The Broken Families of QAnon

This discussion reflects another of my attempts to better understand the nature of what is tearing American society and politics apart and what the effects of this poisonous situation are for at least some regular people.

An article in the Week, The broken families of QAnon, dives into what some families with a Qanon believer are going through. One must be clear about this point. Most or nearly all QAnon believers appear to be sincere in their beliefs. That is the case regardless of how crackpot the basis in reality their beliefs appear to non-believers. The main drivers appear to be, not surprisingly, fear (of tyranny, democrats, illegal immigrants, social change, etc.), anger, deep distrust (of the free press, political opposition, etc.), deep resentment (e.g., of insults from liberal elites), and deep discomfort with the complexity, ambiguity and/or direction of major social changes that America is in the midst of. 

The Week writes:

Tyler, 24, had been living with his mother an hour north of Minneapolis .... The paranoia and fear that had engulfed his home became unbearable in the  months since T**** began to falsely claim that the 2020 election had been stolen from him.

“Any advice on dealing with a qanon parent who thinks ww3 will happen during the inauguration?” Tyler asked last month on r/QAnonCasualties, a fast growing Reddit group for those whose loved ones have been consumed by the bizarre and byzantine universe of baseless conspiracy theories known as QAnon.

“Do they have weapons?” one of the site’s moderators asked. “Yep. A lot of them.” Tyler replied.

.... Far from Washington, the falsehoods that had whipped so many into a frenzywere wreaking a different sort of chaos; one that was tearing families apart.

The anguish was playing out behind closed doors in therapists’ offices, where overwhelmed family members were seeking advice. .... Since last summer QAnonCasualties had grown from 10,000 members to more than 130,000 in the days after Joe Biden’s inauguration.

A woman in Palm Beach, Fla., had gone two weeks without speaking to het mother and was starting to wonder if the rift was irreparable. “I grieve for her every day as if she is dead,” she wrote.

A teenager in Annapolis, Md., worried that she no longer knew her father. “I’ve come to the breaking point,” she confessed. “My heart goes out to everyone else in this situation. It really sucks.”

“My mom has been into QAnon since it got started [the first post was on July 4, 2019],” wrote the QAnonCasualties founder .... “The ignorance, bigotry and refusal to question ‘the plan’ has only gotten worse over time. I’m always torn between stopping communication with her because it only seems to make me feel terrible, and feeling like it’s my responsibility to lead her back to reality.”

“Thank the fucking stars I found you guys,” replied one of the first to join. “Today has been hard.”

“My mother is a hard core believer,” wrote another. “I found her Twitter account handle and I am horrified and embarrassed. Who is this person?”

Like many conspiracy theories, QAnon supplied a good-versus-evil narrative into which complicated world events could be easily incorporated.

A big part of what made it novel was that it was interactive, allowing its followers to take part in the hunt for clues as if they were playing a video game.

Unlike other online conspiracy theories, it also had the blessing of some top Republicans, such as T****, who embraced the movement in the hope that he could channel believers’ rabid and sometimes violent passions for political gain. “It’s a bet that they can control this insurgency [said an expert] .... The bet is we can ride this tiger. And sometimes, as in Germany and Italy, you can get eaten by the tiger.” 

A few days after the Capitol riots, one of his mother's oldest friends stopped by to deliver a wedding present. Tyler’s mother had recently remarried. “Do you plan on shooting someone today?” the friend said she joked when she noticed Tyler’s mom was wearing a pistol. “You never know what's going to happen with the democrats,” Tyler’s mother replied, according to the friend, who spoke on condition of anonymity. “They stole the election.”

Tyler wound up getting kicked out of the house by the new husband and estranged from his mother. He commented: “I just don’t see the humanity in this. I wanted my family back, not this hatred.”

Questions: Is QAnon immoral, evil, neither and/or something else just expressing free speech? What about people who sincerely believe in QAnon’s lies, crackpot conspiracies and irrational emotional manipulation, including fomented distrust and intolerance leading to families being torn apart and the QAnon believers hating their own family members?