In a recent post about far-right movements, NBC dark-web analyst Ben Collins writes that “QAnon adherents . . . believe Trump is secretly saving the world from a cabal of child-eating Satanists, have identified Inauguration Day as a last stand, and falsely think he will force a 10-day, countrywide blackout that ends in the mass execution of his political enemies and a second Trump term.”
The question is what happens when this prophecy is disconfirmed?
Back in the 1950s, Leon Festinger, propounder of “A Theory of Cognitive Dissonance,” and his graduate students studied – and infiltrated – a group of doomsday believers in Lansing and Ann Arbor, Michigan, resulting in the book, When Prophecy Fails.
When the world didn’t end as expected, the believers began to believe/rationalize/reduce dissonance that their preparations for the world’s coming to an end had prevented it from happening. And since the world wasn’t ending after all, they went back to their more normal lives.
Other groups and cults followed other paths. See Jim Jones and his followers and the Heaven’s Gate cult. So what happens to this large, dispersed group remains to be seen.
Time will tell. But most sensible people would agree that telling the truth would be a good start. Gov. Chris Sununu has taken a step in that direction. Fox News, not so much.
TOM CHASE
Northwood