QAnon influencers are grifting off of the increasing violence of their believers: historian

On Wednesday, writing for The Bulwark, history professor Thomas Lecaque warned that the "influencers" profiting off the QAnon conspiracy theory are moving towards more and more open advocacy of bloodshed.

"QAnon is violence in its ideology, in its end goal, and in its imagination: the 'Storm,' a military coup where Donald Trump defeats the so-called 'Deep State' and arrests and executes their opponents in something very much akin to the white supremacist Turner Diaries’ Day of the Rope," wrote Lecaque. "We saw it on January 6, when coup plotters erected a makeshift gallows and shouted 'Hang Mike Pence.' That blood lust hasn’t gone anywhere, even if some humorous headlines about dissension in the Q ranks is distracting attention from the underlying bloodlust at the heart of the movement."

The QAnon movement is inventing new causes to threaten violence over, noted Lecaque — and anti-vaccination is proving a fruitful ground for them.

"Romana Didulo, who called herself the QAnon 'Queen of Canada,' called on her 70,000 Telegram followers on November 21 to murder healthcare workers, writing, 'Shoot to kill anyone who tries to inject Children under the age of 19 years old with Coronavirus19 vaccines/ bioweapons or any other Vaccines. This order is effective immediately,'" wrote Lecaque. "She changed that to arrest two days later, but not because she doesn’t want these 'traitors' dead: 'Please, use airports, hospitals, schools, stadiums, and other public venues to hold and detain all traitors. They will stay there until Military Tribunal is held for each one of them until the day they are executed via firing squad or hanging.'"

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And all of this is having disastrous consequences, wrote Lecaque, noting the case of Matthew Taylor Coleman, a California surf instructor and QAnon believer who murdered his own children out of the belief that they had "serpent DNA."

"We are used to QAnon being a lot of talk, and therefore less dangerous than the Patriot militia movement or any of the more aggressive white supremacist movements. Atomwaffen or Oathkeepers, whose ideology starts from violent overthrow, remain more likely to engage in actual violence. But this sort of accelerationist rhetoric is finding an audience," concluded Lecaque. "The gallows they set up outside the Capitol may have been poorly constructed, but it was heartfelt — and QAnon’s bloodlust, far from diminishing, just gets stronger."

You can read more here.