Another article about QAnon’s spreading cult-like influence, including the vulnerability from within New Age communities. — Molly
In March, as the coronavirus pandemic was forcing much of the U.S. into lockdown, Seane Corn, a prominent yoga instructor and social justice activist started to receive messages from friends and fellow teachers about the rapidly spreading virus that, she says, “just felt paranoid.”
“What they were trying to help get me to understand was ... not to trust the government, that there was this deep-state conspiracy related to COVID where, via Bill Gates, they’re going to be microchipping us through the use of mandated vaccines,” Corn told Yahoo News. They used terms like “great awakening” and “red pill.”
“If you just dug a little deeper, it was like all roads led to QAnon,” said Corn, referring to the cult-like network that promotes the delusion that President Trump is secretly working to dismantle an international child sex trafficking ring run by a cabal of satanic global elites.
Corn was witnessing the start of what Marc-André Argentino, a PhD candidate studying technology and extremist propaganda at Concordia University in Canada, has dubbed “Pastel QAnon,” which uses softer language and aesthetically pleasing imagery to spread the group’s paranoid worldview in the typically apolitical online world of yoga devotees, wellness and nutrition coaches and “mommy bloggers.”
Some were drawn in by QAnon’s adoption of anti-vaccination rhetoric, echoing a common New Age trope. Others believed that in spreading QAnon posts they were helping to fight sexual trafficking of children. Their participation both spread the conspiracies to new audiences, Argentino wrote, and helped the growing network of believers get around Facebook’s efforts to crack down on QAnon content. In a recent Twitter thread, Argentino highlighted several examples of the types of posts that he says are representative of this trend.
The appeal of Q-inspired beliefs to her friends and colleagues was a mystery to Corn, who describes herself as politically liberal. But a predisposition to reject mainstream political and scientific thought is a prerequisite to accepting the Q mindset. Yoga is a form of exercise, but also involves varying degrees of spiritual practice, with elements of mysticism that — not unlike the segments of evangelical Christianity that have embraced the prophecies of Q — resists the sort of fact checking that might undermine the core Q myth.
One example of an influencer who appears to have embraced Pastel QAnon is Rose Henges, a Christian mom blogger and “holistic living” advocate who sells a variety of herbal supplements and skin care products online. Back in April, BuzzFeed noted that Henges, who’d previously posted about her opposition to vaccines and the pharmaceutical industry, had begun sharing QAnon conspiracy theories with her then-substantial audience of 73,000 Instagram followers. One such post from that period includes a photograph that appears to show Henges, armed with a large yellow Gadsden flag (“Don’t Tread on Me”), posing maskless with her family at a “Re-open Florida” protest. At the bottom of the caption, Henges included the hashtag #WWG1WA, an abbreviation for the QAnon slogan “Where We Go One We Go All.” (The hashtag has since been blocked by Instagram, though the post remains visible in Henges’s feed.)
Explicit references to QAnon have disappeared from Henges’s more recent posts, although she’s continued to fill her meticulously curated Instagram feed with misinformed claims about the coronavirus, the alleged dangers of masks and child sex trafficking — building her audience to 125,000 followers in the process.
Some of Henges’s earlier posts indicate that she’d already had an affinity for right-wing causes as well as conspiratorial thinking prior to the onset of the coronavirus pandemic. One post from December 2019 shows Henges posing with a Glock handgun which, in the caption, she encouraged other mothers to “purchase for their families survival preparedness go-bag.” In another, dated March 1, she promotes unfounded conspiracy theories about the dangers of 5G wireless technology.
Like Henges, yoga influencer Krystal Tini began attaching #WWG1WGA and other Q-related hashtags to her Instagram posts in early March. In August, Tini even posted a video explaining to her 145,000 Instagram followers how her “truth-seeking” about the coronavirus pandemic led her to embrace QAnon.
Not everyone is as willing to acknowledge the connection between QAnon (or Trump), and the misinformed claims about masks, vaccines and child trafficking that they eagerly share online. For some, that is likely a deliberate choice to distance themselves from other adherents of this extremist movement, who’ve been increasingly linked to acts of real-world violence and harassment, while also avoiding having their content blocked from mainstream platforms.
Please go here to continue this article here: https://news.yahoo.com/pastel-q-anon-where-pro-trump-conspiracy-theories-meet-new-age-spirituality-222152937.html
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