Now that it’s become apparent that, not only did President Trump not sweep to victory in the 2020 President Election, but that he’s on the brink of failure (CNN has just called the race for Biden, in company of many other news organizations), there’ll be an instructive period of conspiracy theory retrofitting. Professor Richardson sums up the problem for QAnon:
Addressing the right-wing media’s construction of a false narrative for its supporters seems crucial to restoring sanity to the country’s politics. How that might play out is unclear, in part because Trump’s extremism seems to be driving a wedge into the right-wing ecosystem. Limbaugh and Jones are following Trump, but QAnon, which promised that Trump and the military were in control and that Trump would ride to victory, is suddenly adrift. Believers thought he would bring “The Storm,” which would destroy the pedophile-cannibals in the Democratic Party. But now, Trump is losing and “Q” went silent after the election until tonight, when it simply told followers to stay strong.
This won’t destroy QAnon, of course. I feel quite sure that, somewhere deep in a Russian cyberwarfare bunker, American reactions to the apparent Biden victory are being analyzed and proper reactions by the QAnon account are being planned. The goal will be to make it appear that QAnon is unsurprised and has even predicted this turn of events. Or that the promised Trump lawsuits will turn enough states to deliver to him the victory. QAnon, unlike religious cults, doesn’t have as much access to credible (to the adherents) magical thinking as do out ‘n out religious cults, which are more dependent on the charisma of the leader.
This is not to say that the entire QAnon cult will be unfazed; perhaps 5% will leave, finally shocked to their senses by the failure of yet another prophecy. But the cult satisfies some deep need of the cultists, and, because QAnon is far different from most cults in that the leader never reveals him or herself, it’ll be exceedingly unlikely that they’ll be caught out in some supreme form of treachery which would break the cult – such as sexual malfeasance, which has brought down many a cult leader. Look for QAnon to endure, if not prosper. And possibly turn a little more violent.
But QAnon will evaporate. Younger generations will look at them in disbelief, and only a very, very few – insufficient for replacement purposes – will join up. We’ll just have to put up with their silliness, much like that of the Flat-Earthers.
