Category: Politics

Bonhoeffer’s Antifascist Theology – Part II. Collaborators

 Jesus said to them: “Watch out that no one deceives you. Many will come in my name, claiming, ‘I am he,’ and will deceive many.” Mark 13:5-6.

In my previous post, I introduced the core concepts of fascism and introduced Dietrich Bonhoeffer, one of the only German Christians to oppose Nazism both intellectually and in practice. (If you have not yet read Part I, click here) In Part II, we will explore the various groups of Christians who are deceived by the ideals of fascism. In Ethics, Bonhoeffer describes three general categories of those who fall under fascism’s sway.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer on a weekend getaway with confirmands of Zion’s Church congregation (1932, Wikipedia)

1. Centrist Christians

As fascism rises many Christians choose the path of “moderation”, as if by simply being a bit “nicer,” society could be magically healed. I label these people “Centrist Christians.” In our day, people like this often say we just need more “civility,” or simply need a balance between the two extremes. While of course there can be wisdom in moderation, there is something grossly inappropriate in imagining that simply “being nice” is a universal solution when there are irreconcilable divisions and injustices in society. Some things are good, and some things are bad–and to pretend that any solution is to be found somewhere between those two sides is to ultimately choose the side of whichever group has more power. Bonhoeffer writes:

“The failure of ‘reasonable’ people is appalling; they cannot manage to see either the abyss of evil or the abyss of holiness. With the best intentions they believe that, with a little reason, they can pull back together a structure that has come apart at the joins. In their defective vision they want to be fair to both sides, and so they are crushed between the colliding forces without having accomplished anything at all. Bitterly disappointed that the world is so unreasonable, they see themselves condemned to ineffectiveness. They withdraw in resignation or fall helpless captive to the stronger party.”  -Ethics, 78

In his final sentence, Bonhoeffer prefigures the other two groups who fall into fascism’s sway: the Cloistered Christians who withdraw, and the Fascist Christians who fall captive to the stronger party.

2. Cloistered Christians

Other people choose to withdraw from the fight against fascism, and instead focus on their own personal holiness. Such a response to fascism may be called “The Benedict Option,” a term popularized by Rod Dreher who argues that Christians should give up hope of making a public impact in America, and instead retreat to their own private spheres in society, education, and politics. While there is a certain logic in withdrawing from the empire, in so doing these people are ceding the battleground and refusing to faithfully partake in “responsible action”, which is a key phrase for Bonhoeffer and one that I will expand upon later in this series. Bonhoeffer writes:

“Such people [who withdraw from society] neither steal, nor murder, nor commit adultery, but do good according to their abilities. But in voluntarily renouncing public life, these people know exactly how to observe the permitted boundaries that shield them from conflict. They must close their eyes and ears to the injustice around them. Only at the cost of self-deception can they keep their private blamelessness clean from the stains of responsible action in the world.” – Ethics, 80

In fact, Bonhoeffer is quite clear that there is no such thing as actually withdrawing from society in such a way as to keep one’s hands clean. Ultimately, you are either complicit with evil, or you are hard at work fighting it. Later in Ethics, he addresses the idea of “communal guilt,” and points out that in a society there is no such thing as a wholly individual action: every action, good or evil, has an effect on others around them (which is why corporate confession and repentance is so important for Christians to practice). Bonhoeffer writes:

“The quite personal sin of each individual is acknowledged here as a source of poison for the community. Even the most secret sin of the individual soils and destroys the body of Christ. Murder, envy, strife, war…I cannot pacify myself by saying that my part in all these is slight and hardly noticeable. There is no calculating here….I am guilty of cowardly silence when I should have spoken, I am guilty of untruthfulness and hypocrisy in the fact of threatening violence; I am guilty of disowning without mercy the poorest of my neighbors; I am guilty of disloyalty and falling away from Christ…these many individuals are joined together in the collective “I” of the church. The church confesses and acknowledges its guilt in and through them…the church was mute when it should have cried out, because the blood of the innocent cried out to heaven…The church confesses that it has misused the name of Christ by being ashamed of it before the world and by not resisting strongly enough the misuse of that name for evil ends. The church has looked on while injustice and violence have been done, under the cover of the name of Christ.  Ethics,  136-8

If you can sense the heartbreak Bonhoeffer has in this passage, it’s because he knows he’s fallen short himself in the past. In 1939, a few years before he wrote this section in Ethics, Bonhoeffer had a chance to flee and return to the United States, where he had studied previously. But almost immediately upon arriving he realized that he had made a mistake and quickly returned to Germany. He wrote to theologian Reinhold Niebuhr:

“I have come to the conclusion that I made a mistake in coming to America. I must live through this difficult period in our national history with the people of Germany. I will have no right to participate in the reconstruction of Christian life in Germany after the war if I do not share the trials of this time with my people … Christians in Germany will have to face the terrible alternative of either willing the defeat of their nation in order that Christian civilization may survive. or willing the victory of their nation and thereby destroying civilization. I know which of these alternatives I must choose, but I cannot make that choice from security.”[31]

Upon returning to Germany, Bonhoeffer became even more radically involved in the antifascist movement, and would be arrested within four years. But there is one more group of Christians we must talk about.

3. Fascist Christians

Adolf Hitler, Abbot Albanus Schachleiter and Reich Bishop Ludwig Mueller, 1934 (Alamy)

In Bonhoeffer’s day, similar to our own, a majority Christians become totally enamored with their fascist leaders and the basic tenets of fascism (listed in my previous blog). To these Fascist Christians, truth doesn’t matter; all that matters is that the “Christian leader” is successful, that he is a “winner” while everyone else is a “loser”. In fascism the ideals of strength, virility, masculinity, and violence are elevated; while Jesus’ ideals of bearing one’s cross, enduring suffering, and identifying with the least members of society are denigrated as weak, liberal, and effeminate. Bonhoeffer writes:

“Where the figure of a successful person becomes especially prominent, the majority fall into idolizing success. They become blind to right and wrong, truth and lie, decency and malice. They see only the deed, the success. Ethical and intellectual capacity for judgment grow dull before the sheen of success and before the desire somehow to share in it. People even fail to perceive that guilt is scarred over in success, because guilt is no longer recognized as such. Success per se is the good. This attitude is only genuine and excusable while one is intoxicated by events. After sobriety returns it can be maintained only at the cost of deep inner hypocrisy, with conscious self-deception. This leads to an inner depravity, from which recovery is difficult.”  Ethics, 89

It is perhaps too easy to pick out evangelical Christians in our day who have fallen under the sway of this type of mentality. Some, like Jerry Falwell Jr. and Mark Driscoll, come to mind as those who actually got caught so publicly exposed by their sin that they were forced to resign from their positions. But there are so many others who believe that winning at any cost is more important than actually maintaining their character and witness. [And even those who are temporarily forced out are almost guaranteed to return to the limelight one day—after all, failed End Time predictions and sexual sins haven’t kept Jim Bakker, Paula White, Jonathan Cahn, Kenneth Copeland, and other unrepentant leaders from returning to the limelight, so why would some consensual cuckolding and emotional abuse permanently keep Falwell and Driscoll from returning to public ministry?]. I could go on and on about how this type of success-oriented, hyper-masculine corruption of Christianity is completely contrary to Jesus’ teachings in the Sermon on the Mount, but hopefully that fact is obvious enough to even the casual reader of the Bible.

I doubt even Bonhoeffer fully knew quite how deadly this type of Christian Fascism would ultimately become in his own country. But he knew enough to know that it was opposed to the Gospel of Jesus Christ, and thus must be opposed by Christians at every level possible. I invite you to continue to join me as we further explore Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s antifascist theology.

Bonhoeffer’s Antifascist Theology – Part I. Introductions

“Seldom has a generation been as uninterested as ours in any kind of ethical theory or program…this does not come from any ethical indifference in our times, but rather the reverse, from the pressure of a reality filled with concrete, ethical problems such as we have never had before in the history of the West…Today we have villains and saints against, in fully public view. The gray on gray of a sultry, rainy day has turned into the black cloud and bright lightning flash of a thunderstorm. The contours are sharply drawn. Reality is laid bare. Shakespeare’s characters are among us. The villain and the saint have little or nothing to do with ethical programs. They arise from primeval depths, and with their appearance tear open the demonic and divine abyss out of which they come, allowing us brief glimpses of their suspected secrets…” Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, 1943.

Dietrich Bonhoeffer-the pastor who tried to kill Hitler

Dietrich Bonhoeffer is a legendary figure in Christian circles. Born in 1906, Bonhoeffer was one of only a very few German Christians who dared to speak out against the Nazi regime. Despite his pacifist leanings, Bonhoeffer eventually took part in a secret conspiracy to kill Hitler and install a new government. The conspiracy failed, and Bonhoeffer was sent to a concentration camp and hung for treason at just 39 years of age. Perhaps because of his prophetic voice, his writings, including The Cost of Discipleship and Life Together, have been global bestsellers for decades. [In recent years, Dietrich Bonhoeffer has been a lodestar for American conservatives eager to see themselves as Bonhoeffer-esque culture fighters warring against what they see as the tyranny of American liberalism. Eric Metaxas, a die-hard Trump supporter and notable evangelical who recently was caught on video sucker-punching an unarmed protester, wrote a biography about Bonhoeffer that further lionized him (despite being rife with historical inaccuracies).]

Bonhoeffer, Getty Images

Growing up as a young evangelical, I also loved Bonhoeffer’s writings, particularly The Cost of Discipleship, which centers on the Sermon on the Mount–the passage where Jesus says blessed are the poor, love your enemies, you can’t serve God & money, and other famous lines. As a bookish, ethnically German Christian myself, I have always felt a certain affinity to Bonhoeffer. However, the one part I couldn’t understand was to reconcile his wholehearted commitment to the Sermon on the Mount with his attempt to assassinate Hitler–is killing any man, even Hitler, really congruent with Jesus’ command to “love your enemies?” I’d often wondered how Bonhoeffer would answer that, but didn’t put forth significant effort to discover the answer.

That changed recently, when I was looking for a book to read and came upon Bonhoeffer’s Ethics, a massive 500+ page work examining Christian ethical theory that concludes unfinished–Bonhoeffer was arrested in the middle of writing it. A book that I expected to be dry and philosophical felt urgent and of the utmost importance: these were the thoughts of a man written while he was secretly planning to overthrow his own government! I realized: what Bonhoeffer had written was not a mere theory of Christian ethics, but the start of a comprehensive and rigorous antifascist theology–perhaps the first one ever written.

Of course, Bonhoeffer didn’t use the term “antifascist theology,” as it’s a term I came up with on my own–if you Google the phrase “antifascist theology”, only two results currently come up! In fact, one could argue, why use the phrase ‘antifascist theology,’ isn’t that confusing a political theory with a religious theory? But I firmly believe that a religious orthodoxy (set of beliefs) that has no physical orthopraxy (set of actual practices) is meaningless and toothless, the musing of an intellectual in ivory towers. That is not who Bonhoeffer was. The theology of a man who gave his life to fight German fascism can only be interpreted as an inherently antifascist theology–for it is exactly this theology that led Bonhoeffer to his daring course of action. As the foreword to Ethics puts it, “Understanding Bonhoeffer requires moving from disembodied principles to the concrete situation: confronting the life-destroying warmonger and the murderer of the Jews who had to be stopped.” (p. 16)

Fascism Defined

To define antifascist theology, one must first define fascism. “Fascism” comes from the Latin word “fasces”, which describe a bundle of sticks tied together with an axe—symbolizing the unifying power of the State to simultaneously bind society together and punish evildoers. Fasces have been a symbol of State power for 2000 years, ever since the Roman Empire ruled over most of Europe, Asia, and North Africa. The symbol of the fasces have been incorporated into many different cultures, such as at the Lincoln Memorial (below).

However, the political ideology of fascism is a more recent development, one that arose alongside imperialism, capitalism, and the modern nation-state beginning in the 1800s. While political scientists disagree over the precise definition of fascism, historian Stanley G. Payne focuses on three concepts:

  1. The “fascist negations”: anti-liberalism, anti-communism, and anti-conservatism; [Translation—fascism is strongly opposed to any “softening” of society brought on by liberalism, and firmly opposed to any state-run economic engines such as those brought by communism. Yet interestingly, fascists are also in tension with traditional conservatives, who are seen as being too weak to do the “dirty work” that is actually needed to improve society…sounding familiar yet?]
  2. “Fascist goals”: the creation of a nationalist dictatorship to regulate economic structure and to transform social relations within a modern, self-determined culture, and the expansion of the nation into an empire; and
  3. “Fascist style”: a political aesthetic of romantic symbolism, mass mobilization, a positive view of violence, and promotion of masculinity, youth, and charismatic authoritarian leadership.
In 1939, 20,000 Americans flocked to Madison Square Garden for a pro-Nazi rally that combined fascist themes with more traditional forms of American patriotism. Source.

Besides Germany, a number of other societies have become ruled by fascists over the past two centuries. Italy, Spain, and Greece come to mind, and many nations still have strong far-right groups that regularly try to agitate society and recruit new members into their movements. From the Brownshirts and the Hitler Youth, to skinheads and neo-Nazis, to the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers, all of these proto-fascists are linked by their desire for the State to rise up and demolish any liberal/Jewish/“Deep State” political enemies.

To lay all my cards out on the table, I think there are some troubling fascistic tendencies rising up in the United States. In looking at the three concepts I listed above that define fascism, I have witnessed all three elements become more and more widespread in American society over the past 20 years. It used to be that everyone knew the Nazis were the bad guys; but now I see grandmas on Facebook actively spreading anti-Semitic propaganda, I see fathers teaching their children to hate all Marxists, and I see politicians excited about killing liberals in the streets (“pre-emptively” of course). And unfortunately, just like in 1930s Germany, many Bible-believing Christians are the very ones supporting these fascist tendencies, often by using Scripture taken out of context–although to be honest I haven’t see them even bother to do that very often!

Now, whether America is about to collapse into some kind of fascist dictatorship, I do not know. What I do know is that for years far-right individuals have been quickly buying up guns, joining militias, and proclaiming that America is close to being destroyed by nefarious forces who must be defeated at any costs…it seems hard to imagine a scenario where this all just magically ends without more violence than we’ve already seen so far. For most of us though, the struggle remains primarily a war of ideas, not a war in the streets. It is thus incumbent for all of us to make sure that we have a rigorous ethical and theological foundation with which to fight the growing tide of fascism. Hence: the need for an antifascist theology.

Antifascist Theology Defined

With fascism thus explained, I will define antifascist theology as an systemic explanation of the true nature of God and implications for Christians living in a fascist society. While good theology is always able to be translated into different cultures and contexts, there is something particularly challenging about fascism that tends to draw Christians in – unless there is a counterbalancing force warning them of it. Bonhoeffer’s work of Ethics seeks to do exactly that. And in the same way as one cannot fully understand the teachings of Jesus without understanding the socio-political environment in which he lived, we cannot fully understand Bonhoeffer without recognizing his status as a German man writing during the time of German fascism.

So as we dive deeper into Bonhoeffer’s antifascist theology, let’s not sugar-coat things. With a disastrous economy wracking Germany, and the perceived cultural threat of progressive city-dwellers, Jews, communists, atheists, and cultural elites, the rise of fascism in 1930s Germany can be seen as a reactionary attempt to “Make Germany Great Again.” Thus perhaps it’s sad but not surprising that the vast majority of German Christians enthusiastically supported fascism. For Bonhoeffer to oppose the majority of his fellow Christians was bold indeed. While he used a lot of coded language in his writing (in order to avoid being persecuted for his political views), Bonhoeffers’ attacks against fascism are quite clear.

For those of us in America today who see similar signs of fascism in our churches, communities, and national politics, Bonhoeffer’s antifascist theology will give us some tools and a framework through which we can fight back. Stay tuned for future posts in which I will explicitly lay out the main pieces of his antifascist theology.

Members of the Proud Boys, one of many proto-fascist groups that have gained increased traction in American society in recent years.

To be continued…

This concludes Park I of this series. Future parts will dive into the specifics of Bonhoeffer’s Antifascist Theology as described in his work Ethics, and the implications therein for our own world. To make sure you are appraised of future parts, please make sure you have subscribed your email address to get blog updates.

I spent hours arguing with a Qanon believer. Here’s what I learned.

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.]

Supporters take photos with Marjorie Taylor Greene (in red) in Rome, Georgia, on Aug. 11. Greene, a QAnon supporter, won the GOP nomination for northwest Georgia's 14th U.S. Congressional District.
Marjorie Taylor Greene (in red) in Rome, Georgia, on Aug. 11. Greene, a QAnon supporter, won the Republican nomination for northwest Georgia’s 14th Congressional District. MIKE STEWART/AP

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.

A Qanon believer brandishing a loaded gun at a Portland protest

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.

Some of Brett’s older Youtube videos.

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.

One of the many heart-breaking posts in the Reddit thread “Qanon Casulties“

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.

The dark reason behind why so many people are suddenly posting about sex trafficking

TW: involves discussion of sex trafficking, anti-Semitism, violence, and child abuse.

You may have noticed an uptick recently on social media of people posting about sex trafficking. It could be for a good reason, that they’re now becoming aware of a systemic problem that many of us have been warning about for years. [I remember 10 years ago, many InterVarsity college fellowships ran awareness campaigns about modern-day slavery and trafficking. I’ve also learned from experts that sex trafficking is a major problem here in Central Pennsylvania, where a large number of truck stops create a demand for prostitution into which many vulnerable women are forced. There’s also evidence to suggest that ICE detention centers have become hotbeds of sexual assault by the guards, and that some children of immigrant parents have been trafficked after being separated at the border from their parents. And of course, many refugees seeking to come to the United States are fleeing sexual violence and human trafficking in their home countries, only to be refused entry and end up trafficked anyway! Human trafficking is truly a massive, global problem that many non-profits and agencies have been fighting for decades, often with little support or funding.]

However, the recent uptick in posts about sex trafficking may have a much darker background–many of these posts are implicitly or explicitly part of the ongoing Qanon conspiracy theory, which says that everyone in Hollywood and the Democratic party are actually secret satanic pedophiles who eat children. Qanon believes that Donald Trump is actually God’s messiah, and one day soon he will suspend democracy, arrest these Democrats, and have them all executed for treason-and that that’s a good thing! Anyway, in recent weeks Qanon was facing a crackdown on Twitter, and so decided to skirt the ban and spread their message by hijcking the hashtag “save the children” and lure well-intentioned people looking to spread awareness about sex trafficking into learning more about Qanon. Thus, a word of caution: before sharing that viral post about pedophilia or sex trafficking, you need to make sure that it is actually supporting a worthy cause and not unintentionally promoting a Qanon account.

Why is Qanon so dangerous? Read on below…

Qanon is just the most recent manifestation of an ancient anti-Semitic trope, one that has historically manifested itself during times of economic and social disruption. Early Jewish converts to Christianity were accused by the Romans of eating human flesh and blood when they partook in the Eucharist. During the Middle Ages, the ancient blood libel took on new root, as Christians accused Jews of kidnapping their babies and using their blood as part of ritualistic sacrifices. The hoax text, the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, was written at the end of the 19th Century to further suggest the themes of blood rituals, as well as arguing that there is a secret Jewish cabal that controls the media, government, and society. None other than Adolf Hitler used these theories in his propaganda as he sought to overthrow liberal democracy in Germany.

In the 1980s, the accusation that people are kidnapping children and using them in satanic rituals became widespread in the United States as part of the panic around day care centers. Conservative/reactionary forces in American society didn’t trust day care centers, since they were a vehicle that enabled women to join the workforce instead of staying at home with the kids. A vast number of parents collectively made up stories about a literal underground series of tunnels built beneath day care centers; little children were coerced into confessing that they had been victims of heinous crimes. All of the accused were later proven innocent, and the mass hysteria subsided–but not before embedding itself in the American consciousness.

Day care sex hysteria - YouTube
Footage from the day-care hysteria trials. Documentary here.

Enter Qanon. In the fall of 2017, a secret internet user known as Q introduced themselves as someone high in the US government with secret information. In a series of posts on the dark web, Q promised that within a matter of weeks, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, and a large number of other leading government figures would be arrested, convicted of treason, and executed by Donald Trump. As weeks dragged into months, and then years, Qanon’s promises and timelines kept shifting, but not before spawning a whole new American religion centered around Donald Trump as a man sent by God to fight against evil. In an eerie resemblance to the arguments that Hitler made, Qanon believes that our entire country is secretly controlled by a cabal of Jewish and Democratic elites who use their power to commit satanic, ritualistic acts of pedophilia and child sacrifice. In addition to these core beliefs, Qanon believers pick and choose among a vast array of related theories. Some believe that there’s a video out there of Hillary carving a child’s face with a knife. Some believe that Obama, Clinton, Ruth Bader Ginsberg, and others have already been executed and that the people we see today are just clones. Some Qanon believers promoted the idea that furniture supplier Wayfair was actually shipping children in its boxes (with the inevitable result that actual sex trafficking phone hotlines were overwhelmed by calls from people telling them about this fake story). Qanon followers have committed murders and acts of domestic terrorism in their misguided belief that they’re helping Donald Trump fight these satanic enemies. During COVID, Qanon believers thought that the NYC hospital tents in Central Park were just a cover-up to rescue children from sex slavery in underground tunnels. Other Qanon believers think that Michelle Obama is secretly a man.

One of Q’s earlier posts; anti-Semitic language and tropes abound in Qanon

What pisses me off in particular is that a large number of Qanon believers are conservative evangelical Christians who link Qanon’s wild theories into their (poorly developed) pre-existing theology. A whole cottage industry of self-proclaimed “prophets” exist who read Q’s writings side-by-side with the Bible, trying to find connections. In fact, I only started researching Qanon a couple of years ago once I discovered that a number of people I had grown up going to church with were following Qanon after getting sucked in by a man named Mark Taylor. Mark Taylor is a self-proclaimed prophet who believes Donald Trump is God’s chosen man to kill liberal evildoers and hold off the End Times for at least a few years. He has even started an online Qanon church, where people log on to hear him teach about Q and pray for Q’s will to be done in this country. At this point Qanon has stopped being just a conspiracy theory and has entered the realm of religion-the most “American” religion one can imagine.

This was a conversation I had nearly two years ago with a Christian Qanon believer. I edited out the name of their church. Despite the fact that no major arrests of the Democrats happened, this person still believes in Qanon and that Donald Trump is God’s chosen messiah to save America from “The Cabal”. This person has spread their beliefs via videos and posts to their family and others in their social network.

And it doesn’t just end there–at this point over 32 self-proclaimed Qanon believers are running for political office this fall, including at least 20 members of the US Congress! (Donald Trump just tweeted his support for one of them, and in fact he’s re-tweeted dozens of Qanon accounts over the past 2 years). Thus Qanon is not just some fringe belief; this is bringing a deeply anti-Semitic, anti-democratic ideology into the very halls of power. I am not exaggerating when I say that if Donald Trump proclaimed himself dictator and arrested/executed all the Democrats, millions of Qanon-believing Americans would eagerly support him, grateful that at last some justice was coming to the people they think are satanic pedophiles. What a scary thought!

Now, given that sex trafficking really does exist and we should be raising awareness about it, how can one do that without unintentionally promoting Qanon? Here are a few suggestions:

First, don’t spread Qanon posts. There are a number of key words and phrases that Qanon followers use in their hashtags and rantings. If you see any of these phrases or hashtags, run far away! “Where We Go One We Go All” (abbreviated WWG1WGA), Pizza, Pizzagate, Pedogate, anything about “The Cabal”, The Storm is upon us, From Dark to Light, “Out of the shadows,” “Their symbolism will be their downfall”, Adrenochrome, Tom Hanks, Hollywood, “going down the rabbit hole,” being “red pilled”, George Soros, Rothschild, Globalists… the list goes on and on. In fact, I think for the next little while we should all be hesitant to share any posts about pedophilia or sex trafficking that does not come from a verified news organization or nonprofit. Of course, even if it’s a legitimate news story, Qanon believers find ways to spread their crap. Just last week, an Associated Press article about a $35 million Trump administration grant to organizations that house trafficking survivors became one of the most-shared stories on Facebook, after QAnon groups picked it up and cited it as evidence that President Trump’s secret crusade against elite pedophiles was underway.

Secondly, please tell your friends that real anti-trafficking activists hate the recent Qanon posts that are disrupting their activism. Interviews with these activists reveal that they’re angry because they had worked for years to expose facts about child trafficking, only to see them distorted and misused by partisan opportunists. Moreover, in addition to clogging anti-trafficking hotlines, QAnon believers threaten to infect the anti-trafficking movement’s bipartisan credibility by injecting it with a rabid version of Trumpism.

Third, know the facts about sex trafficking. Like most crimes in our world, the truth about sex trafficking is much less salacious than QAnon would have you believe. Similar to rape and murder, most sex trafficking victims are trafficked by relatives, teachers, romantic partners, or other people they know. Trafficking usually doesn’t involve kidnapping or physically forcing minors into sex. “This is not happening in some secret cabal. It’s happening in every single community,” says Lori Cohen, the executive director of ECPAT-USA, an anti-trafficking organization. “But it’s easier to focus on public figures than to think about the reality that trafficking is happening in our midst, among people we know, to children we know.” Of course, there are some examples of big name sex predators, like Jeffrey Epstein or Ghislaine Maxwell. But even in that case, it wasn’t Qanon who broke that story, it was a mainstream media reporter for the Miami Herald. Qanon is just a cult seeking to cash in on people’s desire to protect children.

Fourth, don’t look to Donald Trump to magically solve the problem of sex trafficking. With the risk of sounding like a conspiracy theorist myself, Donald Trump is suspected to have quite a few skeletons in his closet, from his friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, to his sending best wishes to sex predator Ghislaine Maxwell after she was arrested, to the inappropriate looking and touching he did in locker rooms with underage women at pageants, to the 8 abortions he’s rumored to have paid for, to the 19 women who accused him of sexual assault, to the covered-up lawsuit that he raped a 13-year old girl at Jeffrey Epstein’s house. Even if 0 of these accusations are true, it is still foolish to pin hope on any one president to end a social justice problem that has existed since the beginning of time. The actual hard work of fighting human trafficking is often at the local level and far less glamorous than Qanon theories might suggest.

A person wearing a QAnon T-shirt takes part in a rally in Brooklyn, New York, on Aug. 9.
Most, but not all, Qanon supporters are politically on the far right. This photo is from a rally in Brooklyn, New York, on Aug. 9. STEPHANIE KEITH/REUTERS

Fifth, stop falling into performative allyship and instead supporting actual organizations who have doing the work of fighting sex trafficking for decades. Check out International Justice Mission (founded by an InterVarsity alum), A21, Shared Hope International, and Polaris Project, to name a few of the bigger ones. If you actually care about fighting trafficking, click on those links, sign up for their email lists, share their social media posts, and make a donation of whatever amount you can afford right now. Otherwise, just admit that you’d rather share unsourced posts on social media than do the actual hard work of fighting for social justice.

Sixth, support government policies and politicians who will actually do the hard work of fighting sex trafficking. Here’s a few concrete ideas: end the ICE detention centers that are hotbeds of sexual abuse. End Trump’s policy of child separation that has led many immigrant children to be trafficked after being separated from their parents. Massively increase the number of refugees and immigrants that are allowed in to the United States, as many of them are fleeing sexual violence and trafficking in their home countries. Increase government funding for transnational NGOs and efforts to fight human trafficking; instead of cutting funds to the UN, the US should strategically increase our funding to support efforts that fight child slavery and human trafficking in countries around the world. I could go on and on.

Finally, we need to do something to fight Qanon. It is actively tearing families apart, and there is now a 15,000 person support group on Reddit of people who’s loved ones fell prey to the evil ideology of Qanon. Their stories are harrowing: “No longer speaking with my mother,” one user wrote. “Thanks a lot, Q.” “My wife was arrested as a result of Q,” another posted. One user recounted how her husband had fallen deep into the QAnon rabbit hole. “I can’t talk to him because he just shouts over me,” she wrote. “I miss him so much and am so lonely now.” However, like any bad ideology, shaming and making fun of people who believe Qanon doesn’t actually work to lead people out of it. Instead of just making jokes or wagging our finger, there are a few concrete steps that we can take. On the preventative side, we need to be addressing these topics and making sure that people are loved and supported. If people are loved and cared for, and have a real hope that there is some good in this world, they are far less likely to fall into the Qanon cult. Next, don’t panic. If your friend or loved one posts something that sounds like it’s from Qanon, ask them first out what they believe exactly. It may be that they’re just exploring this ideology and haven’t yet been totally “red-pilled”. Next, we should support social media platforms when they ban Qanon and other fake information. If someone cares so much about free speech, they can start their own blog site like I have, but they should not be free to spout lies that promote violence on a site where it can be easily spread. Lastly, in the end, someone is deeply embedded in Qanon, the key is to set healthy boundaries for your own emotional health, but to otherwise keep asking questions, keep poking holes in the theory and its inconsistencies, and finally just pray that one day they will wake up and see the truth about Qanon. As I think back to Qanon’s ideological predecessors in Nazi Germany and in the Middle Ages, I shudder to think what could happen if this new cult is not firmly shut down, and soon.