The Democratic Party Has a Fatal Misunderstanding of the QAnon Phenomenon

[mahatmakanejeeves]

Dave Weigel Retweeted

Strongly endorse everything in this
@OsitaNwanevu
piece. One of the key mistakes I see among Dems, both online & in the real world, is thinking that people believe right-wing nonsense because they are unintelligent or uneducated.

Link to tweet

[Aristus]

1. I don't care what their IQ is, or what advanced degrees they may have earned.

Anyone who believes this horseshit is stupid; bottom line.

[Thekaspervote]

2. ☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️☝️

[In_The_Wind]

5. Here, here

That is the truth.

[Kitchari]

3. Agree with the OP

It's brainwashing, and intelligent people can be brainwashed. From the article :

"The Republican Party is controlled by intelligent, college-educated, and affluent elites who concoct dangerous nonsense to paper over a bigoted, plutocratic agenda and to justify attacks on the democratic process. That agenda and those attacks are supported by millions of reasonably intelligent voters who will believe or claim to believe anything that furthers the objective of keeping conservatives in control of this country forever."

[Vinnie From Indy]

4. Does it really matter ???

Sane, rational people will still consider the premise absurd. The level of intelligence of Q Anon believers won't change that fact.

[KPN]

6. I disagree. Dems are not making a fatal mistake.

They are focused on getting results, whether that be accountability for criminal actions or legislative and other governance accomplishment toward achieving better for everybody, not just the upper crust of society and not just white people. That’s how education is accomplished in the political spectrum— by demonstration of results from which real people benefit. That’s what Democrats are doing — not making fatal mistakes.

[ancianita]

13. Ditto.

[stopbush]

7. Plenty of sane, rational people believe religious claptrap as well.

How to explain it?

[paleotn]

8. Jury is still out on the complete make up of the insurrection.

Seems some were the usual Proud Boy underachievers, while a few others may have had successful careers. The exact makeup is still coming into focus. But one thing is certain, they are almost completely white and incredibly entitled. Reminds me of the White Citizens Councils. Organizations, mainly in the south, for those of better means who thought it unfashionable to run around at night in bed sheets. Same racist garbage for those who didn't want to mix with the yokels in the Klan. One thing, however, still stands regardless of who is or isn't tied to QAnon. Educational achievement and reich wing politics are inversely proportional. That has been proven time and again.

[lettucebe]

9. I don't recall anyone saying all these people are uneducated. Ill informed perhaps but they come

from all walks, in fact many are highly educated, which makes it even more curious.

[hedda_foil]

10. The New Republic Article this references makes a lot of sense.

https://newrepublic.com/article/161266/qanon-classism-marjorie-taylor-greene

[snip]
There were plenty of graduates and good students in the mob that day. Plenty of dropouts and poor students looked on in horror. And as much as the right’s critics might prefer an understanding of what’s happened to our politics that flatters their intelligence, the challenge we’re facing isn’t that millions of hapless and benighted yokels have been bamboozled by disinformation. It’s that millions of otherwise ordinary people from many walks of life—including many who went to and even excelled in college—have a material or ideological interest in keeping the Democratic Party and its voters from power by any means possible. And those means include the utilization of narratives, including conspiracy theories, that delegitimize Democrats and offer hope of their eventual comeuppance.

Those theories are being fueled by politically motivated reasoning, and the literature on this is now fairly vast. For a prescient paper published in the American Journal of Political Science just a month before the 2016 presidential election, the University of Minnesota’s Joanne Miller and Christina Farhart and Colorado State University’s Kyle Saunders conducted a survey examining support for conspiracy theories, including birtherism and 9/11 trutherism. In a result unsurprising to those who follow this research, they found that higher levels of political knowledge actually deepened the likelihood that conservatives with low trust in people and major institutions would endorse right-wing conspiracy theories. In a section reviewing previous research on the subject, the authors explained that political sophisticates “have the ability to make connections between abstract principles and more concrete attitudes and are therefore more fully able to notice the implications of specific attitudes for their worldviews.” “Because politically knowledgeable people care more about politics and hold stronger political attitudes,” they added, “they are especially likely to want to protect those attitudes.”

This dynamic is now well established across multiple issue areas. Studies have suggested, for example, that higher levels of political knowledge, scientific knowledge, and quantitative skill can actually deepen disagreements about climate change and gun control. And research published by Harvard’s Kennedy School last spring found no correlation between educational attainment and beliefs in conspiracy theories about the coronavirus pandemic—indicating, the authors wrote, that the beliefs were “not merely the product of deficient health education” and had been fed by “psychological and political motivations.” The popularity of the idea that simple ignorance lies at the heart of all this may itself be proof of the phenomenon these studies point to: Many people will believe what they want to believe in spite of available data and evidence.

There isn’t much to be done about any of this: We won’t do away with motivated reasoning without wholly reinventing human beings; we can’t contain the spread of disinformation without wholly reinventing the internet and the media as we know them. And while the second task would be easier than the first, it doesn’t seem much more likely. Doing something about the power of the Republican Party seems more plausible—as long as those fighting it frame the battle as right against wrong rather than smart against dumb.
[snip]

[appalachiablue]

11. Rec! Separate post.

[Nitram]

12. I have my doubts this will prove a lot term danger. People are already abandoning QAnon because

their very clear predictions are turning out to be spectacularly wrong. I'm not saying we shouldn't monitor these quacks, but they really went out on a limb with their predictions. QAnon himself has stopped communicating. Yes, many will move on to another conspiracy theory, but this one may have played itself out.