Damian Thompson Damian Thompson

Playing with fire — did QAnon start as a cynical game?

We may never know how the conspiracy theory originated, but its consequences are far from farcical, as two new books reveal

The QAnon Shaman Jake Angeli at the Stop the Steal rally in Washington DC on 6 January [Getty Images] 
issue 24 July 2021

On Easter Monday 2018, Donald and Melania Trump stood on the balcony of the White House next to a giant bunny. It’s part of the job: since 1878, presidents have hosted a children’s Easter egg hunt on the south lawn. Usually they rhapsodise abut what fun the kids are going to have. Trump, true to form, told his young guests to ‘just think of 700 billion dollars, because that’s all going into our military this year’. And he also said that the White House was an amazing place, in ‘tip-top shape’.

The liberal media rolled their eyes about Trump boasting to children about military spending but quickly moved on. The fools! They’d just missed the biggest story since 9/11. The President of the United States had confirmed the existence of an international cabal of child-trafficking psychopaths including Hillary Clinton, George Soros, George W. Bush, Barack Obama, Queen Elizabeth II, Bill Gates and Tom Hanks.

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