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.
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| A victim of witchcraft collapses in court, Salem, Massachusetts, 1692 |
____________________
A few drops of science will often disinfect an entire barrel
full of ignorance and prejudice.
Hendrik Van Loon
____________________
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.
