How QAnon and other dark forces are radicalizing Americans as the COVID-19 pandemic rages and election looms – By Nathan Bomey, and Jessica Guynn (USA Today) / Aug 31 2020
The spread of conspiracy theories into the mainstream on social media channels like Facebook and YouTube is accelerating during the coronavirus.
Harrison Hawkins has experienced firsthand the insidious spread of QAnon.
In early April, he fell in love with a college student he met on a dating app. She was spiritual and intelligent. She liked to meditate and take hikes. But within months, she began to express anxiety. His phone filled up with troubling links and articles concerning conspiracy theories about the “deep state” and child trafficking. Hawkins tried nudging aside his worry, hoping she would move away from the phase.
They had their first big fight in early July when she didn’t show up to dinner at his mom’s house because she was researching the chemical adrenochrome that followers of QAnon, a fringe online movement, erroneously believe is harvested from children’s blood. From that point forward, she avoided him, then cut him off. Hawkins said he still clings to “a tiny bit of hope” that QAnon will release its hold on her.
“Some media outlets have written it off as a kooky conspiracy,” he said of QAnon. “The word conspiracy discredits its power.”
Swept up in the culture wars over immigration and race, rattled by economic upheaval and desperate for companionship in an age of social isolation, an untold number of Americans are succumbing to radicalization in the form of fringe or extremist ideologies rooted in baseless conspiracy theories.
Continue to article: https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/tech/2020/08/31/qanon-conspiracy-theories-trump-election-covid-19-pandemic-extremist-groups/5662374002/
