Children feature in COVID-19 and QAnon conspiracies, but these just most recent examples of a ‘very old, powerful fear’

Conspiracy theories that centre on fears about child abuse and removal are being shared in Australia, as part of a broader trend of misinformation related to children.

In addition to the gamut of #baking shots, pet pics and lockdown selfies, coronavirus has seen an upswing in the sharing of conspiracy theories on social media.

Recently many of these have focused on children, with the ABC‘s COVID-19 misinformation tracking project being sent screenshots of posts focused on the theme of children’s removal from their families.

They make a range of false claims including that children will be removed if their parents refuse to give them a COVID-19 vaccine, or that children will be taken from their families if they have symptoms of coronavirus.

These posts are part of a broader trend, and long history, of conspiracy theories related to children.

Political themes in misinformation

The most well-known is the mega-conspiracy theory QAnon, which centres on the belief that global political elites are engaged in satanic child abuse, and that US President Donald Trump is engaged in a secret war against this cabal.

Its central idea — that President Trump is saving children from paedophiles — is a way of saying that he is engaged in a battle against the ultimate evil, said Anna Merlan, journalist and author of a book about American conspiracy theorists.

The graphic allegations of sexual abuse that tipify QAnon also serve to characterise the movement’s political enemies — Democrats, for instance — as unfathomably evil and deserving of the most extreme punishment, even execution, according to Dr Michael Salter, an expert in child sexual exploitation and gendered violence at the University of New South Wales.

QAnon, Pizzagate and #MeToo

The connection between alleged child abuse and right-wing conspiratorial thinking gained mainstream attention after Pizzagate.

Back in 2016, a North Carolina man Edgar Welch drove to the Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, DC with a gun and fired it in the building. He’d read online that children were being abused by Democrats in the venue’s basement and wanted to investigate.

The Pizzagate conspiracy theory, linking high-ranking Democratic Party officials with restaurants and an alleged paedophile ring, that motivated Welch has been debunked, but it is widely credited to be the predecessor of QAnon.

Dr Salter suggests QAnon and Pizzagate were able to gain popularity online more recently because they followed the #MeToo movement against sexual assault and prosecutions of celebrities like Jeffrey Epstein for sexual offences against children, which raised greater public awareness of the complexities of sexual violence and power.

“What MeToo uncovered is that it is very difficult to bring claims of sexual violence against powerful wealthy figures,” Dr Salter said.

When it comes to child sexual abuse, media outlets often struggled to report on credible allegations because they lacked the high level of evidence needed to publish them, Dr Salter said.

This left “fertile territory” for conspiracy theories to grow.

And platforms like Facebook and YouTube have also allowed conspiratorial communities to find each other and fuse together in an unprecedented way.

History of child-related conspiracies

But this isn’t an entirely new phenomenon. Allegations of child abuse have featured in conspiracy theories for centuries.

Blood libel, the anti-Semitic superstition that claims Jews kill Christian children as part of religious ritual, emerged in medieval Europe and has returned repeatedly to the public consciousness, particularly during moments of social unrest.

James Kline, professor of psychology at Northern Marianas College, said that child abuse was among a handful of taboos, including blood-drinking and cannibalism, that have historically been viewed as both anti-human and sacred.

Pizzagate and QAnon are both part of a conspiracy archetype that involves such taboos, evil groups of powerful elites and a struggle for political power.

“We want to say ‘That’s not part of us, it’s got to be them, not us’. But it remains a fascination,” he said.

“These types of taboos generate this sense of fascination because they are things we’re not supposed to think about (or) associate with. So we project them upon other people.”

Professor Kline likened Pizzagate to a scandal in the US in the early 1980s, when child abuse allegations involving Satanic rituals against a family that ran a children’s day care centre in California were widely reported in the media and later discredited.

He said that while no one was ultimately convicted over the scandal, similar accusations later spread to other pre-schools in the United States.

Philip Jenkins, professor of history at Baylor University, agreed, saying that more recent child-related conspiracies in the US appeared to be “recycled” from false claims made in the 1980s.

“I can say, ‘well they’re going to show up (again) in times of stress and a crisis of values’ but the problem is I can apply a term like that to almost any time,” Professor Jenkins said.

Who are the children?

While adherents of QAnon claim they are motivated by child safety, their depiction of perpetrators who are strangers bears little relationship with the real-world problems of child abuse and child pornography rings.

Dr Salter said that the primary traffickers of prepubescent children were their parents, while post-pubescent children were also targeted in institutions, particularly out-of-home care.

“It’s not just conspiracy theorists who ignore the evidence of child exploitation, very broadly it’s been an overlooked issue for a long time,” he said.

It’s important to note that QAnon and Pizzagate did not originate from reports or investigations of child abuse by children or adult survivors themselves.

“The child really just (features) as sort of an empty symbol or an empty signifier that can be manipulated within the conspiracy theory as a kind of vessel for a whole set of inchoate concerns and anxieties and projections,” Dr Salter said.

Dr Salter said that QAnon followers did not seem to be particularly concerned with the Jeffrey Epstein case, for example, which contained legitimate evidence of child exploitation against wealthy, powerful people.

“And that’s because QAnon is largely a right-wing conspiracy theory and the Epstein case is politically explosive for all sides of the aisle,” he said.

Damaging child wellbeing

But misinformation related to children is likely to have real impacts on actual survivors of child abuse.

As well as flooding the #SaveTheChildren hashtag, QAnon adherents have reportedly clogged trafficking hotlines in the United States with false claims, meaning genuine cases can’t get through.

Dr Salter recalled that several child abuse survivors had espoused QAnon material to him in recent years, with many of the themes involved resonating with their own experiences of not being listened to or believed.

He was concerned that such material could derail their own recovery.

“A crucial part of trauma therapy is about empowering people to make their own decisions about what’s real and what’s not,” he said.

“If you’ve got an external force about QAnon that’s deliberately blurring the boundaries between fiction and non-fiction then naturally that’s going to introduce complexities for some clients who’ve been exposed to this material.

“In the trauma field, we’re going to be unpicking the damage that QAnon has done for some survivors… for years to come.”

*** This article has been archived for your research. The original version from ABC News can be found here ***