QAnon believers are in disarray after Biden is inaugurated

Following the riots, QAnon supporters eagerly anticipated the moment of Biden’s inauguration.

“As the noose tightens around the deep state, some people are becoming more and more desperate to discredit Q,” one 4chan user posted on Wednesday morning. “I guess what they say is true. The flack is heaviest over the target.”

But after Biden’s swearing-in came and went, panic set in.

“We were promised arrests, exposures, military regime, classified documents. where is it????????” wrote one member of the QAnon-linked Telegram channel, which has nearly 128,000 subscribers.

“I’m scared, feeling sick in my stomach, but I am holding the line still,” said another.

“Well babies are still being raped and eaten, any f**kin minute now GOD,” said another.

Some began acknowledging the truth.

“Biden is our president,” a fourth user in the Telegram channel said. “It’s time to get off our devices and get back to reality. If something happens then something happens, but for now I’m logging out of all social media. It’s been fun guys but it’s unfortunately over.”

Other believers insisted that the lack of a climax was itself a part of the plan, theorizing that Trump merely “allowed” Biden to become president “for appearances” while the former reality show host would be the one pulling the strings. “Anything that happens in the next 4 years is actually President Trumps doing,” wrote one 4chan user.

“It’s a hot mess, frankly,” said Carla Hill, research fellow at the Anti-Defamation League’s Center on Extremism, of the various reactions of QAnon believers. “Frustration started seeping in. There is some embarrassment, some anger … A range of [new] conspiracies are spinning out of this and they are arguing among themselves.”

The apparent ease with which some QAnon believers have been able to adjust the theory to suit new events underscores how slippery the conspiracy theory can be. But the proliferation of new theories and beliefs could also lead to a splintering of the movement — and, some extremism experts warn, a potentially new crisis in mental health.

As QAnon believers got pulled deeper into the conspiracy theory, they built a comforting belief system around themselves, said Marc Ambinder, a senior fellow who studies mis- and disinformation at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism.

“The ‘plan’ was so much more powerful in the abstract than anything you could offer in the real world to counter it,” he said.

But now, as many QAnon supporters are increasingly confronted by reality, the resulting cognitive dissonance could break them, Ambinder said — with potentially devastating consequences.

“This type of event is the kind of thing that can set somebody who is already incredibly anxious, in the time of a horrible global pandemic, feeling like they’re completely pushed to the edge,” Ambinder said, saying he fears more of the type of violence that the country witnessed at the US Capitol two weeks ago.

Last week, Twitter said it banned more than 70,000 accounts for promoting QAnon.

But that may not be enough. People who are embedded in conspiracy theories do not listen to authoritative voices, said Ambinder, but rather to the voices they consider to be authoritative in upholding their worldview.

Even though Trump may no longer be president, he and his political allies — some of whom still serve in government — may be some of the only ones who can draw QAnon believers back to the real world, according to Ambinder.

“For the sake of hundreds of thousands of people who are still trapped in the QAnon alternate world and have no idea what to do,” said Ambinder, “this is when Republicans who cynically and willfully spread the false ‘election was stolen’ rumor need to step up.”