What Q Tells Us: Conspiracy Theories and American Civil Society
The Propagation Society (1855), a Know-Nothing poster by Nathaniel Currier alleging a Catholic assault on America. Photo Archived by the Library of Congress.
America’s Conspiratorial Heritage
Americans have a particular attraction to conspiracy theories. To label conspiracy theories as fringe in this country would be quite inaccurate—with amusement, we contemplate the truth in events ranging from the moon landing to the assassination of JFK. Nor are such beliefs confined to the realm of popular culture. From the rise of the Jesuit-phobic Know-Nothing movement of the mid-19th century to the McCarthyist hysteria nearly a century later, conspiratorial paranoia has entered the political mainstream on a near-cyclical basis.
Perhaps it is a feature of our culture—the American virtues of “rugged individualism” and vehement distrust of authority lend themselves well to skepticism. In 1964, Columbia historian Richard Hofstadter wrote “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” wherein he analyzes our country’s passion for conspiratorial thinking. Hofstadter pins the rise of conspiracy theories on two nineteenth-century trends: the common person’s unease with “aristocratic institutions” and the nativists’ fear of “international rings.” These forms of conspiratorial thinking had their respective origins in the 1830s anti-Masonic movement and late 19th century anti-Catholic movement.
However, Hofstadter argues that contemporary right-wing conspiracy theories mark a transition from a narrative of “possession” to a narrative of “dispossession.” Unlike their predecessors who espoused the defense of American tradition from outside actors, the ideologues of the Second Red Scare believed that American institutions were already corrupted by a communist cabal—they viewed themselves as saviors “repossessing” the system before the traitors triggered this country’s downfall. Promulgated by the mass media, the McCarthyist conjecture was more convoluted and grandiose than its predecessors.
Although Hofstadter derisively labels conspiracists as paranoid, he still pities them. He posits that conspiratorial thinking is a product of “being shut out of the political process”—the ostracized are inclined to believe that the world is “sinister and malicious.” Perceiving a morally black-and-white world with irreconcilable interests, conspiracists are radicalized into “double sufferers” and entrapped by the oppressive schemes of their imagination.
QAnon and the Return of the Paranoid Style
In recent years, America has entered a new epoch of conspiracy theories, and paranoia has seeped into American politics under the presidency of Donald Trump. Some have suggested that the president has adopted Hofstadter’s “paranoid style” to divert attention from controversies such as his campaign’s collusion with Russia and policy failures such as the COVID-19 fiasco. Indeed, Trump entered the political spotlight in 2010 for his support of the birther conspiracy theory. But, perhaps more concerningly, Trump has permitted and even endorsed a new right-wing conspiratorial behemoth—QAnon.
The QAnon movement started in November 2017 on the imageboard 4chan, when an anonymous user identified as “Q” foretold the imminent arrest of Hillary Clinton. In subsequent posts, or “drops,” Q—a self-proclaimed insider of the Trump administration—would describe how Clinton, Obama, and other members of “the establishment” were involved in a global Satanic network of pedophiles attempting to overthrow the Trump administration. Q predicts that, mercifully, America will be saved in an event known as “the Storm,” in which the military will intervene under Trump’s command and detain these traitors.
Most of the QAnon canon stems from Pizzagate, another 4chan conspiracy theory from 2016 that claimed that the Democratic Party was trafficking child sex slaves out of the basement of Washington DC pizza parlor Comet Ping Pong. The Pizzagate movement went into hibernation later that year after a follower of the theory attempted to “investigate” the restaurant with an assault rifle. Its successor would invoke the same degree of moral outrage, albeit on a far greater scale. QAnon has eagerly incorporated a broader range of conspiracy theories relative to Pizzagate, including birtherism, the 9/11 truth movement, and vaccine skepticism.
As expected, QAnon has the typical attributes of a traditional conspiracy theory. In a similar vein to the anti-Masonic movement, it alleges that a “cosmopolitan elite” is intent on eradicating American tradition and faith. Much like its forerunner, QAnon is surprisingly organized—it has a whole virtual culture built around piecing together the “breadcrumbs,” and the online marketplace for Q drop exegesis is flourishing. The near-biblical prophecies of Q mean that the movement tends to be fervently religious, and Q frequently invokes the Lord’s name and quotes the Bible even though the posts are supposed to be official correspondence. The movement is also highly ritualistic: aspiring Q acolytes are encouraged to “take the oath” to be accepted into the movement as a “digital soldier.” Online, they proudly identify themselves by the tagline WWG1WGA (“Where We Go One, We Go All”).
Just three months before the November 2020 elections, Trump lauded QAnon for “loving our country.” By then, the movement had achieved over 4.5 million followers across social media platforms. During the 2020 primaries, QAnon formally entered the political mainstream, with six Republican congressional candidates outspoken believers of Q. QAnon is easily the biggest conspiracist-driven political movement since McCarthyism, and the digital soldiers clearly share a dispossessed outlook with their 20th-century predecessor. However, unlike the Second Red Scare, which was somewhat grounded by real-life events such as the Rosenberg Trial of 1951 and the context of the Cold War, QAnon is far more fanatical. The F.B.I. has even labeled it a domestic terrorist threat. The group’s rapid rise over this year marks a new peak in American mass hysteria.
Conspiracy Beliefs and the Information Age
A movement as fanatical and widespread as QAnon would certainly be unfeasible without the advent of the internet. While Joseph McCarthy used televised anti-communist hearings to incite nationwide paranoia, QAnon has harnessed contemporary technology to propagate its doctrine almost entirely online. Social media is inadvertently tailored to enhance the longevity and transmissibility of conspiracy theories, and the QAnon movement is no exception.
For the most part, QAnon disciples have successfully weaponized social media to wage information warfare, preying on everyone from stay-at-home moms to evangelicals through Facebook groups and Instagram posts. These propagandists often get their foot in the door by reaching out to others through memes warning about child trafficking—a favorite call to action is “save our children.” They then leverage this moral panic to gradually induce users into “waking up” and descending “down the rabbit hole.” By blending discipleship and sensationalism, the followers of Q have been able to grow exponentially, exploiting the gullible and emotionally susceptible among us.
One of the many memes posted by Q. Screenshot from Q-Alerts.
The internet has facilitated the efforts of digital soldiers by strengthening confirmation bias and making cognitive dissonance easy to avoid. While online search engines such as Google offer near-limitless amounts of knowledge to users, the increasing accessibility of information has been paralleled by the rising availability of “alternative” information, and the budding popularity of conspiracy-laden outlets such as Breitbart and Infowars attests to the amount of misinformation within reach. Search engines like Google and social media platforms also alter search results for the sake of user retention, which creates “filter bubbles,” a term coined by activist Eli Praiser and since adopted by other scholars. Upon entering these bubbles, users are supplied information congruent with their worldview, so biases and cognitive distortions are reinforced and radicalized.
This phenomenon has been problematic, to say the least. A 2016 Facebook memo reported that 64% of members in extremist communities joined due to its “suggested groups” feature. The company refused to meaningfully respond to these findings, a negligence which runs the risk of sowing the seeds for another wave of radicalism. By opening the door to echo chambers, algorithms can proselytize new Q conspiracists just as, if not more effectively, than the digital soldiers themselves. In March 2019, for instance, Amazon’s automated book recommendations allowed for a piece of QAnon propaganda to top its “hot new releases” page. Although conspiracy theories have infiltrated their platforms, the response of tech giants to such incidents has been minimal. Facebook’s most recent revision to its algorithms has had a muted impact on the growth of QAnon groups, and the overall activity of these communities has continued to rise steadily. In October, the company announced its plans to ban nearly all Q-affiliated content on its site, yet it is uncertain how effective this long-overdue policy will be, especially given how widely publicized the movement has become in the interim.
The Psychosocial Allure of Conspiracy Theories
Thanks in part to the information age, the United States has gradually developed a sociocultural disposition for conspiracy theories. In his 2000 book, Bowling Alone: The Collapse and Revival of American Community, Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam argues that our country’s social capital—our aggregate affiliations, relationships, and community—has broadly declined. American society has atomized since the mid-20th century, and citizens are less involved in activities ranging from political activism to innocuous civic groups such as the Boy Scouts. The most noteworthy ramification of this trend is the decrease in trust—specifically, trust in government—along with rising political and racial intolerance due to decreased socialization. Among other things, the shrinking of social groups and declining faith in fellow citizens has added to America’s polarized political climate. Putnam considers the development of electronic media such as cable television and the internet to be one of the main factors behind this trend, as it shifted entertainment from the civic sphere to the private sphere.
Social capital is a strong predictor of conspiratorial thinking. A 2017 study by Bentall and Freeman identified several interpersonal determinants of belief in conspiracy theories, namely smaller social networks, loneliness, and trust issues. The study likewise found depression, low self-esteem, and feelings of hopelessness to be affective predictors of conspiracy belief, factors which can be tied to social capital deficits as well. It appears as if the United States is moving towards the socially detached psyche of Hofstadter’s double sufferer.
Bentall and Freeman’s “psychological conceptualization of conspiracy beliefs.” Diagram licensed under CC BY 4.0.
From a sociocultural perspective, conspiracy theories have an inescapable appeal for those disconnected from civic life. Although movements such as QAnon have the potential to devastate real-life relationships, they provide believers with a strong in-group. Reflecting on the social motivations behind conspiracy belief, University of Kent researchers Chicovia, Douglas, and Sutton postulate that conspiracy theories can have therapeutic effects: individuals feel as if they are part of a large movement fighting for pure good against a force of pure evil (in QAnon’s case, the pedophilic cabal). The sanctimonious beliefs of conspiracy theories provide previously low-esteem, lonely individuals with a sense of positive distinctiveness.
According to Chicovia, Douglas, and Sutton, conspiracy theories also originate from epistemological and existential motives. These respectively refer to the human tendency to seek intentionality amid uncertainty and the need for self-determination and control. In the former case, Q drops offer followers a way to rationalize the trauma of the ongoing economic crisis by attributing it to an evil syndicate, especially since the current administration has failed to orchestrate a coherent public health campaign. In the latter case, QAnon grants followers autonomy through an exciting alternative reality game. As Putnam noted in Bowling Alone, religious participation is one of many forms of social capital that is withering precipitously, falling around 12 percentage points this past decade. QAnon fills this spiritual void for many believers by offering moral purpose in the form of information warfare against deep-state saboteurs and salvation in the form of the inevitable “Storm.”
Therefore, QAnon may be considered an ill-advised remedy to continuous pitfalls in social capital across America. In the United States, declines in trust and social nets have coincided with the rise of the internet. QAnon remedies the surges in loneliness by offering virtual camaraderie and self-respect similar to a religious congregation. The concept of being a digital soldier waging information warfare provides believers with a unique form of imagined community. There is a certain form of triumph when QAnon acolytes present the identifier “WWG1WGA,” for they have finally “repossessed” a long-lost sense of belonging, and they have escaped the vapid reality of 2020.
Populism and Paranoia in the Age of Trump
Out of all of the cohorts in the United States, the white working class has faced an unparalleled degree of socioeconomic decline. From the 1970s onward, their livelihood has been at odds with several market forces: globalization, automation, and de-unionization. Harvard economist Dani Rodrik argues that rather than reinforcing social programs to assist the “losers” from offshoring and creative destruction, U.S. policymakers have allowed the Rust Belt to oxidize. Rising wealth inequality and decreasing social mobility have rendered the working class the greatest victim of social capital declines—they suffer from broken homes, plummeting religiosity, and decreasing interclass ties. Between the 1970s and the 2010s, trust fell by a third among the upper third of Americans, compared to a one-half decrease among the lower third. The ongoing opioid epidemic, which rapidly accelerated in 2015 and 2016, epitomizes the despair faced by this ailing demographic.
In the leadup to 2016’s pivotal election, Donald Trump’s nativist, populist demagoguery won over the hearts and minds of the disheartened working class, promising them repossession of a state seized by “the swamp.” The soon-to-be-president constructed a conspiracy-like narrative, describing how the Washington elite was intent on destroying blue-collar Americans though open borders and unfair trade deals. During the 2016 Republican primaries, Trump received a majority of his support from the poorest, least religious, and most civically disengaged members of the party—in other words, those most psychologically vulnerable to this conspiracist rhetoric. His enduring dominance over the lonely, white, working-class vote was a major contributor to his victories in the presidential election.
Right-wing populist leaders such as Trump often harness the paranoid style to legitimize the suppression of political opponents and conceal authoritarian ambitions. In Hungary, for example, national conservative strongman Viktor Orban has underscored the threat posed by billionaire bogeyman George Soros to justify his tightening of control over higher-level education. Meanwhile, to defend his campaigns of law and order, Trump has claimed that “dark shadow” operatives have been stirring up unrest across the country. The president has also used the “Obamagate” and Trump Tower wiretapping conspiracy theories as a pretext for politicizing and planting loyalists across the U.S. intelligence community.
.jpg){kind=link}
Trump speaks at a Phoenix, AZ rally in February 2020. Photo by Gage Skidmore licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.
Although Trump and his populist contemporaries have promised to return trust in government and fight for the general will, they continue to corrode the relationship between individuals and institutions. The president’s crusade against news outlets has resulted in Republican faith in the media halving from 30 percent to 15 percent since 2015. Ahead of the election, Trump has doubled down on his conspiratorial thinking in his war on accountability, contesting the C.D.C.’s coronavirus statistics in a vain attempt to whitewash the hundreds of thousands of lives lost, and disparaging the U.S. Postal Service despite mail-in ballots being a public health imperative. The Republican National Convention was relentlessly apocalyptic as well, with Trump and Pence deriding Democratic presidential nominee and former Vice President Joe Biden as a “Trojan horse for socialism” intent on abolishing the police and eradicating American tradition. Thanks to this relentless fear-mongering, the gap between Trumpian dogma and QAnon scripture is shrinking. According to a September poll by Civiqs, 33 percent of Republicans believe that the theory is “mostly true.” In March, only 18 percent of Republicans were familiar with the movement.
Needless to say, Trump has reinforced the double sufferer mindset across his base by making compromise with the establishment seemingly impossible—even though he has frequently appointed corporate lobbyists to his Cabinet. Rather than restoring social capital and making the American community great again, Trump has further cultivated distrust and disillusionment, especially among his already socioeconomically-anxious supporters. This trend has been especially the case over the COVID-19 crisis; Trump has pushed against the necessary collective action of social distancing. The president’s popularity is dependent on perceptions of alienation and disenfranchisement, the same sentiments that Hofstadter identifies as conducive to conspiracy theories. By augmenting this sense of marginalization, Trump has effectively forced his insecure followership to look towards QAnon for clarity and community.
The 2020 Election, COVID-19, and Containing QAnon
When Biden was asked about QAnon in early September, he ordered its followers to seek psychiatric assistance. Republican criticisms have been just as demeaning—Representative Liz Cheney referred to the movement as “dangerous lunacy,” while Representative Denver Riggleman equated it to “mental gonorrhea.” Despite the apparent insanity of QAnon dogma, we must remember that the movement is not a pathology on its own. Rather, the resurgence of conspiracy theories is a symptom of broad sociocultural and socioeconomic factors. As touched upon previously, the rise of Q has been prompted by the fracture of American civil society, induced by the atomizing forces of social media and wealth inequality. It is likewise impossible to distance QAnon from America’s historical tango with conspiracy theories.
American social capital has plummeted even further in the short-term due to the onset of COVID-19 and the placement of indefinite restrictions on in-person interaction. While it could be argued that civic life might be able to migrate to the online domain, this shift to social media exposes even larger portions of our society to the risks inherent in online communities. By providing a deep-state scapegoat to explain the shutdowns and mask mandates, QAnon has been able to enlist new members into its ranks. When evangelical church congregations switched online in the spring and members turned to Facebook for information, they were greeted by Q missionaries. The purportedly patriotic virtues of the movement provided the faithful with a new community—and a new religion—to survive the hardship and solitude induced by social distancing. Distress, distrust, and the internet has led to the rise of an odious form of social capital.
Despite these apparent trends, most of the suggested “treatments” for QAnon include suppressing virtual hotspots, cleansing social media of Q-affiliated influencers, and banning groups. As much as these policies might set back the digital soldiers’ campaign, they do not uproot the psychosocial motives for conspiratorial beliefs. These attempts to suppress QAnon will more than likely enhance the feelings of persecution that prompt paranoid thinking. The movement has also shifted from mainstream social media to a new platform, Parler, which lacks the same anti-extremist policies. Twitter and Facebook’s belated crackdowns will be ineffective in pushing back QAnon, which has already become a political and media sensation. Nonetheless, these corporations must be held accountable for the faults in their algorithms.
The future of QAnon is ostensibly predicated on the election. Trump’s fondness of the paranoid style and distaste for expertise seems to be accelerating rather than reversing as he attempts to intimidate suburban America into voting for him. Putting an end to right-wing populism at the ballot box might be the most straightforward way to combat QAnon. Still, regardless of the outcome of the presidential election, the digital soldiers will more than likely get a foothold in Congress. Majorie Taylor Greene, a Georgian Republican and vocal Q supporter running for the House of Representatives is almost guaranteed to win after her Democratic contender dropped out. Even though forcing QAnon out of the political spotlight will warrant substantial time and effort, the bipartisan disapproval of conspiracy theories in Congress remains promisingly strong.
Instead of playing conspiracy theory whack-a-mole, America needs to work towards restoring an inclusive and non-virtual civil society once COVID-19 finally elapses. Robert Putnam concludes Bowling Alone by insisting that we need to find an alternative to idly preoccupying ourselves with bias-satisfying electronic media, and his words are just as relevant today. The acute decline of social capital has led to unprecedented loneliness, and QAnon has been able to exploit the need for belonging felt by millions of isolated Americans.
Fortunately, history has shown that the current paranoid style of government will inevitably subside, and the ongoing episodes of right-wing populism and COVID-19 will end. For the time being, we must address the QAnon movement holistically and understand its sociocultural foundations. Attributing the movement to partisanship or irrationality alone will do very little to address the historic rifts behind this new epoch of conspiracy belief. That being said, psychological and sociological research on conspiracy theories is quite limited. We must seize the initiative to further study the origins of movements such as QAnon, as conspiracy theories have proven themselves to be a secular feature of American society.
For those who personally know QAnon conspiracists, the most viable approach may perhaps lie in non-confrontational one-on-one conversation and other forms of social support, which have the potential to help guide believers towards acknowledging their cognitive distortions. Further ostracizing digital soldiers is likely imprudent since research thus far has shown that alienation exacerbates conspiratorial thinking. It is this human, psychological lens which will best shed light into the root of the issue. And, above all else, we must remember that conspiracists are double sufferers—victims of fantasy and reality alike.
Luke Seminara is a staff writer at CPR and a sophomore at Columbia College planning on majoring in Political Science with a concentration in History. He is interested in the intersection between American politics and social psychology.