only in the us
For me, the most shocking thing to cross the pond of late was neither the recent footage of the US presidential debate, diabolical though it was, nor confirmation of the most powerful man in the world testing positive for Coronavirus. No, even more alarming was the witnessing of QAnon supporters taking to the streets of London in last month’s anti-Covid protest where several thousand individuals demonstrated against lockdowns, restrictions, mass vaccinations, the mandatory wearing of face masks and early-closing in the boozers. A number, albeit small, were shown to be sporting QAnon branded t-shirts and merchandise.
Since 2017, QAnon, a bizarre and barely believable conspiracy theory, has been gripping America’s right and is now attempting to break into more mainstream dialogue. Its central tenet is that The Donald is waging a secret war against a group of satanic paedophiles including Barack Obama, the Clintons and George Soros, who kidnap, abuse and even eat children, with the complicit consent of the ‘liberal elite’. No, really. For once, I’m not pulling your leg.
‘Q’, unsurprisingly an anonymous figure, so named as he claims to have the uppermost security access known as Q Clearance, first laid out his theory on the infamous 4chan web forum and predicted the imminent arrest of ‘Crooked Hillary’, that Kin Jong Un was a CIA puppet and mass shootings were ‘false flag’ attacks by those who oppose the NRA and the second amendment. Needless to say, none have either come to pass or proven to be true, including his first, #Pizzagate, which posited that senior Democrats were running a child sex-ring from the basement of a Washington pizzeria.
Notwithstanding the completely ridiculous and continuous ‘Q-drop’ output of the group, QAnon-ist David Hayes has notched up over thirty million YouTube views and there are now 170 QAnon groups on Facebook and Instagram with over five million active members. Trump, believed by some to be Q, has retweeted messages from QAnon supporting accounts, and both his son, Eric, and former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, recently recited their QAnon ‘oath’ within Twitter videos. The fact that nothing ever comes to pass appears inconsequential to the group and the subsequent negative coverage is, of course, dismissed as fake news. Q himself has even gone so far as to claim that his false predictions are deliberate and intentional as ‘disinformation is necessary’. In fact only two weeks ago Trump tacitly endorsed the group stating, for the record, they were merely patriots who “love our country and like me very much”. WTF.
For centuries, conspiracy paranoia has been part and parcel of political discourse, with only the bogeyman changing from Templar to Freemason, and Illuminati to satanic liberal paedophile. Adopted by the likes of Russia’s secret police and the Nazis, conspiracy theories, myths and lies have been used to justify some of the most sinister, brutal episodes in history. Given airtime, coverage and, above all, credence, QAnon seek nothing less than the destruction of our democratic and egalitarian way of life. Let’s hope not to see its like on the European continent again anytime soon.
