QAnon Conspiracy Theory Is Exactly What Fueled Nazi Germany, Genocide Scholar Says

QAnon's conspiracy theory isn't new, Genocide Watch's Gregory Stanton said.
QAnon's conspiracy theory isn't new, Genocide Watch's Gregory Stanton said.Getty Images

Many elements of Adolf Hitler's "Mein Kampf" come from a false anti-Semitic text that was originally published in Russia in 1903.

Is QAnon built upon the same conspiracy theory that fueled genocidal Nazism in Germany? Genocide scholar Gregory Stanton thinks so.

Stanton wrote in an article for Genocide Watch, a non-profit educational organization of which he is the founding president, that many concepts used by QAnon are identical to ones published in 1903 in the fraudulent, anti-Semitic propaganda text The Protocols of Zion.

“I’ve seen this one before,” Stanton told CNN. “When I saw this, I said, ‘This is Nazism.’”

He explained that the text, first published in Russia, falsely claims that an elite society that controls high government positions also encourages pedophilia, and the kidnapping and cannibalism of children. It was later incorporated into Adolf Hitler’s “Mein Kampf,” before being republished as a children’s book, and reprinted in Nazi newspapers.

He goes on to explain that certain conditions made Europe ripe for Nazism, including mass unemployment, mistrust in the government and social discontent, and those same “difficult times” could be said now about the United States.

“It’s very hard to believe that an ordinary person could fall for this,” Stanton said. “But in groups, people aren’t always rational.”

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