The New Yorker:

We live in strange times, and they grew stranger still in August, when the President of the United States publicly supported the fringe political ideology known as QAnon. Trump then doubled down during an interview with Laura Ingraham, on Fox News, repeating QAnon talking points, such as how “rich people” were bankrolling protests in American cities and how his Democratic rival, Joe Biden, was being controlled by “people that you’ve never heard of. People that are in the dark shadows.” Even Ingraham, normally an unflappable supporter of the President, seemed taken aback. “What does that mean?” she interjected. “That sounds like a conspiracy theory.”

QAnon is a conspiracy theory, but it is many other things as well, by turns an online troll campaign, a Messianic world view, a form of interactive role-playing, and a way to sell T-shirts. For its critics, QAnon is a hoax spun dangerously out of control; for true believers, it is an all-encompassing life style. The theory holds, among an ever-evolving collage of tenets, that a satanic cabal of high-ranking Democratic politicians and members of the media élite is running a child sex-trafficking ring while plotting to take control of American government and society. According to QAnon lore, the only thing standing between this ongoing deep-state scheme and God-fearing citizens is the singular presence of Donald Trump, whose every tweet and political stunt is actually cover for a top-secret shadow campaign against the forces of evil.

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