The QAnon—I'm not sure what to call it, cult? conspiracy? movement?—has been a punchline pretty much since the beginning, but I suspect that people are going to be forced to take it seriously over the next six months as its—adherents? members? believers—start showing up in Congress.
Reporters at NBC have gotten access to an internal investigation by Facebook and the results should convince pretty much everyone that QAnon isn't a joke:
An internal investigation by Facebook has uncovered thousands of groups and pages, with millions of members and followers, that support the QAnon conspiracy theory, according to internal company documents reviewed by NBC News.The investigation’s preliminary results, which were provided to NBC News by a Facebook employee, shed new light on the scope of activity and content from the QAnon community on Facebook, a scale previously undisclosed by Facebook and unreported by the news media, because most of the groups are private.
The top 10 groups identified in the investigation collectively contain more than 1 million members, with totals from more top groups and pages pushing the number of members and followers past 3 million. It is not clear how much overlap there is among the groups.
In my darker moments I wonder if QAnon will be the most important legacy of Trumpism because it manages to marry the white nationalists, the conspiracy-minded, and the movement conservatives all under a quasi-religious framework that is unfalsifiable.You should take these people seriously.
thebulwark |
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