I do not purport to be a psychologist or a psychiatrist. I did minor in psychology in college but that is about it.
I have been watching with great interest as millions of Americans through social media have become involved with and brainwashed by the bizarre QAnon conspiracy theories. From Democrats doing mass molestations and killings of babies, to all sorts of bizarre fantasies, these people who believe this false fantasy crap, seem to be and truly are out of their minds.
Any sane educated person or so I thought, could see right through the BS. It is kind of like the flat Earthers, most sane adults know full well the earth is not flat, yet there are people out there that believe it is flat, even when presented with all the evidence in the world that the earth is round.
Most sane adults in the United States thought at first that these people were just joking around and that they cannot be serious. After the recent attack on the United States Capitol, and after hearing all the wacko doodles being interviewed outside of the riots, we have now all come to realize in horror that there are millions of Americans that have been brainwashed into believing fantasy propaganda and are seriously out of their friggen minds.
Now this is an opinion editorial so I may be a little loose with my language on this one because when writing about millions of Americans who believe basically something analogous to the boogie man is hiding under your bed or that Santa Claus is real, how do you comprehend that millions of supposedly publicly or otherwise educated adults in this country are out of their minds?
I have contemplated this as a layman. I believe what has happened is someone comes up with a fantasy premise on social media or through other types of media, they spread the fantasy or propaganda, and either people who are lonely and are seeking to belong in the group, or are weak minded people for whatever reason, whether it be for entertainment or other Interest, start to give approval to the fantasy so that they can fit into the group, and eventually the fantasy becomes reality to these people in masse.
I would like to believe that some people in the group know that what they are discussing is not real and that they are simply just trying to be part of the group for whatever reason, but it is becoming very apparent that the majority of these people actually start to believe that the fantasy is real. Then as with other cults what happens is members of the cult or persons who adhere to the fantasy beliefs, start to add more and more fantasy stories onto it so that it becomes like a time bomb. If a member tries to tell other members that something is not real, they are attacked by other members. It is a self fulfilling quagmire. Eventually many will leave the cult and find some other group to belong in, who knows.
There is no difference between QAnon or the Salem witch hunt where a bunch of young girls driving off each other made up fantasy stories which ended up causing multiple women to be hanged as witches. Recently a couple of girls made up a fantasy about Slender Man, a fictional character off of the internet, and driving off of each other believing ultimately, he was real, sought to kill one of their girlfriends to please the fictional Slender Man.
There are other cults like the Branch Davidians, the People’s Temple with Jim Jones, and another group in San Diego who all members collectively killed themselves for their fantasy belief that was perpetrated by the group.
QAnon is much more dangerous because they are using the First Amendment right to free speech to spread their fantasy propaganda, and millions of Americans now believe the fantasy BS that they are spreading is real. As a collective group with their numbers, they are a danger to our nation.
Some of these people invaded the capital building with the intent to take down the United States government.
In my opinion the United States government has to treat these QAnon cult members as dangerous domestic terrorists, as well as far-right wing white supremacist extremist terrorists, as enemies of the state no different than ISIS or Al Qaeda. We can no longer just ignore them like they are some kind of curiosity. Unlike ISIS or Al Qaeda, these whack jobs live amongst us, there are here.
We need to take serious action against these people, attempt to cut off their ability to communicate using private mainstream social media vehicles, and prosecute them when possible and necessary.
This is way beyond First Amendment freedom of speech. These people are trying to take down the United States government. They are spreading lies and disinformation to do so. We should maybe look at some of the European models, and even Australian models, and limit certain speech by these people that is aimed to take down our government.
By Norman Gregory
