QAnon believers in disarray after Biden’s inauguration

After the riots, QAnon supporters eagerly anticipated the timing of Biden’s inauguration.

“As the noose tightens around the Deep State, some people are increasingly desperate to discredit Q,” a 4chan user said Wednesday morning. “I guess what they say is true. The flack is heaviest above the target.”

But after Biden’s swearing in and out, panic set in.

“We were promised arrests, denunciations, military rule, classified documents. Where is it ????????” wrote a member of the Telegram channel linked to QAnon, which has nearly 128,000 subscribers.

“I’m scared, my stomach hurts, but I’m still holding the line,” said another.

“Well, babies are still being raped and eaten, every f ** kin minute now GOD,” said another.

Some have started to recognize the truth.

“Biden is our president,” a fourth Telegram user said. “It’s time to leave our devices and get back to reality. If something happens, something’s going on, but for now I’m logging out of all social media. It’s been fun guys but it’s is unfortunately over. ”

Other believers have insisted that the lack of a climax was in itself part of the plan, theorizing that Trump had simply “allowed” Biden to become president “for appearances” while the former TV host. reality would be the one pulling the strings. “Everything that happens over the next 4 years is actually President Trump’s doing,” one 4chan user wrote.

“It’s a hot mess, frankly,” Carla Hill, researcher at the Anti-Defamation League Center on Extremism, said of the various reactions from believers in QAnon. “Frustration has started to creep in. There is embarrassment, anger … A range of [new] conspiracies ensue and they quarrel among themselves. ”

The apparent ease with which some QAnon believers were able to adjust the theory to suit new events underscores how slippery conspiracy theory can be. But the proliferation of new theories and beliefs could also lead to a collapse of the movement – and, some extremism experts warn, to a potentially new mental health crisis.

As QAnon believers delved deeper into conspiracy theory, they built a heartwarming belief system around them, said Marc Ambinder, a senior researcher who studies disinformation and misinformation at the Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism from the University of Southern California.

“The ‘plan’ was so much more powerful in the abstract than anything you could offer in the real world to counter it,” he said.

But now, as many of QAnon’s supporters are increasingly confronted with reality, the resulting cognitive dissonance could shatter them, Ambinder said – with potentially devastating consequences.

“This type of event is the kind of thing that can make someone who is already incredibly anxious, at the time of a horrific global pandemic, to feel completely pushed to the brink,” Ambinder said, saying he feared more the situation. type of violence the country witnessed on Capitol Hill two weeks ago.

Last week, Twitter said it had banned more than 70,000 accounts promoting QAnon.

But that may not be enough. People who are embedded in conspiracy theories don’t listen to authoritative voices, Ambinder said, but rather to voices they see as authoritative in defending their worldview.

While Trump may no longer be president, he and his political allies – some of whom still serve in government – may be among the only ones who can bring QAnon believers back to the real world, according to Ambinder.

“For the sake of the hundreds of thousands of people who are still trapped in the alternate world of QAnon and have no idea what to do,” Ambinder said, “that’s when that Republicans who cynically and willfully spread the false “election was stolen” rumor need to step up. ”