Why, I Can Believe A Half-Dozen Impossible Things Before Breakfast
QAnon adherents can believe even more
Like many Americans, I’ve marveled at the ability of some of my compatriots to embrace the patently ridiculous, wholly illogical, and unbelievably ridiculous tenets of the QAnon movement. As conspiracy theories go, QAnon isn’t even all that credible, but when you have millions of Trumpers looking for reasons their guy lost, it’s filled the void. Millions unwilling to accept the reality that their guy lost to Joe Biden have embraced QAnon because it provides explanations they can grasp as the truth. Even when those explanations are nowhere close to the truth.
QAnon isn’t based on truth, logic, or credibility. Still, it’s drawn in large numbers by presenting information in a way that’s taken gullible people down a rabbit hole from which they’ve not returned. In some cases, it can and has turned deadly.
In the early hours of Sunday morning, a young woman called 911 in Walled Lake, Michigan, to report she'd just been shot by her father. When the police arrived, they heard a gunshot, and saw 53-year-old Igor Lanis emerge from his home with a Remington 870 pump action shotgun and start firing. Police shot back, killing Lanis where he stood.
Rachel, the 25-year-old daughter who had called 911, tried to crawl out of the home, having been shot in her back and legs, and was rushed to emergency surgery where she is now in stable condition. She told police her father had also shot her mother, and when they entered the home they found the body of 56-year-old Tina Lanis, who had been shot multiple times in the back as she tried to run out the door. The family dog was also killed.
What happens when you introduce conspiracy theories to someone angry and just mentally unbalanced enough to be susceptible to the sorts of straightforward explanations offered by QAnon?
You end up with people like Igor Lanis, who once was a loving and caring parent. Then Donald Trump lost the 2020 Presidential election, which angered Lanis, and QAnon helped explained why. It was enough to send him over the edge.
And who knew that Reddit had a subreddit called “QAnonCasualties?” Igor Lanis’ other daughter, Rebecca, posted an entry on QAnonCasualties entitled “My Qdad snapped and killed my family this morning.”
Yep. The internet ruined him.
Growing up, my parents were extremely loving and happy people. I always had a special bond with both my parents.
In 2020 after Trump lost, my dad started going down the Q rabbit hole. He kept reading conspiracy theories about the stolen election, Trump, vaccines, etc. He always said he wanted to keep us safe and healthy.
It kept getting worse and he verbally snapped at us a few times. Nothing physical though. He never got physical with anybody.
Well, at around 4 AM on September 11, he had an argument with my mother and he decided to take our guns and shoot her, my dog and my sister. My mother succumbed to her wounds and my sister is in the hospital right now.
My dad also fired back at the cops and they killed him.
I'm shocked and I don't even know what to say.
Fuck you, Qanon. I hope the FBI tightens its grip on you and that your lackies rot in prison (and hell) for poisoning so many people.
Yes, QAnon is ridiculous and has little, if any, basis in fact. It sucks people in and doesn’t let go, and its grip on the gullible, mentally unstable, and intellectually malleable can be difficult to break.
QAnon adherents have also been responsible for numerous crimes since the emergence of the cult (Pizzagate, anyone?)
So what is QAnon? At this point, the movement has grown and metastasized so much that it’s difficult to nail it down in one coherent definition, but this is as good as any:
That’s about as basic an explanation as one is likely to find anywhere. Yet, since the advent of QAnon in 2017, there have been so many spinoffs, detours, and debates within the movement that the number of claims is enormous and often contradictory. (See diagram above)
Some adherents combine news events with historical facts and numerology to develop their conspiracy theories. As a result, QAnon has become a self-sustaining rabbit hole with no bottom.
As ridiculous as most conspiracy theories are, they are usually at least somewhat fixed. People believe in alien abductions or that there are lizard people controlling the world, or the government is trying to control us by putting fluoride in the water or poison us with chemtrails, or that the Middle Ages never happened. Most of these beliefs are usually supported by poorly interpreted "evidence" of some kind, something that makes the theories believable to people other than themselves. The flat earth people, for instance, have 20,000 YouTube videos where they go to the beach and film the horizon while yelling "Where's the curve?
This is how we get millions of intellectual and moral Lilliputians believing that COVID-19 vaccines come with tracking chips, allowing the government to keep all of us under surveillance at all times.
The absurdity of such a belief only makes it so appealing and credible to so many. OF COURSE, THE GOVERNMENT CAN DO IT; THEY’RE THE GOVERNMENT! THEY CAN DO WHATEVER THEY WANT!!
But the whole QAnon/Pizzagate thing is more like a group improv subculture than a traditional conspiracy theory. There are a few basic premises — that there is a Deep State, that there are massive pedophile rings involving pretty much every famous person on earth who is not a MAGA conservative, and that "Patriots/White Hats are in control" behind the scenes making sure the story ends the way it is supposed to, with all the evil being exposed, yadda, yadda, yadda — but mostly it is a free-for-all. It's ultimately a community of people who have largely agreed that anything one of them makes up could be true and probably is. It's very feelings-based. Not one of them would be able to explain exactly how one would extract "adrenochrome" from ritually abused children in order to get high, they just know in their hearts that it must be happening.
So we end up with Italian satellites somehow being involved with queering the vote count and cheating Donald Trump out of the victory he so clearly earned.
Or a sitting Congresswoman prattling on at length about Jewish satellites armed with laser beams starting forest fires in California.
Or the Gazpacho Police.
Or [insert ridiculous conspiracy theory here].
Our brains are so much more malleable than we like to think they are. It's why eyewitness testimony is the least reliable form of evidence, and why we can teach ourselves new habits that eventually become automatic. It's why, as gross as it feels, we actually do feel better if we force ourselves to smile. It's why negative self-talk can really screw you up.
If someone is consistently training their brain to believe impossible things and to sort of accept that anything they or someone else imagines can be true, there really is no telling what they could get themselves to believe or what they might do about it as a result. Igor Lanis is proof of that.
Igor Lanis is not the first, nor will he be the last mentally unstable person to be sent over the edge by QAnon. As people descend deeper into QAnon, those who are susceptible will find themselves hurtling down a rabbit hole from which they can’t escape. Every conspiracy takes them farther down and confirms what they “know” to be “true.”
While the actual number of QAnon believers is impossible to know and the actual threat hard to assess, there’s little doubt that the cult does pose a threat.
Anyone who noted the sizeable QAnon presence during the January 6th insurrection understands the threat posed by QAnon. It’s not necessarily the number of adherents as much as the ability of the cult to influence those who are angry, mentally unbalanced, and intellectually malleable.
And they have a distressing habit of referring to themselves as “Patriots.”
QAnon is a predominantly White, Conservative, Christian heterosexual movement that hates the mainstream media and despises democracy. They believe Donald Trump is their savior and that the Democratic Party is the property of Satan.
How do you reason with people like that? The short answer is that you don’t, and you can’t. They know what they know, and believe what they believe. If they have to turn to violence to achieve their goals, they’ll do that. January 6th demonstrated that.
We might not want to believe that a demagogue can manipulate Americans into being controlled by a movement dedicated to destroying American democracy. Still, as mentioned earlier, our brains are far more malleable than we like to believe. People can be manipulated into believing almost anything given the right conditions and the right person or persons to exploit them. All one needs to do is look at Nazi Germany.
Germans weren’t bloodthirsty killers by nature, but Hitler convinced them that they were the Master Race and that Jews and others not like themselves were their mortal enemies. It was a short distance from there to the Final Solution.
There’s no reason Trump supporters can’t be manipulated and propagandized in the same way. It’s been happening for the past seven years. Could they stand idly by if a fascist government acted in the same or a similar manner as Nazi Germany? That’s a matter that bears some debate, but I’ve heard more than one person argue that in today’s America, one-third of the population would happily exterminate another third while the remaining one-third stood by and watched.
It could happen here, and if we’re not careful it might. If we learned anything from the January 6th insurrection it’s the danger and power of a mob ignited and pointed in a direction desired by a charismatic leader.
Mix QAnon and Donald Trump, and who knows what one-third of Americans might be capable of?
My "Onion" report:
A scientific investigation into brain size and brain activity has yielded done interesting (if not surprising) results:
DEMOCRAT/ LIBERAL BRAIN –
Normal sized, fully formed, with most synapses firing properly. Both sides of the brain work together, often resulting in creative or artistic tendencies in the individual. Empathic area of the brain somewhat larger than in other brains investigated.
STANDARD REPUPLICAN/ CONSERVATIVE BRAIN –
Similar in most regards to the Democratic brain, although the “empathy” and “humor” areas are stunted, and do not seem to work well. It is also noted that the “critical thinking” portion of the brain is rather smaller than that observed in the Democratic brain, and while both sides of the brain work together, there is less tendency toward creativity or artistic expression vs. the Democratic brain.
TRUMPIAN/ MAGA BRAIN –
This third type of brain studied bore almost no relation to the counterparts noted above. This brain is approximately half the size of others tested, and virtually every example studied showed signs of corrosion or rot. There are virtually no empathic or humor centers in such brains. The small “creative center” of the brain is practically hardwired into the stunted “emotional” center, thus any art produced by individuals with this type of brain tends to be sophomoric and generally unimaginative. In the area where was found “critical thinking” in other brains, there is a previously unknown tumor-like space, which scientists are finding works as a center for introducing propaganda, conspiracy theories, and gullibility into daily thought. While some researchers have called this new center a “disease” and have lobbied to have it surgically removed for the benefit of the individual, most doctors are waiting for more data on this anomaly before weighing in. Research on this area continues.