On Friday, writing for the Chicago Tribune, columnist Virginia Heffernan argued that the QAnon conspiracy — which holds that former President Donald Trump is fighting to take down a cabal of flesh-eating pedophile Satanists who rule the United States — is rapidly falling apart and will soon fade into the history books.
“QAnon, who made a messiah out of former President Donald Trump, was always bound to lose steam. It will follow the arc of furious, loopy-loo American conspiracy theories that have existed since before the Civil War. Cults like QAnon burn bright, and they fade fast,” wrote Heffernan. “QAnon’s demise, in fact, is well underway. Its leader, Q, a figure from the internet’s dark side, is now widely suspected to be the creation of Jim and Ron Watkins. The Watkins men are a seedy father-son duo in Asia who serve up pornography and hate speech online.”
As evidence of the decline, Heffernan noted: the mysterious anonymous poster “Q” whose cryptic messages drove the theory has vanished from the internet; many believers have now disavowed the movement; and the fallout from the January 6 Capitol riot has led many more to blame the movement for their violence. Continue reading.