The Cycle of Public Panic Over Childhood That Got Us to QAnon
For 150 Years, Americans Have Misplaced Concerns for Their Kids—Helping Conspiracy Theories to Flourish
The story of QAnon’s violent extremism is often told as one of partisan polarization. We tend to focus on the most outlandish parts of the far-right conspiracy theory—which falsely claims former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton was at the center of an international Deep State pedophile ring tied up in murder and occult ritual, and that would eventually be exposed and punished by Donald Trump. But in doing so, we miss how it is also fed by something so universally accepted that we don’t acknowledge how modern it is: our values …
