Trump and the Peter Pan Fascists: LARPing in the “QUniverse”
How we rebuild and recover from the COVID-19 pandemic may hold the keys to reclaiming some sense of shared reality and common purpose in a world that seems increasingly unhinged from reality.
The idea that we live in a Multiverse (or in a universe among many), first posed by cosmologists and quantum physicists, has become a popular idea in mainstream culture over the past decade. In short it is the theory that there are multiple universes that vary in degrees of similarity of difference to our own, in which an infinite number of different variables and outcomes play out as the total expression of all matter, energy, and time. This has shown up in multiple science fiction series, like the popular Man in the High Tower, where we are introduced to a world existing alongside ours in which the Nazis and Imperial Japan won the Second World War.
By 2020 it has become clear that a parallel universe has begun to intrude into ours and have real world influence in our own worldly affairs. I’ll call this parallel universe the QUniverse. More precisely it can be described as a paracosm, a detailed imaginary world, the kind a child might create where their teddy bears are presidents and kings and the carpet of their bedroom is a vast ocean filled with fantastical creatures.
The central mythos of the QUniverse paracosm, which we’ve become increasingly familiar with over the past few weeks, is that the U.S. government is secretly controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshipping child trafficking pedophile cannibals, often referred to as The Deep State or ‘Synagogue of Satan’, and Donald Trump is the hero, and only one, who can dismantle this nefarious cabal and set the United States on a righteous path once again. Liberal elites, including popular entertainers, elected politicians, government officials, the Black Lives Matter movement, ANTIFA, George Sorros, Bill Gates, the “LameStream Media” the unfortunate owner of Comet Ping Pong Pizza Restaurant in Washington DC and other scapegoats continue to be added to the list of enemies, dupes and traitors gobbled up into the QUniverse as it comes into being.
So what is it? What is QAnon and the QUniverse its believers and proselytizers continue to birth as America crescendos towards a November election?
Dr. Gregory Stanton is a globally renowned academic in human rights and genocide, Past President of the International Association of Genocide Scholars and founder of Genocide Watch, he recently wrote an essay detailing how the core elements of the QAnon mythos are, almost verbatim, a mirror of propaganda in Nazi Germany’s Third Reich. Yes, we got here fast I realize. But this needs to be established right off the bat. QAnon may be an Active Measures masterstroke or it could be a prank/reddit thread gone horribly wrong, but what can be known definitively is this.
In his recent piece QAnon is a Nazi Cult, Rebranded Dr. Stanton warns that QAnon’s central conspiracy theory is a repackaging of the early 20th century godfather of modern conspiracies The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, which was used to predicate Nazi atrocities involving Jews and other political prisoners (Gypsies, Freemasons, Homosexuals and other enemies of the Reich).
As Dr. Thomas Milan Konda observes in his recent book Conspiracies of Conspiracies How Delusions Have Overrun America, The Protocols is fittingly similar to the QAnon QUniverse in that its mythos was a bricolage of Anti-Semitic, Anti-Masonic/Illuminati, Anti-Liberal conspiracy content of the day with roots in the reactionary literature that arose in response to the Enlightenment and Jacobinism of the 18th century. The Protocols essentially pulled together existing conspiracy threads and was curated in the early 20th century by the head of the Russian Secret Police, Pyotr Rachkovsky (Konda, 2019, Pp 50–51).
Konda reminds us in his recent book that conspiracy theories and paranoia have been infused into American political culture since the very beginnings of the Republic, beginning with paranoia about the King of England, the Illuminati, the Pope, and paranoia in the antebellum South about the Union North with its New York bankers and Jacobin friendly progressive ideas.
According to Konda a 1917 version of the Protocols was distributed to the frontlines of World War One, with the title He Is Near, at the Door…Here Comes Antichrist, which then made its way to readers in the West by way of Victor Marsden and was reprinted en masse by American fascist sympathizers like Henry Ford who published a series of pamphlets with content from the Protocols in the Dearborn Independent, a publication he owned.
Despite Henry Ford himself being a Freemason, who were persecuted and killed en masse by the Nazis along with Jews, he was also a fascist sympathizer. Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug.
As Dr. Stanton notes off the top of QAnon is a Nazi Cult, Rebranded “The Nazis published a children’s book of the Protocols that they required in the curriculum of every primary school in Germany” and it’s central tenets were communicated via a popular Nazi publication called Die Steurmer (The Storm Trooper). With a similar cast of characters engaged in similar diabolical predilections in the QUniverse’s ‘Synagogue of Satan’ Stanton states unequivocally that “QAnon’s conspiracy theory is a rebranded version of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion”
In short, QAnon, the conspiracy sensation that’s sweeping the nation, was at one point a Nazi children’s book.
So what has made QAnon in particular such a lightening rod phenomenon as it emerges as the ultimate conspiracy platform in America today?
LARPing in the “QUniverse” — The Intoxicating Rush of Fantasy Role Playing as the World Burns
My curiosity with conspiracy theories goes back to the early 1990s as I was growing up in suburban British Columbia. At the time my hometown of Kelowna was known for having among the most churches per capita in Canada and a strong and growing evangelical community in particular. It was in the apocalyptic millennialism of the evangelical church that I first learned of the shadowy world of conspiracy theories and the many signs that the end was at hand. The Gulf War, AIDS, The World Bank and IMF, the United Nations, Israel, the bar code on all the things we buy, it was all there, right in front of us man. (!)
I eventually read my way through this phase of my life, blessed with the ability to think just critically enough and endowed with just enough natural skepticism that I unshackled myself of the paranoias of conspiracism, and walked away from the evangelical church.
I even became a Freemason. A really, really, really ‘high ranking’ one even!
Evangelicalism is intoxicating in the intensity of its spectacle. Pre-millennial and post-millennial apocalyptic evangelicalism is especially intoxicating when its righteous certitude is added to its spectacle.
Similarly, I believe QAnon offers a type of intoxication for its adherents through its curious mix of democratization of information and Live Action Role Playing at scale. It’s what communication theorist James Cary called, Ritual Communication. The form of communication QAnon engenders helps its adherents construct a symbolic reality (The QUniverse) in which people engage in the co-creation, maintaining, and adapting of a shared belief.
This type of LARPing behavior is seen in the marches and protests and live streaming videos of people taking action who have been inspired by the mythos of the QUniverse. When I see people doing these (crazy) things and saying these (incredibly bizarre) things, I see people living in a chaotic, unfair and inexplicable world finding power and creating meaning through their shared QAnon mania. We need to take this seriously.
As is detailed in the fascinating QAnonymous Podcast the anonymous author “Q” will leave breadcrumbs, Easter eggs, random clues, non-sequitors, even random keyboard mashings online, and the believers of the QUniverse react in a frenzy to de-code and interpret and mobilize around this content.
As Adrian Hon writes in an intriguing piece in Vice, it is like what began as something akin to an Online Alternate Reality Video Game has spilled into the analogue world, with frightening consequences.
Anyone can play this game, you matter in this QUniverse! But be warned, the QUniverse can turn on you too, as detailed in the cautionary tale of Scottie the Kid. The model/rapper with dirty lyrics who has been identified as the catalyst for the Save the Kids Marches that took place across America this year. Once QAnon chatrooms found out how many references to pizza he made in his lyrics he became a persona non grata in the QUniverse.
I’m sure like many cults, myths, religions, or corporate mission statements, people involved in the co-creation of the QUniverse believe this mythos with varying degrees of commitment.
But with nearly 100 American politicians actively promoting and endorsing QAnon and some pro-QAnon politicians now winning nominations for public office in the United States, like Marjorie Taylor Greene, this suggests the semi-orchestrated chaos of the QAnon phenomenon risks becoming a political movement of sorts.
This is especially concerning when we’ve witnessed multiple times in 2020, members of the QAnon community/cult believing in the dark paranoid delusions of the QUniverse to such an extent that they will drive across the country to attempt to kill and threaten elected leaders and politicians, interfere with the efforts of non-profits actually trying to break up child trafficking rings, shoot and kill a mafia family member because they believed he was part of the Deep State, and engage in a litany of other criminal acts. In doing so they are performing the myth of QAnon, they are bringing its dark and twisted existence into being.
Despite all of this violence and criminality being done in the name of an absurd and incredible premise, according to the Pew Research Centre 41% of Republicans who have heard something about QAnon agree it is somewhat or very good for the country, and less than 50% thinking it is at least somewhat bad. With himself identified as the central hero figure at the center of the QUniverse, President Donald Trump praised the QAnon movement even while the FBI labeled it a growing domestic terrorism threat.
And just who is “Q” ? Well, the QAnonymous Podcast has some intriguing ideas rooted in empirical evidence about that too if you’re interested. I’m actually less interested in who Q is and more interested in how we break his spell and find our way back to each other and to a shared sense of reality and common purpose.
We’re Off to Never Never Land
Whether it is Russian Active Measures or a New Jersey financial analyst’s prank or a proxy of the Trump Campaign itself, QAnon may be a reproduction of a fascist fairy-tale of the past but it is also a product of our time. It is the prophet of today’s Peter Pan Fascism in which the Trumps of the world can whisk their supporters into a collective fever dream where real threats to our well-being like climate change and the coronavirus pandemic are hoaxes perpetuated by China and the Democrats, but bogeymen like ANTIFA and peaceful movements for racial justice and police reform like Black Lives Matter, are currently burning American cities to the ground and preparing to invade your suburban neighbourhood on election day, as Trump’s Director of Communications for Health and Human Services, Michael Caputo, proclaimed on a recent Facebook Live rant.
Roundly criticized for his comments, he’s now on a personal health leave.
It seems nuts now that we are here in this moment, but we should have seen this coming for years.
Media watchdogs like Ad Fontes Media have been warning us since the start of the 21st century that we are increasingly retreating into bias re-enforcing media bubbles in which we are given vastly different accounts of reality.
It was enshrined in the words of Senior Advisor to Trump, Kellyanne Conway, when she introduced the world to the concept of Alternative Facts. Indeed, when there are two different realities at play it’s not inconceivable to arrive at the conclusion there are alternative facts that underpin them.
As University of Chicago political science professor Eric Oliver explains in a recent U of Chicago podcast, the same forces driving the rise in conspiracy theory culture is also behind the intensification of political polarization in America. At the core of this trend is an examination of political identity and behaviour that doesn’t break so much along the lines of conservative and progressive or Republican and Democrat, but along the lines of “Intuitionists” and “Rationalists”.
Intuitionalists rely on what conspiracy theory researchers call “Patternicity” the act of finding meaningful connections in randomness, chaos and noise. Often times those patterns will re-enforce and confirm existing biases, rather than challenge new learning. Needless to say, those who rely on intuition and pattern finding are inclined towards conspiracism.
It was only a matter of time before some kind of mania or mass delusion grabbed hold in a self-re-enforcing echo chamber of bias and paranoia that tens of millions were subjected to for years on end.
But it wasn’t just an increasingly polarized media landscape that brought us to this point, it was also the experiences of living in a world with a vanishing middle class losing its sense of agency and opportunity.
Since the 1960s America has seen a precipitous decline in public trust in government. Of all the G7 nations its people trust the government the least. As author Umair Haque writes, this may have been written right into the DNA of the country in terms of which conceptions of freedom and liberty were privileged over others in the crafting of its constitution and national identity.
From the Vietnam War, to Watergate, to Iran Contra, to 9/11 to the market crashes and bank bailouts, trust in government has eroded to dangerous levels in America.
It was in this increasingly unfair and inequitable world that the anger and the scapegoating and the desperate piecing together of answers for the inexplicable found currency once again in the world of conspiracy theories. Just as history has shown us, is likely to happen.
QAnon eventually emerged as Leviathan in this world.
As I wrote about in an earlier piece this year, it was these failures of Neoliberalism and the ill begotten policies that led to increasing inequality and loss of agency, that are at the heart of this dark paranoid moment. And this is where the process of rebuilding and recovering from the Coronavirus Pandemic enters in.
Decades of nepotistic authoritarian rule in the world’s largest democracies now appear entirely plausible as American institutions fail like rusty circuit breakers in an overloaded power station and Trumpian strong-men consolidate their power in India, Brazil, and elsewhere.
It’s not that Trump, Bolsanoro, Modi and these other Peter Pan Fascists offer people a false sense of hope, they offer as a false sense of strength, with the competency to protect their followers from a threat or some threats — just not the threats of climate change, economic inequality or COVID19. The threat of other people in your country. It’s classic fascism.
The United States, India, and Brazil are the three worst hit countries in the world for COVID19, it’s no coincidence; all three have right-wing populist leaders who similarly have terrible track records on human rights and the environment who spend more time attacking their own people than our most pressing real world challenges.
Finding Our Way Home
It’s hard to say where exactly we should go from here in order to dissipate the feverish mania of QAnon and how it is manifesting in dangerous real-world actions. How do we break the spell?
Regulating the social media giants who are unequivocally complicit with the rampant spread of misinformation and disinformation is a start. As research from the Brookings Institution shows, the declining trust in mainstream journalism mirrors the declining trust in public institutions.
As someone who has worked in public policy and community development for over a decade I believe a key is in understanding we have a broken social contract that has unraveled America and threatens to do the same in other Western Countries. The 40 years of neoliberal polices and narratives that worsened inequality, weakened public institutions, promoted disdain for government, consolidated wealth, replaced equity with debt for working people, and stalled action on the greatest challenges facing humanity in favor of stock market numbers, is our starting point.
On one had the Coronavirus pandemic has caused an outright supernova of conspiracy theorism and QAnon LARPing but on the other hand it has presented us with a moment of pause where we are considering what society might look like after the pandemic. How can we emerge better, stronger, fairer?
If people find they have a place in the post-pandemic world, to play a meaningful role in their community, if they find that feelings of opportunity, connection and potential are stronger than feelings of dread and paranoia, I’m hopeful that conspiracism won’t be an increasingly dominant worldview in the 21st century as Thomas Konda portents.
Recovery funding needs to mobilize resources and people in such a way that feelings of efficacy and a tangible sense of possibility replace fear with hope and empathy. It cannot go to bail out corporations, it needs to go to workers. It can’t go to billionaires, it has to go to small businesses. It can’t further the financialization of the world’s economy, it has to bring us back down to earth, in our communities, face to face, with the realization that we can build a better future together with money in our pockets and tools in our hands.
Or we can at least batten down the hatches as best we can and stare our doom straight in the eyes as adults instead of dithering in a fantasy world of absurdism while the world burns around us.
How we build back after the pandemic could hold the key to re-emerging with a shared sense of purpose and along with that, a shared sense of reality in which the paracosm of the QUniverse fades into the canon of humanity’s shunned and forgotten fairy tales where it belongs.
This is a world where we could find the courage to deal with the real threats facing us and elect leaders with the courage to deal with reality such as it is, instead of retreating into a fantasy world of scapegoats and fleeting shadows like the QUniverse.
Cosmologists and physicists may be right, there may be multiple universes, but as we’ve seen with QAnon, even an imaginary universe can have dangerous real-world consequences once enough people choose to live in it.
One day millions of people were living in a democratic Germany, the next day they were living in Nazi Germany’s Third Reich — a vision from the mind of a madman inspired by the same paranoid anti-Semitic conspiracy at the heart of QAnon’s mythos. If we don’t take this threat seriously, you too may find yourself living in the dark Never Never Land of the QUniverse, a twisted, paranoid place where terrible unthinkable things happen, and heroes like Donald Trump are adored with cult-like fanaticism. I hope you’ll take this threat seriously.