Our God’s Appointed Ones: Using Eastern Cults to Predict Possible Paths for QAnon

Abstract

In 2017, an anonymous user under the name “Q” posted on 4chan that Hillary Clinton would shortly be arrested. Since then, Q and QAnon has garnered a following of thousands of people from more than 100 countries. This group centers on the core belief that Q is a high-level agent working with former President Donald Trump, who was put in as President by the military, to take out a secret cabal of sex traffickers and devil worshippers who secretly control the world. But with Trump losing the Presidency and under legal trouble, and QAnon’s messaging board future constantly changing, a question arises: What will they do next? And as the FBI has put them on a potential domestic terror threat list, that important may be more important than ever. This thesis will look to explore three possible avenues QAnon may go down in the near future, using three Eastern cults to represent why each avenue is realistic. The Unification Church represents the pan-institutional path, Soka Gakkai represents the political party path, and Aum Shinrikyo represents the violent path. What this paper seeks to show is not only three ways QAnon may develop, but that Eastern cults can help identify certain cult-like behaviors and help researchers in future studies on Western cults. To do this, extensive backgrounds will be given on each cult to give future research an easily accessible introduction to three cults that have gone down three distinct paths.