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Lots of hay has been made of QAnon’s affection for Russia and Vladimir Putin. One seemingly obvious conclusion is that QAnon is secretly funded by Russians, who use the movement to push their geopolitical agenda and harm other nations they don’t like.
An examination of the global QAnon movement would even appear to support this conclusion, showing QAnon spreading fast in many countries traditionally opposed to Russian interests, and by contrast, the native Russian QAnon movement is still small.
But whether Russia pumps money into Q or not has actually very little to do with answering the question of why QAnon seems to like Russia so much. Could it be that Q is a Russian Intelligence Operation? Sure, maybe—but it doesn’t matter here.
QAnon promoters may or may not be getting paid to push Russian talking points, but the QAnon audience viewed Russia favorably to begin with.
Why? There are two hugely influential factors.
Why? There are two hugely influential factors.
First, the right (and particularly the alt-right) already loved Russia. https://www.nytimes.com/2016/12/03/world/americas/alt-right-vladimir-putin.html
QAnon was born from the /pol board—the home turf of the Very Online Masculine Right. The /pol board is frequented by all manner of bottom dwellers, from “race realists” of the so-called Intellectual dark Web to straightforward neo-Nazis like Stormfront.
Their influence pulls the entire board towards their position, infecting even casual visitors with their alt-right worldview. And they love Russia, not because they are paid to, but because they see Russia as the sole example of an authoritarian white nationalist regime.
They view Russia as an aspirational model and openly say so.
Richard Spencer: "[Russia is] the most powerful white power in the world."
David Duke: "Russia holds the key to white survival."
Richard Spencer: "[Russia is] the most powerful white power in the world."
David Duke: "Russia holds the key to white survival."
Matthew Heimbach: "[Putin] is the leader of the free world."
Sam Dickson: "[Russia is] the great protector of Christendom… They are the strongest white people on Earth."
Russia was therefore a perfect expression of what /pol wanted to be: white, powerful, Christian, masculine.
Sam Dickson: "[Russia is] the great protector of Christendom… They are the strongest white people on Earth."
Russia was therefore a perfect expression of what /pol wanted to be: white, powerful, Christian, masculine.
This attitude was not reserved to the swamps of the alt-right, either. Putin’s faith, strength and masculinity were written about glowingly in right-leaning media for years. https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2014/02/the-conservative-man-crush-on-putin.html
In 2014, Ben Carson penned an op-ed praising Russia’s supposed Christian Values and agreeing with Vladimir Putin’s critique of America and the West as godless. https://townhall.com/columnists/drbencarson/2014/02/12/still-one-nation-under-god-n1793430
“Bare-chested Putin gallops his horses, poses with his tigers, and shoots his guns,” Victor Davis Hanson wrote in the National Review. “Barack Obama, in his increasingly metrosexual golf get-ups and his prissy poses ... wants to stay cool while playing a leisure sport.”
Trump, therefore, was America’s Putin, a strong leader who was unapologetically masculine, proud to sleep with porn stars and force beautiful women to kiss him and talk locker-room talk.
He was the authoritarian that the right had been craving, just so long as they papered over all his physical weaknesses with Ben Garrison cartoons.
Second, the left used Russia to attack Trump and the right played defense reflexively. https://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/donald-trump-russia-democrats-233467
Putting aside the fact that Russia really did seek to influence the 2016 election, the very existence of the Russia investigation was viewed by Trump supporters as a disguised threat against Donald Trump’s legitimacy as President.
In their minds, the implication that Trump could have been elected because of Russian action took away their own feelings of agency.
Trump supporters did not and do not feel that they were manipulated into voting for him: they feel they chose a strong, white, masculine Christian leader who loves America.
What’s more, if it could be shown that Russian interference directly led to Trump’s election, would the next step be to remove him from office because of it? That too would invalidate their choice.
Many Trump supporters therefore saw the Russia investigation as simply a way to remove Donald Trump from the White House after they (and everyone they knew) had put him there.
As a result, the instinctive reaction is to defend Trump—and by consequence Russia—from these accusations. It’s a defense mechanism and requires no outside manipulation to occur naturally.
You see this sort of faulty thinking all the time: I like X, but you say X did bad things. If X did bad things, then X is bad. If X is bad, I am a bad person for liking X. I am not a bad person. Therefore, you must be wrong about X.
What is important here is that Trump voters aren’t actually interested in defending Russia; they are defending Trump, and by extension, themselves.
To agree that Russia acted to influence the outcome of the 2016 election is to agree that they did so for Russian benefit, and not for US benefit, which casts aspersions on Donald Trump, and on themselves as his voters.
From the point-of-view of a diehard Trump supporter, the logic goes like this:
∵ The Democrats say Russia meddled to influence the election for Donald Trump; and
∵ Russia would put its own interests ahead of America’s interests; so
∵ The Democrats say Russia meddled to influence the election for Donald Trump; and
∵ Russia would put its own interests ahead of America’s interests; so
∵ Donald Trump could not have been the best candidate for America’s interests; but
∵ I voted for Trump; and
∵ I made that choice freely; because
∵ I love America; so
∴ The democrats are lying, and Russia did nothing wrong.
∵ I voted for Trump; and
∵ I made that choice freely; because
∵ I love America; so
∴ The democrats are lying, and Russia did nothing wrong.
This stance has metamorphosed over the past four years to be a reflexive defense of ANY critique of Russia, because to criticize Russia is to agree with the Democrats, which is more than a sin, it's an admission.
If you agree with the Democrats on this, what does that mean about the last time you defended Russia from criticism?
It prompts the question: if Democrats are right about this, what does that say about *me*?
It prompts the question: if Democrats are right about this, what does that say about *me*?
In QAnon, these two forces of influence collided.
A conspiracy theory born from a corner of the internet that idolized Russia as a symbol of white nationalism spread into a majority-white demographic that had been told for years that Putin was a powerful masculine emblem of conservatism who made Russia great again.
At the same time, Democrats were using accusations of Russian malfeasance to harm another powerful masculine emblem of conservatism who promised to Make America Great Again.
Thanks for reading.
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