The QAnon Takeover Of The GOP Is A Fantasy Of Corporate Media And Democrats

There is indeed a fight underway for the future of the Republican Party, but it's not about QAnon conspiracy theories or crackpot lawmakers.

There’s a big push right now among corporate media, Democrats, and NeverTrumpers to establish a narrative that the Republican Party is being torn apart in a bitter civil war between its establishment wing and its supposed QAnon wing. It’s about as true as your garden-variety QAnon conspiracy theory, but it’s politically useful, which is why you’re seeing it crop up all over the media right now.

According to this narrative, dangerous right-wing conspiracy theorists and QAnon acolytes make up a sizable portion of the GOP electorate and enjoy broad acceptance among many Republican elected officials and right-of-center media outlets. These people believe all the “lies” and “conspiracy theories” that Trump peddled after the November election—so much so that they launched an “armed insurrection” at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6 in a failed attempt to overturn the election results and maybe even kidnap Vice President Mike Pence or murder Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

This “wing” of the GOP is so dangerous, we’re told, we need a 9/11-style commission to investigate what happened on Jan. 6, we might need a new domestic terrorism law, and we’re definitely going to have to figure out how to “de-radicalize” Trump supporters. Half the country has lost its mind, you see, which is why so many legacy media outlets have been publishing very serious essays on “MAGA extremism.” If we don’t address this now then MAGA white supremacist militias will terrorize America—like al-Qaeda, only worse.

Tune into NPR or CNN, browse the pages of The New York Times or The Washington Post, and you’ll hear all of this discussed in detail, ad nauseum. But it’s pure fantasy, almost a kind of conspiracy theory of its own, akin to the years-long conspiracy theories about Trump’s collusion with Russia in the 2016 election, which Democrats and the press still cling to despite zero evidence after years of investigations.

Indeed, the notoriety QAnon now enjoys has more to do with the media building it up than Republicans flocking to its banner. According to Pew Research, last spring during the Democratic primaries, more Democrats had heard about QAnon conspiracy theories than Republicans had (28 to 18 percent, respectively) and by the fall, that disparity had grown, with 55 percent of Democrats saying they’d heard of QAnon compared to less than 40 percent of Republicans. Notably, those most likely to say they had heard about it also reported that they got their news mainly from...

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