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Chapter 16 - Categorizing QAnon

Is This a New Religious Movement?

from Part V - The Future of QAnon

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  14 September 2023

By
Amarnath Amarasingam ,
Marc-Andre Argentino ,
Dakota Johnston  and
Sharday Mosurinjohn
Edited by
Monica K. Miller
Monica K. Miller
Affiliation:
University of Nevada, Reno
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Summary

Over the course of 2020, QAnon repeatedly captured the news media’s attention more than ever as the group started to move its activities from online chat boards into the offline world. With increased public attention, political commentators (expert and lay) increasingly refer to QAnon as a “cult” (Blazakis, 2021; Hassan, 2021). What is missing in the growing literature on QAnon is: (1) an examination of the movement within the context of the substantial academic literature on new religious movements (NRMs); and (2) use of this research to see whether labeling QAnon a “cult” or “new religious movement” makes sense in a comparative context. In order to do this, we discuss QAnon’s fit with two widely used NRM definitions, its fit with definitions of conspiracy from religious studies literature, and its differences from and similarities to other related types of organizations, including terrorist groups, social movements, and even multilevel marketing (MLM) companies. It is this latter comparison that we spend the most time on, using the example of the company NXIVM (pronounced “NEX-ee-um”)1 to test out the NRM criteria with two loosely defined groups that have recently come to public attention and therefore do not neatly fit into the NRM discourse. This exploratory analysis is of particular importance in the case of QAnon, not only because the use of the terms “cult,” “religion,” and “conspiracy” by the public is usually divorced from academic research, but also because the terms are often used as weapons to tarnish movements that are considered to be deviant in some way.

Type
Chapter
Information
The Social Science of QAnon
A New Social and Political Phenomenon
 , pp. 271 - 290
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2023

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References

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