The sinister signs of QAnon: Interpretive agency and paranoid truths in alt-right oracles

Abstract

QAnon's promotion of Donald Trump and conspiracy theories is well known, yet almost no analysis has focused on the cryptic writing style in Q's online postings, or ‘Q-drops’. This essay focuses on QAnon's relationship to signs and symbols, including the style of communication in Q-drops and the semiotic-interpretive stances that these encourage. The poetic forms in Q-drops have social effects crucial to QAnon's popularity. I examine the types of inquiry and semiotic ideology that Q's writing style encourages, and the epistemological roles this style allocates to followers. I also explore how Q-drops invoke the power of secrecy and divination to reify their aura of omniscience and discernment, while interpellating the Anon — a follower who interprets the Q-drops — as an epistemological agent in their own right. Ultimately, through decryption and suspicion, Q followers learn about the indirection of signs, and that the truth may lie somewhere behind the unreliable sign vehicle. This epistemology helps to explain some of QAnon's appeal and some of Trump's political durability.