You have the right to believe what you want, but we gotta be clear about what we’re discussing. QAnon is a conspiracy theory that alleges Democrats writ large rape and eat children and only Donald Trump could stop them by imposing martial law.
No one “allowed” this person to believe that school shootings are false flags and the Jews set fires and Nancy Pelosi should be shot. She just ... did.
I have written a lot about conspiracy theories and a big part of conspiracy theories is the role of agency. You *want* to believe that Jewish people ran the slave trade or that the earth is flat, and you then find “evidence” to support that.
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I have some quibbles with the @jacobinmag’s piece on QAnon for various and sundry reasons but I think this is accurate — QAnon is a statement of faith, unmoored from reality but centered in an idea of heroism and righteousness. jacobinmag.com/2021/01/q-anon…
My biggest objection is the piece’s conceit that the solution is political:
People do not succumb to conspiracy theories (or extremism, for that matter) for reasons that can be answered by politics.
Perhaps I am alone in this but I argue that marriage equality was largely used as a dishonest cudgel by people who had no genuine views on the issue, not an issue that spoke to large swaths of America.
A whole swath of people gained fame and infamy for their full throated opposition to marriage equality and they were abandoned the second it stopped working.
Maggie Gallagher now works at an institute for the development of the “spirit and craft of liturgy,” for example.