The short version is - people have moved away from traditional cults like Christianity, but still feel the need for the familiar comfort of the father figure.
Big takeaway: Looking at the "meta" is important, but people who get to these weird places in their lives - in their beliefs - all have an individual story on how it happened, and there's usually some kind of traumatizing event that instigates their transition.
My thing is that we're conditioned all our lives to look for stability and security in a world that we perceive to be randomly dangerous and ultimately uncaring and cruel (and to be sure, the world can be pretty fucking scary).
So we want that powerful presence in our lives. Something that makes us feel safe no matter what.
The problem is that our desire for that warm fuzzy feeling makes us willing to indulge in self-infantalization. So, in the relationship that we have to develop with ourselves as adults, we refuse to be the grownup, and we're then susceptible to manipulation at the hands of people who're looking to collect some kind of rent from us in return for telling us what to think rather than helping us figure out how to think for ourselves.
Something like QAnon is almost supremely insidious because it masquerades as "doing your own research and then deciding for yourself", while it's really just meaningless mental masturbation dressed up to look like intellectual rigor - with guns and a motivation to impose a kind of guided vigilante-ism that makes the Nazis look like an Amish picnic.
Think: The Three Stooges with automatic weapons and hand grenades.
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