In a Post-Trump World, What Will Become of QAnon?
A decade ago, an end times preacher by the name of Harold Camping launched a well-funded, highly-publicized, campaign to spread the word: The rapture, he claimed, would arrive on May 21, 2011. He said he had “abundant Biblical evidence” to back up his prediction—some napkin math about Biblical timelines, as well as a bunch of numerological nonsense—but for most everyone the California evangelist was a subject of ridicule; Michael Bloomberg, then the mayor of New York, joked at the time that “alternate side parking will be suspended” if the apocalypse did indeed arrive. But Camping did find some adherents, including some who made extraordinary personal sacrifices based on his preachings, like the retired New York transit worker who reportedly emptied all of his $140,000 in life savings to put posters warning of the coming Judgment Day in the city’s subway system.
May 21 came and passed without armageddon, of course, and his followers felt deceived. “It’s like getting slapped in the face,” said one of Camping’s believers, a former television producer who said he spent much of his retirement savings spreading word of the rapture. Camping initially tried to save face, revising his prediction to October of that year, but the party was over. “I think I was part of a cult,” one regretful former follower of the late Camping said, a year after the world didn’t end.
This is, of course, the terminus of many mass delusions of this sort—and it seems, perhaps, to be the kind of moment adherents of the QAnon movement may be reaching. Followers of the dangerous far-right conspiracy had thought that Inauguration Day on Wednesday would bring what they call the “Storm,” in which Donald Trump would return, take power, and begin the mass arrests of the secret cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophile cannibals they believe run the government and Hollywood. But none of that happened: Trump pardoned a bunch of crooks, including accused fraudster Steve Bannon; he told his supporters to “have a good life” and boarded a plane to Florida; and Joe Biden was sworn in as president. “I’m about to puke,” one QAnon devotee posted online as these events unfolded, according to the Daily Beast. “I feel stupid,” wrote another.
The rise of conspiracy theories was one of the most dangerous hallmarks of Trump’s time in Washington. He was as susceptible as his followers and gave voice to them from the highest office in the land. His supporters, meanwhile, built a massive cult around him. But the transfer of power from Trump to Biden on Wednesday laid waste to some of their core beliefs, leaving some followers—like those who awaited the apocalypse ten years ago, only to go right on living—disillusioned. “It’s over,” one person in a Q chat room wrote, per the New York Times.
Some, rather than accept that fact, tried to spin new theories to explain why the Storm hadn’t come. Maybe it was all part of Trump’s plan. Maybe Biden was even “part of the plan,” as some suggested, according to the Washington Post. But others appeared to resign themselves to the fact that what they’d believed would never happen. “Wake up,” one Q follower wrote in a chatroom, according to the Times. “We’ve been had.” Ron Watkins, a prominent figure in the QAnon movement who has been rumored to be Q himself, more or less seemed to acknowledge as much on Wednesday, suggesting that others in the community “go back to our lives as best as we are able,” and “remember all the friends and happy memories” they’d made.
This isn’t to say QAnon or the conspiracy movement Trump awakened is going away anytime soon. Q supporters or sympathizers like Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert have made it into the United States congress. The Republican establishment may be in shambles post-Trump—the NRA has filed for bankruptcy, the Koch donor network has fractured, and organizations like the U.S. Chamber of Commerce have listed leftward—but the MAGA movement still has its diehards, as evidenced by the throngs who stormed the Capitol earlier this month. And while the prophecies of Q didn’t pan out Wednesday, it’s not clear how many of those currently devoted to the movement will ultimately leave it. “There’s a lot of grief and confusion in Q world over the plan seeming to fizzle out, and feeling as if Q abandoned them,” disinformation researcher Mike Rothschild, who is working on a book about QAnon, told Politico. “But I think that will very quickly turn into determination to continue down the path they’ve committed to.”
But what form its future takes, and how much power it wields in U.S. politics going forward, is not clear. “With Trump gone, the head has been decapitated, but that doesn’t mean this is going away,” researcher Shane Creevy told Politico. “The big question is, what happens next?”
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