Amanda Moore went undercover and witnessed how fascism has burrowed into the right.
“There is more and more cross-pollination between white nationalist influencers and QAnon influencers,” Moore told me, basing her conclusions on interactions with some of the people she spent time around undercover. When she mentioned that she would go to events attended by believers in the conspiracy, she says white nationalists she spoke with would reply, “Oh, these QAnon people are all freaks, but they’re useful.”
“There is a very clear to QAnon-to-fascist pipeline. I talked about planning that pipeline with fascists. These are people who are working with Hungarian fascists to bring their style of government into our country,” Moore says.
Mike Rothschild, author of The Storm Is Upon Us, a book about QAnon, is one journalist who was in touch with Moore while she was undercover. He says what she found shows that many on the far-right, from the bottom all the way up through its top tier of influencers, truly mean what they say.
“This is not an act. This is not a con. This is who they are,” he told me. “She would send me pics of people who were big in QAnon that she came face to face with. What she found with them is that they actually believe what they push. The facade never dropped—even in private.” Rothschild says “there’s a huge amount of value in chronicling what these people do,” likening her actions to infiltrating a far-right chatroom or Discord server. “They don’t know they’re being listened in on—but who cares? They’re extremists and grifters and anti-semites. I don’t care about hurting their feelings.”
f https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/02/amanda-moore-undercover-maga/