My latest article for Accuracy in Media is on the curious hop-skip-jump from the Biden administration to progressive activists to youth publications to Democrat fundraising around the supposed threat of QAnon:

Media Matters’ dubious methodology hasn’t stopped Democrats and their supporters in the mainstream media from taking political advantage. Just before the election, national and state-level media outlets leveraged the list to put Republicans in a suspicious light. Citing Axios, Forbes, and Newsweek, for instance, the Chicago Tribune warned voters to “take note” that one Republican candidate had used the “wwg1wga” hashtag while another had retweeted a video in which General Michael Flynn recited that phrase.

Earlier this month, Rhode Island Congressman David Cicilline promoted the Media Matters conspiracy about a “Q Caucus” to ask for political donations. His email, however, discloses the real purpose of the Q panic when he asks, “Will you rush a donation to protect our Democratic Majority in the House right now?”

The fabrication of a Q phenomenon is a fascinating study.  While researching for the article, I came across a survey by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) that purports to find about one in four Republicans to be “QAnon Believers.”  Breaking the number down shows how fabricated this is.

To start with, there are only three categories, provided here with the percentage of all Americans in each group:

1. QAnon believers: Respondents who completely or mostly agreed with these statements (14%); 2. QAnon doubters: Respondents who mostly disagreed with these statements (46%); and 3. QAnon rejecters: Respondents who completely disagreed with all three statements (40%).

Notice that “mostly disagreed” gets its own group, while “mostly agreed” is lumped with “completely agreed.”  The importance of this blurring of agreement is heightened when one considers that the three “statements” to which people were agreeing or disagreeing are highly various in their ambiguity:

1. The government, media, and financial worlds in the U.S. are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation
2. There is a storm coming soon that will sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders
3. Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country

The study isn’t clear what it means to “mostly agree” with these statements. If somebody disagrees with the first statement, completely agrees with the second, and partially agrees with the third, which group would they fall in?  Note also note how the survey’s construction blurs factual beliefs with metaphorical beliefs.  One doubts the questions’ authors or respondents were thinking of a literal storm for statement 2, but the study authors clearly want readers to think agreement with statement 1 is literal.

A responsible survey (or at least a responsible analysis of the survey) would dig into the possibility that respondents were agreeing with statement 1 because they believe (for example) that elite culture is implicitly Satanic, defiling of children, and tending to corrupt morals.  For that matter, one has to ask how many conservatives would say “agree” as a form of mockery of the survey itself.

All along the line, the progressive narrative in the service of Democrats is crafted to create a false reality.

Featured image by Ehimetalor Akhere Unuabona on Unsplash.