Since Trump’s defeat, the QAnon movement has quietly entered a different, and arguably more dangerous, phase. Adherents now hold local elected offices across the U.S.–from mayors to city-council members to school-board trustees–with the power to shape policies that directly affect the lives of millions of Americans from positions that offer a measure of credibility to delusional beliefs. In some places, like Grand Blanc, the election of QAnon believers to local office has met little organized resistance. In others, it’s prompted street protests, frantic PTA meetings, tearful city-council Zoom calls, and hundreds of angry emails and petitions.
It’s impossible to estimate how many elected officials believe in QAnon or have promoted its theories in the past. No organization keeps tallies, and it can be hard to parse the point where Trumpian provocation ends and true conspiracy thinking begins. But it’s clear from more than two dozen interviews with residents of communities where QAnon-tied officials have taken office that America is only beginning to grapple with the havoc that the cultlike conspiracy theory has wrought. Almost every resident who talked to TIME about their own local official’s links to the movement also pointed out others in the area they had noticed sharing QAnon content: a state legislator, a county commissioner, a sheriff.
DL Open Thread – Monday April 26th 2021
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