For QAnon Believers Facing Reality, What Happens Now? | Psychology TodayThe Trumpazee Dupes who got their 'information' from Trump's disinformation sources such as QAnon - the supposed 'deep state' whistle-blower and Trump confidante, responsible for the more outlandish beliefs of the Trumpanzee cult - have a major psychological task facing them - how to rationalise the demonstrable fact that none of the QAnon predictions and claims proved to be true with their belief in the certainty and reliability of their source?
Their problem is the familiar one of how to cope with the cognitive dissonance that results when reality doesn't conform to your requirements and beliefs, forcing you to either change your precious beliefs or ignore reality by explaining it away.
Central to the cult belief was the notion that 'Q' was Trump's agent and a senior 'deep state' member of the elite who was working on the inside with Trump who had been sent by God to do battle with the 'Satanic paedophile ring of child-sacrificing cannibals' who were secretly running the world and plotting to take their freedoms from good, God-fearing Americans. The sort of beliefs that would qualify as psychotic delusions in most countries but which seem commonplace in parts of the USA, with its deeply embedded cultural paranoia that America is beset by enemies who are jealous of her 'freedoms' and plotting to come and take them away, and of course, that Satan is trying to bring down God's favourite country, which he created for his favourite people - white Christians - God save America!.
Writing in Psychology Today, Joseph M. Pierre, M.D, Health Sciences Clinical Professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the Chief of the Hospital Psychiatry Division for the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare Center, explains the psychology behind cognitive dissonance and how it is handled by cultists such as Trumpanzees.
Many devoted Trumpanzee are so invested in the belief that President-reject Trump must have won the November election, that the loss of face involved in admitting President Biden won fairly and squarely is too much to bear, so an alternative explanation has to be found, no matter how outlandish and bizarre it may seem to those outside the cult. Something had gone wrong! Reality was turning out to be something other than what they wanted it to be. Someone must be cheating!
Amongst the more ludicrous predictions made by QAnon in recent days and weeks since the election, and fully bought into by Trumpanzees, have been:
- Incontrovertible evidence of a massive electoral fraud would be found, proving that Trump won by a landslide.
- Trump would retain power through a military coup.
- After Vice-President Pence refused to reject the Electoral College count and declare Trump the winner, he would be arrested and charged with treason and executed.
- Following an insurrection to overthrow the government, evidence would be found that Biden, Hilary Clinton, Barak Obama and other 'deep state' elites, including the Pope were part of a massive paedophile ring and would be tried by a military tribunal.
None of these predictions came true, of course, and Joe Baden and Kamala Harris were duly and legally sworn in as President and Vice-President respectively and Trump has left the White House and power. The Trumpanzees' worst nightmare!
So, what will happen to the cut that Trump worked so hard to cultivate and encourage?
As Dr Pierre points out, sometimes there are limits to the amount by which a person can stretch to maintain an absurd belief in the face of mounting evidence of its falsity. For example:
- A woman who wished to remain anonymous, cited in episode 8 of the New York Time series 'Rabbit Hole', as going from being a keen follower of QAnon to realising it was fake after 'he' started using Bible verses in what was obviously a marketing ploy:
What got me out was they posted Bible verses. And I just immediately knew —— that it was fake. I was like, OK, let me get this straight. We’re a military intelligence. We’ve got a secret channel that we can communicate, and we’re going to proselytize about the Bible and risk a military channel that’s leaking? No.
Kevin Roose (Interviewer):So —
It makes no sense at all to me. It’s because my father was military. I grew up in — he was military ops. I knew that that was just a marketing ploy. I mean, they were hitting their market base. Their market base are conservative church ladies. The middle America. The Joe Sixpack. That’s who they’re marketing. And they wanted to bring the religious aspect in so they could broaden their base so they can make more money on the T-shirts, and the mugs, and the donations, and the app memberships.
Kevin Roose:So you felt like Q, whoever it was, had been taking a risk by posting these secrets and this classified information? And that if Q were real and really part of this military intelligence operation, that they wouldn’t post a Bible verse because it was —
You’re either military intelligence, or you’re a preacher. And if you’re a military preacher, you’re in a chapel. You’re not next to the president. It was just logic. It was just an instant, to me, an instant pulling back of the curtain of what they were doing. And the minute I saw that, I was just crestfallen. Because I knew that it was all fake. And it was the instant. It was like a death. And then I was angry again. And I said, well, you know, there is no hope. This is just ridiculous. There’s no way. This is not real. I’ve wasted three months of my life researching fakeness. I really felt like I’d been had.
- The Australian, Jitarth Jadej, who had fully bought into the QAnon Trumpanzee cult, even believing the 'Coming Storm' prediction that Trump was about to declare war on the Satanic paedophile rings, have Hilary Clinton and the rest of the baby-sacrificing cult arrested and have Clinton publicly executed.
The same paedophile ring conspiracy had even induced one deluded idiot, Edgar Welch, to burst into a D.C. Pizza parlour firing an assault rifle, to 'rescue the children being held captive in the basement', only to discover that there were no children and not even a basement to hide them in.
Jadej began to realise that none of the QAnon predictions ever seems to come true and then discovered another inconsistency in a QAnon claim:At one point, a QAnon believer posted online requesting Q to get Trump to say “ ’tip top tippy-top shape,’ as kind of a shout out.” Four months later, when speaking at the 2018 White House Easter Egg Roll, Trump used a version of that phrase.
“For the longest time, I was like ‘Dude, that’s a very unique phrase,’ ” Jadeja said. But as he began questioning QAnon, he began looking more deeply — and stumbled upon a two-part YouTube compilation of Trump repeatedly using that wording. “It’s just something that Trump says from time to time. … That’s when my world kind of came crashing down.”
He felt crushed, to put mildly.
“If I didn’t have family that loved me I probably would have committed suicide,” he said. “It was really a terrible feeling to know that you are this stupid and this wrong.”
“He was constantly on edge waiting for Q to make some big move or waiting to hear about a planned move. The world was always due for a massive change,” [His sister] Joy said. “Then, thank God, it all came to a massive halt. After this blip in his history, he is super chill. He’s calmed down and his feet are firmly back on Earth. It’s such a relief. I don’t have to worry about him so much anymore. ”
Amongst the more bizarre claims I have seen so far is that Biden, et al., were arrested as planned, but, to prevent a civil war, they agreed to pretend to be the government whilst Donald Trump continued to run things from behind the scenes. The entire inauguration ceremony was a sham; a show put on the fool the people.
As with all religions, and cults are religions in all but name, leaving the faith involves a loss of confidence in the cult's core beliefs. The Coming Storm' never came and won't be happening. Trump's military coup to keep him in power never materialised. The government of the USA was not overthrown and the leaders of the supposed Satanic paedophile ring were never arrested.
It seems that many QAnon dupes have woken up to the fact that they were taken for a ride by Trump-supporting frauds. Dr Pierre list the following instances of forlorn and betrayed former Trumpanzee waking up to the realisation that they've been had:
Joe Biden is now President and Kamala Harris is now Vice-President, while Trump looks ever more like a paranoid psychotic narcissist; a man-child forever blubbing that he was cheated out of the victory and power to which he felt entitled. And the Trumpanzee cult is looking more like a rabble of barely-educated entitled fools who were played for all they could be taken for by a manipulative, criminal megalomaniac who came close to destroying everything a patriotic American holds dear - freedom and democracy and the right of free citizens to chose who to govern them, as the ultimate arbiters of power.
- “I’m losing my everloving mind right now. Is this really happening? Was this part of the plan?”
- “If nothing happens I will no longer believe in anything.”
- “Anyone else feeling beyond let down?”
- “It’s over and nothing makes sense… absolutely nothing.”
- “Was Q just one big lie and psyop that I foolishly followed and believed for over 3 years?”
- “Been played like fools.”
- “He sold us out.”
- “What a fraud.”
Perhaps the most significant achievent of the misogynistic white supremacist Donald Trump, supported by his misogynistic neo-Nazi Proud Boys and misogynistic white evangelical Christians, is to have the first Afro-American/Asian-American female as Vice-President, and just a heart-beat away from becoming President of the United States of America!
Hopefully, the mega-rich Talibangelical Christian extremists who supported the cult and who hoped to gain from a share in the power they tried to take from the people, will be diminished in the eyes of every decent American patriot. Whatever they stood for, it was not a free and democratic America.
A nasty chapter in American history has now been closed, hopefully for good.
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