One month ago, a man who became obsessed with QAnon during the pandemic murdered his wife and shot one of his daughters. Shortly after the shooting, his younger daughter turned to the QAnonCasualties subreddit. “He would spend all day and night reading stuff on his phone and laptop and would get really pissy over the smallest things. His carefree and fun persona was gone. He started talking about 5G and EMFs being bad, and modern medicine being a sham. It's like he got possessed by a demon,” she wrote.
For many, the violence might not be relatable, but the emotional loss of a loved one to conspiracy sure is.
In a hotel lobby bar during Clay Clark’s Tampa Q Con, a woman told me she was on the brink of divorcing her husband. She was frustrated because he didn’t believe the QAnon conspiracy theory that mole children are forced to live in tunnels underneath the Getty Museum in Los Angeles, and he did believe Joe Biden is the president. A couple sitting by us said they had gotten rid of most of their friends for the same reason.
The woman who told me “we need to tell people the truth so they don't hurt themselves, right? Even if they hate us for it,” also said she had cut ties with her friends because they were not comfortable with her covid denialism.
At the September 2021 Justice for J6 rally in DC, another woman showed me text messages between her and her son. He was a doctor, and angry that his mother chose to listen to conspiracy grifters over him. He told her by refusing to wear a mask or get vaccinated, she was killing people, and said he didn’t want to talk to her until her behavior changed. While the woman was clearly very sad, she was still unvaccinated and unmasked, choosing preventative Ivermectin over a relationship with her child.
In the conspiracy movement, losing loved ones is a rite of passage. It’s a relatable topic because nearly every single person has experienced it.
That’s why I was not surprised when Hannity played audio from an emotional voicemail Joe Biden left Hunter Biden. “It’s Dad. I’m calling to tell you I love you. I love you more than the whole world, pal. You gotta get some help. I don’t know what to do. I know you don’t either.”
For people who have not elected to choose denying reality and spiraling into hatred over relationships with their children and friends, the idea this is a got ya moment seems pretty deranged. But many of the people this segment is meant for are people who are on the receiving end of calls like this — only their drug of choice is conspiracy.
Even without that, they are primed to view the world through a lens of hate. While very few rightwing influencers have made statements about the leaked audio, regular people have shared their opinions.
The call was scripted. It’s real, and it’s karma for causing other people’s children to die from opioid overdose. It is evidence Biden can’t run the country because he can’t even run his own family. It’s insincere. “Joe Biden used his son like a pimp uses a whore. And kept him on an emotional leash,” wrote Raheem Kassam (a ‘career bigot’ who was nearly banned from Australia).
If Trump had left this exact message for Don Jr, they would say it is an example of a strong patriarch. But it’s impossible for them to view the Biden family this way because reality doesn’t matter, and feelings don’t care about facts. If your own child died of an overdose, it’s the universe avenging the suffering of your family at the hands of Joe Biden, who you view as personally responsible for the opioid crisis. If you feel bad for Biden but don’t want to admit that, you can pretend it’s scripted and fake. It’s nothing more than a hate-filled Choose Your Own Adventure exercise.
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Too those who would say “It is evidence Biden can’t run the country because he can’t even run his own family,” I would quote President Theodore Roosevelt, “I can be President of the United States or I can control Alice Roosevelt. (His 19-year old daughter.) I cannot possibly do both.”
There's a conspiracy that men can become women, that vulnerable children should be permanently mutilated, that white people are inherently evil, that critical theory has value to humanity...and none of it is from the right.