Topic: QAnon

QAnon and the Fragility of Truth. Nathan J. Robinson, Current Affairs. Dec. 30, 2020.

My general approach to things labeled “conspiracy theories” is not to wave them away as “crazy.” I do not want beliefs considered outlandish to be dismissed without consideration, because I hold beliefs that some people consider outlandish, and I do not want to be treated as a kook myself. I want people to evaluate my actual arguments and determine for themselves whether what I am saying is reasonable. I know that one of my intellectual heroes, Noam Chomsky, is often treated as a “crank” and “conspiracy theorist.” I don’t see him that way, because I have spent a lot of time reading his work carefully and examining his arguments. But if I had listened to what people said about what he said, instead of diving into the original material, I would never have given him a fair hearing.

Does that mean I want to give QAnon a fair hearing? Yes. Yes it does. Because, and you may laugh, what if the QAnon theory is true? The first QAnon book I opened, QAnon: An Invitation to the Great Awakening,** which calls itself a “field guide to an important chunk of reality that’s been carefully hidden and wrongly discredited by the media,” begins by asking:

Have you ever wondered why we go to war or why you never seem to be able to get out of debt? Why there is poverty, division, and crime? What if I told you there was a reason for it all? What if I told you it was done on purpose? What if I told you that those corrupting the world, poisoning our food and igniting conflict were themselves about to be permanently eradicated from the earth? You might think that is an idealistic fantasy. Well, let me tell you a story. 

Your first reaction to this might be: oh, boy. Here comes a conspiracy theory. But I actually try to keep myself from rolling my eyes. If someone comes to me with this kind of story, I want to give them a chance to lay out their case, because I don’t know what their story is and I don’t know everything about the world, and on the off chance that they’re right and I’m wrong, I kind of want to find out about the reasons for war and poverty and the coming eradication of those causing it! 

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I do not think people who believe in QAnon are stupid. In fact, I think it’s a huge mistake to assume that. I do think that anyone who believes in this theory hasn’t thought very critically about the kinds of cognitive biases we are subject to, and the ways that we can be manipulated into thinking we are discovering truth when we are actually drifting further and further away from it. The Washington Post’s ex-QAnoner was a perfectly normal and intelligent guy who was frightened when he realized how far he’d gone toward believing something he now realized to be obviously untrue. He still didn’t quite understand how it had happened. It is important to accept that ordinary people, even well-educated and otherwise-sensible ones, can end up believing totally bonkers falsehoods.

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I still believe in the power of evidence and reason, even though I have long thought that simply “fact checking” people to death is an ineffective way to change their minds. But “evidence” and “reason” are not just magic words you can say. Reasoning is something you do, evidence is something you either have or don’t have. Like many others on the right, the QAnon propagandists use the rhetoric of evidence without the reality of it. 

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Everyone needs to learn to be a true skeptic. Many QAnon people are actually trying to be skeptics. They question what the media tells them. If someone else comes along with a theory that sounds crazy but offers a coherent story and has a bunch of facts they don’t know how to explain away, they listen. The problem is that they need to think harder and do some serious scrutiny of the kinds of things they have started to find persuasive. 

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Part of the problem is that very little of our knowledge is based on examining evidence and weighing arguments to begin with. We often believe things because someone we trust to tell us the truth has told us a thing is true. And yes, that goes for liberals and leftists just as much as QAnon people. 

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It’s incredibly difficult to find the truth in this world, and everyone probably believes a number of things that aren’t the case. The very definition of truth, and the possibility of finding it out absolutely, are highly contested. We do the best we can and sometimes we go down blind alleys. QAnon is a real serious blind alley. We can see why people end up going down it, though. It tells a powerful tale that offers people a motivation for avoiding critical questions they might otherwise ask.

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The whole Q theory cannot really last beyond Trump’s last day in office. I think many of these people are soon going to discover that they need a new theory once the Great Awakening doesn’t happen. 

The bigger problem here is that QAnon is “proof of concept” for greater mass delusions in the future. It shows how fragile the truth is and how easy it can be to get something utterly ridiculous to be taken very seriously by scarily large numbers of people. The tendencies that lead people to be sucked into these kinds of psychological black holes are still going to be present next year and the year after. I am reassured to know they are easy to combat intellectually. I am discomforted to know that this may not matter in the least. 

QAnon Is A Fake, Decoy Imitation Of A Healthy Revolutionary Impulse. Caitlin Johnstone. Aug. 20, 2020.

I write against QAnon periodically for the exact same reason I write against the plutocratic media: it’s an obvious propaganda construct designed to manufacture support for the status quo among people who otherwise would not support it. It presents itself as an exciting movement where the little guy is finally rising up and throwing off the chains of the tyrannical forces which have been exploiting and oppressing us, yet in reality all it’s doing is telling a discontented sector of the population to relax and “trust the plan” and put all their faith in the leader of the US government.

And that’s exactly what makes QAnon so uniquely toxic. It’s not just that it gets people believing false things which confuse and alienate them, it’s that it’s a fake, decoy imitation of what a healthy revolutionary impulse would look like. It sells people on important truths that they already intuitively know on some level, like the untrustworthiness of the mass media, that the official elected US government aren’t really the ones calling the shots, and that we need a great awakening. It takes those vital, truthful, healthy revolutionary impulses, then twists them around into support for the United States president and the agendas of the Republican Party.

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The fact that people need to be deceived by their healthy impulses in this way is a good sign; it means we’re generally good people with a generally healthy sense of which way to push. If we were intrinsically wicked and unwise their propaganda wouldn’t hook us by telling us to fight tyranny, defend children and tell the truth–it would hook us using our cowardice, our hatred, our greed, our sadism. People are basically good, and propagandists use that goodness to trick us.

But good will and good intentions aren’t enough, unfortunately. Even intelligence, by itself, isn’t enough to save us from being propagandized; some fairly intelligent people have fallen for propaganda operations like QAnon and Russiagate. If you want to have a clear perspective on what’s really going on in the world you’ve got to have an unwavering devotion to knowing what’s true that goes right down into your guts.

Most people don’t have this. Most people do not have truth as a foremost priority. They probably think they do, but they don’t. When it comes right down to it, most people are more invested in finding ways to defend their preexisting biases than in learning what’s objectively true. If they’ve got a special hatred for Democrats, the confirmation biases that will give them leave them susceptible to the QAnon psyop. If they’ve got a special hatred for Trump, they’re susceptible to believing he’s controlled by some kind of Russian government conspiracy. There are any number of other directions such biases can carry someone.

Only by a humble devotion to truth that is willing to sacrifice any worldview or ideology to the uncompromising fire of objective reality can skilfully navigate through a world that is saturated with disinformation and propaganda. Sincerely put truth first in all things while doing your best to find out what’s actually going on in our world, and eventually you’re guaranteed to free yourself from any perceptual distortion.

How You Can Be 100% Certain That QAnon Is Bullshit. Johnstone. May 26, 2019.

... If you’re one of those fortunate enough to be unfamiliar with the QAnon phenomenon, in October of 2017 odd posts began appearing on the anonymous message board 4chan, which is wildly popular with trolls, incels and racists. Those posts ceased appearing on 4chan and moved to a related site, 8chan, where they continue appearing to this day. The poster purports to have insider knowledge of a secret, silent and invisible war that President Trump has been waging against the Deep State with the help of the US military and various “white hats” within the US government, and shares snippets about this war with 8chan users in extremely vague and garbled posts.

Here are three reasons you can be absolutely, 100 percent certain that it’s bullshit:

1. It always, always, always excuses Trump’s facilitation of evil deep state agendas.

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2. They always, always, always refuse to prove the validity of their position.

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A year ago I tweeted out that I was thinking of writing an article about QAnon and asked its adherents for their very best links/screenshots proving its legitimacy. Go ahead and have a read of the kinds of responses I got by clicking this hyperlink if you’re curious. No one came remotely close to providing anything like the evidence I’d asked for, with most responses falling along the lines of “You kind of have to just immerse yourself in it over an extended period of time and marinate in it until you believe,” which is the same sort of response you’ll get if you ask a religious proselytizer to prove the legitimacy of their religion. I shared the thread again yesterday and got the same response, with one QAnon promoter with a fairly large following telling me, “No amount of evidence can be seen by one choosing to stay blind.”

This is completely different from standard conspiracy theories. If you ask a 9/11 truther to prove the legitimacy of their position, they’ll instantly be able to produce clear and concise videos and articles for you, and if they’ve actually done their homework they’ll be able to regale you with information about physics, forensics, architecture, chemistry, and plot holes in the official narrative. If you ask someone who’s got theories about the JFK assassination you’ll get a comparable amount of lucidity. Ask a QAnon cultist for the same level of intellectual transparency and you’ll get a bunch of mealy-mouthed gibberish which will quickly turn into accusations that you are lazy for refusing to do your own research if you keep pressing.

This is because there is no actual, tangible factual basis for the belief system which has sprouted up around QAnon. It begins, just like any other religion, as a premise of faith, and then the adherents to that faith pool their intellectual resources into the task of finding reasons to legitimize that premise. They begin with the premise that Trump is a good and noble savior who is uprooting the source of all of America’s problems with strategic maneuvers which are so brilliant that they look like the exact opposite of what they are, then they let confirmation bias and other cognitive biases do the rest of the work for them.

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3. It’s made many bogus claims and inaccurate predictions.

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I don’t claim to know everything about this QAnon thing or who exactly is behind it, but these three points I just outlined in my opinion kill all doubt that it’s not what it purports to be. For anyone looking at them with intellectual honesty rather than the same way a creationist or cult member might look at something which challenges their faith, anyway.

It is not good that a vocal and enthusiastic part of Trump’s largely anti-interventionist, pro-WikiLeaks base has been propagandized into consistently stumping for longtime agendas of the CIA and the Pentagon. Someone’s benefiting from this, and it isn’t you.