>https://www.nytimes.com/2020/09/10/opinion/qanon-women-conspiracy.html
Mothers for QAnon
On Aug. 22, I attended a “Freedom for the Children” rally in London, one of hundreds around the world organized by believers in the complicated conspiracy theory known as QAnon. Looking around, it was impossible not to notice a fact that at first glance surprised me: The rally was composed mostly of women, many with young children.
“They can’t hide it anymore,” one smiling woman who looked to be in her 30s told me. (“They,” in this case, refers to a group of shadowy elites known as “the cabal” who are trafficking children for satanic rituals.) One woman, attending with her mother and sister, told me that she had endured sexual abuse as a child; she wanted to show solidarity with other victims. One of the rally organizers, a young woman named Laura, addressed the crowd to remind them that “saving our children is far more important than a fake pandemic.”
When I interviewed attendees, many talked about how they had come out of a sense of maternal duty to protect the innocent. Very few brought up QAnon’s connections with President Trump, Hillary Clinton or the anonymous 4chan account known as “Q” that started it all. They were here, they said, for the children.
Just who is a believer in the sprawling, muddled world of QAnon isn’t an easy thing to pin down; it’s not like following a conspiracy theory requires a registration form. But what seems clear — from the rally, from conversations I’ve had with other experts and my own research — is that there’s something about QAnon that makes it stand out in the world of Trump-adjacent online groups: Its ranks are populated by a noticeably high percentage of women.
“Women have always been part of QAnon since the early days,” said Travis View, a conspiracy theory researcher who is a co-host of the podcast “QAnon Anonymous” (which has documented the rise of the conspiracy theory, and which I’m affiliated with). “But I also think the ‘soft front’ of QAnon in the form of ‘Save the Children’ makes it easy for more women to get on board.”
“I do think that there is something about the intense focus on harm being done to children and the graphic nature of the images and videos associated with Q” — including photos of children with black eyes or badly bruised bodies — “that is catered toward evoking shock and empathy, and it’s possible that these are chiming with a lot of women in particular,” said Blyth Crawford, a research fellow at the International Center for the Study of Radicalization in London.
When researching far-right networks, I find that it tends to be something of a general rule that there are always more women involved than first meets the eye. It is generally men who grab the headlines, either because they are in leadership positions or commit acts of violence, while women are used for the behind-the-scenes work of recruitment and organizing.
QAnon seems to be different. Many of the congressional candidates who have voiced their support for QAnon — Marjorie Taylor Greene, most famously — are women. Even more alarming are the believers who have demonstrated their willingness to hurt people: Cynthia Abcug of Colorado, who was charged with conspiracy to commit kidnapping after becoming obsessed with “evil Satan worshipers and pedophiles,” or Cecilia Fulbright of Texas, who allegedly chased strangers in her car under the impression they “had kidnapped a girl for human trafficking.”
Today, much of the original Facebook content relating to QAnon consists of videos posted by mothers — visibly furious, sometimes in tears — about the alleged sinister messages used to “brainwash” their children through toys or Disney movies.