Let’s Go Crazy: QAnon, March 4 and Trump’s Return to the Throne

A Cabal

If you work overseas a lot, particularly among poorly educated populations, you sometimes learn of questionable and even dangerously uninformed beliefs in some countries. One memorable one, at the height of the AIDS crisis, involved the notion that men shouldn’t wear condoms because shamans could then retrieve their sperm and do all sorts of nefarious things with it.

Not that we’re immune to such stuff. Take QAnon, the metastasizing, hydra-headed, born-in-the-USA conspiracy theory initiated in October 2017 by “Q Clearance Patriot,” an anonymous and subsequently prolific internet message board poster. Q has ridiculously claimed to be a highly placed government official privy to classified information.  

At its core, QAnon contends that “the world is run by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles” that includes “top Democrats like President Joseph R. Biden Jr., Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and George Soros, as well as a number of entertainers and Hollywood celebrities like Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks and Ellen DeGeneres and religious figures including Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama,” and that “Donald J. Trump was recruited by top military generals to run for president in 2016 to break up this criminal conspiracy and bring its members to justice.”

Which brings us to March 4. Reality got in the way of the evolving QAnon tenets that Trump would win the presidential election, then would emerge as the winner despite the November 3 results and then would be inaugurated on January 20 despite the January 6 electoral college certification. But the latest prediction is that he will nonetheless be inaugurated on March 4. (What’s so special about March 4? Long story.)

But Seriously…

We can’t take this stuff seriously, can we?

Well, security officials took it seriously enough to “warn of credible threats of violence circulated by right-wing extremists that March 4 is the ‘true Inauguration Day’ when former president Donald Trump will be sworn in for a second term.”

The House of Representatives leadership took that warning seriously enough to cancel its March 4 session.

In a completely different way, House Republicans take it seriously enough to welcome newly elected Representative and QAnon adherent Marjorie Taylor Greene to the House with a standing ovation at a Republicans-only meeting, despite her “past remarks urging the violent death of some of her now-colleagues, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, or her especially lurid notions about Jewish space lasers and wildfires.”

In news that will surprise no one, QAnon hero Donald Trump has retweeted and otherwise supported the phenomenon, including by praising Greene. His pro-QAnon actions even escalated after he lost the election. Trump pardonee and former national security Michael Flynn has also emerged as a QAnon star.

Most of all, tens of millions of Americans take it seriously. Consider this data from a December NPR/Ipsos poll:                                                                              

[F]ewer than half (47%) [of the respondents] are able to correctly identify that this statement is false: “A group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media.” Thirty-seven percent are unsure whether this theory backed by QAnon is true or false, and 17% believe it to be true. [Emphasis added.]

A January American Enterprise Institute Survey similarly found that “[n]early three in 10 Republicans say the claim that Trump was fighting a global child sex trafficking ring is mostly (17 percent) or completely (12 percent) accurate.”

There’s More…

The wackiness goes way beyond what I’ve sketched. For an enlightening and far deeper dive into QAnon’s origins and beliefs, check out this episode from the podcast Midnight Facts for Insomniacs.* (Note: The discussion is at times profane, ribald and very irreverent.)

I’ve also only scratched the surface of the many dangerous ideas infecting the Republican Party. One is that Trump should run again in 2024. Another can be found here.

But let’s leave all that for another day.

Happy March 4.

*[Disclosure: My stepson, Shane Rogers, researches and leads the podcast discussion.]