‘Drop my DNA!’ New book reveals heartbreaking stories of how QAnon tore families apart

The QAnon movement has torn families apart to an extent few people realize, says a new book by Jesselyn Cook, published by Jonathan Russell Clark of The Washington Post.

The turn-off of those who promote the conspiracy theory that America is controlled by a cabal of Satanists who traffic children and drink their blood is well documented, but this new book, The Quiet Damage, takes a closer look at specific and heartbreaking cases.

The movement has been linked to old Nazi conspiracy theories and has produced bizarre spectacles, such as the “ReAwaken America” ​​tour featuring Michael Flynn, former President Donald Trump’s former national security adviser, or gatherings in Dallas where believers thought former President John F. Kennedy would reveal that he was still alive and working with Trump to defeat the forces of evil.

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Cook, Clark wrote, “grapples with the personal consequences for many of Q’s followers and the people who care about them,” with a specific intention of “humanizing those deeply committed followers who can so easily be dismissed as delusional or gullible or worse. She also hopes to answer the question she received in “a flood of emails from strangers across the country sharing terrifying stories of people abruptly recalibrating their identities in terms of their devotion to QAnon: ‘What happened to the person I love?'”

One such case described in the book is Emily, a woman who turned to QAnon after her husband’s suicide, bombarding her children on Facebook with conspiracy theories that former First Lady Michelle Obama was a man and former Vice President Mike Pence was a clone, and calling her son Adam a “huge disappointment” who needed to “drop his DNA.” Another case was a pair of twins, Kendra and Tayshia, who grew up in Milwaukee. When Tayshia’s husband died, Kendra, brainwashed by QAnon, convinced her son that Tayshia killed him by making him get vaccinated against COVID, thus destroying the family.

“Beliefs like QAnon’s – which are at least imaginative – can appeal to those for whom the truth is too banal to be compelling or too complex to be comforting,” Clark concluded. “Disinformation, provocative theories and scapegoating on a silver platter have proven to be tempting alternatives for more people than we would have imagined. Cook’s book does not offer solutions, but it sheds important light on the problem.”