John F. Kennedy Jr.’s 1990s-era Magazine Is Back, With a QAnon Twist
It is a reanimation story strange enough for a zombie movie, made possible by the fact that the original George trademark lapsed, only to be secured by a conservative lawyer.
On a Saturday morning in August, a few hundred people gathered at a convention center in Hot Springs, Ark., paying between $145 and $475 to hear from a cast of far-right speakers. They included a body builder-turned-pundit who carries a tomahawk and promotes an antisemitic conspiracy theory, and a pro-Trump preacher who has warned of threats posed by technologically sophisticated demon mermaids.
Strangest of all: The gathering was a celebration of George magazine, the Clinton-era concoction of politics and celebrity culture co-founded by John F. Kennedy Jr., which stopped publishing after his death in 1999. Improbably, George is back, with the same logo and the same catchy slogan: “Not just politics as usual.” This time, though, a QAnon conspiracy theorist and passionate Trump fan is its editor in chief.
It is, indeed, not politics as usual. While the old George sought to mix political insights with covers featuring superstars like Robert DeNiro and Barbra Streisand, the new George has published fawning profiles of people like Scott McKay and Amanda Grace, the pundit and preacher who spoke in Hot Springs.
It is a reanimation story bizarre enough for a zombie movie, made possible by the fact that the original George trademark lapsed, only to be secured by a little-known conservative lawyer named Thomas D. Foster.
But much like the original George, which published from 1995 to 2001, the new version holds a revealing mirror up to the era it was made for. The revived magazine, which debuted in late 2022, is circulating at a moment when mainstream conservatism and the conspiratorial far-right fringe are particularly entwined.
Former President Donald J. Trump has boosted hundreds of QAnon-related messages and accounts online since leaving office in 2021; in August, Mr. Trump promoted a flurry of social media posts that incorporated QAnon slogans. In recent weeks, as two deadly hurricanes hit the Southeast, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene, the far-right Republican ally of Mr. Trump from Georgia, has been asserting that an unidentified “they” can control the weather. And officials in areas damaged by Hurricanes Helene and Milton are concerned that a barrage of other misinformation is hampering the recovery effort.
