#With 30M followers, QAnon as popular as some religions : poll

An estimated 30 million Americans are praying at the altar of Q, according to a new poll by religious interest groups.

That number means QAnon has more followers in America than Judaism, Islam, Buddhism and Hinduism combined.

Conspiracy theories held by proponents of QAnon — central to which is the notion that powerful people in government are sex-trafficking pedophiles who act on behalf of Satan — have found their way into the mainstream, as lawmakers like Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene have publicly espoused the group’s far-flung beliefs. Adherents further suggest that civil unrest and violence are necessary to defend American virtue against such villains.

Experts have said QAnon draws upon decades, even centuries, of “satanic panic,” while proof of the group’s tenets has repeatedly failed to rear its beastly head. Consequential dates and events touted by devotees, such as the day former President Donald Trump was due to retake the “stolen” office — March 4 — have not come to fruition as predicted.

Now, a poll by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Interfaith Youth Core confirms QAnon’s political and ideological stranglehold over American society.

“Thinking about QAnon, if it were a religion, it would be as big as all white evangelical Protestants, or all white mainline Protestants,” PRRI founder Robert P. Jones told the New York Times. “So it lines up there with a major religious group.”

Of the 5,625 respondents to the survey, 15% said they agreed with QAnon’s core premise — that “the government, media and financial worlds in the US are controlled by a group of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who run a global child sex trafficking operation.”

Another 15% agreed with QAnon’s calls for violent revolution, suggesting that “true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” Meanwhile, 20%, or 1 in 5, of respondents agreed that a “storm” — presumably referring to civil war — will soon “sweep away the elites in power and restore the rightful leaders.”

By contract, 40% of participants disagreed with all three of the above statements. Yet 44% — a relative majority — admitted they “mostly disagree” with the statements, but were not willing to reject them wholly.

The difference in responses between Republicans and Democrats was stark: Only about 20% of those who identified as Republican readily rejected QAnon theories, compared to 58% of Democrats.

Close to 1 in 4 Republicans (23%) were likely to be QAnon “believers,” who “completely or mostly agreed” with the statements. As for Democrats and independents, just 7% and 12%, respectively, had joined Q’s cohort.

“It’s one thing to say that most Americans laugh off these outlandish beliefs. But when you take into consideration that these beliefs are linked to a kind of apocalyptic thinking and violence, then it becomes something quite different,” said Jones.