QAnon as a New Religious Movement

In light of the indictment of former president Trump on March 30, I thought it would be useful to share some of the findings from my PhD research, that I presented at my defence. In particular, I want to highlight how QAnon functions as a religion, as well as some misconceptions about what QAnon actually is and its beliefs structure. This is important to understand, not only in light of recent events, but also to understand the behaviours that come out of the QAnon movement. Understanding the ideology of QAnon can serve to better understand why many QAnon influencers and believers scrambled to make sense of the indictment by turning to Qdrops from 2018, 2019, and 2020, and to see how the indictments fits within their ideological world view.  Their behaviours highlight several factors from my research: a) QAnon has a canon of scripture that is used as reference by believers in a time of crisis, b) QAnon is a lived tradition, rooted in everyday practice and participation, c) QAnon believers are militant in the participation in a digital war (a corner stone of their beliefs), d) QAnon is about theodicy and faith in "Q" and Trump, above any fact or evidence.

The Core Tenets of the QAnon Ideology:

QAnon IS NOT MONOLITHIC, rather it represents an amalgamation of virtually every popular conspiracy theory under a single interpretive frame. This is what researchers who have not  explored primary material or dug into the communities get wrong in their analysis of QAnon. QAnon is what Michael Barkun dubs a superconspiracy, “conspiratorial constructs in which multiple conspiracies are believed to be linked together hierarchically.” QAnon absorbs into itself existing conspiracy theories AROUND ITS CORE IDEOLOGICAL CONSTRUCT.

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There are four central pillars to the QAnon Ideology:

1. QAnon believes the world is controlled by a coalition of global satanic pedophilic elites, who abuse and traffic children to collect a substance called adrenochrome.
2. They believe an anonymous user was posting military intelligence and government secrets on 4chan (and subsequenbtly 8chan and 8kun), that adherents need to decode to help awaken people to the threat the world faces.
3. QAnon adherents have to participate in a digital war against the Deep State in order to save the world.
4. A great awakening has taken place and millions of people are aware of the crimes and corruption of these Elites, and QAnon adherents are called to be the calm before the coming storm during this period of turmoil.

It is around these four core pillars that QAnon then absorbs unto itself other conspiracy theories. In example: the belief in reptilian, Pleiadean, the return of JFK Jr., D.U.M.B.S. are not QAnon, rather they are absorbed into QAnon depending on the vector an influencer will take to mediate Qdrops, or the QAnon milieu adherents will find themselves in.

Belief in QAnon is Mediated by Time and Space

In my research I have broken down the existence of QAnon into three distinct periods: A) Proto QAnon, B) Canonical QAnon, and C) Apocryphal QAnon. Belief in QAnon is distinct depending on when you are collecting data on the movement, as a reactive and volatile movement QAnon influencers come and go and conspiracy theories produced by the movement tend to come and go in flash points.

QAnon was not born ex nihilo, rather is has several foundations that played a key role in laying the groundwork for QAnon to flourish and sustain itself. There are three core elements to Proto Qanon:

• The Pizzagate conspiracy theory;
• The anon genre of LARPING as an intelligence of government offical on image boards;
• The lost Qdrops that Qorigins has discovered.

Canonical QAnon refers to the 4,953 posts (called Qdrops)  the multiple “Q” posted between October 27, 2017, and December 8, 2020 (yes I a purposefully excluding the Jim Drops). These are referred to as canonical as they are the Qdrops that are accepted as genuine by QAnon influencers and the QAnon community, they were the Qdrops posted on the official “Q” boards on 4chan, 8chan and 8kun, and they were the Qdrops included into the “Q” aggregators. Qdrops form the canonical material for the movement, which adherents and influencers turn to in times of crises to find meaning and understanding. This is not different then how those who beleive in, lets say Abrahamic religions, would turn to their scriptures.

Apocryphal QAnon refers to the period post “Q,” (December 2020) following Donald Trump's electoral loss (November 2020), and following the January 6, 2021 insurrection, which marks the beginning of the apocryphal period of QAnon. This a period of volatility for the QAnon movement, due to a loss of influencers and leaders but also due to an early 2021 scramble to find a new home, as QAnon was deplatformed. However, QAnon adherents and influencers still turn to the canonical material for guidance during this period.

In both the Canonical and apocryphal period of QAnon, adherents are similar to Christian Gnostics as they claim to have access to special knowledge that each individual can obtain through digging into the Qdrops and finding meaning. Like the early Gnostics, QAnon does not constitute a single movement.

Ideological Adherence Obtained Through Participation

There is no initiation ritual for QAnon, no sign up sheet, no interview. One becomes part of the movement through participation. QAnon is a lived tradition and requires that adherents participate to be part of the community This is because a core foundation of the QAnon myth is that "Q" is military intelligence, and with the white hats "Q" is helping Donald Trump fight against the deep state. Trump "Q", and the military are responsible for the kinetic war, and "Q" is also helping with the information war that is going on. QAnon adherents are called to fight in the digital war to: 1) spread the truth they have decoded from the Qdrops, 2) Awaken/Red Pill/Radicalize others into the truth they have uncovered. QAnon adherents have been called by "Q" and QAnon influencers digital soldiers. Their digital ammo are memes, videos and disinformation they have created, while also uncovering the secret message that "Q" has left for them in his cryptic drops.

QAnon as a New Religious Movement

Now that we have a quick 101 of the QAnon ideology lets move on. Based on years of researching QAnon, from insdie the community itself, I have come to the conclusion that QAnon has evolved beyond a simple conspiracy theory into a new religious movement. This can be made manifest in three ways:

1. QAnon as entangle religious practices, which occurs when there is a high degree of overlapp between religion and everyday social action that extends across a broad swath of the society of subgroup as a whole.

   1. In my research have equated QAnon as a hyper-real religion, which religion is a term coined by sociologist Adam Possamai to describe a concept rooted in Jean Baudrillard’s work on hyper-reality and simulacra. Hyper-real religion is based on the premise that pop culture shapes and creates our actual reality in example: Matrixism, Church of All Worlds, Jediism, etc.

   2. David Chidester argued that popular culture is not only permeated by religion, but popular culture essentially embodies the characteristics and roles of faith by their mutual mimetic play method. Both religion and pop culture play with what it means to be human and to be part of a community, to possess a body, and to have desires. Both are “an arena of human activity marked by the concerns of the transcendent, the sacred, the ultimate—concerns that enable people to experiment with what it means to be human.”

2. QAnon and established religious traditions, which is a live religion practice that exists within the context of an established religious tradition, I've called this Qvangelicalism.

   1. this is the segment of QAnon that has become enmeshed with established religion, in particular forms of Evangelicalism that have a theological foundation whereby adherents need to take action now to make the kingdom of God a reality, rather than wait for it to come.

   2. There is a strong overlap with Dominionist beliefs, which is a theology that believes countries, including the United States, should be governed by Christian biblical law.

3. QAnon as an interstitial religious practice refers to the rise of those who identify as spiritual rather than religious. These spiritual practices are as broad and diverse and the conspiracy theories that make up QAnon. For the purpose of my research I have coined the term Pastel QAnon, to explain this phenomenon, but it is also called conspirituality.

Conclusion

In sum, One of QAnon’s major purposes is the quest to define and explain evil: theodicy. As the movement crowdsources answers to the unexplainable, QAnon provides its devotees with solace in an uncertain—and unprecedented—age. For them, Trump’s arrest is not a loss but part of the omniscient plan that "Q" and Trump have put in place to defeat the Deep State.

That is because those who adhere to QAnon beliefs can rely on the greater framework of the ideology, and on the unfalsifiable principles that form the cornerstone of their ideology, in the face of dissonance. What they are tying to do is make sense of this latest event that has impacted the prophet of their movement and in doing so they turn to the foundational literature given to them by "Q". As these are bits of secret military intelligence they are suppose to decode to make sense of what is to come, they return to their core practices. Qdrops, like scriptural texts, can always be reinterpreted to find new meaning, or adapt old interpretations to fit the current reality. What is of note is that to an insider that is the ultimate truth they need, and there is little to no outside source of information that will convince them otherwise.

This however demonstrated the potential risk that QAnon influencers and adherents pose: the unpredictability of the interpretations they will come to based on old Qdrops. The potential interpretation is what could lead to individual mobilization or even mass mobilization in light of Tuesday's indictment. This would not be novel for QAnon, but I also think it is unlikely that a QAnon adherent, or a mob of QAnon adherents would do anything (based on their current reactions). They are currently happy to believe that they have nothing else to do but be keyboard warriors as it's part of the plan. To most adherents and influencers, there is nothing for them to worry about except to sit back and relax. This is one of the difficult challenges about analyzing QAnon: determining the difference between a harmless conspiracy theory and a dangerous conspiracy theory.

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