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From Saturday Night Live to HBO to South Park, major players in entertainment are starting to depict QAnon. But experts are cautious. As the absurdity of the conspiracy theory becomes the butt of jokes, does it ignore the group s roots in anti-Semitic and racist ideology?
“QAnon says there is an underground ring of very bad people who gather to undermine Trump and steal elections and eat children. I hear that and I m like whoa, where, said Kate McKinnon on a recent episode of Saturday Night Live. On the one hand, the scene is very purposefully trying to make it laughable and ridiculous and unserious in a way that it helps us to recognize that it s not going to be congruent theory that there are lots of weaknesses in the theory, said Outi Hakola, Researcher of North American Culture at the University of Helsinki.
Jake Angeli at a protest in Phoenix following the November 2020 election.
There didn’t seem to be much of a plan. The presidential election was over, and Joe Biden won. Ordinarily, that would be the end of it, but there was nothing ordinary about 2020.
President Donald Trump said the election had been stolen from him. His supporters backed him at rallies, like one in Arizona, where people carried signs that said “stop the steal.”
Some carried flags or guns. There were signs that referred to QAnon, an online conspiracy theory. But the rally was peaceful and had a carnival-like atmosphere, with flags, speeches and songs.
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QAnon followers on have been talking about getting in on the trading action started by Reddit’s WallStreetBets….a disruption that rattled the stock market. The GameStop and the kind of Reddit populism of the traders was a real boon for QAnon folks, said Jack Bratich, Associate Professor of Journalism and Media Studies at Rutgers University, and author of “Conspiracy Panics: Political Rationality and Popular Culture.
The most recent frenzy is focused on silver trading. One Q influencer with 62,000 Telegram subscribers urged them to buy physical silver and create “a giant short squeeze that will make GameStop look like it’s a small world.”
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During the pink-salt-lamp-lit evening classes she d conduct at Yess Yoga in Minneapolis, Marnie Bounds frequently shared a mixture of metaphysical philosophies about the subtle body, a person s energetic layers that transcend the physical, while folding in her own astrological interpretations.
After the pandemic started, Bounds classes moved online and she added a weekly info session What on Earth Is Happening? that brought something new to the mix: QAnon.
QAnon is the movement that falsely believes former President Donald Trump has been working to destroy a child sex-trafficking cabal of Satanists run by prominent Democrats and celebrities. Its adherents include a handful of Minnesota politicians along with members of the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, including horn-helmeted, self-declared shaman Jake Angeli.