Many of you know vaguely what the QAnon conspiracy theory is about—its followers believe that a group of Satan-worshipping Democrats, Hollywood celebrities and billionaires run the world while engaging in paedophilia, human trafficking and the harvesting of a supposedly life-extending chemical from the blood of abused children. And there’s way more to it. If you’d like to discover more about the absolutely unhinged world of conspiracy theories, fake news and misinformation, feel free to have a browse through.

What few people are aware of, however, is that QAnon (along with numerous other conspiracy theories) is completely founded on an old form of antisemitism—only repackaged for our digital age. And now, its awful foundations are finally getting exposed. So, what’s happening among the ranks of QAnon believers, and why are the community’s antisemitic views coming out just now?

“There’s a war brewing within the QAnon community,” writes VICE. An anonymous QAnon account called GhostEzra has amassed a massive following in the space of a few months by spreading wild claims about President Joe Biden being a ‘fake’ played by Hollywood actor James Woods in a mask. Don’t ask where this came from. In recent weeks, the ‘on-the-rise’ account has become more and more extreme, spreading Holocaust denial and neo-Nazi content.

By doing so, GhostEzra has seriously pissed off some old school QAnon followers who’ve spent years promoting the conspiracy theory’s misinformation by pretending—and pretending is the key word here—that it isn’t intrinsically antisemitic. Unfortunately for these QAnon ‘influencers’, they have a smaller combined following than the mysterious GhostEzra. But the real problem lies in the fact that they aren’t actually worried about the antisemitic content itself; they’re just worried that the extremist language being used to express that antisemitism is damaging the QAnon brand. Which party is worse? I’ll let you decide for yourself…

“Do you see how disinformation accounts hurt our movement?” CJTruth, part of the establishment QAnon influencer group, wrote on Telegram last week, according to VICE. You’ll notice that the message doesn’t go as far as to try and debunk the Holocaust denial content or antisemitic posts.

With Q gone MIA since December 2020, and President Trump out of office (and therefore unfit to save the world from ‘Satan-worshipping Democrats’), QAnon’s followers seem closer and closer to embracing more extremist views. Obviously, experts see this as a very dangerous trend. “They point out that GhostEzra’s account has become ‘a hub for radicalisation’, where more extreme groups can recruit QAnon followers,” continues VICE.

The GhostEzra channel, which has 335k members, whas gone from Antisemitic to holocaust denialism in less than a week. It is also networking the QAnon adherents in that channel to more extre groups on Telegram. It has become a hub for radicalization pic.twitter.com/CH8VGeAs6R

— Marc-André Argentino (@_MAArgentino) May 26, 2021

Yes, QAnon had always promoted antisemitic views, only it never did it so blatantly. The type of content being shared in the GhostEzra channel has taken very extreme turns. In no time, the anonymous account became the leading channel for QAnon content on Telegram. No one knows who is behind the account exactly, but their rise to power within the QAnon community has been extraordinarily fast.

A Twitter account using the same name was set up in December 2020, and within weeks gained over 18,000 followers. After it went down as part of Twitter’s major QAnon purge in the wake of the Capitol riots, it quickly reemerged on Telegram. There, freed from any sort of moderation, the account quickly became a massive hit with QAnon followers.

Besides the standard QAnon conspiracies and the Holocaust denial content, GhostEzra has also promoted some truly wild claims. From some of the wildest flat Earth theories I’ve ever heard to the good old Biden is in fact Woods in a mask idea, one thing is for sure, GhostEzra doesn’t lack imagination.

This is GhostEzra's latest video to explain how flat earth makes total sense. The bottom left is so totally off the rails insane I don't even have words for it. pic.twitter.com/V4pRxVNSgj

— Poker and Politics (@PokerPolitics) May 25, 2021

But last week, the underlying antisemitic content that GhostEzra had always been pushing came to the fore in a series of posts on their Telegram channel that left no doubt about just how extreme the account was. It first promoted the neo-Nazi film Europa—the Last Battle, a ten-part film that claims Jews created communism, and deliberately started both World Wars as part of a plot to found Israel by provoking the ‘innocent’ Nazis, who were only trying to defend themselves.

QAnon promoter GhostEzra is probably the king of Q on Telegram, with over 330k followers. He's also in the midst of a rabid spree of posting antisemitic memes. pic.twitter.com/qP4EO3DDRF

— Mike Rothschild (no relation) (@rothschildmd) May 20, 2021

“Almost all the 4,000 comments responding to the post on Telegram are positive, with very few pushing back against the openly racist message,” reports VICE. On Tuesday 25 May, the account posted more antisemitic content. Here again, the post attracted radicalised comments from other QAnon followers.

Marc is right. In fact, GhostEzra's Telegram channel might now be the largest antisemitic online channel or forum in the *world*. I can't think of anywhere that comes anywhere near that scale, at least in English. https://t.co/7JGYi8Eq9u

— Arieh Kovler (@ariehkovler) May 26, 2021

Meanwhile, other QAnon followers have only criticised GhostEzra for exposing those views, not promoting them in the first place. Why would they? They’ve been posting that same content for years. As of now, their complaints about GhostEzra seem to have fallen on deaf ears, with hundreds of thousands still interacting with his posts every day. As GhostEzra’s channel on Telegram continues to grow, many worry that it’s already too late to stop him on a platform known for its undisguised lack of rules.

It’s been said that QAnon is the mother of all conspiracy theories. Since its modest beginnings with Pizzagate in 2016, QAnon has grown from a fringe movement to a seemingly all-inclusive convergence of multiple right-wing conspiracy theories related to COVID-19, vaccines, 5G networks, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, and a “Deep State” cabal that harvests adrenochrome from children. Some have gone so far as to claim that QAnon has become a new American religion.

By the end of 2020, an NPR/Ipsos poll confirmed broad support for some of the beliefs falling underneath the wide QAnon umbrella. Nearly 40 per cent of Americans endorsed belief that the “Deep State” was working to undermine President Trump and as many as 1 in 3 believed that voter fraud helped Joe Biden win the presidential election. The claim that “a group of Satan-worshipping elites who run a child sex ring are trying to control our politics and media” was rated as false by a mere 47 per cent of respondents. But ironically, 83 per cent voiced concern about the spread of false information.

How can we explain why so many people believe in things not supported by empirical evidence? How did people come to believe in Pizzagate, the conspiracy theory that Hilary Clinton was running a child pornography ring out of the basement of a pizzeria that actually had no basement? How did people believe something as obscure and lacking in evidence as “Frazzledrip,” another conspiracy theory claim that Clinton was filmed tearing off the face of a child, wearing it as a mask, and then drinking the child’s blood?

Although a common temptation is to invoke mental illness or delusional thinking as an explanation, such accounts mostly fall flat. For one thing, surveys have consistently shown that about half of the population believes in at least one conspiracy theory. So conspiracy theory beliefs, like religious beliefs, are normal, unless we want to start proposing that half the population has a psychotic disorder.

Although psychology research has found some support for a kind of subclinical paranoia being related to conspiracy theory belief, most findings indicate that it is a matter of more quantitative differences in certain subtle ‘cognitive quirks’ that we all tend to have to some degree. For example, greater needs for closure, certainty, and control could explain why some tend to embrace conspiracy theories during times of crisis and chaos.

Psychological needs for uniqueness can explain how belief in conspiracy theories are often rewarding, based on believers’ fantasy of “seeing the light” in a way that “uncritical sheep” do not. Lack of analytical thinking and ‘bullshit receptivity’ have also been implicated in conspiracy theory belief, but these are also widespread liabilities of normal human brains and results of poor education, not deficits of psychopathology per se.

A more convincing account of QAnon conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and Frazzledrip lies at the level of social interaction and information science as opposed to psychiatric disorder. Conspiracy theories involve a negation of conventional explanations in favour of an alternative account featuring shadowy forces with malevolent intent. Therefore, mistrust—not clinical paranoia—is often the central feature of conspiracy theory belief.

QAnon conspiracy theories that, at their core, demonise left-wing liberals and “globalists” were born out of an emerging right-wing American populism and have come to be widely adopted within the Republican party. Appearing around the time of Clinton’s campaign against Donald Trump during the 2016 Presidential race, conspiracy theories like Pizzagate and Frazzledrip that maligned her were embraced because many viewed her as a literal enemy, just as the so-called “birthers” endorsed conspiracy theories about Barack Obama’s citizenship 8 years before. While mistrust can be earned, when it underlies conspiracy theory belief, it’s often fueled by prejudices of “othering” in the form of hyper-partisanship, racism, or misogyny.

Mistrust of others, and especially of authoritative sources of information, results in a vulnerability to misinformation that is widely available within today’s media landscape. When Edgar Maddison Welch decided to “self-investigate” Pizzagate armed with a rifle, he was misinformed by sources like Reddit and InfoWars that had presented the supposed “evidence” of Clinton’s guilt. Only later, when Welch was arrested, did he concede that “the intel on this wasn’t 100%.” Likewise, the purported “evidence” for Frazzledrip was widely claimed within YouTube videos back in 2018, despite the fact that no actual video of Clinton cutting off a child’s face ever existed.

The democratisation of knowledge in the modern era of online media has resulted in a ‘post-truth’ world in which ‘fake news’ has become a household word, but no one can agree on which information sources are to be trusted. Consequently, trust has largely become a matter of confirmation bias and motivated reasoning aligned with partisan identities, with little agreement about what constitutes objective evidence anymore.

Human beings are fond of myths that revere our heroes and demonise our enemies. We’re also fond of the self-deception that we think rationally and are always right. The reality is that we come to hold beliefs based on intuition, subjective experience, and faith in trusted sources of transmitted information, independent of veracity. It’s no coincidence that Pizzagate, Frazzledrip, and QAnon have been largely online phenomena that have flourished in an era of hyper-partisanship where the other side is regarded as a mortal enemy and existential threat. So long as that continues, conspiracy theories will continue to flourish.

Joseph Pierre, MD is a Health Sciences Clinical Professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioural Sciences, David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA and the Acting Chief of Mental Health Community Care Systems at the VA Greater Los Angeles Healthcare System. His column titled Psych Unseen and published in Psychology Today draws from the perspectives of psychiatry, neuroscience, psychology, and evidence-based medicine to address timely topics related to mental illness, human behaviour, and how we come to hold popular and not-so-popular beliefs.