PASTELS AND PEDOPHILES

An international security scholar teams up with a psychologist specializing in radicalization to explore the QAnon movement.

QAnon, a congeries of conspiracy theories whose origins lie in a curious blend of popular culture, science fiction, and deep-rooted antisemitism, has swept up millions of people of varying ideologies and levels of education. Bloom and Moskalenko quote David Gilbert from Vice News: “There are highly educated people that fall into these movements, and it is dangerous and remiss to pigeonhole QAnon followers according to educational attainment or social status.” Even so, write the authors, QAnon is a magnet for the mentally ill, particularly people suffering from PTSD, one manifestation of which is “the feeling of not belonging.” Other forms of anomie and detachment are evident throughout the movement. An unusually large segment of members are women, who “have been at the forefront of white racist movements for the past 100 years.” Such women have been responsible for numerous crimes, and those involved in QAnon were well represented in the attack on the Capitol of Jan. 6, 2021. Oddly, the authors note, there are connections between QAnon and the fuzzy New Age movement, which shares a mistrust of corporations, government, and the media and a view that all are dark forces bent on poisoning minds and bodies. With the canonical doctrine that Democrats are satanic pedophiles and that Donald Trump is the only person on the planet who can combat them (and their “Jewish space lasers”), we’re on the dark side of the moon indeed. And it just gets weirder, but more urgent, with QAnon planks that paint Tom Hanks and Oprah Winfrey as agents of a movement meant to destroy the Constitution and enslave those who don’t share their liberal views. The authors close with the note that the madness is contagious and that QAnon views have spread to dozens of other countries.

A revealing—and disturbing—analysis of a dangerous threat to American democracy.