A nation of messianic lunatics

I very rarely do this, but I’m asking — imploring? begging? — the readers of this post to listen to or read the transcript of this interview, between NPR’s Terry Gross and Will Sommer, the author of the new book Trust the Plan.

Here’s an excerpt that captures the flavor of what’s happening here, although what that is ain’t exactly clear:

GROSS: And in the U.S., there are factions and there are splits within QAnon. Can you tell us about some of those splits?

SOMMER: Oh, absolutely. I mean, this is one of the most fascinating things to cover about QAnon, is how QAnon more broadly, for someone outside of it, looks so ridiculous. But even within the movement, you have people who say, well, that group’s looking – making us look silly; we’re a serious operation here. So one of the major ones is a question of whether JFK Jr. faked his death in the ’90s from a plane crash and is, in fact, still alive. And so this is a group – I would say it’s – maybe 30% of QAnon believers believe that he is still alive.

And so you have guys who are – they exist in the real world, but people believe that they are JFK Jr. And so they’ll show up at these rallies, and everyone says, wow, it’s JFK Jr. I talked to – I was shadowing one of them, and these women were so excited to see him as though they had seen, you know, a real celebrity. And I said, you know, that guy looks nothing like JFK Jr. And she said, you know, haven’t you ever heard of special effects? Haven’t you ever heard of Tyler Perry and Madea?

GROSS: Well, you know, you say this whole JFK Jr. story is one of the stories that drives you crazy. You know, JFK Jr. died in 1999 in a plane crash. And one of the people who impersonates him, Vincent Fusca, developed his own following. People dressed like him on Halloween. There are numerological calculations based on his license plate with secret meanings. You actually talked to him. What impression did you take away from this guy?

SOMMER: Yeah, I’ve actually – I’ve talked to him many times, and he loves texting me to this day. So this is a guy who looks like, you know – and I don’t think he would dispute this. He looks a little shabby. He’s got a kind of a permanent 5 o’clock shadow. He wears a fedora. And so he’s a guy who was a Trump superfan. He had a van covered in Trump pictures. And so it appears as though the Trump campaign started giving him a lot of VIP passes to events. And so he was always appearing behind Trump at rallies.

So then, one day, some QAnon believers said, hey, do you think that guy looks like JFK Jr.? And do you think that blonde woman near him looks like JFK Jr.’s wife? And so these people became convinced that he was JFK Jr. And what is maddening to me is that this is a guy who he knows he’s not JFK Jr. He’s the one guy who knows that more than anyone. But he still shows up at these events, and sometimes he’ll wear a JFK Jr. shirt. And people say, wow, it’s JFK Jr. And he says, well, maybe, maybe. And so I’ve run into him repeatedly, and he’ll say, well, you know, I’d actually love to talk with you about that; can we meet up in an hour? And so I’ll say, OK, sure. And then, of course, he never responds.

But sometimes when there’s a rival JFK Jr. on the scene, he’ll text me and say, oh, look – you know, look at this. Look at this guy. What’s he up to? But I mean, he seems to be having the time of his life. He’ll do karaoke at events, and everyone thrills to it as though they’re seeing JFK Jr. perform karaoke.

GROSS: So is the whole bit here that JFK Jr. staged his own fake death so he could return as Q?

SOMMER: It’s very complex. And I think you’re making the mistake of (laughter) trying to make sense of it. But basically…

GROSS: I’m sorry.

SOMMER: Oh, no, no, no.

GROSS: No, I’m kidding (laughter).

SOMMER: There is an internal logic to it because the idea is that the deep state, the people who are out to get Donald Trump, the cabal, assassinated John F. Kennedy, the president. And so JFK Jr. saw this and said, you know, I know how sick these people are. I’m going to go undercover. And so he fakes his death in the ’90s in this plane crash and then either becomes Q – some people believe that – or just works with his buddy Donald Trump to take down the cabal. And this idea of this kind of this hidden figure who’s going to come back to life – I mean, there really are some messianic religious aspects to it. But people really buy into this.

I went to – in 2019, Trump had a very sort of Trump-ified July Fourth celebration in D.C. And all of these QAnon believers, among other people, came to D.C. for it. I was hanging out at the Trump Hotel, and I saw this woman wearing a JFK Jr. shirt, who was convinced that he was coming back That day. I saw a woman wearing a JFK Jr. mask, and I said, you know, excuse me, what’s the significance of this mask? And she just said, he’s alive, and sort of flitted away into the crowd.

Oh those wacky Internet conspiracy theorists! It’s a good thing they don’t actually affect anything in the real world:

GROSS: Ginni Thomas, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas’s wife, texted Mark Meadows, Trump’s final chief of staff, that it looked like Trump had lost, but the election could have been a ruse to arrest top Democrats. And then she quoted from a QAnon website that Biden and his co-conspirators would be headed for Guantanamo Bay to face military tribunals. You just mentioned Guantanamo Bay. I mean, so two things here – one is a Supreme Court justice’s wife is basically quoting QAnon beliefs. And the second thing is why Guantanamo Bay? Why does that – and military tribunals – why does that figure so much into QAnon? If you can – that’s a lot to ask you in one answer. Yeah.

SOMMER: Sure. So first of all, yeah, let’s take Ginni Thomas. So her text messages came out because the January 6 committee got them through Mark Meadows. And when I was reading them, I was so struck by how QAnon had really reached the top ranks of the government. It’s – the QAnon person she was quoting from wasn’t even a mainline QAnon person. It was sort of a fringe person who other QAnon believers think is a kook. And so that was striking to me as how – and I see this over and over – is how this thing that I think the average person dismisses as just internet weirdness and a bunch of – maybe not that many sort of unhinged people really has managed to amass so much influence in American politics that it – that someone – you know, Supreme Court justice’s wife is advising the president’s chief of staff about it. As far as Guantanamo Bay goes, I think a psychologist might be able to say what about the American psyche it is that – and how the war on terror has affected us that Guantanamo Bay looms so largely that people say, well, you know, we just got to – we got to cut through this mess of politics and gridlock. We just got to send these folks to Guantanamo Bay. But it really is a huge thing there. I think it is this appeal of frustration with American politics that people just – you know, essentially they want a military coup. And they want – they’re obsessed with military tribunals as though, you know, everything else has been infected with liberalism or this nefarious cabal that QAnon is fighting against, that we can only trust the military.

QAnon’s core belief is that a deep state cabal, which exists primarily to steal the precious bodily fluids of children who have been subjected to Satanic ritual sexual abuse in order to extract those fluids, so that they can be used to grant the leaders of the cabal, who are Democrats and Jews, a fountain of eternal youth, stole the 2020 election from Donald Trump, who QAnon believers refer to as GEOTUS, which stands for God Emperor of the United States.

61% of Republicans agree with at least the electoral theft component of this conspiracy theory.

Again, please do find some time to listen to or read this thing.