The Qanoon Conspiracy Theory
Conspiracy
Pizzagate and its progeny Qanoon are two conspiracy theories with a growing number of believers worldwide. Qanoon has entered mainstream conservative politics, with followers identifying themselves with posters and t-shirts at rallies for former President Trump beginning in 2018.
With growing numbers of Qanoon theorists, the world over, psychiatrists will begin to encounter such individuals with increasing frequency.
Because some individuals are motivated to engage in criminal behaviour based on their beliefs, forensic psychiatrists may also encounter Qanoon more commonly in the future. It is therefore important that psychiatrists understand the Qanoon conspiracy theory, as well as how it is consistent with and different from other conspiracy theories. Particularly noteworthy is the rapid and global spread of Qanoon via social media.
Clinically, it is important for psychiatrists to be able to differentiate Qanoon beliefs from other types of beliefs, including delusions and other delusion-like beliefs. For forensic psychiatrists, understanding the role that conspiracy theories may play in individuals’ legal proceedings is particularly important.
Pizzagate was a conspiracy theory that high-ranking Democratic officials in the United States government were involved in a child sex trafficking ring located in the basement of a pizza Parlor in Washington, D.C.
The theory developed following WikiLeaks’ release of e-mails originally hacked by Russians from the e-mail account of John Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman, one month before the 2016 United States presidential election. Right-wing, alt-right, and Russian trolls on forum sites including 4chan and Reddit posted that the use of the phrase “cheese pizza” in e-mails about dinner plans was code for child pornography.
The association between pizza and child sexual abuse led forum users to target Comet Ping Pong, a Washington, D.C. pizza Parlor from which Mr. Podesta had ordered. Believers began spreading the Pizzagate meme, which expanded via stories containing disinformation on conservative forums and websites.
The conspiracy theory became progressively stranger, ultimately invoking the existence of an elite, Satanic, cannibalistic, child sex trafficking ring operating out of Comet Ping Pong’s basement.
Motivated by his belief that alleged child abuse was occurring at the pizzeria, 26-year-old Edgar Welch drove from North Carolina to Washington, D.C., carrying three loaded firearms on December 4, 2016. He marched into the store armed with an AR-15 assault rifle and a revolver.
As customers and employees fled the building, Mr. Welch reportedly attempted to open a locked door with a butter knife and, when unsuccessful, his AR-15. Unable to find the alleged sex ring’s kill rooms, he departed the pizzeria unarmed after about 20 minutes and was arrested. In an interview from jail with The New York Times, Mr. Welch expressed regret over how he “handled the situation.”
The intel on this wasn’t 100%
Regarding the absence of children at the pizzeria, he said, “The intel on this wasn’t 100 percent.” He was subsequently sentenced to four years in prison for interstate transportation of a firearm and ammunition and assault with a deadly weapon.
On October 28, 2017, the birth of the Qanoon conspiracy theory picked up where Pizzagate left off. On that day the now mythic Q created a post entitled “Calm Before the Storm” on the forum site 4chan in which he claimed to be a government official with connections to the Trump administration and Q clearance.
Releasing alleged intelligence in the form of breadcrumbs or Qdrops, Q built on the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, asserting that then-President Trump would initiate The Storm, an attack against the deep-state actors responsible for the global paedophile cabal. Since then, a community of online followers has expanded the belief system of Qanoon, often in response to political and societal happenings or to the tweets of former President Trump.
For example, the group identified Q’s influence when Alabama’s football team presented Trump with a jersey bearing the number 17, which also happens to be the position of letter Q in the alphabet.
The conspiracy theory rapidly worked its way into the mainstream, in part due to the amplification of Qanoon material by celebrities like Roseanne Barr, who tweeted supportive comments about the Trump administration’s role in breaking up paedophile rings in March 2018, and Trump himself, who is estimated to have promoted the conspiracy theory at least 265 times via retweets of Qanoon-associated accounts between October 2017 and October 2019.
Qanoon has been associated with various criminal acts. For example, on June 15, 2018, Matthew Phillip Wright blocked traffic on a bridge over the Hoover Dam with an armoured truck containing two assault rifles, two handguns, and 900 rounds of ammunition.
He held a sign next to the vehicle that stated, “Release the OIG report,” and claimed that he was on a mission for Qanoon to obtain a report on the conduct of Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents during their investigation of Hillary Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server for official public communications.
He later pleaded guilty to charges of making a terrorist threat, aggravated assault, and unlawful flight from a pursuing law enforcement vehicle. On May 30, 2019, the FBI released a report classifying Pizzagate and Qanoon as “fringe political” conspiracy theories and noted that they likely motivate domestic extremists to commit violent and other criminal behaviour.
It is therefore not surprising that many of those arrested for their participation in the January 6, 2021, insurrection at the United States Capitol building have been found to be loyal Qanoon believer
Like any other type of belief, a conspiracy theory can motivate the believer to act, including in ways that are violent or otherwise unlawful. Qanoon has managed to invade mainstream political discourse and spread to other nations.
Given its wide uptake, general psychiatrists, correctional psychiatrists, and forensic psychiatrists may encounter individuals espousing belief in the conspiracy theory more frequently. It is therefore important for practitioners to understand the underlying tenets of this theory, as well as how Qanoon compares to other types of atypical belief systems.
Psychiatrists charged with evaluating or treating Qanoon theorists should also be aware of how conspiracy theories spread, a process that has become more rapid and virulent with the rise of social media. Finally, forensic examiners require a framework by which to evaluate the role of Qanoon and other conspiracy theories in the context of forensic assessment.
The Differential Diagnosis of Belief in Qanoon
Because individuals espousing belief in the Qanoon conspiracy theory are engaging in criminal behaviour, they are more likely to encounter correctional and forensic psychiatrists in the future. Psychiatrists therefore require a framework with which to understand and assess conspiracy theorists. It is necessary to be able to identify conspiracy theories as such because the differential diagnosis of atypical beliefs is vast.
Qanoon and Delusion-Like Beliefs
Belief in conspiracy theories is not delusional. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition (DSM-5) defines a delusion as a “false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly held despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary” (Ref., p 819).
Furthermore, the text indicates that delusions are “not ordinarily accepted” by an individual’s culture or subculture and, when they involve a value judgment, are “so extreme as to defy credibility” (Ref., p 819). Belief in Qanoon and other conspiracy theories fails to meet the DSM-5 definition of a delusion because their existence depends on a community or subculture of individuals that share the belief. In addition, there are degrees to which theorists adhere to their beliefs that may change depending on evidence presented to them.
Even those committed to act on behalf of Qanoon, such as Edgar Welch, may find that their “intel [is not] 100 percent”5 or that their belief is shaken by evidence to the contrary. Finally, the fact that conspiracy theories are widely held within the general population indicates that they are not delusions, lest most of the population be considered to have a delusional disorder.
Belief in conspiracy theories may be described more appropriately as one form of delusion-like belief (DLB). Pierre recently published a review of DLBs in The Journal in which he described them as beliefs that “slip through the cracks of symptom definitions and drift into the Gray area between pathological and normal beliefs”
Indeed, because of their prevalence, cultural sanction, shared nature, and content ranging from the mundane to the extreme, conspiracy theories uncomfortably straddle the line between the pathological and the normal.
In his review, Pierre argues that a failure to look beyond typical psychiatric classifications may result in misunderstanding and misidentification of DLBs. In either a clinical or forensic context an uninformed psychiatrist could certainly mistake belief in a conspiracy theory for a delusion and misidentify a theorist as experiencing psychosis. Pierre advocates for careful consideration of the conviction, preoccupation, self-reference, grandiosity, and distress associated with the belief, rather than its content or the degree to which it is shared, as the former factors may suggest a delusional belief rather than a DLB.
Though being able to distinguish between a delusion and belief in a conspiracy theory is undoubtedly helpful, particularly for a treatment provider, it may be less useful for a jury or other legal decision-maker. In forensic considerations of dangerousness or criminal responsibility, it is necessary for the expert to be able to explain how individuals developed their beliefs and how these beliefs contributed to their behaviour.
Pierre advocates the use of a cognitive perspective in the evaluation and diagnostic formulation of individuals with DLBs. An expert must understand individual belief acquisition and maintenance and the impact of dyads, closed groups, and the Internet in such processes.
Pierre recommends that experts understand models of the adoption of unconventional beliefs. Relevant examples include the two-deficit model that involves the cognitive misinterpretation of an anomalous experience and the socio-epistemic model that involves epistemic mistrust (i.e., lack of belief in the authority of traditional institutions), as well as information-processing biases that make an individual vulnerable to misinformation.
Qanoon and Cult Considerations
Qanoon’s casual and inaccurate conflation with a cult by various news highlights the difficulty in distinguishing between various types of DLBs and offers an example as to how one might do so.
Whether the community of conspiracists who believe in and promote Qanoon’s tenets represents a cult depends on how closely it adheres to the characteristics of a cult. Galanter identified some of the essential traits of a cult, including a consensual belief system, social cohesiveness, behavioural mores, a charismatic leader, and a transcendental goal. Qanoon, however, lacks defined behavioural mores and belief in a transcendental goal.
In terms of behavioural mores, Qanoon theorists are spread internationally and rely on social media to communicate. The widespread network of believers, each with the ability to contribute to or interact with Qanoon messaging at his or her frequency of choice, makes it difficult to establish coherent behavioural norms. Even if there were a set of behavioural mores, there would be no way for a central authority to enforce it.
Qanoon theorists differ from a cult also in terms of transcendent experiences and belief in a transcendental goal. Galanter noted that cults are “more specifically religious”) than other charismatic groups with atypical beliefs.
He indicated that transcendent experiences, including hallucinatory experiences in psychotic and nonpsychotic cult members, are instrumental in cult activities such as recruitment, conversion, and conflict resolution.
Participation in Qanoon, however, largely occurs via social media and does not involve such experiences. For example, joining Qanoon entails opening a web browser and searching social media sites for relevant posts and like-minded individuals.
There is no evidence that Qanoon theorists seek to bring about transcendent experiences in believers. In addition, the Qanoon conspiracy theory does not entail belief in a transcendental goal.
Rather, the theory is fixated on comparatively banal topics related to human life on Earth, including the tweets of Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton’s e-mail history, wildfires, the COVID-19 pandemic, alleged child sexual abuse, and the 2020 United States presidential election.
Though Qanoon and its adherents are not a cult, its conspiracy theories have begun to merge with the preexisting DLBs of the sovereign citizen movement. Sovereign citizen beliefs have morphed since their inception in England in the 19th century, but common tenets include the United States’ rule via admiralty law; the creation of a corporate trust in a child’s name coinciding with the assignment of a social security number; and redemption by freeing oneself from the jurisdiction of the U.S. government.
The Anatomy of a Conspiracy Theory
A conspiracy theory is a set of ideas describing the collusion of various individuals or entities for a malevolent purpose. The claims encompassed in conspiracy theories are unverified, unverifiable, and sensationalistic, and they rebut more coherent and logical explanations for the topic at hand.
Central elements of a conspiracy theory include a pattern or causal connection between various people, objects, or events; agency or intentionality among alleged conspirators; a coalition of actors; threatening or malevolent goals; and secrecy among those involved.
There is evidence that conspiracy theories about a broad range of topics are widely held in the general population. For example, in a telephone poll of 1,010 randomly selected adults in the United States, 16.1 percent and 20.0 percent reported that it was “very likely” or “somewhat likely,” respectively, that people in the federal government assisted in the September terrorist attacks or took no action to prevent the attacks because they wanted the United States to go to war in the Middle East.
Such beliefs were more likely to be held by racial minorities, younger people, women, those with less education, and those who read blogs. Similarly, an online survey of 1,351 Americans regarding medical conspiracies found that 37 percent agreed that the Food and Drug Administration is deliberately preventing the public from getting natural cures for cancer and other diseases because of pressure from drug companies, while 20 percent agreed that doctors and the government wish to vaccinate children despite knowing that vaccines cause autism and psychological disorders.
Analysing data from four nationally representative surveys conducted in 2006, 2010, and 2011, the same authors reported that more than half of American adults believe in common conspiracy theories and concluded that “both the willingness to agree with conspiracy theories or see them as valid explanations for political phenomena are quite commonplace in the American public”
Not surprisingly, conspiracy theorizing leads individuals to engage in behaviours consistent with their beliefs. Individuals who expressed agreement with an increasing number of medical conspiracy theories reported greater use of alternative medicine and herbal supplements and less utilization of annual check-ups and sunscreen.
Similarly, a recent online survey of more than 5,000 UK residents identified a negative relationship between COVID-19 conspiracy beliefs and COVID-19 health-protective behaviours, and a positive relationship between conspiracy beliefs and the use of social media as a source of information about COVID-19.
Qanoon clearly demonstrates the defining characteristics of a conspiracy theory. Theorists identify patterns and causal relationships among individuals, events, and places, attributed to the work of a cabal of cannibalistic paedophiles. The cabal is alleged to act in coalition to satisfy a malevolent goal, namely the commission of child sexual abuse and sacrifice.
Despite the purported involvement of high-profile politicians and Hollywood celebrities, the cannibalistic sect has managed to conduct its affairs in secrecy. Some have hypothesized that conspiracy theorizing may be an evolutionary by-product of adaptive psychological mechanisms including pattern perception, agency detection, and threat management.
Indeed, the processes of pattern perception and agency detection are well on display in the interpretation of banal events by Qanoon theorists. For example, when Donald Trump was on a trip to Asia, Q posted photographs of islands that conspiracists interpreted as evidence that Q was on Air Force One.
The content of the conspiracy theory has crept across various thematic areas over time, incorporating both well-worn conspiracy tropes and current world events. The theory has been linked with antisemitism due to its fixation on Jewish elites, including accusations of malevolence targeting George Soros and the Rothschilds.
Following the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, Qanoon theorists spread the idea that drinking an industrial bleach known as Miracle Mineral Solution was a cure for the illness.
With the spread of wildfires across the West Coast in the fall of 2020, Q posted comments from a former U.S. Senate candidate in Oregon that six Antifa members had been arrested for intentionally starting wildfires. Conspiracy theories can grow to incorporate current events and topics with relative ease, propagating some claims that may not individually appear false or unusual.
The Spread of Qanoon
Perhaps one of the most distinctive aspects of the Qanoon conspiracy theory is the speed and ease with which it has propagated around the world. Prior to the advent of blogs and social media platforms, people obtained the news from traditional media outlets, including newspapers and television.
People’s beliefs about the world were shaped by the news and the communities to which they belonged, which were commonly local neighbourhoods, professional networks, religious organizations, and other civic institutions.
The rise of social media, however, has enabled conspiracy theories like Qanoon to spread rapidly and globally. Social media platforms allow all comers instant access to communication with people around the world and facilitate the linkage of those susceptible to conspiracy thinking with a community of like-minded individuals.
It has also enabled the immediate, global sharing of disinformation, including the ideas of celebrity conspiracy theorists like Alex Jones, host of the popular show InfoWars. The problems associated with disinformation on social media platforms are becoming increasingly apparent and include the loss of a shared sense of reality, political polarization, and a risk to public health.
An information landscape that enables the development of siloed communities of individuals who are prone to reject traditional news provides fertile soil for the growth of conspiracy thinking.
Indeed, Qanoon’s spread and representation on social media platforms have been extensive and persistent. The Institute for Strategic Dialogue (ISD), a global think tank that seeks to address extremism and disinformation, published a report outlining the presence of Qanoon-related posts on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and YouTube. From October 27, 2017, to June 17, 2020, ISD identified 69,475,451 tweets, 487,310 Facebook posts, and 281,554 Instagram posts that mentioned Qanoon-related phrases or hashtags.
They noted that the number of posts and unique users discussing Qanoon tends to increase in response to certain events, such as when Q followers were first spotted at Trump rallies in Florida in August 2018 and after the arrest and death of Jeffrey Epstein in July and August 2019.
ISD also reported that the highest volume of Qanoon-related posts on all platforms occurred between March 2020 and June 2020 with the imposition of stay-at-home orders in response to the COVID pandemic.
The number of unique users discussing Qanoon on Facebook grew 161 percent from 344 per day in the first week of March 2020 to 898 per day in the last week; similarly, the average number of Twitter users grew from 37,302 in the first week to 89,338 in the last week.
Despite Facebook’s efforts to eliminate Qanoon content from the platform beginning in October 2020, many personal profiles have remained active, including that of Larry Cook, an anti-vaccination activist who shares videos in which he explains Qanoon to beginners and how the U.S. government runs secret detention camps.
Later that month, YouTube stated that it would begin “removing more conspiracy theory content used to justify real-world violence.” It remains unclear whether these platforms’ efforts will be able to curb the spread of Qanoon-related content in the future.
Perhaps most revealing of the effect of social media’s ability to spread the Qanoon conspiracy theory is how it has taken root abroad.
According to the ISD, from November 2019 to June 2020, 2.8 percent of Qanoon-related tweets came from the United Kingdom, 2.7 percent from Canada, 1.7 percent from Australia, and 0.5 percent from Germany. An online survey of 2,000 adults in the United Kingdom found that 19 percent had heard of Qanoon, and, of those, 5.7 percent reported supporting it In addition, in August 2020 there were street protests in 10 cities across the UK, including one in London involving 500 protestors, organized by Freedom for the Children UK, a group promulgating the Qanoon conspiracy theory online under the hashtag #SaveOurChildren.
Qanoon’s growth in Germany has resulted in theorists demonstrating in the streets as well, along with anti-COVID lockdown and far-right Reichs burgers nationalist protestors. In countries around the world, Qanoon themes have been picked up and adapted by local groups to promote conspiracy theorizing and to foment grievance.
Qanoon and Extreme Overvalued Beliefs
Recently, Rahman and colleagues put forth the concept of the extreme overvalued belief. Based on Carl Wernicke’s concept of overvalued idea, extreme overvalued belief is meant to assist psychiatrists in distinguishing between delusions, obsessions, and DLBs to which someone may firmly adhere.
Differentiating elements of the definition of extreme overvalued belief include that it “is shared by others in a person’s cultural, religious, or subcultural group,” that the “individual has an intense emotional commitment to the belief and may carry out violent behaviour in its service,” and that it “is usually associated with an abnormal personality).
In theory, a conspiracy theory to which a believer closely adheres could constitute a single extreme overvalued belief or multiple extreme overvalued beliefs. Indeed, various vignettes that Rahman and colleagues presented to conference attendees to assess the concept’s interrater reliability were consistent with conspiracy theories.
Though a conspiracy theory could be considered an extreme overvalued belief, problems with the concept belie its utility. First, there are no published data indicating that the various elements of the definition cohere to validate the concept of an extreme overvalued belief.
Second, Rahman and colleagues suggest that the extreme overvalued belief assists by “classifying beliefs by putative causation,” which would “promote progress in forensic psychiatry”). Yet the definition itself does not posit any mechanism of causation, apart from noting that belief may contribute to an individual’s violent behaviour.
This conclusion is both obvious and unhelpful. Furthermore, the definition indicates that an individual may, but does not necessarily, act on the belief. As previously noted, in considerations of dangerousness or criminal responsibility involving DLBs, it is the link between belief and action that matters.
The concept of extreme overvalued belief does not help in understanding this link. Finally, the definition of extreme overvalued belief is so broad that it potentially can include conspiracy theories, religious or cult beliefs, or other DLBs of sociocultural or political sects.
These different DLBs have their own historical, social, political, and psychological underpinnings. Placing them all under one umbrella term does not help to further their study; rather, it further blurs the lines distinguishing them.
Finish off
Because of their beliefs, sovereign citizens attempt to combat government interference in their lives by refusing to pay taxes and filing excessive pseudo legal documents in court. Recently some Qanoon supporters used sovereign rhetoric to explain why Donald Trump will be President of the United States again.
Specifically, Qanoon adherents claimed in January 2021 that Joe Biden was inaugurated President of the corporation of the United States, but that Donald Trump would be inaugurated as President of the original republic on March 4, 2021.
This crossover of sovereign beliefs into Qanoon further demonstrates the malleability of the conspiracy theory and the difficulty of distinguishing between different DLBs, including similar types of DLBs.
