In our now-ubiquitous environment of neo-tribalism, today’s information technologies have enabled us to move far beyond simple street gang-type statements of “You can’t diss my tribe.”
Any number of loosely-related groups of people are currently telling one another, along with an ever-growing army of new recruits, that everything of significance in contemporary life is permeated and controlled by a secretive cabal (often referred to as “the deep state”) to advance an agenda that is not only self-serving, but outright evil.
Their proposed remedies are comparably radical:
Trust no one
Do your own research
Now, under normal circumstances, most people would find it daunting to be told that before they can really know anything, they’re going to have to redo everything from Euclid’s 3rd-century BCE principles of geometry to Einstein’s insights into general relativity (not to mention discarding all that they’ve been told by everyone from their most trusted TV newscaster to their favorite teacher). Why do so many people today consider this a reasonable proposition?
Logically, it ought to be apparent that once you’ve rejected everything that every currently-respected expert has to say about anything, you’ll be left either guessing on your own about what’s going on in situations you have no experience with (or direct understanding of), or you’ll be relying on the recent “findings” of people in your online group—whose expertise is, at best, highly dubious. You’ll also have no trouble quickly recognizing that the kinds of “discoveries” that members of your cyber-group(s) are most appreciative of are the ones that are most shockingly at variance with commonly-held beliefs and expectations.
It should therefore be apparent that this wouldn’t be a promising resource to turn to if you were looking for, say, tips on how to safely carry large amounts of cash through a rough neighborhood at night, or information on treating flesh-eating bacteria attacking a loved one. Yet large numbers of people are latching onto groups exactly like this every day, for answers to questions of great importance to them and the future of their country—even the world. Why?
There’s a telling oddity in the pattern of attracting new recruits to this movement. They’re typically asked to accept as a given, well before any significant amount of evidence is presented, the proposition that a nefarious cabal controls everything in contemporary life. Normally, successful communicators who want to make a radical or shocking point spend a fair amount of time building a case, presenting various bits of suggestive or provocative information before baldly stating the full thesis they hope to gain acceptance for. Why is this not necessary in the case of newbies first encountering the realms of QAnon and the like?
It would not be unreasonable to suspect that the main reason they latch onto it so quickly is that they strongly want to believe it…that it does something for them…serves a deeper purpose for them.
