The Shasta County Board of Supervisors turned the county’s election process upside down, the Los Angeles Times reported last week, by terminating its contract with Dominion Voting Systems. The county could choose to hand-count ballots instead, which would likely delay results and increase election suspicion. A supervisor said he had sought the services of Mike Lindell, the pillow supplier and prominent conspiracy theorist.

Shasta, a deep red county in far northern California, has proved vulnerable to causes that are on the national fringe but are under pressure from the forces that supported Donald Trump’s trumped-up election fraud allegations. Members of the militia and other hard-right activists led a recall of a member of the all-Republican district board last year and have since secured a majority, leading to last week’s official approval of unfounded suspicions about Dominion.

The current state of QAnon and related conspiracy theories is no exception to the old axiom that all politics is local. Since President Biden’s inauguration, efforts to stay ended

Donald

Trump in office, these theories have been lured and influenced from national to local politics

local

officials responsible for crucial policymaking on voting, education and more.

The broad, baseless set of beliefs known as QAnon portrays Trump as a messianic figure battling an evil cabal of Democratic elites and Hollywood celebrities who rule the world and molest and murder children. In 2020, supporters banded together to stop the theft allegations that Dominion-manufactured machines had somehow altered outcomes in key states. The allegations surfaced in a few states where Dominion machines were never even used.

A focus on Dominion’s nefarious ballot changes and the supposed origins of the company in Venezuela, it’s actually Canadian, became a mainstay of Trump’s refusal to accept the election results. More than two years later, such conspiracies continue to permeate right-wing politics below the national level. At last weekend’s Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC), Kari Lake, speaker and loser of the Arizona gubernatorial race, continued to claim that the 2022 election had been stolen from her.

Such conspiracy beliefs have been promoted by far-right figures such as Lindell and Trump attorney Sidney Powell and reinforced by right-wing media. Research I conducted found 97 QAnon-supporting candidates in the 2020 primary, with California, Florida, Texas and Arizona leading the nation.

The campaigns and their supporters have been shockingly successful in promoting grassroots faith. Polls conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute and NPR/Ipsos have shown that as many as one in three Americans believe the key tenets of the QAnon conspiracy theory.

A 2021 poll by the conservative American Enterprise Institute found that 29% of Republicans agree

Mostly or completely correct

that Trump has secretly fought against a group of child sex traffickers, including prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites, while only 42% of those polled rejected the claim as inaccurate. The polls suggest that millions of American adults believe there is a “deep state” of pedophile vampires who stole Trump’s election.

Far-right media echo chambers played a critical role in achieving this level of acceptance of fringe beliefs. We know more about that thanks to Dominion’s $1.6 billion defamation lawsuit against Fox News.

After January 6, 2021, QAnon influencers focused on propaganda about local wedge-shaped issues, such as the content of K-12 education (especially critical race theory) and trans rights, implying that studying race caused homosexuality and sexual dysmorphism, like I and Sophia Moskalenko in our recent book on QAnon. Much of this propaganda appeals to a Republican base made up of groups in which QAnon theories have enthusiastically embraced, including evangelicals.

Devotees were encouraged to act locally for the greatest impact. They were particularly encouraged to run for local offices, including positions in cities and counties and especially school boards, which lure conspiracy theorists with the promise of extending their influence to future generations. From Michigan to California, dozens of elected local officials have promoted QAnon conspiracy theories such as the one surrounding Dominion. Another California county, Kern, only retained its Dominion machines last week after much deliberation.

School boards across the country are now occupied by people whose social media feeds are filled with calls for patriots and digital soldiers to join the movement and prophecies that nothing can stop what is to come. Time magazine investigated school boards in Michigan and Nevada and found, as one student put it, far-right conspirators or radicals infiltrating the most basic unit of the US government. In addition to their impact at the local level, these offices often serve as springboards for state and national candidacies.

And besides harming children’s education and the rights of transgender people and other minorities, these theories undermine our democratic institutions. It should come as no surprise that since its inception in 2017, QAnon has been bolstered by US adversaries like Russia and China. Conspiracy theories about Dominion, stolen elections and an evil cabal proliferating at the local level are mirrored by Russian disinformation campaigns at home and abroad. The theories have much the same effect as some of Russia’s tactics during the 2016 presidential campaign, when its agents created fake Facebook accounts to pit neighbor against neighbor, encourage protests and violence on both sides of controversies, and boost the confidence of the public. weaken the public.

QAnons’ infiltration of local politics furthers the long-term global goals of evil foreign actors. Only by recognizing the hidden motivations and roots of these conspiracy theories can we begin to vaccinate against them.

Mia Bloom is a professor of communications and Middle East studies at Georgia State University, a fellow with the New Americas International Security Program, and co-author of Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon.