PerspectiveQAnon-ers’ Magic Cure for Coronavirus: Just Drink Bleach!
QAnon, a fervently pro-Trump conspiracy theory which started with a series of online posts in October 2017 from an anonymous figure called “Q,” imagines a world where Donald Trump is engaged in a secret and noble war with a cabal of pedophile-cannibals in the Democratic Party, the finance industry, Hollywood, and the “deep state.” Will Sommer writes as the global death toll from an alarming new coronavirus surged this week, promoters of the QAnon conspiracy theory were urging their fans to ward off the illness by purchasing and drinking dangerous bleach.
QAnon, a fervently pro-Trump conspiracy theory which started with a series of online posts in October 2017 from an anonymous figure called “Q,” imagines a world where Donald Trump is engaged in a secret and noble war with a cabal of pedophile-cannibals in the Democratic Party, the finance industry, Hollywood, and the “deep state.”
Will Sommer writes in the Daily Beast that despite or perhaps in part because of such outlandish ideas, the theory has taken root with a segment of Trump’s base, with QAnon believers regularly appearing at the president’s campaign rallies. “Trump has also routinely retweeted QAnon content, even though apparent devotees have been charged with murder and linked to other violent incidents,” Sommer notes.
The fact that the president of the United States, almost daily, gives the presidential imprimatur to conspiracy theories fabricated by wingnuts is dangerous, especially now:
As the global death toll from an alarming new coronavirus surged this week, promoters of the pro-Trump QAnon conspiracy theory were urging their fans to ward off the illness by purchasing and drinking dangerous bleach.
The substance—dubbed “Miracle Mineral Solution” or “MMS”—has long been promoted by fringe groups as a combination miracle cure and vaccine for everything from autism to cancer and HIV/AIDS.
The Food and Drug Administration has repeatedly warned consumers not to drink MMS, last year calling it effectively a “dangerous bleach” that could cause “severe vomiting” and “acute liver failure.” But those warnings haven’t stopped QAnon devotees—who believe in a world where Donald Trump is at war with shadowy deep-state “cabal”—from promoting a lethal substance as a salve for a health crisis that speaks to the darkest recesses of fringe thought.
Coronavirus’s spread was a perfect fit for QAnon conspiracy theorists and others on the fringe right, who have already adopted the idea that the disease has been manufactured by shadowy forces…. Conspiracy theory hub InfoWars, meanwhile, has promoted the false idea that Microsoft billionaire Bill Gates’s philanthropic efforts are just a cover for a “depopulation agenda” centered on the virus.
