Very much looking forward to this discussion...
The approach of Q's followers (along with myriad other conspiracy
theorists) reflects
the Ninth lesson from historian Timothy Snyder’s text ‘On Tyranny:
Twenty Lessons for the 20th Century’
which begins with the sentence: ‘Investigate. Figure things out for
yourself.’ Worryingly that is precisely
what Q's followers feel they are doing.
The epistemology of these movements could be characterised as a
hermeneutics of un-quenchable suspicion in
which “every official narrative and mainstream institution is suspect
[…] and in which real knowledge is
produced by like-minded strangers working together on the internet “to
do their own research”.”
These are potent grass roots research orientated sub-cultures who
experience the sheer excitement of feeling that they are unmasking a
world of lies and revealing through their own research efforts a network
of hidden causes. This fact that makes it particularly hard terrain
those on the left to contest.
Although not exactly an activist I find it useful to recall Roland
Barthes's evolution thinker from the early days as an unmasker of
'mythologies' to a later understanding that you can’t get rid of a
mythology by telling or demonstrating that it’s a 'myth'. It can only
ever be replaced it with a better myth. Faith in evidence and exposure
is not enough.
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