Several years ago, I became familiar with the movement known as “QAnon,” a mash-up between a cult and some sort of adult role-playing game.
For years, since it first emerged on the internet’s nether regions known as 4Chan, QAnon believers have insisted that a hidden network of powerful elites abused children with impunity, protected by their wealth, influence and a complicit, corrupt government (i.e. “the swamp”).
At the center of that worldview sat Jeffrey Epstein, a real, documented criminal monster whose connections reached into politics, finance and celebrity culture.
Some QAnon beliefs could veer into wild fantasy, involving lizard people, Tom Hanks as a criminal mastermind and a fascination with JFK, Jr., whom Q adherents claimed was still alive and working in the shadows to save America.
From what I saw of the QAnon stuff, and from those I knew who followed it, the movement fancied itself as some sort of new-age uber-conservative awakening of America, intermingled with a sort of edgelord vigilantism and elements of Mad Max.
I once asked someone I knew who was deep into following the “Q drops,” as the movement’s dispatches of info were called, about why President Donald Trump ate so much McDonalds food. She told me that it was a sort of signal; that Trump was fighting the cabal that cannibalized children, because other fast-food establishments used baby meat in their food production, but not McDonalds.
Yeah, some of the rhetoric was that bizarre, and I’m just scratching the surface, but to the true-blue QAnon adherents, Trump was some sort of emperor-god/superhero sent by God to save the children.
So where is the QAnon victory lap now that the latest tranche of Epstein files has, in essence, proven their key talking point (mostly) correct?
If the Department of Justice is now releasing the Epstein files, QAnon believers should, by their own logic, be absolutely thrilled.
The release of the Epstein files, as heavily redacted and behind schedule as though they may be, represents a kind of transparency that We the People (including the Q folks) have long demanded. Records, testimony and investigative materials, again, albeit with redactions, is a start to show that the government is pulling the curtain back, as opposed to hiding behind it.
Photographs, emails, testimonies and other documents offer something far more valuable than byzantine word salads offered up online: verifiable evidence produced through investigation, and to the Q folks, this should represent the giant jackpot payoff they’ve been promising for years.
The case of Jeffrey Epstein is one of the rare moments in our history where conspiratorial rhetoric overlaps with established, objective fact: Epstein did traffic and abuse children, and he had some incredibly powerful and influential friends. The documents released by the Department of Justice should disturb every American citizen, but also have them thinking about accountability, and none of this requires a belief in secret cabals or coded messages.
There’s so much that is in those files that is disturbing enough that there is no need for fantasies, so why isn’t QAnon all about the Epstein files? Where is their presence now in 2026?
I have no numbers, currently, for how many folks believe, or at least follow, the Q stuff, but at one point, in 2022, it was around 4% of the overall U.S. population, which is hugely significant for something that spawned from the bowels of the internet.
Some of the mainstream/normie knowledge of the QAnon stuff came by way of actual legislators, and people in Trump’s cabinet sharing Q adjacent posts. Georgia congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene was once so entrenched in the Q mythos that I believe I used to refer to her with a “Q” beside her name, instead of an “R” for Republican. Greene, of course, has broken ranks with Trump over the DOJ’s dragging its heels to release the Epstein files, and has been banished from MAGA, a fate that awaits anyone even slightly critical of the president. Greene has announced that she is not running for another term, but she has become, surprisingly, a powerful voice of reason speaking her truth.
So is, or was, QAnon actually devoted to a noble cause, underneath all of the bizarre nonsense, or has it always been about idolizing or worshiping Trump? Truth is rarely, if ever, as cinematic as conspiracy theories promise, but if the movement is sincere about exposing corruption and advocating for justice for child sex abuse victims, instead of sustaining outrage, then this should be a moment of celebration, and a test as to whether or not truth matters more than just some elaborate story.
The bottom line is this: anyone who abuses children deserves to meet the appropriate consequences, and in my opinion, that should in some cases include a death sentence. That justice should not matter if the perpetrators have names like Clinton, Trump or Musk OR Smith and Jones.
