Then there's QAnon's path to prominence — from 4chan to 8chan to more mainstream sites such as YouTube and Twitter and, finally, to a Trump rally in Tampa and TV screens across the nation.
In the cesspools where the theory first flourished, registration is either not required or not possible, and the "rules", such as they are, look nothing like the terms of service for a site like Facebook. The intelligentsia is already at odds over how the more-established entities should regulate themselves, or be regulated. It's even harder to have that conversation about a site like 4chan or 8chan that eschews responsibility for its content entirely.
Now that it's clear that what starts on the fringe doesn't stay there, it is a real concern. QAnon's lurch from online to off hasn't manifested only in T-shirted ralliers wielding weird signs. Last week, a "baker" appeared outside the office of Michael Avenatti, the lawyer representing a porn star who claims she had an affair with Trump, because Q sent him there. Others have started searching for child sex camps in the desert outside Tucson. A man in an armoured truck blocked a bridge near the Hoover Dam demanding the release of a report that Q claimed the Government was withholding. He had two guns.
What's scariest of all, though, might be what motivates Trump's base to believe in so byzantine a conspiracy. QAnon isn't your average story of all-powerful actors exercising complete control over a helpless populace. This time, the heroes are already in charge and, still, the theorists see themselves as victims. Why, even with their man in the Oval Office, do they feel embattled?
One explanation has to do with the on-the-ground reality of this presidency. The special counsel looks ever closer to proving ties between Trump and Russia and, in the meantime, Trump appears more erratic. If he is under investigation and not just pretending to be, all his supporters' hopes evaporate.
But this anxiety also ties into a more amorphous sense among these voters that, though the Republican Party controls Congress and the executive, the country is still rigged against them. Trumpism has always been about insecurity: As a candidate, Trump played on the paranoia of Americans who thought the country they knew was being taken from them — by immigrants, by an over-reaching government, by adversaries overseas.
The "forgotten men and women of our country" didn't stop feeling forgotten when their self-proclaimed avatar walked into the White House. There was too much dissent, too much doubt cast on his (and, by extension, their) legitimacy and ability to lead. Now, they'll only be assuaged by the destruction of everything and everyone that stands in their way, through the mass arrest of those who they say connived against them and the installation of a state filled only with loyalists.
That's what QAnon followers really want. That is where the "storm" motto comes from.
Most Americans were puzzled when, in a meeting with military leaders months ago, Trump said, "You know what this represents? Maybe it's the calm before the storm." But these theorists thought they knew exactly what he was talking about. Trump was pointing at the officers' uniforms.
The storm QAnon truthers predict will never strike because the conspiracy doesn't exist. But while they wait for it, they'll try to whip up the winds, and the rest of us will struggle to find shelter. QAnon is scary because it's getting bigger, it's scary because we don't know how to stop it, and it's scary because the people behind it won't be satisfied until their illusory storm arrives.
