Twitter Instagram Facebook Youtube Linkedin Rss

The Roots of QAnon | Discourse! August 2020

What is QAnon? In this August 2020 episode of Discourse!, David Robertson, Megan Goodwin, Savannah Finver and Jonathon O'Donnell discuss this conspiracy movement's links to American religious history and contemporary political discourse.

Listen Now

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: RSS

This episode has not been transcribed yet. 

Consider a donation to pay for the cost of editing a transcript?

Featuring

Savannah H. Finver

Megan Goodwin

S. Jonathon O’Donnell

David G. Robertson

About this episode

Take a journey into the dark heart of American politics in this month’s Discourse! Join David Robertson, Megan Goodwin, Savannah Finver, and S. Jonathon O’Donnell to discuss QAnon. Explore the roots of this multifaceted conspiracy theory in the Satanic Ritual Abuse scare of the 1980s and ’90s, the parallels with earlier millennial narratives, and the connections with modern evangelical Christianity. The panelists also discuss how depictions of QAnon in religious language (i.e., “death cult”) are being used by different actors within and outside the movement, with both sides revealing significant features of contemporary American politics.

The panelists recommend the following piece by Adrienne LaFrance, “The Prophecies of Q,” part of The Atlantic‘s project “Shadowland” about conspiracy thinking in America.

 Fund the RSP while you shop! Use an Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.ca, or Amazon.com affiliate link whenever you make a purchase. There’s no additional cost to you, but every bit helps us stay on the air! 

We need your support!

Want to support us directly? Become a monthly Patron or consider giving us a one-time donation through PayPal. 

Related Resources

“A Feeling of Belonging can only Develop if People Decide to Listen”

Response

Telling Stories to Change the World

Response

"How is a myth different from a story or narrative?" Susannah Crockford says the answer "shifts dramatically with different disciplinary definitions and assumptions." Read on to learn why this matters in her response to our episode with Tim Stacey on "Myth-Making, Environmentalism, and Non-Religion"
Measuring Secularity

Response

While often rigorously testing for variance among the religious, many studies treat the irreligious as if they have a static identity, resulting in an elision of the range of beliefs and behaviors that have been found within this growing group. At the home of the first secular studies undergraduate program, amid dozens of secularity scholars from around globe, Tommy Coleman's interview with sociologist ...

Other EPISODES YOU MIGHT ENJOY

RE Commission report: A Way Forward?

Podcast

At a recent RE research and policy conference #2020RE, Dr Wendy Dossett had the opportunity to chat with two of the Commissioners and authors of the Religion and Worldviews report, Dr Joyce Miller and Prof Eleanor Nesbitt, along with Religious Education sociologist (and convener of SOCREL), Céline Benoit. Their conversation ranged over some of the following issues: the rationale for the move from calling the subject ‘Religious Education’ to ‘Religion and Worldviews’; the inadequacy for the classroom of a world religions approach; the degree to which faith communities are entitled to influence what gets taught in schools; and the anomaly of the so-called withdrawal clause.
Atheism, New Religious Movements, and Cultural Tension

Podcast

Extensive research has been conducted in exploration of the American religious landscape; however, only recently has social science research started to explore nonbelief in any detail. Research on nonbelief has been limited as most research focuses on the popularity of the religious “nones” or the complexities of alternative faith expressions such as spirituality. Through two studies, one qualitative and one quantitative, Dr. Christopher F. Silver's research explored how nonbelievers’ self-identify.
Claude Lévi-Strauss

Podcast

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009) was the founder of structural anthropology, and is widely considered to be a foundational figure for modern anthropology. In books including Les Structures élémentaires de la parenté (1949, The Elementary Structures of Kinship), Tristes Tropiques (1955) and La Pensée sauvage (1962, The Savage Mind, 1966),...
An Introduction to the Sociology of Religion

Podcast

What is the sociology of religion? What are its particular concerns, dominant themes and defining methodologies? Where did it begin, and how has it evolved? This interview with Grace Davie, the first in our BSA SOCREL series, introduces this important and historically influential approach to the study of religion.
Empty Signs in an Automatic Signalling System

Podcast

In this week's episode, Timothy Fitzgerald speaks with David G. Robertson about why the history of the category “religion” should make us reconsider many other modern categories like politics, liberal, secular. Can these interrelated terms ever escape their origins in centuries of colonial epistemé?
Editors’ Picks 4: The Secularisation Thesis

Podcast

In this, the penultimate Editors' Pick, David tells us why he chose his interview with Linda Woodhead on the Secularisation thesis as his favourite. The secularisation thesis – the idea that traditional religions are in terminal decline in the industrialised world – was perhaps the central debate in the sociology of religion in the second half of the 20th century.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial- NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License.

The views expressed in podcasts, features and responses are the views of the individual contributors, and do not necessarily reflect the views of The Religious Studies Project or our sponsors. The Religious Studies Project is produced by the Religious Studies Project Association (SCIO), a Scottish Charitable Incorporated Organisation (charity number SC047750).