QAnon made headlines in the 2020 cycle but has largely disappeared from view. What happened?
Journalists and academics have been warning about the potential for misinformation to wreak havoc on the 2024 election. But QAnon, arguably the most consequential political conspiracy theory in recent history that made headlines in 2020 and helped propel the Jan. 6 assault on the Capitol, has largely disappeared from the news this cycle.
Millions of people became believers of the extreme right-wing theory, which centers on the false claim that a cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles control the world and that Donald Trump was recruited by military generals to quash it. But while there is less coverage of QAnon, its adherents and their beliefs haven’t gone away.
Jesselyn Cook, a journalist, fellow at Harvard University’s Nieman Foundation, and author of the new book, “The Quiet Damage: QAnon and the Destruction of the American Family,” spoke to The Boston Globe about QAnon’s role today. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
What do you see as QAnon’s relevance today and in today’s election? I feel like it’s something that has been lost from media coverage.
QAnon’s branding has really faded. We don’t even see as many people openly identifying as QAnon believers. Part of that is because Q, this kind of shadowy figure at the center of the movement, just before the last election actually posted a drop advising followers to stop using the word QAnon. There was recognition that QAnon the term was being, as Q said, used by the mainstream media to discredit the ideas of the movement.
But what I think is more important and relevant here is that QAnon has just blended in. It really hasn’t gone anywhere. Its theories have been diluted and normalized in a way that’s really insidious and effective. We don’t hear the really extreme versions of its conspiracy theories anymore — there’s not as much panic about children being harvested for their blood and the really extreme conspiracy theories — but certainly that fear mongering, moral panic over threats to children, over pedophilia, has just kind of been integrated into our political system. It’s legitimized by elected leaders and just stoked a widespread fear that is no longer confined to the political fringes.
How have these theories come to the mainstream? Who are some of the biggest figures you’re seeing peddle those theories?
QAnon has, in a sense, been absorbed into the conspiracy theorists-wing of the GOP. There are a lot of elected GOP leaders who have not only resisted opportunities to disavow or condemn QAnon, but have either tacitly or openly embraced it. We saw Donald Trump say that QAnon was a movement of good people, and I think there’s an understanding by his campaign that QAnon and QAnon-adjacent conspiracy theory believers represent a substantial portion of his base. (A Trump spokesperson did not immediately respond to a request for comment.)
QAnon has also been really effective in paving the way for conspiracy theories this election cycle by shifting the way we absorb information. On a widespread scale, we’ve seen healthy skepticism too easily crumble into reflexive suspicion.
QAnon and its endorsers on the right have really been effective in causing this paranoia — this tendency to distrust everything you hear when it comes from authority. We even saw this with the assassination attempts on Trump, both on the left and the right: people really not believing what they’re told and instantly jumping to wild conclusions rather than waiting for facts to come in.
What conspiracy theories are you seeing in the lead up to this election? I’m curious if there’s anything in particular that you’re seeing or concerns you have ahead of this election?
I know that some people are nervous that we might see another January 6-style event if Donald Trump loses. But I don’t anticipate there being one big episode of violence or unrest like that.
What’s really concerning to me is the threat of small bouts of violence against election workers all over the country. It’s staggering seeing already some of the threats that these people are facing.
I think whether Kamala Harris wins or Donald Trump wins, I really don’t see all these tensions going anywhere. I’m just feeling quite anxious to be honest with you.
In your book you mentioned how mainstream news outlets fixated on the most outlandish parts of the QAnon conspiracy theory, and left a lot of readers unsure how people became followers. Could you explain why so many people got sucked into it?
What early reporting on this phenomenon kind of missed, or at least didn’t acknowledge well enough, is that there is a lot of truth, or at least a grain of truth, to some conspiracy theories, and people do have legitimate reasons to feel a lack of trust toward authority.
In many of the interviews I did with conspiracy theorists and QAnon believers for my book, some of the older folks I spoke to said that they really started feeling cracks in their trust in all the bodies of power after the [George W.] Bush administration’s lies about weapons of mass destruction. After that, their trust was deeply, deeply broken.
When reporting on these kind of wild conspiracy theories like QAnon, it’s not helpful to just cast them as insane and mind-boggling and raise questions as to, “How can anyone be so stupid or crazy?” There is a path to get there. It generally is quite a gradual one.
What do you want people who haven’t read this book and may only know QAnon for its extreme false conspiracy theories to know about its impact on American families and the destruction it has had across the country?
There has been a lot of really excellent reporting on the political harms caused by conspiracy theories, the harm they have brought on our democracy, and our public health. I think less attention has been paid to this quiet damage — the title of my book — on a social level to families and to relationships.
I hope that people understand how devastating these weaponized falsehoods can be, how they can shatter families, how they can almost brainwash people into unrecognizable strangers, and the extreme pain and trauma this causes behind the scenes.
Aidan Ryan can be reached at aidan.ryan@globe.com. Follow him @aidanfitzryan.
