April 20, 2021: Witches Entering through Keyholes and QAnon Beliefs

 

4/20/21: These have been challenging times for the QAnon crew; but there’s new “hope” for delusional conspiracy theorists. 

Now that they know Trump isn’t coming back anytime soon, QAnon believers have focused on vaccine conspiracies.

A victim of witchcraft collapses in court, Salem, Massachusetts, 1692

 

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A few drops of science will often disinfect an entire barrel full of ignorance and prejudice. 

Hendrik Van Loon

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Before we dive into the story of QAnon, we should go back a few centuries to a period when people subscribed to witchcraft conspiracies. The historian Paige Smith describes the delusions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, when “witchcraft broke out like a terrible epidemic.” 

The madness of persecution, flaring up early in the fifteen hundreds blazed like a raging fire for the next hundred and fifty years. Witches suddenly began to swarm through all of Europe, burning hayricks, holding witches Sabbats, consorting with the devil, working mischief and destruction everywhere. The most learned theologians and scholars recorded their comings and goings and affirmed their authenticity. Thousands of old women, lubricating themselves with devil’s grease made out of the fat of murdered infants, slid through cracks and keyholes to make their airborne journey to a witches’ Sabbats. Specialists in witchcraft located eight hundred meeting places in the province of Lorraine. Twelve thousand witches were believed to have assembled for meeting in southwest France; often they came to such gatherings with their demon-lovers in attendance.

 

At the gatherings the devil himself appeared, sometimes in the form of a bearded man, sometimes as a goat or a toad. The witches danced to music made from bones and skulls, enjoyed sexual orgies with their demons or ate meals that might consist of boiled children, corpses, bats, and other tasty bits. Bizarre and horrible as witchcraft persecutions were it is notable that they were directed primarily at women. Not a few men, priests and civil officials, were charged and burned as witches, but the vast majority were women and a very considerable number confessed, without torture, to being members of that dark sisterhood. (Daughters of the Promised Land; pp.31-32)

 

If that sounds absurd, compare with the tenets of QAnon. Last Christmas Eve, a Milwaukee-area pharmacist named Steven Brandenburg destroyed 500 doses of Moderna vaccine. He told authorities he feared the drug would alter the DNA of anyone who received it. He also warned his wife that the government was “planning cyberattacks and plans to shut down the power grid.” 

If you threw in a few bats, and witches entering homes through keyholes, you had the same baseless paranoia today as in 1692. 

Mass meetings of devil-worshippers in the sixteenth century. It was all imaginary. A “cabal” of cannibalistic pedophiles in 2021? And for political purposes, conveniently all liberals! Imaginary. 

Not to say pathetic.

 

In an article on how antivaxxers and QAnon have recently combined, Rolling Stone sums up current conspiracy thinking in language similar to Smith commenting on the witchcraft hysteria. 

“The core of Q is familiar,” writes Tim Dickinson: 

It posits that the surface world of respectable politicians, well-intentioned government institutions, and the media seeking to hold them accountable, is an illusion. The real power in the world is wielded by shadowy power brokers in the government, Hollywood, and the media called “the cabal” or the “deep state.” QAnon takes this conspiratorial boilerplate to wild extremes. The “deep state” is alleged to be insatiable in its thirst for power, and willing to do anything – from launching wars to spreading pestilence – to move closer to global domination. The Q ideology has no room for subtlety. The conspirators are believed to be the embodiment of evil, actual “luciferins” and pedophiles.

 

The theory may sound lunatic, but Q Anon is no longer relegated to the fringe: A Civiqs tracking poll finds that even after the attack on the Capitol, 10 percent of Republicans describe themselves as “supporters” of QAnon. Tenets of the Q belief system are even more widely held: An NPR poll released at the end of 2020 found 17 percent of Americans rated as true the statement that: “A group of Satan-worshiping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media.”

 

The good news (you can argue) is that we no longer hang or burn witches. 

 

Our ancestors had some excuse. We should know better. 

The bad news: delusional thinking is still delusional thinking. In the past witches dangled from scaffolds. In the present, QAnon dupes decide to riot on Capitol Hill and five people are killed, and dozens of police injured. The more anti-vaxxers there are, refusing to get shots in order to “protect their DNA,” the more potential hosts remain in which the virus may find harbor. Our ancestors had some excuse. Science was severely limited in the 1600s. So, our forebearers could believe the devil might appear in the shape of a toad. We should know better. COVID-19 enters our cells, somewhat like flu or herpes. Only it’s far more deadly. 

Unfortunately, “The larger the group of unvaccinated individuals, the more chance the virus can mutate to pose a danger, even to the already vaccinated.” We’re seeing that already, with several new strains. As one medical expert tells Dickinson, “Large outbreaks anywhere can give rise to variants that can escape vaccines everywhere. It’s the nightmare scenario of a never-ending pandemic.” 

 

POSTSCRIPT: Speaking of idiots, Ted Nugent has revealed that he contracted COVID-19, and a bad case, too. “I thought I was dying,” he said in a Facebook live video. “I literally could hardly crawl out of bed the last few days,” adding, “so I was officially tested positive for COVID-19 today.” 

This came after he grumbled in the past that the virus was “not a real pandemic.” He does note that he won’t be getting any vaccines, because no one knows what’s in them. 

Still stupid, in other words. For more details on what an ignorant fool Nugent is, check this link. 

 

FUN FACT: It turns out that twelve superrich donors gave $3.4 billion dollars to candidates and causes during the 2020 election cycle, or one of every thirteen dollars donated. A report, issued by a group called Issue One, warns of “the corrosive effect of big money in politics.” 

Money talks, as they say, and when politicians listen to the superrich, they may not be listening to people like you and me. Unless you are one of the superrich and happen to be reading this fine blog. 

As Salon notes, all twelve are white, six preferring Democrats, six siding with the Republicans. 

Democratic donors included former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (who spent $1 billion, much of it on his own bid to become president), hedge fund manager Tom Steyer (he also spent $200 million on a presidential campaign), Donald Sussman and Jim Simons, hedge fund managers, media mogul Fred Eychaner, and Facebook co-founder Dustin Moskovitz. 

Top Republican donors included Sheldon Adelson and Dr. Miriam Adelson, Richard and Elizabeth Uihlein, who made their money as shipping magnates, two more hedge fund managers, Ken Griffin and Paul Singer, Timothy Mellon, of the famed Mellon family, fabulously rich since the days of John D. Rockefeller, and TD Ameritrade founder Joe Ricketts and his wife Marlene.