The QAnon Caucus

By Lisa Lerer Politics Newsletter Writer

Hi. Welcome to On Politics, your guide to the day in national politics. I’m Lisa Lerer, your host.

It sounds like the plot of a mediocre political thriller.

A baseless conspiracy theory, promulgated in the outer rings of the internet, begins seeping into college campuses, courtrooms, political campaigns — and finally the highest reaches of American government.

Like so much in our politics these days, the once unbelievable has become real.

More than 50 candidates who have expressed support for the conspiracy theory known as QAnon have run for Congress in 2020, according to Media Matters, a liberal research group. Nearly all are running as Republicans. About half have already lost their primary races. But at least one has a good chance of ending up on Capitol Hill.

Last week, Marjorie Taylor Greene, a wealthy businesswoman who has promoted QAnon, won more than 40 percent of the vote in a Republican primary for a House seat in Georgia. She now enters an August runoff as the favorite to secure her party’s nomination — and the Republican candidate is likely to win the general election in the conservative district.

Most Republicans said nothing about Ms. Greene’s support for the conspiracy theory; on the contrary, she was endorsed by prominent figures like Representative Jim Jordan of Ohio and Representative Andy Biggs of Arizona, the chairman of the conservative House Freedom Caucus. But after Politico uncovered hours of Facebook videos in which she made racist, Islamophobic and anti-Semitic remarks, Republican leaders began distancing themselves from her candidacy.

In Oregon last month, Republicans selected a Senate candidate, Jo Rae Perkins, who also promotes QAnon. Although she’s unlikely to beat the incumbent Democrat, Senator Jeff Merkley, her bid has the backing of party leaders.

Neither Ms. Perkins nor Ms. Greene ran explicitly on her QAnon beliefs. But Ms. Perkins believes her candidacy is helping QAnon.

“We are seeing more and more people getting emboldened as we see more and more information get out there,” she told The New York Times. “And as people put together more and more pieces of the puzzle, they can see, yeah, this is real.”

So what, exactly, do QAnon adherents believe? The central theme is that President Trump is a near-messianic figure who is besieged by threats from evil government officials.

The sprawling conspiracy theory started in October 2017, when a user of the online message board 4chan began writing cryptic posts under the name Q Clearance Patriot, claiming to be a high-ranking official privy to top-secret information from Mr. Trump’s inner circle.

Since then, the QAnon universe has expanded to include a series of outlandish claims. Mr. Trump was recruited by the military to run for office in order to break up a global cabal of Democratic pedophiles (remember Pizzagate?). The special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s investigation would end up sending prominent Democrats to be imprisoned at Guantánamo Bay. John F. Kennedy Jr. is still alive and is going to replace Vice President Mike Pence on the 2020 Republican ticket.

While these statements are ridiculous, they can also put real people in danger. Last year, the F.B.I. put out an intelligence bulletin identifying QAnon and other fringe conspiracy theories as a potential domestic terror threat. People said to have been radicalized by QAnon have been charged with crimes including attempted kidnapping and murder.

Still, the president has played right along, at times at times elevating and encouraging QAnon followers. He’s recirculated their posts on Twitter, posed with one for a photograph in the Oval Office, and invited some QAnon believers to a White House “social media summit.”

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“I can’t say whether President Trump believes QAnon, but he certainly is willing to use conspiracy rhetoric to his advantage,” said Joanne Miller, who studies the political psychology of conspiracy theories at the University of Delaware. “That could be part of what’s emboldening QAnon believers to come out of the shadows.”

Joseph Uscinski, an expert on conspiracy theories at the University of Miami, has a simple theory: “Conspiracy theories are for losers.” Generally, the party in power doesn’t need to support a theory essentially undermining the government it controls.

That’s not the case with Mr. Trump, who has often claimed that a “deep state” of shadowy government officials is trying to subvert his presidency.

“There’s always been these beliefs that there’s a deep state. Now, it’s more like it’s the deep state that’s really turning on this populist who’s one of us,” Ms. Miller said. “This is the first time we’ve seen the president’s party — people on the winning side — who seem to be more conspiratorial.”