THE CONSPIRASPHERE

Has the attitude of the mainstream media to conspiracy theories changed from amused condescension to moral panic? NOEL ROONEY looks at their response to QAnon.

QANON AS THREAT

I’ve written in these pages, on more than one occasion, about the strange creep of conspiracy theory and conspiracist themes into the mainstream. When I first observed this phenomenon, it was largely a form of media entertainment involving ‘lookat-the-nutters’ articles on Flat Earth theory, the Moon Landing Hoax, and generally the more exotic reaches of the Conspirasphere. In some newspapers (a couple of UK tabloids come to mind), there was even a hint of breathless sympathy for views that would not normally make it as far as the pages of the press.

Recently, however, the flippant attitude of the media has given way to something more akin to moral panic. Conspiracy theory has morphed from treat to threat, and the main focus of this new wave of hand-wringing journalism has been QAnon (FT371:32-39). How and why has a fringe movement in the USA (where 75 per cent of the population has never heard of QAnon, let alone been threatened by it) become the signal danger to democracy as far afield as the UK and Australia? What we are witnessing here, I believe, is a kind of paper tiger mania that has infected some sections of the media to the point where they have become the ironic marketing outlet for all things QAnon. Conspiracy theory aside, this is in itself a properly fortean phenomenon.

Moral panic is, of course, not new. From Reds under the bed to non-existent Satanic child abuse, the media have regularly been prone to promoting the fear of completely spurious perils. The QAnon scare is in some respects just another in a long line of hollow monsters haunting the less rational segments of the media; or a shibboleth for a sense of fear that needs to erupt publicly every so often in a popped bubble of catharsis. That eruption requires an object; as Paul Valery, put it: “We hope vaguely; we fear precisely.”

Let’s look at some basic misconceptions around QAnon. First and foremost, QAnon is not a conspiracy theory. It is a loosely knit, and often fissiparous, community of interests that has coalesced around the cryptic posts of an anonymous source on an obscure and often scurrilous social media platform. Q offers a single – and singular – original conspiracy theory: that an alliance of military and intelligence operatives has formed behind the figurehead of Donald Trump to fight an internecine war against the Deep State. The necessity for this conflict is not properly articulated in Q’s gnomic and fragmentary writings; in fact, the bulk of what is perceived as the Q canon is the work of a small, dedicated group of individuals interpreting the Q Drops for the wider QAnon community. These Q-proofers and Q interpreters have drawn on an eclectic range of preexisting conspiracy theories to shore up the skeletal and deliberately imprecise utterances that form the actual output of Q.

The QAnon community, both the core adherents and the rather larger numbers of loose affiliates who include the Q Drops in their piecemeal worldview, take the secondhand material and assimilate it into their ideas about a political reality that appears both threatening and immoral. In many respects, they do precisely what the media are currently doing; they grab bits of Q material and use them as targets to wave their frightened sticks at. The world, for religious conservatives of a certain age, is a strange and foreign place; their personal and collective certainties are under constant threat from the forces of change. Membership of the Qanon movement gives them a modicum of reassurance that they are not entirely alone in a sea of liberal immorality. It also enables a quixotic attempt to build a coherent narrative out of incoherent elements.

This is QAnon, inasmuch as we can actually talk about QAnon as a coherent entity; not so much a threat to democracy as a deeply frightened version of it. Q, without having to produce much in the way of concrete evidence, offers the comforting illusion of an insider fighting the good fight. And for many on the beleaguered right in the US, that is a message they desperately need to hear. The vast majority of people in the QAnon community, just like the majority of conspiracy theorists, sincerely believe they are engaged in a struggle to defend democracy from an ill-defined, murky cabal determined to strip us of our rights and freedoms.

So it is curious in the extreme that so many in the media see them as exactly the opposite. It is as if a mutual illusion has captured both the Q folks and the journalists who write about them. Each side looks at the other and sees, not a political group with whom they disagree, but an ogre intent on devouring everything that is good. And the media interest in QAnon suffers from the paradox of all moral panics: be careful what you wish for. Just as Facebook did more to disseminate the Pizzagate conspiracy theory than any advocate

(in the recent documentary, The Social Dilemma ,anexFB executive suggests that Pizzagate was posted as a ‘Recommended for you’ titbit hundreds of millions of times), concerned media outlets are doing more for the domestic and international profile of QAnon than any crazed conspiracist ever could.

The attitude of the media is something akin to a moral panic

SOURCES: www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-congress-qanon/ bipartisan-measure-introducedin-congress-to-condemnqanon-conspiracy-theoryidUSKBN25L2MF. www.theguardian.com/world/2020/sep/20/the-qanon-conspiracy. www.insider.com/qanon-violencecrime-conspiracy-theory-usallegation-arrest-killing-gun-2020-8 www.theguardian.com/usnews/2020/sep/16/qanonrepublicans-conspiracy-theorypolitics-save-the-children.