JANUARY 6, 2021
Capitol Hill, the Failed Insurrection
Women made up a significant portion of the Capitol Hill rioters on January 6, 2021. The failed insurrection aiming to overturn the 2020 election results was preceded by dedicated rallies for female Trump supporters. Kylie Jane Kremer, who had cofounded the group Women for America First, organized the “Stop the Steal” rally in November and applied for the permit to hold the rally at the Capitol that day.1 The FBI used social media posts and anonymous tips to track down the rioters, many of whom were arrested within a week or two after the attack. Almost two dozen women have been indicted following the assault on the Capitol building, and although this number only comprises 10 percent of the total present in the mob, women were nevertheless the driving force that day because of their pivotal role in bringing together an ad hoc network of far-right militants, Christian conservatives, and adherents of the QAnon conspiracy theory.2
Women are unlikely drivers for a movement that initially emerged inside the hyper-masculine virtual spaces of 4chan like /pol/—the politically incorrect discussion board on 4chan. Young men, incels, and computer hackers typically dominated these message boards. Mobilization for the insurrection occurred across social media platforms, Subreddits like r/TheStorm, and the far-right message boards like TheDonald. win. Contributing to this disinformation environment were conservative news, Facebook discussion groups, and the right-wing extremist social media application Parler, all of which inspired female supporters of Donald Trump to gather in Washington to “stop the steal.”
QAnon might have initially emerged from masculine spaces, but the movement only took off once it found fertile ground in feminine online spaces like women’s Facebook groups and Instagram. This shift from the encrypted platforms and message boards through to the online ecosystem on the surface web explains how QAnon became a movement. The women in QAnon made the conspiracy appear palatable and perhaps even seem motivated by altruistic instincts to protect children.3
Certainly, QAnon’s most visible perpetrators at the siege, like QAnon Shaman Jacob Chansley (Jake Angeli), captured the nation’s imagination. With his painted face, wearing a Viking-horned helmet, Chansley looked like a cartoon Asterix come to life. A New Yorker video taken by Luke Mogelson inside the Capitol Rotunda on January 6 shows Chansley bellowing like a wounded animal.4 CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan attended a QAnon meeting in Arizona back in October 2020 before the election.5 Chansley was present, face painted, wearing the horned helmet and again shirtless (no matter what the weather), exposing a chest branded with Norse tattoos. The representations have been coopted by the extremist right wing to validate their pure Nordic (read “white”) origins.
The focal point for the media has been on the men who overran the Capitol, especially in light of threats made to specific female lawmakers like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nancy Pelosi. But it is the women who have been essential to sustaining the QAnon conspiracy as a movement. We know from studying terrorist groups that the vast majority, as many as 90 percent, fail within the first two years.6 But groups that recruit women guarantee the entire family will be indoctrinated. To survive and thrive in such an environment where the likelihood of failure is high, militant groups must ensure their continuity and plans for succession. To do this, they prepare the “next generation.” The best way to access the kids is to recruit the moms.
Women have been at the forefront of white racist movements for the past 100 years. Much of this has been forgotten as women’s roles were whitewashed due to “a gender bias that shifts political seriousness away from ‘nutty’ (i.e., not dangerous) White women.”7 Seyward Darby’s book, Sisters in Hate: American Women on the Front Lines of White Nationalism,8acknowledges “White supremacist [movements] would collapse without women’s labor.”9 Furthermore, white women have been voting for Republicans since 1952 because “it is in their interest to protect the interests of white patriarchy.”10
The coordination required for the January 6 protests occurred on right-wing extremist channels like Parler and on the messaging app Telegram. The discussions in the far-right closed information system argued that this election meddling was a secret plot hatched in China and Venezuela. In the eleventh hour, Facebook and Twitter attempted to prevent their sites from being used to organize the attempted coup but failed. Social media, MAGA channels like One America News and NewsMax all guaranteed the January 6, 2021, “Stop the Steal” rally would have a substantial turnout. Travel to Washington was reportedly funded by dark money loosely connected to the Trump administration or his wealthy enablers according to investigations by BuzzFeed News and the Washington Post.11
Looking at many of the images as they were broadcast live on January 6, one might have mistakenly assumed that only men had stormed the Capitol, but this was not the case. People noticed women only once they started getting arrested or killed. That day in DC, two women died, both of whom were QAnon believers. They became (temporarily) martyrs for the cause. QAnon women are symbols of the movement, and like martyrs across the political spectrum, they are able to motivate others to follow in their footsteps. QAnon propelled the events on January 6 just as much as the impeachment managers claimed that President Trump had done and as much as social media enabled the insurrection. At the Capitol playing out in real time on live TV, the country witnessed a pro-Trump mob overpowering U.S. Capitol Police officers, injuring dozens. One officer, Brian Sicknick, died as a result of his wounds. Two other officers committed suicide in the days after.
As we watched in horror, the news reported that a woman was fatally shot by police inside the Capitol, and three others died of medical emergencies.12 The first casualty of the January 6 insurgency was Ashli Babbitt, shot as she attempted to enter through a window with a Trump flag draped around her shoulders like a cape.13 Babbitt, an Air Force veteran of 14 years, had been scaling a barricade of furniture when a security officer shot her in the chest at point-blank range. The video of the shooting was aired for the first time during the impeachment hearings during Representative Stacey Plaskett’s presentation of the evidence.
The case of women killed that day, and the wave of arrests afterwards, pose more questions than they answer about how and why women joined QAnon. Ashli Babbitt was in distress, and not just economically; she was having problems transitioning from the military to civilian life. Before the pandemic, Babbitt worked as a security guard for a nuclear power plant and struggled to keep her pool supply company afloat.14 Babbitt’s life after the military had proved more difficult than she expected, and she bounced from one job to the next until she found a new direction in QAnon, and then she jumped down the rabbit hole with both feet.
In a video she posted to social media, Babbitt railed against the general indifference she saw to the dangers posed by the secret cabal. “You guys refuse to choose America over your stupid political party, I am so tired of it.”15 The day before, on January 5, Ashli tweeted:
Nothing will stop us . . . they can try and try and try but the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in less than 24 hours . . . dark to light!16
Conspiracy theories like QAnon exploit vulnerable people during times of personal crisis, especially those who might lack social support networks. Preliminary research has suggested that one of the consequences of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) is the feeling of not belonging. This may translate to members of the U.S. military being especially vulnerable to targeted recruitment. The death of Ashli Babbitt (a veteran of four tours) and the disturbing fact that 20 percent of those arrested for insurrection were veterans or active service soldiers offer a possible link between PTSD and belief in QAnon.
The other QAnon woman who died that day was Rosanne Boyland, a 34-year-old from Kennesaw, Georgia, who had come to DC “keep the fight alive.” Boyland was trampled to death in the crowd.17 Her family had begged her not to attend the rally, and she’d promised to stay out of the fray; but she wanted to show her support for the president, from whom she fervently believed that Democrats had stolen the election. Outside the Capitol steps she was caught up in the melee that narrowly converged into an entrance on the west promenade, the second level of the building. Boyland was pinned to the ground and trampled during the clashes between rioters and the police. After Boyland lost her footing in the crush, her friend Justin Winchell tried to pull her to safety.18 “By the time that they decided to pick the person up and give them to the police officer, she had blue lips and blood was coming out her nose.”19 Despite administering CPR, by the time police finally reached her at 5 p.m. it was to no avail. Rosanne Boyland died at the scene.20
Like Ashli, Rosanne’s family knew that she was troubled. Many women drawn to QAnon are vulnerable due to the circumstances in their lives. Rosanne had been a drug user who fought her addiction, cleaned up her life, and hoped to become a sobriety counselor.21 She embraced Q mythology seemingly as a replacement drug. On her Facebook page, Rosanne disseminated QAnon content, reposted QAnon social media influencers, and praised President Trump.22 One family member made a statement the following day, on January 7: “I’ve never tried to be a political person but it’s my own personal belief that the president’s words incited a riot that killed four of his biggest fans last night and I believe that we should invoke the 25th amendment at this time.”23
It is important to note that QAnon grew exponentially in a very short time. Its spread is inextricably linked to the pandemic. In March 2020, QAnon Facebook groups increased by 120 percent, and posts with QAnon hashtags or content increased by a whopping 174 percent; one journalist tracking the impact of QAnon found that between January and August 2020, Instagram Q-supporting accounts “generated 63 million interactions and 133 million video views.”24 This was a massive amount, compared to other rival trending hashtags like #MeToo or #BlackLivesMatter.
A London think tank focused on QAnon’s radicalization; the Institute for Strategic Dialogue recorded 69 million tweets, 487,000 Facebook posts, and 281,000 Instagram posts using Q hashtags or phrases from 2017 to 2020.25 Twitter finally removed 7,000 accounts associated with QAnon in July 2020. Twitter explained that it had determined QAnon was an “online effort with the potential to lead to offline harm”—thus violating one of its terms of service. Facebook followed suit in August 2020, removing thousands more groups and accounts on their platform and on Instagram.26
Eventually most of the social media giants escalated anti-QAnon measures, including banning QAnon-promoting advertisements. Platforms like Etsy that previously sold Q-branded merchandise like T shirts, hats, and even onesies for babies banned the group and removed much of their goods. Like Tracy Beanz’s use of Patreon and PayPal in her QAnon YouTube videos, the popularity of Etsy paraphernalia suggests one of the primary drivers for QAnon: that it was monetized. A handful of influencers and high-profile conspiracists (like General Michael Flynn) made a lot of money by selling Q-branded items. According to Vice News, many links with QAnon content on the right-wing Parler platform, QAnon Subreddits, or other Q-promoting posts led to General Flynn’s legal defense fund website. Flynn’s website contained Q merchandise until it was taken down after the failed January 6 insurrection.
Facebook determined that QAnon was dangerous relatively late in the game (for example, it was two years after Reddit had banned them), initially investigating how QAnon had hijacked the #SaveTheChildren hashtag to use as a recruiting and fundraising tool. In the fall of 2020, Facebook’s dangerous organizations unit, led by a team of trained counterterrorism experts, announced that the platform would “remove any Facebook Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts representing QAnon, even if they contained no violent content.”27 While thousands of pages and groups were removed overnight, the platform wasn’t able to eliminate all of the content—for example, posts by individuals that did not violate their terms of service.28
However, Facebook could not eliminate all of the conspiracy-laden groups and posts. In the lead up to January 6, 2021, social media had whipped up sentiment and outrage—encouraging thousands to flock to DC to “stop the steal.” For Rosanne Boyland and Ashli Babbitt, it was too little too late.
Martyrs for the Cause
Ashli and Rosanne were mourned as martyrs to QAnon, with Babbitt described as a patriot whose “heart was pumping with fire and hope.” Anonymous accounts hounded Republican politicians insisting that they “show support for our fallen MAGA patriots.”29 Posts on the far-right messaging app Parler honored Babbitt (in all caps in the original post):
WOMAN MURDERED BY DC POLICE IDENTIFIED: ASHLI BABBIT WAS A WAR HERO, WHO SERVED 14 YEARS OVER FOUR TOURS OF IRAQHER LIFE WAS SENSELESSLY TAKEN TODAY WHEN SHE WAS GUNNED DOWN, DEFENDING OUR NATION’S FREEDOM TO HER LAST BREATHPRAY FOR HER FAMILY, AND MAY GOD WELCOME HER INTO HIS EVERLASTING KINGDOM.30
Babbitt’s honorific, however, was short-lived. She was declared a QAnon martyr on January 6, but 24 hours later, supporters decided that she was actually an undercover Antifa deep state operative and a traitor to the cause. Although Ashli lost her martyr status among QAnon, other white nationalist movements—like White Power, National Socialists, Accelerationists, Boogaloo, and neo-Nazis—immediately adopted her as a symbol of “White America.”31
Ashli’s martyrdom seems to have “sprung from the Proud Boys ecosystem,” the racist group President Trump instructed to “stand back and stand by.” The Proud Boys emulated (plagiarized) the mantra repeated by Black Lives Matter supporters during the summer of 2020, insisting that their followers “say her name” and chanting “her name was Ashli Babbitt,” echoing BLM’s rallying cries about Breonna Taylor.32
Escalating Violence in the Name of Q
Ashli, Rosanne, and the insurrectionists at the Capitol on January 6, 2021, were not the first instances of QAnon violence. Since the conspiracy first emerged in 2017, people have been killed, and there have been numerous kidnapping attempts foiled by law enforcement. Many of the more violent incidents involved men, and so the media has focused on these acts of violence without mentioning the increase in QAnon women.
What is clear is that leading up to the failed insurrection, QAnon violence was on the rise. In the following list, we present the events leading up to the FBI designating QAnon as potentially a terrorist threat to the country and show the variety of crimes affiliated with the conspiracy even after the designation. Women were arrested for 5 of the 12 crimes from 2018–2020.33 Most of the women were guilty of kidnapping or threats against politicians. Coincidentally, many of the women who were so concerned about saving the children were implicated in kidnapping attempts of their own children after having lost custody.
• One of the earliest incidents included a terrorist attempt against the Hoover Dam. On June 15, 2018, Matthew Wright blocked the bridge to the Hoover Dam using an armored vehicle with Q slogans (release the OIG Report). He was unhappy that President Trump had not yet made the mass arrests of the democratic Satan worshippers (predicted in the Q drops). Wright had two military-style rifles, two handguns and 900 rounds of ammunition in his vehicle, and eventually pled guilty to terrorism charges.34
• A man in California was arrested December 19, 2018, after law enforcement found bomb-making materials in his car, in a plot to blow up a display in Springfield, Illinois. “The man allegedly was planning to ‘blow up a satanic temple monument’ in the Capitol rotunda in Springfield, Illinois, to ‘make Americans aware of Pizzagate and the New World Order.”35
• In January 2019, Buckey Wolfe killed his brother James in Seattle by stabbing him in the head with a four-foot-long sword because he was certain that a lizard person had replaced his brother. Wolfe called 911 after he ran his brother through and told the dispatcher that he’d killed his brother because he thought his brother was a lizard. The recorded 911 call includes him saying, “Kill me, kill me, I can’t live in this reality,” and “God told me he was a lizard.”36
• In March 13, 2019, Anthony Comello killed a mob boss from the Gambino crime family on Staten Island. The 24-year-old “ardently believed that Francesco (Franky Boy) Cali was a prominent member of the deep state and an appropriate target.” Comello was certain President Trump would protect him and give him a full pardon.37 Comello was found mentally unfit to stand trial; his lawyer Robert Gottlieb used his belief in the QAnon conspiracy as proof of his mental unfitness.
• In December 2019, Cynthia Abcug a 50-year-old woman from Parker, Colorado, was charged with conspiracy to commit kidnapping after becoming obsessed with “evil Satan worshipping pedophiles.”38 Her descent into the conspiracy theory was triggered by her son’s removal from her custody. Cynthia suffered from a psychological disorder, Munchausen syndrome by proxy, where a parent fabricates their child’s illness to garner sympathy and attention. Cynthia had stopped going to therapy and started meeting in person and online with other QAnon followers at all hours of the evening to discuss “evil Satan worshipers” and pedophiles.39 Abcug kidnapped the child and traveled across the country, using an “underground railroad” network of QAnon supporters, before being arrested in Montana. In September 2020, Cynthia pled not guilty to second-degree kidnapping.40
• In April 2020, Eduardo Moreno, a train engineer from San Pedro, California, derailed a train because he believed the USNS Mercy hospital ship was part of suspicious plot to spread (and not cure) the coronavirus.41
• On April 30, 2020, Jessica Prim, a 37-year-old QAnon supporter from Illinois, was arrested after live streaming on Facebook her journey to New York City to “take out” Joe Biden and Hillary Clinton. A post on her Facebook page read: “Hillary Clinton and her assistant, Joe Biden and Tony [John’s brother] Podesta need to be taken out in the name of Babylon! I can’t be set free without them gone.”42 Prim, a stripper, was traveling with a dozen knives. She said she was driving to the USNS Comfort, a hospital ship docked in New York harbor, but accidentally ended up at the USS Intrepid aircraft carrier museum. Prim felt like “I was supposed to come to the Comfort and get some help because I was the coronavirus.”43 She claimed to have been inspired by President Trump: “I was watching the press conferences with Donald Trump on TV and felt like he was talking to me.”44
• In July 2020, Canadian military reservist Corey Hurren rammed his truck through the gates of the Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s residence in Ottawa. He was also “accused of uttering a threat to ‘cause death or bodily harm’ to Trudeau.”45 In March 2021 he was sentenced to six years in prison.
• In August 2020, Cecilia Fulbright rammed her vehicle into a crowd of civilians because she was under the impression they had kidnapped a girl for human trafficking. She was charged with driving while intoxicated and aggravated assault with a deadly weapon. Two of Fulbright’s acquaintances claimed that she had become deeply absorbed in the QAnon conspiracy, including talking about how Trump was “literally taking down the cabal and the pedophile ring,” and they said she continued to describe herself as a follower of QAnon even after her arrest.46
• In March 2020, Neely Petrie-Blanchard tried to kidnap her two daughters from their grandmother who had legal custody. Neely’s Facebook wall was plastered with QAnon slogans and the hashtag #TheGreatAwakening. She posted pictures of herself wearing Q-branded clothing. She then hired a legal consultant to help her get her children back, and when her efforts failed, she shot him—believing he was working against her interests.47
• In October 2020, Emily Jolley fled with her 6-year-old son, whose father had sole legal custody. After a supervised visit, she took the child and disappeared and was later arrested in Oregon. Like Petrie-Blanchard, Jolley was a member of the Sovereign Citizens Movement, but her social media was full of references to Trump and QAnon. She had even posted an article claiming that Child Protective Services (CPS) stole children to drain them of adrenochrome, the special chemical that the evil cabal drank, a central tenet of the QAnon conspiracy.48
While the country has focused on the demographics of the insurrectionists, the role of women might be less obvious. Among the crimes listed above, between 2018 and 2020, women were involved in half. As of the time of this writing, there were 27 people who participated in the Capitol insurrection on January 6, 2021, who were connected to QAnon. The offenders for all QAnon attacks since 2018 come from 27 states, including 7 from California, 4 from Arizona, 3 from New Jersey, 3 from New York, 3 from Pennsylvania, and 3 from Virginia.
The media may have viewed what happened in DC on January 6 as largely male dominated, and in doing so inadvertently erased the role that QAnon women have played in the escalating violence. As with terrorist groups, women play important behind-the-scenes roles encouraging, supporting, and sustaining the violence. The QAnon Shaman Jacob Chansley left a note threatening Vice President Pence on the VP’s chair. As with terrorist groups, Chansley’s mother fully supported his actions; Martha Chansley defended her son as a great patriot, a veteran, and a person who loves this country.49
On January 6, 2021, there were many women in the crowd, egging the men on and even participating in the violence. To date, 20 women have been indicted, and every day the DC court files charges against more insurrectionists. Among one of the first to be indicted for her actions at the Capitol was Army veteran Jessica Watkins, who had recruited members for a local militia group and was affiliated with the Oath Keepers.50
Examining why QAnon is so popular among women and charting women’s involvement with this dangerous conspiracy will help identify opportunities to help women exit from QAnon. We can draw on our experiences with women exiting violent extremist organizations to ascertain the best ways to help women find a pathway out.
A Brief History of Women and Extremism
Throughout the twentieth century, women have been active in violent insurgencies and conflicts that historically spawned terrorist groups, from the far left to the far right. Women’s involvement has spanned the spectrum from disseminating propaganda, to planning operations, to carrying out the attacks themselves. Women were often active in groups that prioritized women’s rights or made equality part of their political platform.
In Germany in the 1960s, the Baader-Meinhof gang’s ideological leader Ulrike Meinhof, after whom the group was named, was a key organizer and ideologue. Women have historically formed the bulk of behind-the-scenes support networks for terror groups, maintaining safe houses, ferrying weapons, but also engaged in occasional frontline activities such as bank robbery and driving the getaway car (e.g., Astrid Proll). The Red Zora (Rote Zora), a breakaway faction of Baader-Meinhof, exclusively female, was responsible for 45 arson and bombing attacks from 1977 to 1988,51 including an attack against the German supreme court to protest the country’s abortion laws, the spread of sex shops, and the proliferation of multinational corporations; the group actively opposed genetic engineering, pornography, and the objectification of women.52
Elsewhere in Europe, women comprised about 17 percent of Euskadi Ta Askatasuna (ETA), the Basque separatist party, and often joined as part of family units. According to Carrie Hamilton, although men dominated the leadership in its first decade, in the 1960s a few women joined the movement. Some took up arms and engaged in frontline militant activities. By the end of that decade, “Yoyes” Dolores Gonzalez Katarain became part of the leadership, which, contrary to popular opinion, did not alleviate ETA’s use of violence.53 In 2009, ETA appointed Iratxe Sorzabal Diaz as its leader and four other women as commanders; one Spanish newspaper concluded:
The five [women] are thought to have been closely involved in the decision to step up violence in a renewed attempt to force Madrid to grant the northwestern Basque region full independence from Spain.54
In Northern Ireland, women made up a critical part of the Provisional IRA (PIRA). Most of the women, like their sisters in Germany and Spain, provided much-needed support for the men. Republican women in Belfast and Derry became the not-so-secret weapon of PIRA—lookouts who raised a racket by banging garbage-can lids when British soldiers approached, shielded fugitive gunmen when squads of troops swooped into the Catholic ghettos or planted bombs. Over time women became more involved in frontline activities and in violence. Women began carrying weapons and taking part in armed encounters against British soldiers. Some of the women went on “active service,” meaning that they took on military roles and engaged in frontline attacks.55
Among the Palestinian terrorist organizations, women filled a variety of roles—both supportive and operational. A handful of women were notorious hijackers or planted explosive ordinance. Perhaps the most notorious woman to engage in terrorism was Leila Khaled who became a poster child for Palestinian militancy in the 1970s after she participated in several hijackings against Israeli targets for the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine. Another militant, Dalal Mughrabi, a member of Fatah, became a source of inspiration after she organized a deadly roadside attack in March 1978 in which 37 Israelis died. These women helped inspire an entire generation of young girls in the refugee camps to follow in their footsteps. Poems, songs, and stories were written about Khaled in a dozen languages; a public square, soccer tournament, youth center, and girls’ summer camp were named for Mughrabi.56
There was an observable shift in the Middle East—from secular organizations engaged in terrorism during the 1960s and 1970s to later groups advocating the use of violence based on religious justifications. These new groups, in part because of their religious (patriarchal) traditions, did not necessarily view women as potential recruits for the cause. Initially, some religious terrorist groups prevented women’s participation and, on a few occasions, even sent would-be female recruits to rival (secular) groups.57
Women in extremist movements have stereotypically been portrayed as lacking agency. Lumped together with children, women are perceived as having been manipulated into believing extremist ideologies, and they are described as merely playing peripheral or supporting roles. This is despite the fact that 53 percent of Nigerian suicide bombers from Boko Haram and 30 percent of LTTE (Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam) and PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) suicide bombers in Sri Lanka and Turkey were women. Nevertheless, the trope has always been that “a man made her do it.” Dangerous and misleading, it removes the responsibility from women—and dismisses a critical aspect of the emotional and behavioral aspects that are presenting in the vast majority of extremist organizations: the search for identity and belonging. The urge to belong, have purpose, and feel power is essential in successful radicalization, recruitment, and retention.
On the far right, women have been involved in terrorist groups like the KKK (Ku Klux Klan) for over 100 years, but they were often less visible as operatives, taking on a more traditional domestic role, even as they egged on the men or encouraged their children to follow in their father’s footsteps. To this day women on the far right are presented with a regressive choice, according to Seyward Darby, since being a mother in the extremist far right is a revered status—having white babies to perpetuate the white race is their ultimate contribution.58 In an op-ed in the New York Times, Annie Kelly explained that it was:
something of a general rule that there are always more women involved than first meets the eye. It is generally men who grab the headlines, either because they are in leadership positions or commit acts of violence, while women are used for the behind-the-scenes work of recruitment and organizing.59
Women have been a part of the QAnon conspiracy from its earliest days, before there was a Q. QAnon emerged in 2017, however Pizzagate—a conspiracy theory that evolved from John Podesta’s hacked emails, published by Wikileaks—occurred the year before in December 2016. In Podesta’s emails to friends and family, he often suggested “getting a pizza” at a popular local DC haunt, Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria. The conspiracy theory began on 4chan and speculated about links between Comet and the Democratic Party. It reached critical proportions as many became convinced that references to “cheese pizza” (CP) were actually code for “child pornography.”
The conspiracy theory was popularized by women like Liz Crokin,60 a self-declared follower of QAnon. She became infamous for targeting Chrissy Teigen and connecting her to Pizzagate.61 Crokin is the original source for Roseanne Barr’s tweet alleging that President Trump had released hundreds of children:
President Trump has freed so many children held in bondage to pimps all over this world. Hundreds each month. He has broken up trafficking rings in high places everywhere.62
Crokin was also the inspiration for Marjorie Taylor Greene’s conversion to QAnon, according to Greene’s videos.63
Other prominent women that helped disseminate the baseless conspiracy theory include Ann Vandersteel, president of the far-right media outlet YourVoice America, who is firmly on the fringe.64 The theory gelled further in a series of now banned alt-right Subreddit discussions in which women played a pivotal role and then spiraled out of control. The pizzeria owner, who had never met Hillary Clinton, began receiving phone and text messages threatening him and his staff. At the time, despite the clear and present danger, social media companies did virtually nothing to deescalate the danger.
Pizzagate culminated with Edgar Madison Welch, a father of two and volunteer firefighter from Salisbury, North Carolina, driving hundreds of miles to Washington, DC, in hopes of rescuing the children he believed were being held in the basement of the pizzeria and who were about to be trafficked. Welch entered Comet Ping Pong Pizzeria carrying a fully loaded AR-15 military-style rifle, a .38 revolver, a shotgun, and a knife, seeking to investigate the Pizzagate rumor. After a panicky evacuation by Comet’s servers and customers, which included several children, he fired his rifle a few times at a locked closet door, hitting the computer equipment inside. There were no children in the basement—in fact, there was no basement. After a 45-minute standoff, Welch surrendered peacefully to the DC Metro Police, having found no evidence that underage children were being harbored in the restaurant.65
A mass casualty event had been narrowly averted.66 Welch pled guilty and received four years imprisonment on federal charges of assault with a dangerous weapon and transporting a firearm over state lines. It is worth mentioning that despite Edgar Welch announcing that he had been wrong,67 in April 2020 another QAnon supporter, Ryan Jaselskis, set fire to Comet Ping Pong pizzeria. Most QAnon devotees believe still that children were being trafficked inside the restaurant, and no amount of disconfirming evidence will shake their certainty.
Maternal Instinct and Domestic Terrorism in QAnon
Women constitute the softer side of QAnon, posting messages in pastel colors and capitalizing on women’s maternal instinct to protect children. The participation of women in QAnon is not accidental. The women who flocked to QAnon often did so not because of violent radicalization but from the perspective of wanting to “save the children.” This is fundamental to understanding why women are willing targets for QAnon. The conspiracy appealed to the “angels of their better nature” and traded on their innate altruism: Some accounts have referred to this group as the QAmoms.68 Many of the images flooding their social media timelines include graphic content of children—bruised, beaten, and battered—precisely intended to instigate an immediate reaction and activate women’s maternal instincts. “[T]here is something about the intense focus on harm being done to children and the graphic nature of the images and videos associated with Q . . . that is catered toward evoking shock and empathy.”69
QAnon, like the terrorist group ISIS, understands that one of the best ways to appeal to women is by exploiting their altruism. Many far-right narratives appeal to their base to “save the white race” or “save individual liberties.” These are popular with angry or disillusioned young men, whereas QAnon’s narrative to “save the children” evokes a visceral—even maternal—reaction among women. The phrase “save the children” has been part of QAnon’s successful pivot into mainstream culture and was taken from one of the oldest charities dedicated to child protection. QAnon believers spread false claims that Hillary Clinton trafficked and abused children and harvested adrenochrome from their blood. Both Jessica Watkins and Cecilia Fulbright were crying when they were arrested. Cecilia insisted that she was saving the children and that the target (i.e., the actual victims of the vehicle ramming) “were pedophiles and had kidnapped a girl for human trafficking.”70
Fulbright reportedly confessed to ramming the Dodge Caravan because she believed she was saving a child from a pedophile she had been following, but her account “did not match the timeline or any facts or evidence,” according to the affidavit.71
A QAnon survivor, Lenka Perron, spent hours pouring over stories about the evil people in power. She all but ceased doing anything else like cooking, cleaning, or caring for her three children. Lenka was obsessed with tracking down the cabal. She told herself that all of it was worth it: “She was saving the country and the children would benefit.”72 Far-right conspiracy theorists and neo-Nazis often make claims about defending children.73
Annie Kelly notes that despite such sentiments arising from positive motivations, QAnon women can be very dangerous:
Conspiracy theories are no less dangerous even when they claim to be driven by maternal love. At the heart of QAnon lies an undeniably frightening ethos that demands harsh punishment, even execution, for its ever-growing list of political enemies. History teaches us that sex panics do not end well for society’s most vulnerable minorities; QAnon and its offshoots must be rejected in the strongest possible terms.74
Because QAnon was linked to all the crimes listed at the beginning of this chapter,75 Christopher Wray, director of the FBI, warned that the conspiracy theory posed a domestic terrorism threat.76 In 2019, Wray had explained why the country was predisposed for domestic extremism. At the time Wray was talking about the growth of the extremist right wing, but the same conditions that made radicalization possible made people vulnerable to dangerous conspiracy theories. There was an economic downturn, people felt the government was overreaching, and they were spending more time online. Lenka Perron described what had made her receptive to the conspiracy’s messaging and could persist well after the Trump presidency: widespread distrust of authority, anger at powerful figures in politics and in the news media, and growing income inequality.77
The once-fringe conspiracy theory went mainstream under the conditions of the COVID-19 pandemic: Lockdowns, economic insecurity, and extended hours online became the norm for many. The surge in QAnon posts correlate to the stay-at-home orders issued as the pandemic raged across the country and the globe.
It should not be surprising that many of the QAnon-affiliated individuals arrested after the failed insurrection at the Capitol had a history of trauma or mental illness. According to the data collected by Michael Jensen, director of the PIRUS (Profiles of Individual Radicalization in the United States) project at the University of Maryland,
More than 40% of the 31 QAnon offenders who committed crimes before and after the Capitol riot radicalized after experiencing a traumatic event. These experiences included the premature deaths of loved ones; physical, emotional, or sexual abuse; and post-traumatic stress disorder from military service.78
Women associated with QAnon had even higher rates of trauma.
83% of the female offenders in this [University of Maryland] sample experienced trauma prior to their radicalization that involved the physical and/or sexual abuse of their children by a romantic partner or family member. These women appear to have been drawn to the QAnon conspiracy theory due to a narrative that casts followers as key players in the fight against child exploitation and sex trafficking.79
Women’s individual identity and sense of belonging play an essential role in how QAnon appeals to women. Up until recently, our understanding of extremism tended to be limited to religious-based movements or groups that were fighting over ethnicity, heritage, religious background, or disputed territory. Our ability to appreciate the danger posed by women has improved as more people study the phenomenon of female terrorism and as journalists stop assuming that women lack agency when they perpetrate acts of violence or terror. As the United States fractures, with political extremists on all sides turning to violent ideologies to address their grievances, women are playing a major role.
One of the primary reasons why conspiracy theories have seemingly metastasized in the last few years is that the people who believe in them tend to believe in more than one at a time. Like potato chips, people can’t stop at just one. People who are vulnerable to one conspiracy theory are significantly more likely to believe in other related, adjacent, or overlapping conspiracy theories.
People who believe in QAnon also tend to be vaccine skeptics or anti-vaccine (anti-vaxxers). They are most likely to be anti-mask and assume either that COVID-19 is a hoax, exaggerated, or a deliberate plot from China to undermine the presidency of Donald Trump. Often they are also suspicious of 5G technology. As we show in Chapter 5, QAnon has managed to fold in local grievances when it moves from one location to the next. People who oppose 5G technologies worry that there is some malevolent plan behind the new technology. It is why on Christmas Day, December 25, 2020, Anthony Quinn Warner blew up a recreational vehicle outside the Nashville headquarters for AT&T. The pandemic and ensuing stay-at-home orders offered an intersection of beliefs: QAnon was able to overlap with all the other adjacent or complementary conspiracies like COVID-19 denial and vaccine skepticism. Parenting and anti-vaccine groups on Facebook blamed dark forces for the COVID-19 crisis, which spilled over into anti-mask, anti-lockdown sentiment.
QAnon includes people who layer anti-Semitic beliefs along with the QAnon conspiracy theory. A notable example was Mary Ann Mendoza, originally scheduled to speak on the second night of the 2020 Republican National Convention about her son’s 2014 death at the hands of a drunk driver who was an undocumented alien. As the founder of Angel Families, whose children have died in an untimely fashion, she’d been selected to be a member of Donald Trump’s campaign advisory board. While spouting QAnon conspiracies, she took to Twitter to recommend reading about the Rothschild family’s plot to take over the world.80 Mary Ann posted Twitter threads that claimed that the Federal Reserve had sunk the Titanic and that every president between John F. Kennedy and Donald Trump had been a “slave president” enthralled by the global cabal. The Twitter account she recommended, @WarNuse, promoted The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.81 At the eleventh hour, she was abruptly yanked off the RNC-scheduled program even after her prepared remarks had gone out to the assembled crowd.
People who post QAnon materials offer provocative and compelling narratives about how they discovered the truth. These stories might captivate the reader, but they offer little by way of evidence. In QAnon chatrooms and discussion boards, “Q proselytizers” impart their virtual pitch by encouraging others to “Do your own research” or to “Find out what they’re not telling you.”82 Thus, the proselytizers urge people to discover for themselves what is going on. As Lili Loofbourow, a journalist with Slate, puts it, “[This approach] expresses full faith in the reader’s abilities to discover the truth, promises a light at the end of the tunnel, and appears to invite independent verification and free inquiry.”83 “Do your own research” can also be interpreted as: “Don’t trust other people. Don’t trust institutions. Listen to me.”84
QAnon Jumps the Shark: Social Media Influencers and the Spread of the QCult
Once QAnon moved from encrypted pages and anonymous message boards to popular sites like Facebook and Instagram, it appealed to a completely new audience: soccer moms, yoga aficionados, and even vegans. Social media influencers in the United States but also in other countries played a crucial role in disseminating the QAnon message to a new demographic: QAmoms.85
Krystal Tini, a U.S. social media influencer, entrepreneur, and model has an Instagram page with 100,000 followers, believes in QAnon, and shares posts about the dangers of 5G technology causing COVID-19. She became interested in QAnon because she felt that it “gets people to think for themselves and not become a slave to the mainstream media.”86 Finding the clues and figuring out what all the Q-drops signified made Tini feel smart, special, and empowered.
Because you feel like you are solving a puzzle, it boosts your self-image. As people discover the answer, they feel like they are the only ones who can solve it. People derive a sense of accomplishment and even intellectual superiority over people who have not (yet) seen the light. Gamifying QAnon, as we explained in Chapter 1, has real physiological effects on the brain. Solving puzzles as a group creates the feeling of community and shared experiences:
Everyone has something to focus on, a shared interest, and something to do. The puzzles are often just a way of getting together. If Q drops clues, then you have something to do and you have people to do it with. It’s bonding. The same reason puzzles are used for corporate team building exercises or as party games.87
Solving a puzzle also encodes information in the brain in a different way than other types of learning. Puzzles and knowledge gained through our own efforts can feel incredibly rewarding and bring a hit of dopamine, the brain’s pleasure drug, as a reward.88 It is plausible that the way QAnon structures the release of information, in the form of Q-drops, sustains user engagement on the platform so that readers never leave.
CNN’s Fareed Zakaria explains that this kind of variable schedule of reinforcement keeps people transfixed.89 Furthermore, the addictive qualities of QAnon followed the development of apps to alert enthusiasts with push notifications the moment a new Q-drop posted to the message boards. But people who believe in QAnon are not figuring out these things for themselves because the Q-drops have pre-seeded conclusions. They point to unrelated events to imbue them with a secret meaning commensurate with the propaganda. Izabella Kaminska, an editor at the Financial Times, explains:
The Q experience combines the thrill of discovery, the excitement of the rabbit hole, [with] the acceptance of a community that loves and respects you. Because you were convinced to “connect the dots yourself” you can see the absolute logic of it. Q does not want you to come to your own conclusions. Q is feeding you conclusions.90
The other common experience that happens to people who think they have figured out the puzzle is a proselytizing compulsion that takes hold of them. QAnon “influencer” Rebecca Pfeiffer started sharing information about Q when she felt that she had a moral obligation to her audience to share the content. “I truly believe I owed it to my audience to be more for them during this turning point in our culture.”91 Once a person figures out what is really going on, they feel as if they have a personal responsibility to share this knowledge, and in doing so, empower others. This is why people who fall down the rabbit hole seek to take friends and family along with them.
QAnon claims to have all the answers, but the reality of what is going on is the equivalent of taking the red pill. In the next chapter we explain the psychology of QAnon. Put simply, conspiracy theories elicit strong emotions among their followers, including outrage, fear, or anger that they can share and commiserate with likeminded individuals. Sharing these strong emotions satisfies a basic human need for connection. Many of the women who became ardent supporters of QAnon might also display a certain personality type that is more susceptible to conspiratorial beliefs. Ultimately conspiracy theories feel comforting against the backdrop of a complex and frightening world.
For some women, believing that there is worldwide evil conspiracy manipulating and controlling things is less stressful than believing that bad things happen to good people. In hindsight it is easy now to see how outlandish QAnon claims are, but at the time, for QAnon survivors like Lenka Perron, it was not so clear:
Looking back, Lenka understands [now] how Q drew her in. Conspiracies were comforting, a way to get her bearings in a chaotic world that felt increasingly unequal and rigged against middle-class people like her. The stories offered agency: Evil cabals could be defeated. A sense that things were out of her control could not. While the theories were fiction, they hooked into an emotional vulnerability that sprang from something real.92
QAnon created a virtual community of people with shared values and goals; the price of admission to the club suggested exclusivity and conferred a feeling of pride to its members. This is salient for individuals who may feel socially isolated or lonely, especially during a global pandemic when we no longer socialize as we used to. Conspiracies offer social interactions in a virtual world. However this shared community can easily become an echo chamber. While Lenka stopped feeling isolated and alone, she was going further and further down the QAnon rabbit hole. “She was no longer a lonely victim of a force she did not understand, but now part of a bigger community of people seeking the truth. She loved the feeling of common purpose. They were learning together.”93
The echo chamber is a result of the ways that social media algorithms suggest new pages or groups, but also if Q-curious people search using one of the well-known hashtags, they will immediately get QAnon materials and nothing else because the hashtag acts like a filter. This is the same phenomenon we have seen in other closed information systems used by neo-Nazi groups or cults (if they allow Internet access). There, algorithms drive people toward more and more extreme ways of thinking.94 The intersection between women who subscribed to QAnon and were anti-mask or against stay-at-home orders begins to blur one into the other, as QAnon absorbs any adjacent or complementary conspiracy theory.
Facebook encourages likeminded individuals to cluster together, whether through a computer architecture structured to create “filter bubbles”95 or through what Daniel Kahneman calls “cognitive ease”96—our willingness to more easily accept ideas that are familiar and comfortable. We also tend to avoid ideas that would take more effort to accept. Facebook’s algorithms can be manipulated to generate an opinion. People who believe in QAnon exhibit a constellation of personality traits. There is some research on “schizotypy”—that is, personality type as a predictor to believing in conspiracies, including distrust, eccentricity, the need to feel special, as well as suspicion of others.97 Lenka Perron articulated this feeling:
Q managed to make us feel special, that we were being given very critical information that basically was going to save all that is good in the world and the United States. . . . We felt we were coming from a place of moral superiority. We were part of a special club.98
In 2020, QAnon appropriated the hashtag #SaveTheChildren from the charity of the same name, leveraging existing human rights and child protection campaigns against their primary inspiration: human trafficking. For a newly initiated QAnon-curious individual, searching for information on social media by using a hashtag refined the results the person would get. Combing through the Internet or social media by using a QAnon hashtag leads one to closed information ecosystems. It is an information bubble in which any disconfirming evidence is excluded; at the same time, it is an echo chamber in which conspiratorial beliefs are reinforced by group dynamics. This is no different than how jihadi groups operate. There are echo chambers and selective information bubbles:
The bubble communities on Facebook shielded people from alternative views to our own, while also making it easier for views to be reinforced, enhanced—groomed even—towards more radical positions.99
QAnon’s focus on #SaveTheChildren distracts from the work of nonprofits, like the actual Save the Children charity that has been engaged in child protection for decades. QAnon’s obsession diverts resources that could be used to protect vulnerable children or causes law enforcement to waste their time on fictional cases of abuse at the expense of pursuing real cases. While it might seem harmless to post memes, some might escalate to ramming a vehicle into strangers, as was the case with Cecilia Fulbright in Waco, Texas.100
QAnon and the COVID-19 Pandemic
The COVID-19 pandemic offered the perfect storm for the QAnon conspiracy theory. A deadly invisible virus was spreading through the world leading to shutdowns, stay-at-home orders, and the opportunity to disseminate disinformation. This situation was further exacerbated by politicians who peddled disinformation that the virus was a hoax or possibly a deliberate bioweapon from China intended to undermine the Trump administration.
The year before, in July 2019, Christopher Wray, the director of the FBI, had explained that the United States was experiencing an uptick in right-wing extremism because of an economic downturn, the perception of government overreach, and sociopolitical conditions: racism, anti-Semitism, Islamophobia, misogyny, and negative reactions to legislation. Wray reiterated these conditions in 2020 to the House Homeland Security Committee—explaining that the pandemic had created an environment in which these preconditions were on steroids.101
Reactions to the pandemic from the QAnon community layered the conspiracies. Being anti-mask or insisting that the country reopen immediately went hand in hand with believing in a global conspiracy theory of blood-drinking elites.
Melissa Rein Lively became infamous when she was captured on video, losing her temper and destroying a mask display at Target. Lively had come to QAnon via natural wellness and spirituality websites. After Facebook algorithms suggested QAnon groups and pages, Lively spent her days searching for Q-drops as she drifted further from reality. In additional to consuming QAnon material, she also posted racist and anti-mask memes. One day she posted a burqa-clad woman with the caption, “Fine, I give up. I’ll wear the damn mask.”102 Her newfound QAnon enthusiasm had a deleterious impact on her life. She lost her work clients when the Target video went viral, and while she apologized for the outburst, the damage was done.
After leaving QAnon, she explained that the narrative from QAnon, while horrible, offers some consolation. Feeling like there is a plan, even an evil one, is more comforting than thinking bad things happen to good people in a random way:
The answers are horrifying and will scare you more than reality, but at least you feel oddly comforted, like, ‘At least now I have the answer.’ They tell you the institutions you’re supposed to trust are lying to you. Anybody who tells you that QAnon is wrong [is] a bad guy, including your friends and family. It happens gradually, and you don’t realize you’re getting more and more deep in it.103
Facebook pages about herbal remedies, vaccine skepticism, home birth, and essential oils would suggest QAnon women’s groups. There was even a QAnon connection to yoga. QAnon could also be found in the most unexpected platforms, including Nextdoor or Peloton.104
QAnon co-opted messages about natural living or health food—but eventually this led to indoctrination into white nationalism and xenophobia. QAnon plays into the concept of purity—the idea that you can “cleanse yourself and your life and your family’s life of pollutants.”105 Messages about avoiding genetically modified foods (GMOs) can blur into messages about keeping non-white children out of schools.
QAnon was particularly effective on Instagram where image rather than text content dominates. Instagram’s visual mode of communication has a more intense and more emotional appeal.106 When it comes to disinformation on Instagram, QAnon targeted suburban women whose support could be decisive for Trump’s future electoral success. It is a possible explanation for why the suburban soccer moms voted for QAnon-supporting candidates like Marjorie Taylor Greene or Lauren Boebert.107 In recent years the Grand Old Party has engaged in outreach to suburban women by recruiting more female candidates, however many of the new GOP “stars on the right” are aligned with nativist, paranoid, and conspiracy theories like QAnon.108 In 2020 there were 97 QAnon-affiliated candidates, over half were women.
The group of QAmoms—comprised of middle-class women interested in natural birth, parenting groups, yoga, or essential oils—explain why recent surveys cite 6 percent of Democrats believe in QAnon.109 These women were already skeptical of expertise—like anti-vaxxers—and the pandemic confirmed their worst suspicions. Because this was a novel coronavirus, the CDC and the FDA appeared inconsistent and changed their recommendations almost weekly. This was partly because the original CDC models had been based on data from Wuhan, China. The models changed after the virus spread to Italy, and again once the United States had data. While some of the modifications occurred as new information came to light, other changes were the result of political pressure from the Trump administration.110 The fact that recommendations shifted legitimized QAnon suspicions that the virus was suspect, created in a lab, or altogether a hoax.
The increasing number of women in QAnon means that it is no longer just a right-wing movement; it transcends the political spectrum. Many women who supported Bernie over Hillary ended up in QAnon. It is equally true that women, whom we ordinarily assume are left wing, have also ended up supporting QAnon.
Downward Facing Dog, Upward Facing QAnon
We don’t ordinarily associate yoga with extremism. QAnon turned peaceful chanting yogis into conspiracy theory peddling harum-scarum. Once the coronavirus arrived in the United States, the pandemic began to take hold in March 2020. Women who were into essential oils, or natural childbirth, noticed that their Instagram feeds had shifted. Yoga instructors tended to follow one another and famous yogis religiously. If the yogis on one feed began expressing doubts about COVID-19, challenging government lockdowns and mask-wearing requirements, this would spread through the yoga community like wildfire. These were people who were likely to suggest that natural medicine and meditation would offer better protection from the coronavirus than CDC recommendations. By April, Instagram was full of yogis disseminating conspiracy theories, including that 5G technology caused COVID-19 or that any future vaccine developed was really cover for a secret tracking device.111
Part of the reason that the pandemic saw the transformation of social media within the typically left wing, essential oil, and yoga crowd was because of the video Plandemic. Plandemic was a fake documentary fueling disinformation about the coronavirus. Most social media companies took down the video, but not before 8 million people had watched it within days.112 The 26-minute video featured a discredited scientist, Dr. Judy Mikovits, describing a secret plot by global elites like Bill Gates and Dr. Anthony Fauci to use the pandemic to profit and seize political power.113 Mikovits soon became a regular guest on far-right media channels, and she became the darling of far-right publications like The Epoch Times and Gateway Pundit.114
Dr. Christiane Northrup, a notable anti-vaxxer who became famous appearing on Oprah Winfrey’s shows, aggressively promoted the video; it then circulated widely through the anti-vaxx community. From there the video was re-posted by a woman, Laura GK, connected to the “open protests,” defying the government lockdown and stay-at-home regulations. The next day, Melissa Ackison, one of the 97 QAnon candidates who had lost her bid in the Ohio Republican primary, posted Plandemic on Facebook to 20,000 followers. Ackison’s post brought the film to the Republican mainstream audience. By May 7, 2020, the movie was discovered by BuzzFeed News and came to the attention of the social media companies.115
Anti-vaxxers, Q-conspiracy theorists, and people who oppose government-mandated lockdowns all unified and seized upon the documentary. The video spread from YouTube to Facebook groups with tens of thousands of followers. For the yoga community, the documentary Plandemic was the gateway drug into QAnon. Many people who practiced yoga were already suspicious of vaccines. It was common to find that people who practiced yoga were vegetarians or vegans, and they eschewed GMOs (genetically modified food) or Western medicine. Journalist Rachel Greenspan interviewed yogis who subscribed to the QAnon conspiracy theory. They confided to her that “it was not super fringe for people [in yoga] to be doing a raw vegan diet, juice cleanses or fasts, or not ‘believe’ in Western medicine.”116
Yoga-centered Instagram accounts went from posting inspirational messages adorned with serene images of light and love to being littered with posts about child exploitation, sex crimes, the devil, and an imminent war between good and evil. The shift was surprising. Most women who followed yoga had never seen a teacher talk about Satan before. Yogis were falling down the QAnon rabbit hole in large numbers.117 Bizzie Gold, the founder of the very popular Buti Yoga, shared videos about the “Satanic agenda” and adrenochrome to his 56,000 Instagram followers. As we explained in Chapter 1, adrenochrome is the recreational drug of choice of Satan-worshipping elites who harvest it from terrified children, according to QAnon lore. It is the chemical that allows Hollywood elites to maintain their youthful appearance (rather than, say, plastic surgery) and, after Tom Hanks announced his COVID-19 diagnosis from Australia, QAnon insisted that adrenochrome was the cabal’s cure for coronavirus.
For several years, Tom Hanks has been a frequent target of QAnon attacks. They accuse him of being part of the pedophile cabal. For many people, this might be surprising since Hanks’s likability and contractual obligations make explicit that he can never play a villain in a film. QAnon antipathy toward the congenial Tom Hanks might be because he is a well-known supporter of Democratic candidates. Alternatively, it might be because of the character he played in The Da Vinci Code,118 a film that mainstreamed conspiracies. Their hatred of Hanks is so strong that a QAnon member vandalized his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame.
QAnon is obsessed with certain celebrities whom they accuse of trafficking in children or torturing them to harvest the much-prized adrenochrome. A series of Facebook posts by QAnon influencer Mama Wolf119 linked Hillary Clinton, Oprah Winfrey, Bill Gates, Madonna, and Queen Elizabeth to Jeffrey Epstein’s child trafficking, adrenochrome harvested from children’s blood, and secret messages coded in Trump’s tweets.120According to these diehard believers, Trump’s notorious spelling errors (e.g., “Covfefe”) were not actual typos but coded messages made to look like mistakes.
Pay attention to the bigger picture. Trump has arrested and caught more pedophile and child trafficking rings in the world . . . but I bet you didn’t know that because the mainstream (George Soros funded media) make out that he’s a moron.121
Trump is their hero whose private conduct is more important than his public statements, which might contradict the savior narrative (e.g., Trump walking in on the contestants getting dressed at the Miss Teen USA pageant, bragging that he would date his daughter Ivanka, the hot mic comments about “grabbing women by the p#%&$,” or the many allegations of sexual misconduct). To Trump’s most devoted supporters, these public actions are nothing more than a cover—constituting what they believe is a 12-dimensional chess game in which Trump is a brilliant strategist.
In addition to social influencers and the yoga community, celebrities also played a role in advancing the QAnon conspiracy theory. They tend to be B-list celebrities like James Woods or Roseanne Barr, who might suffer backlash from fans but since they have already aligned themselves with Trump, the pushback would have minimal effect.
Many A-list celebrities have been the target of constant cyber harassment and allegations of perfidy—from Tom Hanks to Chrissy Teigen and even Ellen DeGeneres. DeGeneres was attacked for allegedly being involved in a scandal involving online furniture retailer Wayfair in the summer of 2020. Questions were raised in July when Reddit users in the “r/conspiracy” group claimed that Wayfair was trafficking children and posted screenshots of furniture with outrageously high price tags. QAnon followers accused Wayfair on Facebook and Instagram of trafficking children in their overpriced closets. Wayfair, like Ikea and many other furniture retailers, uses exotic-sounding names like Neriah, Samiyah, or Yaritza for their designs. The QAnon women found the prices of the closets to be unreasonably expensive (over $10,000) and deduced that they must have children inside them when they were able to match these names with names from the missing children’s registry. In one case, Samiyah Mumin, who had gone missing briefly in 2019, took to Facebook live July 10, 2020, to confirm that she was not missing. The accusations persisted despite fact checkers from USA Today or Snopes finding zero evidence of any malfeasance.122
QAnon also finds opportunities to blame and castigate enemies in random situations of very bad luck. For example, QAnon blamed the explosions at the Beirut port on space lasers; QAnon also argues that “Jewish space lasers” are responsible for the 2020 California wildfires.123
QAnon, like all conspiracy theories, is more than just an idea. It manifests itself like a living organism and is capable of adapting to changes over time. QAnon has folded other conspiracies into its own master narrative.124 QAnon integrated conspiracies as diverse as anti-5G, lizard people, and Dominion voting machines having stolen the election from Donald Trump. Like a black hole, it sucked in all the light from nearby galaxies. By incorporating all the different conspiracies, QAnon is a one-stop shop that offers something for everyone.
QAnon is thus able to draw in a diverse group of women. Some are highly educated and not ordinarily associated with ludicrous conspiracies; others are stay-at-home moms who only get their news from Facebook. They are certain that Q is real and protecting the children. Once QAnon shifted its primary social media platform to Instagram, a platform that is more attractive to middle- and upper-class women who would never affiliate with something as crass or trashy as an online conspiracy theory, QAnon expanded beyond the United States.125
On Inauguration Day, January 20, 2021, QAnon supporters eagerly waited for “the Storm” that the message boards had predicted for years. The reckoning would result in arrests for all the Democrats and Hollywood elites gathered in DC for Joseph R. Biden’s inauguration; they would be marched down Pennsylvania Avenue and executed. QAnon supporters even built a gallows for the occasion. Watching their reactions in real time on the encrypted networks, like Telegram, they narrated the movements of President Trump as he climbed the stairs to Air Force One, expecting him to turn around and unleash “the Storm.” When—instead of walking back down the steps—he entered the plane, shut the door, and took off for Florida, their reactions can only be described as apoplectic.
Once again, the oracle that was Q had gotten the prediction wrong. On January 20, 2021, they faced the crisis: What now?
In the wake of Joe Biden’s inauguration, many women who were members of QAnon have started to leave the movement. However, according to a survey by the conservative American Enterprises Institute, belief in QAnon remains very high. Based on their survey published February 11, 2021, 29 percent of Republicans maintained a belief in QAnon as do 6 percent of Democrats.126 QAnon’s insertion into traditionally left-wing spaces and its ability to recruit women have afforded it a degree of resilience no matter how often the oracle of Q is wrong.
Some of the women who left QAnon bravely shared their stories with the media and are trying to piece their lives back together. In order to understand the challenges facing those who seek to exit, we need to appreciate how they became involved in the first place. We need to offer simple solutions to help them get out of this dangerous conspiracy theory. We cannot simply abandon friends and family who have become enthralled by the conspiracy theory. In many ways, they are victims of a predatory group who exploited fears for their financial benefit. Slowly pulling the thread allows us to plant a seed of doubt.
We liken it to the analogy of the pebble in the boot. Initially if a pebble gets into your boot, you might be able to ignore it. But eventually the pebble will cause you to limp. The tiny particle irritates, annoys, or even impairs. Finally, you will stop, untie your boot, and shake it out to get rid of the source of pain and discomfort.
In the next chapter, we explore the psychology of conspiracy theory and suggest some possible ways to help people leave QAnon behind.