Excellent Atlantic article about QAnon and how it is becoming an anti-Enlightenment religion

In his excellent brief book, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons from the Twentieth Century, Timothy Snyder writes, "Fascists rejected reason in the name of will, denying objective truth in favor of a glorious myth articulated by leaders who claimed to give voice to the people."

This quote came to mind while I read this article in the Atlantic called "The Prophecies of Q," by Adrienne LaFrance. As part of Shadowland, -- The Atlantic's series about conspiracy thinking in America -- LaFrance's article explores how QAnon is rapidly becoming a religion that rejects science and reason.

The power of the internet was understood early on, but the full nature of that powerits ability to shatter any semblance of shared reality, undermining civil society and democratic governance in the processwas not. The internet also enabled unknown individuals to reach masses of people, at a scale Marshall McLuhan never dreamed of. The warping of shared reality leads a man with an AR-15 rifle to invade a pizza shop. It brings online forums into being where people colorfully imagine the assassination of a former secretary of state. It offers the promise of a Great Awakening, in which the elites will be routed and the truth will be revealed. It causes chat sites to come alive with commentary speculating that the coronavirus pandemic may be the moment QAnon has been waiting for. None of this could have been imagined as recently as the turn of the century.

QAnon is emblematic of modern Americas susceptibility to conspiracy theories, and its enthusiasm for them.