​The Gospel of Fear and Resentment

​QAnon and the Trump Cult 


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Al Drago for The New York Times


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If Trump loses, look for the rising influence of QAnon,
more Trump rallies, a ramped up Trump-cult,
increased activity among right wing militia, 
and the possibility of political violence.  ​
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Believing in Q
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"You know that a small group of manipulators, operating in the shadows, pull the planet’s strings. You know that they are powerful enough to abuse children without fear of retribution. You know that the mainstream media are their handmaidens, in partnership with Hillary Clinton and the secretive denizens of the deep state. You know that only Donald Trump stands between you and a damned and ravaged world. You see plague and pestilence sweeping the planet, and understand that they are part of the plan. You know that a clash between good and evil cannot be avoided, and you yearn for the Great Awakening that is coming. And so you must be on guard at all times. You must shield your ears from the scorn of the ignorant. You must find those who are like you. And you must be prepared to fight.
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You know all this because you believe in Q."

- from Adrienne LaFrance in the Atlantic Monthly: The Prophecies of Q



The Danger of Q
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QAnon is more than "a nutty conspiracy theory in which a heroic Trump is prosecuting a secret war against a satanic pedophile ring of lefty elites." It plays the role of "a support group, a political party, a lifestyle brand, a collective delusion, a religion, a cult, a huge multiplayer game and an extremist network."  So writes the NT Times columnist, Farhad Manjoo, in an Opinion piece Oct. 21, 2020. 

​He had been talking with Joan Donovan, the research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School. He quotes her:
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“I’m worried about political violence,” Donovan told me. America is heavily armed, and from Portland to Kenosha to the Michigan governor’s mansion, we have seen young men radicalized and organized online beginning to take the law into their own hands. Donovan told me she fears that “people who are armed are going to become dangerous, because they see no other way out.”

If political violence is instigated by QAnon supporters, many of its soldiers will be members of the Trump Cult.  Some of them will identify themselves as Christian and quote the following passage from the Bible:
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“And you will be hearing of wars and rumors of wars; see that you are not frightened, for those things must take place, but that is not yet the end. And you shall hear of wars and rumors of wars: see that you be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet. (Matthew 24:6)

​They will see themselves as fulfilling the prophecy of "wars and rumors of war," engaged in battle preparatory to the end.


The Trump Cult
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Donald Trump and Chairman Mao: Parallels

Picture a leader in charge of a political party whose other senior leaders hold him almost in as much contempt as he holds them. One who exults in contradictory statements and constant changes of posture and mind. Someone who has had multiple marriages, and a complex private life. A person who appeals to people’s fears, and whose prime approach often seems to stir up widespread upheaval and unrest...That description is of Mao Zedong, but applies equally well to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump.

Paradoxically, the real heir to the spirit of Maoist politics sits these days not in Beijing, but several time zones away, in Washington. Trump’s tendency to speak directly to the public through Twitter and his own personal voice has eerie parallels with the way that Mao often subverted his own propagandists and state media, reaching above their heads to the people, whom Mao always claimed to stand with.

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Then there is the delicate matter of attitudes toward the political system itself. Mao remained a revolutionary to his dying days. He regarded the “swamp” of bureaucracy and governance in Beijing as manifestations of the Communist Party becoming its own vested interest and simply working for itself. The Cultural Revolution began in 1966 was, among many other things, a vicious attack on the Party by one of its founding leaders and by far its most influential one. Mao would have regarded Trump’s contemporary version of an American-style Cultural Revolution as simply a poor shadow of how it should be done properly. But Mao would have had no trouble understanding the political purpose and the reasons behind what Trump has called “The Movement.” Trump’s attitude, to the PRC’s founder, would merely be sound Maoism.

​Then finally there is the lifelong aversion that Mao had to intellectuals. From his days as a humble librarian at Peking University in the 1910s, Mao disliked scholars, and reserved particularly brutal treatment for those that even slightly opposed him. He would have given a mark of approval to the furious anger that Trump directs at those he regards as snooty elites in their ivory towers trying to question him.
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For Trump though, it seems that class struggle, fights between different parts of the bureaucracy, and a wholesale onslaught on the very culture of governance and administration in the United States is very much in the cards. Brutal attacks on the media, constant direct appeals to the public to support him in taking on the vested interests of the elite, and a policymaking ethos dominated by contradictions seems to be what America and the world can expect in the coming years. Chinese people, who had experience of this form of politics within living memory, can only stand by and nod with bewildered pity. They know where this story ends up.

- Kerry Brown, January 16, 2017, The Diplomat
The Trump Cult: A World Teeming with Enemies

​As I argue in my upcoming book, The Cult of Trump: A Leading Cult Expert Explains How The President Uses Mind Control (Simon & Schuster), Trump has gotten where he is today in large part because he has exploited tactics straight out of that playbook. These include his grandiose claims, his practice of sowing confusion, his demand for absolute loyalty, his tendency to lie and create alternative “facts” and realities, his shunning and belittling of critics and ex-believers, and his cultivating of an “us versus them”  mindset. These are the same methods used by Moon, Jones, and other cult leaders such as L. Ron Hubbard (Scientology), David Koresh (Branch Davidians), Lyndon LaRouche (LaRouche PAC), and, most recently, convicted trafficking felon Keith Raniere (NXVIM).
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Of all these tactics, the “us versus them” mindset is probably one of  the most effective. From the moment you are recruited into a cult, you are made to feel special, part of an “inside” group in opposition to unenlightened, unbelieving, dangerous “outsiders.” Playing on ancient human tribal tendencies, cult leaders extend this “us versus them” mindset outwards to an almost cosmic struggle.

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​As did LaRouche, Moon, and Jones, Trump sees a world teeming with enemies: the “deep state,” globalists, radical left-wing Democrats, socialists, Hollywood actors,  the liberal media. And, of course, Muslims, Mexicans, and migrant caravans. He depicts all of them as wanting to destroy America—and him. Inspiring or creating fear of real or imagined threats overrides people's sense of agency. It makes them susceptible to the confident father figure, Trump, who promises to keep them safe—“Only I can fix it”—and makes them more compliant and potentially obedient. Some followers of Trump have gone so far as to believe that liberal Democrats, George Soros, and the CIA are involved in an international sex trafficking ring run out of the basement of a Washington, D.C., pizza parlor. One such follower actually brought an AR-15-style rifle into the pizza parlor and fired three shots. Fortunately, no one was injured.

- Steven Hassan, Daily Beast, Oct. 13, 2019


New Religious Movements

You can identify them by their fruit, that is, by the way they act. 

                                         - Matthew: 7: 16
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One of my neighbors down the street is a very nice man.  If you have a flat tire, or need help moving furniture, he will help you.  He is not greedy or pretentious.  He is also a Q believer.  He belongs to a new religion that I find dangerous.  He is a good man belonging to a bad religion.

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If you teach the world’s religions to college undergraduates, you know that many of your textbooks have a chapter on “new religious movements.”  Such movements are a subspecialty of scholars in the field of religious studies. QAnon is one of these religions, and so is the Trump cult.

There are hundreds of these movements.  There's one called "Creativity" and one called "Discordianism" and one called "Jedism" and one called "The New Message from God."  And lest we think the classical religions are outside this category, we best remember that in many cases they began as new religious movements, especially if they had founders.  

Often these new movements are syncretistic in that they weave together influences from older movements into new wholes; and often they have a political side to them, dividing the world into us and them, good and evil.  They may be short-lived, lasting only a few years, or long lived, lasting decades and centuries.  Christianity, for example, is a new religious movement that has lasted quite a long time.   

For a new religious movement to last for a while, it needs to provide a sense of community and identity, and to provide opportunities for intense experiences: devotional Trump rallies, for example  It also helps if it has a founder who evokes a sense of power, authority, and excitement.  At the devotional rallies, participants get to participate in a world turned upside down or, as they see it, right side up.  The first (the elites) will be last and the last first.

Welcome to QAnon and the Trump cult: two of the most recent new religious movements in America today.  Some new religious movements are quite harmless, containing gems of wisdom for all.  They are about life and love, compassion and reverence, wonder and justice, healing and health.  I like to think that Christianity began this way.  But others new religions are fueled by fear and hatred.  The Trump Cult and QAnon are like this.  My neighbor notwithstanding, they are false religions in that too often they bring out the worst in some people.  

Which takes me to a warming.  If Trump loses, look for the rising influence of QAnon, more Trump rallies, a ramped up Trump-cult, increased activity among right wing militia, and the real possibility of political violence.  How to respond?

In the spiritual alphabet developed by Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat, "S" is for Shadow.  QAnon and the Trump Cult reveal the shadow side of humanity.  An appropriate response is not hatred or violence.  It is to recognize that you, too, have a shadow side: a side which is fearful, resentful, and with a propensity for violence.  But it is also to present to the world, and to the followers of Q and Trump, a gentler and more loving option for how to live in the world.  This response takes courage and equanimity, prayer and forgiveness, but not acquiescence.  Violence (inner and outer) must be recognized for what it is: evil.

If you are an open and relational (process) thinker, you can also recognize that the Abba in whom you place your trust shines on the just and unjust alike.  

- Jay McDaniel, October 2020
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Open Horizons