Someone I care about believes QAnon. What should I do?

Steven Hassan was 19 and had just been dumped, when a pair of beautiful women came up to him, started flirting with him and told him he would be great to hang out with.

Then they invited him to an event connected to their religion, he recalls.

Two and a half years later, Hassan was extracted from the cult of the Unification Church led by Sun Myung Moon.

He would spend the following decades helping others detach themselves from cults as a therapist.

Now, Hassan has done a “deep dive” into QAnon, the popular internet conspiracy theory that, in his view, looks like a cult, acts like a cult and is a cult.

To him, it makes disputing Q’s misinformation an almost entirely futile affair, if the goal is to get people away from the movement.

Here’s what he says may actually work — and some of what almost certainly won’t.

Do not tell the QAnon believer they are wrong, ‘cooky’ or crazy

“What happens, typically, when someone gets into Scientology or something similar, is the family member tries to talk them out of it, rationally,” Hassan explains.

It seems like a natural response, but it often doesn’t work. The person who has come to believe a false narrative offered by a cult likely had deep, emotional incentives for delving into the area. When it comes to QAnon, people initially become hooked by QAnon posts and theories connected to a highly emotive subject they were already interested in, such as Christianity, human trafficking, or even yoga. Then, it begins to provide the person with a sense of community and special belonging.

Hassan says the way out requires love and acceptance as a prerequisite to sowing doubts about the conspiracy-theory adherent’s beliefs.

Do not distance yourself from your loved one

As it is in the real world, so it is online, when it comes to isolation.

Hassan said that once it becomes clear to family and friends that the person they love is deep into their cult or conspiracy beliefs, a common response is to pull away.

But he said that’s one of the worst things a loved one can do, since it can cause the person to go even deeper into their cult community seeking the social support they used to get from family and friends.

He suggests reaching out to say, simply, “Hi, I miss you.”

“I came across this photo of when we were children together. Remember when we went to the playground and had such a good time?” is another suggestion he offers.

“Reminding people of who they were before the mind control happened is a critical piece to empowering them that they can leave.”

Do suggest therapy

Beliefs in conspiracies and cults involve deception, and deep fears that can shake a person’s core beliefs about who they are. There are many different therapies available to treat phobias, social fallout and clarity with respect to one’s own identity.

Do encourage Q believers to come to their own conclusions

Hassan says the “straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back” for his own cult experience was watching a speech given by Moon to an American audience, and realizing that Moon was lying. He says was able to recognize that because of information presented to him by caring family members about mind control in communist China. The information wasn’t presented to him as evidence of what was happening in his own life, but he absorbed it all the same, and some time later was reminded of what he learned.

Once he saw the similarities with Moon, he says, he couldn’t unsee them, and his belief in the cult came crumbling down.

He’s seen the same pattern repeated among clients who have left cults. It may not help much to argue with a cult member directly about their beliefs, but it can help immensely to give them resources to help them see fault lines of their own within the cult.

In the case of QAnon, he praised a YouTube video by former believer Melissa Rein Lively in which she explained that watching the documentary The Social Dilemma, which explains how internet persuasion works, helped her draw her own conclusion that she had become convinced by QAnon.

That’s the kind of information-sharing Hassan encourages. Not blaming the person involved in QAnon, but giving them resources that may help them understand the situation they’re in.

“We talk about other groups, not the one you’re in, that they would agree, ‘That’s a nasty cult, it’s obvious,’” he said, using the NXIVM cult as an example. “And you explain about how people were made to fear and believe they had to stay in the group.”

Do practice patience

Hassan said that in his decades of helping people exit cults, he has seen the vast majority leave at some point after the first seeds of doubt are sown. But it doesn’t always happen right away, and family and friends are best served by letting their loved ones work out their beliefs in their own time.

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