Mothers of Conspiracy: Child Trafficking (Dis)information and the Politics of the Women of QAnon in the United States

How are feminized identities used to further the participation of Women in far-right populist movements? We examine this question by exploring the appropriation of #SavetheChildren by the far-right group, QAnon. We employ competing narratives of QAnon child trafficking campaign materials and those of Polaris, the largest anti-trafficking NGO in the United States, in an original survey of respondents to examine public responses to QAnon’s use of gendered stereotypes that tie women to motherhood and maternal duty. Our results illustrate the syncretic nature of QAnon and the complex reality of gender stereotypes. We find that motherhood and child protection narratives by QAnon do not mobilize women better than NGOs. However, QAnon narratives appear to be at least as good at mobilizing as NGO narratives and do so for the same groups. Further work in this area is crucial to understanding the complex relationship between gender and the rise of QAnon.