When podcaster/journalist Stephanie Kemmerer proposed our cover article on QAnon, I knew little about the phenomenon except for occasional mentions. Once she researched, reported, and submitted it (she interviewed former QAnon followers, and her article by then had expanded to a two-part series), I read the result, “Life, the Quniverse, and Everything,” in disturbed amazement. “Red-pilled,” “black-pilling,” “Q Drops,” “Q crumbs,” “8chan,” QAnon aggregator sites—a whole new vocabulary of modern unreality. This loose assemblage of the world’s most virulent conspiracy theories is a creation of our own times, an ill society. Yet in another way, it is as old as human nature. She notes that QAnon draws upon ancient hateful tropes and anti-Semitic themes going back past the origins of Nazi fascism, the Blood Libel Myth, and the tactic of declaring one’s enemies Satanists. What’s especially scary is, she points out, followers consider themselves heroes—and victims.
And, as we saw in horror on January 6, many QAnon followers were among the hordes who violently invaded the Capitol of the United States to try to stop the Constitutional certification of the duly elected next president. But QAnon is just one of many hate groups fueled by conspiratorial thinking and irrational beliefs, and we needn’t elevate it to any mythic status over all others. The extreme elements among them have now shown they pose a threat to democracy and civilized society.