In June 2018, a man parked an armored car full of guns and ammunition next to the Hoover Dam near the Nevada-Arizona border. Two months later, another man occupied a tower at a cement plant in Tucson for nine days. In 2019, an English professor at a community college in Mesa, Arizona, was fired after students complained he promoted conspiracy theories during class hours. In July of this year, a woman was arrested after destroying a face mask display at a Target near Scottsdale, Arizona. A common thread connects these individuals: They all vocalized support for a movement called QAnon.

The movement is gaining national traction, with its supporters winning several Republican primary elections and some prominent Republicans, including Donald Trump, mentioning or praising the group. Other members of the Republican Party have outright dismissed QAnon and expressed that the group’s conspiracy theories have no place in Congress.

QAnon followers believe Trump is working to dismantle a global cabal of satanic pedophiles, and that a “deep state” run by Democrat politicians, business leaders and celebrities with ties to a child sex-trafficking ring is working against him. These ideas were first posted to an online message board in 2017 by a person (or people) known only as “Q,” who claims to be an insider with security clearance in the U.S. government. Over the past three years, QAnon conspiracies have spread across Facebook, Twitter and YouTube. The FBI named QAnon as a potential domestic terrorist threat in 2019. 

Trump told reporters at an August 2020 press conference that he didn’t know much about QAnon, but he understood its supporters “like me very much” and the movement “is gaining in popularity.” Media Matters for America has identified 70 Republican congressional candidates who have promoted QAnon this year, and QAnon supporters have won Republican nominations for the U.S. Senate in Oregon, and state House seats in California, Colorado, Illinois, Nevada, New Jersey, Ohio, Texas and Arizona. 

In Arizona, two Republican legislators posted about QAnon on social media over the July 4 weekend. State Sen. Vince Leach of Tucson posted a political cartoon depicting Trump, his former national security adviser Michael Flynn and a figure whose head is a large Q marching over miniature figures labeled traitors. The same day, State Rep. Jay Lawrence of Scottsdale posted to Twitter and Facebook: “Qanon Patriotic Americans who support President Trump.”

Lawrence later posted an apology on Facebook, saying he knew “practically nothing” about the group but had seen comments that led him to believe its members were being attacked simply for supporting Trump. After he learned more about the group’s conspiracy theories, Lawrence wrote: “Now I think half of them are rather nuts. I do miss the simpler days when someone could say something patriotic and you could applaud without having to first make sure they don’t also think that Oprah and Tom Hanks secretly control the world.”

Leach, a newly appointed chair of Republican Sen. Martha McSally’s election campaign, did not reply to messages seeking comment. But McSally told a Phoenix-based NPR affiliate KJZZ that QAnon “is crazy. I speak for myself, and we need to move on and solve the problems of this country.” McSally wouldn’t comment on Trump’s refusal to disavow the group’s endorsement. Her office did not respond to requests for comment on her appointment of Leach.

The day after QAnon supporter Marjorie Taylor Greene won a Republican primary runoff election in Georgia, Rep. Adam Kinzinger, R-Ill., condemned the group. “Qanon is a fabrication,” he wrote on Twitter. “This ‘insider’ has predicted so much incorrectly (but people don’t remember PAST predictions) so now has switched to vague generalities. Could be Russian propaganda or a basement dweller. Regardless, no place in Congress for these conspiracies.”

The Washington Post reported that the Trump campaign’s director of press communications went on the online QAnon program “The Common Sense Show,” telling listeners to sign up for Trump Victory Leadership initiative training, and that QAnon iconography has appeared in some official campaign advertisements. Trump congratulated Taylor Greene on her primary victory, calling her a “future Republican star.”

The political impact of QAnon in the leadup to the November general election, especially in battleground states like Arizona, is already evident. QAnon is shaping the narrative of a segment in the GOP base, just as the Tea Party did during Barack Obama’s term. It’s unclear how Congress would respond if QAnon were to reach a critical mass and form a caucus in the manner of the Tea Party’s Liberty Caucus.

“It’s difficult to imagine QAnon capturing the entire GOP the way the Tea Party did,” op-ed columnist Paul Waldman wrote in The Washington Post. “One of the Tea Party’s advantages was that even if, in reality, it was made up of extremists (and more than a few conspiracy theorists), it also paid fealty to standard conservative ideas of small government and respect for the Constitution. That allowed any Republican to take it seriously, if not claim outright allegiance to it. But QAnon is so bizarre and rancid that it may be hard to see the Congressional QAnon Caucus pulling in dozens of current members.”

Still, many pundits and politicos warn that the movement shouldn’t be taken lightly and indicate that the future of the Republican Party depends on dissociation from QAnon. Republican Jeff Flake, a former Arizona senator, posted to Twitter Aug. 13: “If the GOP wants to be a relevant political force in the future, it cannot endorse those who embrace QAnon and other conspiracy theories.”