The recipe has been around since the Middle Ages: Take Satan, child molestation and immeasurable wickedness and define dark forces that have conspired against the people in order to ultimately enslave them.
Sometimes the Freemason is behind the conspiracy, sometimes the Jews, currently - according to the conspiracy theory surrounding QAnon - it is left-wing elites, including politicians, Hollywood stars and practically all journalists, who do not work for the US broadcaster Fox-News.
Conspiracy theories have been around for centuries and time and again they turn out to be fabulous nonsense.
QAnon, the highly dangerous movement that has now worked its way from the depths of the internet into the bourgeois camp, believes that US President Donald Trump, with the help of a small group of upright patriots, is trying to defeat the left-wing elites who have captured the US state, to stop.
The world only noticed something of this heroic struggle because an anonymous official "Q" kept posting cryptic messages on the Internet - according to the theory.
more on the subject
Icon: Spiegel PlusIcon: Spiegel PlusQAnon and its German followers: The most dangerous cult of our time
"Eight billion" host Juan Moreno talks to SPIEGEL Netzwelt editor Patrick Beuth about the rise of a crazy idea that millions of people around the world have now dealt with.
Christoph Scheuermann, deputy head of foreign affairs at SPIEGEL, describes the US president's political calculations, who to this day refuses to condemn the conspiracy theory.
Professor Michael Butter from Tübingen, who has been working on conspiracy theories for years, explains why so many people are receptive to this obvious nonsense and how Donald Trump consciously uses conspiracies to increase his chances in the presidential election in November.
Icon: The mirror
/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/DIFWFJXADONJ55G5YHH3YGNYNY.jpg)
