The next wave of extremist cults will make QAnon look tame

Delusional. We were told by fervid columnists that QAnon would only get even deadlier and more organized after January 6th, and yet again you should panic about the imminent fascist coup of QAnoners. Instead, it's fallen apart amid feuding and is now some laughingstocks waiting for JFK to reincarnate in Dallas.

So what do you do when you're a professional pundit or QAnon-watcher whose predictions have aged about as well as Trump pee-tape predictions (or Q himself's predictions)? Just pass the buck to tomorrow, and aver that QAnon will rise again greater than ever and vaguely link it to covid, never mind that people being really pissed about covid-related stuff have ample reason to be pissed, especially if you know any students or teachers eg. https://twitter.com/neuroecology/status/1479432438896017409 - at least two of my teacher relatives retired solely because of the covid farce - and let's not start with the endless bait-and-switch about masks and lockdowns and whether any followup vaccines will be a good idea much less mandatory and the casual admissions of lying and... - no, let's go full on 'epistemic closure' here (a term I'm sure OP is familiar with) and ascribe away any anger to QAnon cultism, sure, let's do that! There's no way this could go wrong or backfire!

And people wonder why Trump's re-election odds remain so horrifyingly stubbornly elevated and constant on the prediction markets...

...and I look forward to reading the apologia and propaganda from their supporters here on Hacker News.

As dangerous as Qanon is, watching Hellbound made me realise that cults/conspiracy movements can grow far more violent than that. It's fiction, but in times when literal (neo-)Nazis and xenophobic populist platforms are starting to get heard in Europe and the US, the fourth wall seems far thinner than it used to be ~10 years ago.