QAnon now as popular in US as some major religions, polls suggest

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QAnon, the conspiracy theory claiming a Satanic paedophile ring has a grip on world power, is now as popular as some major religions in the United States, polling suggests.

With Donald Trump having been held up as a possible hero figure within the movement, belief in the ever-evolving conspiracy’s core tenets became increasingly prevalent in the US during his presidency, culminating in QAnon bursting from internet forums and social media into mainstream consciousness and politics as its proponents joined the fatal January raid on the US Capitol.

Major polling from the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and Interfaith Youth Core, carried out in March, now suggests that more than 30 million Americans are in the thrall of the conspiracy.

“Thinking about QAnon, if it were a religion, it would be as big as all white evangelical Protestants, or all white mainline Protestants,” PRRI founder Robby Jones told The New York Times. “So it lines up there with a major religious group.”

Some 15 per cent of the survey’s 5,625 participants said they agreed with QAnon’s integral premise that “the government, media, and financial worlds in the US are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation”.

An even greater proportion agreed with the conspiracy’s calls for violent, apocalyptic resolution, with one in five respondents believing “there is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders”.

Displaying the kind of thinking which saw pro-Q and pro-Trump adherents march on the Capitol following Mr Trump’s “big lie” over the US election, and is causing alarm among national security officials, 15 per cent agreed with the notion that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country”.

While the vast majority of participants disagreed with all three statements – respectively 83, 77 and 85 per cent – Mr Jones said: “It’s one thing to say that most Americans laugh off these outlandish beliefs, but when you take into consideration that these beliefs are linked to a kind of apocalyptic thinking and violence, then it becomes something quite different.”

And although the numbers of people who fully adhere to such beliefs are relatively low, a significantly greater portion of the US population appear willing to entertain them on some level.

The researchers found that, while just 40 per cent of respondents completely disagreed with the three above statements and 14 per cent fully or mostly agreed, a third group dubbed “QAnon doubters” – which formed a majority with 44 per cent – said they “mostly disagreed”, but did not reject them outright.

The polling is the merely latest to emphasise the extent to which tendrils of the conspiracy have taken hold among Republican voters – just one in five of whom rejected the three statements outright, compared with 58 per cent of Democrats.

Among Republican voters, the majority fell into the “QAnon doubter” category, however nearly one in four were found to be QAnon believers.

While the GOP currently houses lawmakers such as Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Boebert who have previously touted QAnon theories, with all but 11 House Republicans effectively failing to condemn such views by voting in February not to strip the former of her committee responsibilities over her former claims, IPPR’s research suggested a strong correlation also exists between far-right media consumption and belief in the conspiracy.

Of respondents who listed far-right networks such as One America News and Newsmax as their most trusted outlets, as many as 40 per cent said they believed Satan-worshipping paedophiles control US government, media and finance.

Some 48 per cent of those who trust far-right news sources said they expected a coming storm to sweep away current elites and restore the country’s rightful leaders – falling to 34 per cent among viewers of Fox News, whose primetime host Tucker Carlson has repeatedly downplayed the threat posed by QAnon.

While QAnon’s followers have been repeatedly let down by its prophesied events failing to come to pass – notably including Mr Trump’s supposed re-inauguration on 4 March – the conspiracy has proven highly adaptable, serving as a so-called “big tent” for a wide range of pre-existing and constantly evolving conspiracies.

For example, the researchers found that 73 per cent of QAnon adherents believe Mr Trump’s lie that the election was stolen, compared with 29 per cent of the general population.

And while just 9 per cent of Americans appear to believe that Covid-19 vaccines contain a surveillance microchip that is the sign of the beast in biblical prophecy, this rose to 39 per cent among QAnon believers.