Unknown author, Wikipedia Commons
If you haven’t lost a family member to Q, you probably know someone who has. For an obvious internet LARP, it’s been astonishingly divisive. /r/qanoncasualties is full of stories about families torn apart by the writings of Q, now believed to be Ron or Jim Watkins. /r/reqovery, where tales of loved ones recovering from Q beliefs, is sparsely populated by comparison.
You’d be forgiven for thinking that once JFK didn’t show up in Dallas, these people would accept that they were bamboozled, pack up their shit, go home and resume their lives. Surely that ought to be the straw which breaks the camel’s back, or to borrow some ex-Mormon terminology, brings their shelves crashing down. Surely they can’t live out the rest of their lives in a state of constant suspended hope, always expecting the Great Awakening is “just around the corner”, as Jehovah’s Witnesses are fond of saying about Judgement Day.
Ellen G. White Estate, Wikipedia Commons
But before there was a Great Awakening, there was the Great Disappointment. Followers of Baptist preacher William Miller, known as Millerites, were persuaded by his numerological arguments that Jesus would return to Earth in 1844. Many sold their homes and other possessions, or took out ruinous loans in order to congregate with fellow believers in anticipation of the second coming.
When nothing happened at the appointed hour (“Miller Time”, as I prefer to call it) rather than mass apostasy, the Millerites split into several denominations based on their rationalization for why the Earth wasn’t destroyed on schedule. This schism gave birth to what we now know as the Seventh Day Adventists, as well as the Watchtower Society, aka Jehovah’s Witnesses. Both are still around today, which bodes well for the potential longevity of Qanon despite multiple disconfirmation events.
When people invest themselves irreversibly in a lie, even if the lie is conclusively disproven, they often do not accept that they were tricked. Instead they double down, seeking to surround themselves with others who share their beliefs so everybody they know agrees on the same false reality. This makes it feel comfortingly real to them in spite of the disconfirmation. After all, how can so many good, earnestly believing people all be wrong?
This effect has been observed repeatedly, not by any means is it unique to the Great Disappointment. Psychologist Leon Festinger documented the same effect following the failed apocalyptic prophecy of Marion Keech, aka Dorothy Martin, Chicago housewife and leader of a 1950s UFO cult.
George Stock, Wikipedia Commons
Prior to the date of the supposed end of the world, the group (named “The Seekers) was secretive. Believing they were privileged to possess a secret the general public wasn’t privy to, they kept it close to their chest, not advertising and not recruiting new members beyond the initial small group of believers.
When the time came and went without the world being destroyed, there was much confusion and anxiety. Then Dorothy received another message via “automatic writing” which looks an awful lot like someone sitting down and writing something on paper with their eyes closed, to the effect that their little group “created so much light in the world” that the Earth was now to be spared.
This rationalization, that the failure of the prophecy to come to pass is actually evidence of the group’s triumph and even salvation of humanity, is a popular one. The ultimate expression of turning lemons into lemonade, it judo-flips what would otherwise be a fatal blow to the founder’s credibility into some kind of metaphysical or symbolic victory.
Following this narrative shift, the group became much more open, advertising their group and seeking new converts. Their faith wounded by the disconfirmation, despite reinterpreting it as a victory, wanting to surround themselves with an insulating layer of like-minded new recruits as protection against the unwanted reality that they were deceived.
Time is of the essence, if narrative shifting is the strategy you intend to use as a cult leader. Your followers will be dazed when the world doesn’t end as expected. In a state of fear and confusion, feeling lost, still receptive to your framing of the event. So you must strike while the iron is hot. Harold Camping didn’t do this, eventually admitting error, and thus his movement came to an end.
Wayne Bent, aka Michael Travesser (cults are big on new names/identities specific to the group) did manage to do this, as seen in the documentary “End of the World Cult”. When the supposed final dawn rose over “Strong City”, his compound of trailers in the New Mexican desert with no fire or brimstone raining down from the heavens, it certainly looked as if he was a big fat liar.
Instead, the members all emerged from the trailer in which they’d been holding a vigil in anticipation of argmageddon. Some carrying candles, others swinging flashlights, all of them chanting “Renewal! Renewal!” Later they explained to the film crew that the apocalypse turned out to be of the metaphorical variety. Rather than destruction, it heralded transformation. A spiritual renewal of the Earth and humanity. Which conveniently looks exactly like nothing happened.
This is much the same rationale used by Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists and especially by the Jehovah’s Witnesses, who are by far the most prolific of all denominations in the area of failed end times predictions. The failure of their vaunted 1914 prediction for example was explained as an invisible, spiritual return of Christ in the form of Christ’s enthronement in Heaven and his appointment of Jehovah’s Witnesses as his official Earthly representatives.
Auftraggeber: Otto III. oder Heinrich II, Wikipedia Commons
The reaction of the apostles to the crucifixion of Jesus also follows this pattern. The New Testament, edited and compiled some decades after his death, was written as though he knew he would be executed despite earlier books suggesting Jesus was to become a literal king over the 12 tribes of Israel. With that hope dashed, their beloved leader executed by the state, his followers pulled a Dorothy Martin/Wayne Bent by interpreting his death as a necessary event. A victory over the world, over sin and death itself, and salvation for all willing to believe in the resurrection (and thus the credibility of all dependent claims forming early Christian doctrine).
There is ample historical precedent for either outcome, it would seem. Disconfirmation is sometimes the end of the cult, as with Harold Camping, but not always. It can also trigger a new period of evangelism and growth, as with Dorothy Martin’s UFO cult, Christianity, or Wayne Bent’s Lord Our Righteousness church. It all depends on how disconfirmation events are managed by the group’s thought leader(s).
Qanon is not a centralized/organized movement now, if it ever was. It has a definite symbolic leader in Donald Trump, and an inaccessible source of divinely revealed, behind the scenes insider info in “Q”. But Trump has distanced himself from the group and their actions for liability reasons, and Q went radio silent a long time ago, perhaps in fear of what he created.
Since that time the Qanon movement took on a life of its own, becoming a sort of self-governing collective, crowdsourcing new predictions, choosing from them based on what members most strongly fear or desire. This is how it went off the rails with stuff like the JFK prediction, although one could argue that it was never on the rails to begin with.
There’s a non-trivial chance that Q belief is here to stay, as something like a new politically themed religion. I’d say the moment of truth will be when Trump dies, depending how they react to it. But with any luck, whether it takes years or decades, Q believers will move on.
Whitehouse Employee / Beyond My Ken, Wikipedia Commons
They’ll never admit, even to themselves, that they were deceived. They’ll instead go back to being quiet about it, pretending it never happened like the spurned followers of Harold Camping. I don’t know about you, but I can’t go along with that. I can’t just forget what a large percentage of the country absolutely lost its fucking mind, openly declared the intention to massacre their neighbors in a civil war, and so on.
I mean, we share a country. We’ve got to make this work somehow. But after so many of our fellow countrymen revealed, publicly, that they’re evil and insane? It’s like being stuck on a desert island with a stranger you need to cooperate with to build a raft, but at some point he starts talking about how he has a kitten crushing fetish or likes to shoot homeless people and rape them as they lay dying or some shit. How are you gonna pretend you didn’t hear that?
All the dirty laundry is coming out because they’re the ones airing it, and I’m sure I won’t be able to forget what I saw after they take that laundry back inside. I will never look at these people the same way again. I don’t want to speak to them, work with them or know them but it’s not like they’re gonna fade away into nothingness along with Qanon. They’ll still be here, living alongside us, acting normal.
What options does this leave us with? I’ve said in the past that this country looks to be headed for some sort of violent showdown. It’s a popular sentiment on both sides but difficult to gauge the plausibility of given how much disinformation is out there, and how much right wing saber rattling is just political theater.
Minimization is a possible outcome, with Q belief either fading away or going back underground, conservatives gaslighting the nation about how prevalent those views were within their ranks. Right now they seem content to ride the wave of insane mob outrage on the off chance they can use it to seize and hold onto power. If that doesn’t work out, I would expect them to downplay the entire ordeal in the hopes that it can eventually be memory holed.
Cultural balkanization is a possibility, with the country holding together but remaining locked in a sort of cultural cold war, citizens self-segregating by political views and enacting whatever measures they can within the scope of the law to disentangle themselves from one another, and disadvantage enemy states. Something like a less overt West/East Germany situation.
Germany’s process of cultural reconciliation benefited from most of the sincere, committed nazis either dying in combat, being executed upon capture by the allies or committing suicide when Berlin fell, The remainder were forced to undergo de-nazification by allied governments.
We may or may not have that option depending on whether or not a full blown civil war occurs, whether it brings down the sitting government, and the extent to which our allies (or enemies, like Russia or China) get involved. It seems likely most Q believers would rather fight to the death than submit to a “de-Qification” program. But then, a civil war is the worst case scenario and imo we’re not so far gone that it’s unavoidable or even the most likely outcome.
The “rule of boring” would have this country continue to limp along, convulsing but not dying even as the insanity grows more severe and widespread. Q belief is in large part just a modernized repackaging of the Satanic panic of the 1980s and the red scare of the 1950s, which were themselves just a repackaging of the blood libel and witch trials.
In that case we might expect Q belief to go into remission, but only temporarily, with some new movement resurrecting the anxieties of a dwindling American Christian demographic perhaps twenty or thirty years from now. A new story, new details and characters, but the same underlying themes: That the political enemies of Christianity and racial/sexual undesirables are part of some sort of sinister plot to victimize children.
It’s not really clear to me how many sincerely believe this line, versus the ones who recognize its utility as a justification for pre-emptive violence against the kinds of people they want to kill anyway. It’s not unprovoked violence if you invent a provocation and convince enough people that it’s reality.
Vaishal Dalal, Wikipedia Commons
Whichever path we take as a nation, going forward, I’m not content to sweep this mess under the rug and forget about it. That serves nobody except the instigators of this madness, senators and congressmen who benefit from it in the near term, but who would prefer we all forget it happened once those benefits come to an end.
I’m not going to forget. A declaration of intent to massacre is a cat that can never be put back into the bag. The Trump flags and “Let’s Go Brandon” signs may come down and be put into storage, but it’s not like we’ll forget which houses bore them, who put those signs and flags up to begin with, or what they represented.
When all the creepy crawlies that came out of the woodwork in 2016 at last return to their hiding places, make a note of who and where they are around you. Above all else, don’t forget the maxim that “when someone tells you who they are, believe them.”