Samantha Bee on QAnon’s dangerous appeal to white women

The end of Donald Trump’s presidency was by no means the end of conspiracy theories like those spread by QAnon. Last night on Full Frontal with Samantha Bee, host Samantha Bee examined the role suburban white women are playing in keeping QAnon alive.

While QAnon has been on the public radar for some time, its prominence rose to new heights following the Jan. 6 insurrection at the Capitol. The country saw just how dangerous conspiracy theories can be as they spread online and get amplified by public figures.

Late night television hosts like Stephen Colbert, Seth Meyers, and Jimmy Kimmel have condemned former President Donald Trump and other politicians for feeding into QAnon. And while that is certainly justifiable, it is the average citizen at home who is most responsible for spreading the conspiracy theories at the center of QAnon.

Samantha Bee detailed this further last night on Full Frontal. Specifically, Been looked at how white women are empowering QAnon in an eye-opening two-part segment.

Samantha Bee started the segment by stating that QAnon has infiltrated Congress in the form of Representatives Lauren Boebert and Marjorie Taylor Greene. These two Republicans have been increasingly targeted by late night hosts for pushing election lies and for their political stunts.

As bad as this is, it isn’t Bee’s primary focus. Instead, she zeroes in on the report that white women are now the “driving force” behind QAnon. The Full Frontal host outlines how the conspiracy theory targets mothers’ instincts and desire to protect their family, hooking them by raising concerns about child kidnapping and human trafficking.

Doing so can send women down a rabbit hole that is exacerbated by social media and the algorithms used to push similar content onto their feeds. Bee is among a number of late night hosts and other public figures who have heavily criticized Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram for how it spreads false information.

Samantha Bee looks at how conspiracy theories have hijacked legitimate causes

In part two, Bee took a closer look at how specific hashtags have been hijacked by QAnon and made it easier to recruit women into the conspiracy ring. #SaveTheChildren and the Save the Children organization have taken on very different meanings recently as Bee highlights in her segment.

It only gets worse from there as Bee connects the dots to white nationalism and xenophobia. So what starts as activism against child trafficking can quickly turn into something corrupt and dangerous. Bee argues that white women now play a key role in spreading right-wing ideology online, continuing a history of perpetuating racism under the false pretense of protecting their family.

There is no easy solution to this problem and Bee readily admits that. But the point of her segment was to show that not all conspiracy theorists dress in military gear and carry guns. Instead, Bee concludes that stopping online radicalization will require acknowledging the major role played by white women.

What did you think of this segment from Samantha Bee? Share your thoughts in the comment section below.