Democrats dismissed it as a Frisian group of conspiracy-minded elots. Moderate Republicans longed for the potential to tarnish the image of their party, while more conservative lawmakers carefully sought to harness the energy of their roots. Sympathetic media outlets covered his rallies, painting it as an emerging strain of populist politics – a protest movement born of frustration with a corrupt, irresponsible elite.
Then, to everyone’s surprise, the supporters of elections began.
That’s a description of the Tea Party movement, which emerged from the right in 2009 and transitioned to a major, lasting force in American conservatism.
But it could just as easily be a description of QAnon, the pro-Trump conspiracy theory that has emerged as a possible legacy to the mantle of the Tea Party as the most powerful grassroots in right-wing politics.
This week, QAnon probably got its first member of Congress: Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican from Georgia who won a primary runoff on Tuesday in an entire Republican neighborhood. Ms. Greene has publicly supported QAnon, appeared on QAnon shows and advocated the unfounded belief of the movement that President Trump is about to break a shaky cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles. Other QAnon-affiliated candidates have won primarily at the federal and state levels, although a few in districts are as conservative as Mevr. Greene’s.
QAnon, who draws her faith from the posts of cryptic message board of an anonymous writer who claims to have access to high government intelligence, lacks the leadership structure and dark money connections of the early Tea Party. It also lacks realistic goals like what appears to be a coherent policy agenda. The followers are internet watchdogs gripped by paranoid and violent revenge fantasies, not conservatives with lower-me-taxes as opponents of the Affordable Care Act.
But after Ms Greene’s primary win, some Washington residents began to question whether the potential impact of QAnon was underestimated in the same way. They worry that, just as the Tea Party gave cover to a racist “birther” movement that espoused conspiracy theories about President Barack Obama in the Republican mainstream, QAnon’s extreme views could hardly contain.
“They are insane for blaming it as a powerless fringe,” said Steve Schmidt, a longtime GOP strategist and campaign veteran who has become a Trump critic. “The Republican Party is becoming home to an amalgam of conspiracy theorists, fringe players, extremists and white nationalists who are in an enchanting way in the open.”
To be clear: QAnon’s ideas are far more extreme than the Tea Parties ever were. Tea Party tea parties have objected to Wall Street bailouts and the growing federal deficit; Supporters of QAnon believe that Hillary Clinton and George Soros drink the blood of innocent children. While Tea Party supporters generally tried to oust their political opponents at the ballot box, QAnon supporters cheered for top Democrats to sit prisoners at Guantánamo Bay or run up and down.
But there are more parallels than you might think, especially when it comes to how the political establishments of their time reacted to the rise of each group.
When the Tea Party appeared in early 2009, many commentators mocked the idea that it could ever achieve political power, calling it a “display of hysteria” by “scathing judges.” Michael R. Bloomberg, then the mayor of New York, characterized the Tea Party as a passing mud, comparing it to the burst of support for Ross Perot’s 1992 presidential campaign. Republican party leaders took it more seriously, but they also seemed to think that they could use their energy without subduing their more extreme elements.
Then, in January 2010, Scott Brown, a little-known Republican lawmaker from Massachusetts, won a citation in the House of Representatives in a shock over his Democratic opponent, Martha Coakley, in part for support from the Tea Party. And it became clear to members of both parties that they were wrong to underestimate the potential of the Tea Party.
Today, pundits tend to regard the QAnon as an extreme but marginal movement – a kind of John Birch Society for the 4chan era. And some polling has suggested that the movement remains widely popular.
But QAnon followers have left the dark corners of the internet and established a large and growing presence on mainstream social media platforms. Twitter recently announced that it has removed or restricted the visibility of more than 150,000 QAnon-related accounts, and NBC News reported this week that an internal Facebook investigation into QAnon’s presence on its platform found thousands of active QAnon groups and sites, with millions of followers among them.
Even after Ms. Greene’s primary victory this week, few lawmakers have recognized QAnon immediately. (One Republican lawmaker, Illinois Representative Adam Kinzinger, called it “A fabrication” that on Wednesday “has no place in Congress.”) But her followers have routinely used social media to suppress extreme views – including opposition to mask wear, false fears about child exploitation, and the “Spygate “conspiracy theory – in conservative media. At least one Fox News commentator has spoken out in favor of the move. And dozens of QAnon candidates are running as anti-establishment outsiders in Republican primaries this year, just as Tea Party candidates did in the 2010 midterm elections.
The similarities between QAnon and the Tea Party are not only historic. Some of the same activists are involved in both movements, and organizations such as the Tea Party Patriots have provided fodder for QAnon’s social media campaigns, such as a recent viral video of doctors making false claims about Covid-19.
One notable difference is that although the Tea Party gained influence during a period when Republicans were out of power, QAnon grew during the Trump administration, with the silence of the president. On Wednesday, Mr. Trump congratulated Ms. Greene on her primary win, calling her a “future Republican star.” (He made no mention of the video in which she called Mr. Trump’s presidency a “once in a lifetime opportunity to take out this worldwide cabal of satan-worshiping pedophiles.”)
Vanessa Williamson, a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and co-author of “The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism,” said that QAnon somehow represented an extension of the Tea Party’s skepticism about mainstream authorities.
“The movement of conspiracy theories toward the center of the Republican Party is not entirely new,” Ms. Williamson said. “But the centrality of that conspiratorial thinking was something striking to the Tea Party, and it’s something even more striking to QAnon.”
One advantage QAnon has over previous insurgent movements is improved technology. Members of the John Birch Society had to publish their pamphlets and newspaper advertisements, and the Tea Party – which began with a television broadcast from CNBC’s anchor – relied heavily on the existing conservative media to spread its message.
But QAnon is native to the internet, and moving with the speed of social media. Since 2017, QAnon followers have built an impressive media ecosystem encompassing Facebook groups, YouTube channels and Discord servers. These spaces serve as both sources for news and virtual water coolers, where followers socialize, trade new theories and memes, and strategize on growing their rank.
The other big difference, of course, is who is in the Oval Office. Mr. Trump did not directly address QAnon, but he has remarkably avoided denying it, and has shared dozens of posts from believers on his social media accounts.
Geoffrey Kabaservice, director of political studies at the Niskanen Center, a libertarian think tank, said that although QAnon would probably not take over the Republican Party as thoroughly as the Tea Party did in 2010, it could continue to grow if top Republicans were reluctant or unwilling to do so. contain.
“It will obviously not be played out of the system,” he said. “The Republican Party should take active steps to flush it out of the system. And that is unlikely to happen under President Donald Trump. ”
Bill Kristol, Mr. Trump’s conservative commentator and critic, was more skeptical about QAnon’s influence on the Republican Party. He pointed out that there have always been extreme extremists in both parties to Congress, whose influence has been eroded over time by modern voices.
But that was in the pre-Trump era, he acknowledged. Who knew what QAnon could become, with a presidential stamp of approval?
“Trump’s embrace is what makes this different, and more worrying,” Mr Kristol said. “If Trump is the president, and he embraces this, are we so confident that it is not the future?”
