link to original reddit post by /u/thisistheperfectname
I strongly suspect that QAnon has not been an organic phenomenon for at least the recent election cycle. I'm sure many of you have a passing familiarity with the conspiracy theory and have seen how its name can be weaponized to delegitimize opposition. Hell, maybe the latter has happened to you.
As for QAnon itself, it's pretty nuts. While the body of literature attributed to Q is truly massive and seems to tie in clichés from pretty much any conspiracy theory you can name, generally it centers around the idea that Trump is working from within the government (even still, though he is out of office) to eradicate a cabal of globalist Satanic pedophiles. Some people do believe this story religiously, but they are few.
So why do I believe QAnon to not be as organic as it is made out to be? It’s mostly the uncanny convenience that it offers the political establishment. On one hand, you have the ability to transfer QAnon’s negative authority onto any and all deviation from establishment politics, including simply supporting the former president. So there is utility, but what makes it convenient? QAnon does this with essentially no collateral damage. Many extreme beliefs are easily translated into destructive action, radical Islam for example, but the central message of QAnon is, without exaggeration, to sit back and do nothing while uncritically trusting the process. The sole prescription the QAnon theory has to its followers is to just keep believing that Trump will right the world without taking any initiative on their own. Some will doubtlessly point to the Capitol storming in January as a counter-example, but this doesn’t hold up for two reasons: most people there almost certainly had nothing to do with QAnon and very little of note actually happened at the hands of the participants anyways. Nevertheless, the media has made the Capitol out to be a watershed moment in our history in part due to the ease of demonizing the right with negative transfers of authority like what QAnon offers.
Imagine you’re a state actor who comes across some anonymous person making wild claims about these actors on 4chan and getting some meager attention from them. Imagine also that you can do the same with no papertrail and create a boogeyman that the media will scream about from the rooftops while talking about people you don’t like. Now imagine that you will have no loose ends to clean up whatsoever as a result of this project. You’d be a fool to pass up an opportunity like that.