lie (that Hillary was arrested in 2017), the only true believers who are still in the movement are those who want to believe in it. Any pro-Q “proofs” and “evidence” that people like Brett produce to encourage the faithful are haphazard, misleading, or just flat-out wrong. However, those who have been leaders in the Qanon movement are often reluctant to leave it, because…

Promoting Qanon can be a VERY lucrative business

In our messages, Brett told me that his full-time job is producing content for his Youtube channel and podcast, “Woke Societies.” I asked him to share the link, and spent a number of hours perusing his content across that platform and others, discovering that while Brett is not a top-tier Qanon promoter, he is managing to do quite well for himself.  I crunched the numbers: Brett currently has 75 patrons on Patreon, with membership levels at $5, $15, and $25 a month. Thus Brett earns anywhere from $375-$1875 every month in (virtually) passive Patreon income. In addition, his merch store has 59 products of various Trump and Qanon branded mugs, stickers, and other items, which probably earns him another few hundred dollars a month. Most interestingly to me, Brett has over 100,000 subscribers to his Youtube channel—which he started only 16 months ago, and which has increased by nearly 70,000 subscribers in the past 90 days! According to a Youtube analyzer, with 100,000 subscribers Brett earns at roughly $101 per Youtube video through ads. In the past 30 days, Brett has published 15 Youtube videos, which has netted him a cool $1500. All told, at minimum Brett is probably making over $30,000 a year just by promoting Qanon theories and ideas. Clearly, this is more than a hobby, it is essentially a job.

When I asked him if perhaps his financial interest was blinding him to the truth about Qanon, Brett was defensive. Brett claimed that he only dipped his toes in Qanon initially as a hobby, but it wasn’t until people started following him by the hundreds that he decided to make it his career. (To be honest, if I knew I had hundreds of thousands of people hanging on my every word, with hundreds joining by the day, I might decide to make a career of it too!) In this way Brett’s trajectory echoes that of Instagram influencers; the difference being that he’s not hawking a nail polish or makeup tutorial, he’s hawking an ideology that says Hollywood elites eat babies.

At this point, Qanon is inextricably linked to a vast number of other conspiracy theories

While I am often focused on debunking Qanon, since I’ve personally seen the damage it can cause, Brett would often demure and say that he actually doesn’t talk much about Qanon on his podcast anymore, and that he’s just about “the truth.” A quick glance at his Youtube channel and Tweets easily disproved that as a flat-out lie, as direct references to Qanon abound. But his reaction was interesting to me; it seems that Brett’s posts deliberately include a variety of other conspiracy theories in an attempt to reach a broader audience. A scan shows Brett’s Youtube channel includes conspiracy theories about a host of matters, including UFOs, Black Lives Matter, George Soros, COVID-19, a secret Nazi base underneath Antarctica, time travel, 9/11, manmade earthquakes, JFK Jr. still being alive, vaccines, al-Baghdadi being a CIA agent, the existence of astral planes, and Trump’s supposed connection to Nichola Tesla, to name a few. As such, Qanon is sort of a “Grand Unifying Conspiracy Theory,” onto which emotionally and spiritually vulnerable people can link all their hopes, fears, and passions. While arguably some of these conspiracy theories aren’t harmful and perhaps even a bit silly, many others of them have a verified death toll and are used to spread an authoritarian, anti-Semitic, and fascistic worldview. That’s dangerous, because…

For many people, Qanon functions as a religious cult, and it’s very hard to leave once you’re in

I originally met Brett at a private Christian school, and so I asked him early in our conversation if he’s still a follower of Jesus. He said he’s not, that he hates all religions and all dogma. Perhaps for that exact reason, he took great offense to my claim that Qanon is a cult. He thinks that is derogatory and offensive (and perhaps there are other terms that might fit better). However, Qanon fits the bill for a lot of things that cult does. Qanon has: a set of holy scriptures (the Q-drops) which get interpreted by a number of prophets (Q researchers), a messiah figure (Donald Trump), a supernatural villain (the Jewish/Democratic/Hollywood cabal), an eschatology (the promise of mass arrests and executions happening, which then makes America great), a persecution complex (Twitter bans), a requirement of evangelism (exposing your friends and family to Qanon ideas via Facebook), and, in its linking to older conspiracy theories, Qanon also has a deep, complex story of good vs. evil that goes back centuries. Moreover, like religious cults, Qanon has the tendency of stealing people away from their families, drawing them to spend more and more time and money in an insular internet chat rooms while driving a wedge between them and their Deep State relatives who “just don’t get it.” In short Qanon fits the basic bill for a religious cult just like Scientology or similar cults do.  

Like other cults, there are many paths into Qanon but it is very hard to get out of it. Some Qanon followers come in via dark, anti-Semitic & far-right corners of the internet. Others are loners who feel alienated from mainstream society, and are eager to embrace an ideology that gives them hope and a purpose. More recently, a surge of new members have been coming in from “wellness moms” who are into New Age healing techniques, are anti-vaccines, and are passionate about protecting children from evil people “out there.” While these cultists co-exist somewhat uneasily, in Qanon all of them are unified in their hope of a Messiah, Donald J. Trump, who will liberate them from the evil Deep State overlords that are secretly running society.

The few hard-core Qanon believers who do leave the faith do so for one of a few reasons, all of them rare. The first reason is that these believers become frustrated at the slow pace of “The Storm” and are ready for the hammer to drop on Trump’s enemies. These members are dangerous, as they may violently take matters into their own hands.

Another reason some people leave is that they have a “come to Jesus moment” where they realize just how many loved ones they’ve hurt and alienated by following Qanon, and decide to walk away from it all. However so far these people are rare, as the tendency to simply disappear deeper into the Qanon community is usually easier than rebuilding bridges one has burnt.

The last reason people might walk away from Qanon is that it ultimately becomes boring, and it’s more fun, meaningful, or profitable to simply move into a different religion. I honestly think that is what will happen to Brett within the next few months/years; he already has so many diverse interests, he may realize it is more profitable and enjoyable to monetize one of those with the skills he learned from Qanon. Perhaps most likely, he will move explicitly into politics, either as an online pundit or by running for federal office like the ~80 pro-Qanon Congressional candidates who’ve entered the race this cycle.

Why it matters

So in the end, does it really matter if a few million Americans believe in this conspiracy theory? Why not just leave them alone? Why take so many hours addressing this issue (after all, unlike Brett I don’t make any money from producing this content!)? The reason is that Qanon holds at its heart a dangerous, anti-Semitic, anti-democratic, fascistic worldview. While not every Qanon follower has these exact views, based on Brett’s videos and worries about George Soros, the Cabal, and the deep state, I have every reason to believe that he himself holds to many of the anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that have been around since the time of the Middle Ages and that were most prominent during the Nazis. It’s uncertain to me that we’re about to enter a new era of bloodshed and violence, but regardless this ideology must be stopped.

In 1985, historian George L. Mosse wrote his ground-breaking analysis of European racism Toward the Final Solution. In his concluding chapter, Mosse warned that the same forces and ideologies that led to the Holocaust were still present in Western society. Read this quote below from that final chapter, but as you read, replace the word “racism” with Qanon. Doesn’t this sound exactly like our current situation?

“Behind all the attempts at justification [for the Holocaust] stood a fanatical belief in racist ideas. This was a racism which stemmed from the outer perimeter of the movement, connected with spiritualism, secret sciences, and cosmic battles. But such ideas came to dominate the mind of Adolf Hilter, who was at one and the same time a fanatic and a superb politician…Racist myths not only explained the past and brought hope for the future, but through their emphasis on stereotypes rendered the abstract concrete…this made racism a visually centered ideology. This stress on the visual [memes], in turn, made it easy for people to understand the thrust of the ideology…racism was never at a loss for proofs which would make its stereotypes convincing…racism was a scavenger ideology which annexed the virtues, morals, and respectability of the age to its stereotypes and attributed them to the inherent qualities of a superior race. If racism annexed the virtues of the age, it also condemned as degenerate all that was opposed to such respectability.”

It might feel weird to spend 3000 words attacking such a bankrupt, scavenger ideology, one that seems foolish from top to bottom. But America in 2020 is a nation where bankrupt, foolish ideologies of white supremacy, fascism, militarism, nationalism, and others are making comebacks of their own. If we do not recognize the tell-tale signs of these ideological viruses, and do what we must to stop their spread, we will once more find ourselves surrounded on every side by politicians, church leaders, and family members who have been infected. Many of them already are.