Post by midcan5 on Jun 29, 2021 6:53:37 GMT -5
'America is doomed, part 357: QAnon now rivaling major religions for adherents'
"There are many ways civilized countries can disintegrate, the Weimar-to-Nazism case is only one, even if it looms very large for understandable reasons. Consider now the ramifications of this:
15 percent of Americans say they think that the levers of power are controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles, a core belief of QAnon supporters. The same share said it was true that “American patriots may have to resort to violence” to depose the pedophiles and restore the country’s rightful order.
And fully 20 percent of respondents said that they thought a biblical-scale storm would soon sweep away these evil elites and “restore the rightful leaders"....
14 percent of Americans fall into the category of “QAnon believers,” composed of those who agreed with the statements in all three questions. Among Republicans only, that rises to roughly one in four. (Twelve percent of independents and 7 percent of Democrats were categorized as QAnon believers.)
But the analysts went a level further: They created a category labeled “QAnon doubters” to include respondents who had said they “mostly disagreed” with the outlandish statements, but didn’t reject them outright. Another 55 percent of Republicans fell into this more ambivalent category.
Which means that just one in five Republicans fully rejected the premises of the QAnon conspiracy theory. For Democrats, 58 percent were flat-out QAnon rejecters.
Mr. Jones[the pollster] said he was struck by the prevalence of QAnon’s adherents. Overlaying the share of poll respondents who expressed belief in its core principles over the country’s total population, “that’s more than 30 million people,” he said.
“Thinking about QAnon, if it were a religion, it would be as big as all white evangelical Protestants, or all white mainline Protestants,” he added. “So it lines up there with a major religious group.”
How many of those 30 million are among those who own a lot of firearms, one wonders?
80% of voters for one of the two major political parties in the U.S. are either "true believers" (25%) or suspending judgment, as it were, about a batshit crazy conspiracy theory. (Good news: one-third of voters don't identify with either party, although many "independents" lean to the batshit crazy conspiracy theory party.)
To be sure, a certain Austrian political insurgent in Germany in the 1920s also subscribed to a batshit crazy conspiracy theory, and the similarities between QAnon and anti-semitic conspiracy theories have been noted. But that similarity is far less important than what the spread of such unhinged theories of the world reveal: that tens of millions of people are distressed, fearful, and utterly ignorant of how the world works and unequipped to figure it out. Obviously such people are ripe for mobilization by demagogues and fascists. Unless the prudent wing of the ruling class in America (i.e., the Democrats) embrace social and economic policies that alleviate some of the distress and fear, this will all end badly for America. And since America is still the most dangerous nation on the face of the earth, if things end badly for America, the rest of the world will be at risk as well."
leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2021/06/america-is-doomed-part-357-qanon-now-rivalling-major-religions-for-adherents.html
Source: www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/us/politics/qanon-republicans-trump.html
"There are many ways civilized countries can disintegrate, the Weimar-to-Nazism case is only one, even if it looms very large for understandable reasons. Consider now the ramifications of this:
15 percent of Americans say they think that the levers of power are controlled by a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles, a core belief of QAnon supporters. The same share said it was true that “American patriots may have to resort to violence” to depose the pedophiles and restore the country’s rightful order.
And fully 20 percent of respondents said that they thought a biblical-scale storm would soon sweep away these evil elites and “restore the rightful leaders"....
14 percent of Americans fall into the category of “QAnon believers,” composed of those who agreed with the statements in all three questions. Among Republicans only, that rises to roughly one in four. (Twelve percent of independents and 7 percent of Democrats were categorized as QAnon believers.)
But the analysts went a level further: They created a category labeled “QAnon doubters” to include respondents who had said they “mostly disagreed” with the outlandish statements, but didn’t reject them outright. Another 55 percent of Republicans fell into this more ambivalent category.
Which means that just one in five Republicans fully rejected the premises of the QAnon conspiracy theory. For Democrats, 58 percent were flat-out QAnon rejecters.
Mr. Jones[the pollster] said he was struck by the prevalence of QAnon’s adherents. Overlaying the share of poll respondents who expressed belief in its core principles over the country’s total population, “that’s more than 30 million people,” he said.
“Thinking about QAnon, if it were a religion, it would be as big as all white evangelical Protestants, or all white mainline Protestants,” he added. “So it lines up there with a major religious group.”
How many of those 30 million are among those who own a lot of firearms, one wonders?
80% of voters for one of the two major political parties in the U.S. are either "true believers" (25%) or suspending judgment, as it were, about a batshit crazy conspiracy theory. (Good news: one-third of voters don't identify with either party, although many "independents" lean to the batshit crazy conspiracy theory party.)
To be sure, a certain Austrian political insurgent in Germany in the 1920s also subscribed to a batshit crazy conspiracy theory, and the similarities between QAnon and anti-semitic conspiracy theories have been noted. But that similarity is far less important than what the spread of such unhinged theories of the world reveal: that tens of millions of people are distressed, fearful, and utterly ignorant of how the world works and unequipped to figure it out. Obviously such people are ripe for mobilization by demagogues and fascists. Unless the prudent wing of the ruling class in America (i.e., the Democrats) embrace social and economic policies that alleviate some of the distress and fear, this will all end badly for America. And since America is still the most dangerous nation on the face of the earth, if things end badly for America, the rest of the world will be at risk as well."
leiterreports.typepad.com/blog/2021/06/america-is-doomed-part-357-qanon-now-rivalling-major-religions-for-adherents.html
Source: www.nytimes.com/2021/05/27/us/politics/qanon-republicans-trump.html