City Research Online

Abstract

The presidency of Donald Trump was marked by a period of populist and sometimes extremist right-wing policies and rhetoric, and an escalation of ‘culture wars’ between the left and right in politics and society. He also gained the devoted support of numerous right-wing and so-called alt-right groups, such as QAnon, a conspiracy theory group that first emerged in 2017. This paper takes the novel approach of exploring the existence of a moral panic having formed around the activities of QAnon itself. I suggest that the current regulatory discourses around QAnon are flawed, with insufficient attention being paid to a wider range of extremist groups in assessing how to regulate extremist speech and action.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
Publisher Keywords:	QAnon, moral panic, Donald Trump, capitol insurrection, hate speech, regulation
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology H Social Sciences > HN Social history and conditions. Social problems. Social reform H Social Sciences > HV Social pathology. Social and public welfare J Political Science J Political Science > JK Political institutions (United States) Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
Departments:	The City Law School > Academic Programmes
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

Export

Downloads