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Speech and Rhetorical Studies Commons™
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Full-Text Articles in Speech and Rhetorical Studies
“But You Have To Have Been There To Know What We Are Talking About”: An Examination Of The Rhetorical Environments Of Cults And Other Extremist Groups And How They Lead To Violence, Katherine Camille
Honors College
Popular culture often cites charismatic leaders as the catalysts for violent acts in cults and other extremist groups. This explanation is insufficient and oversimplified, and this thesis challenges the idea that a single speech or person can move a large group to act violently and without their own best interests in mind. This thesis examines two well- known cults: The Peoples Temple and Heaven’s Gate, to determine what compelled their followers to commit violent acts 3⁄4 particularly mass suicide. I then take this analysis and look at QAnon, a far-right conspiracy theory group, whose participation in the January 6th, 2021 …
Faith Down The Rabbit Hole: A Critical Rhetorical Interrogation Of Q-Anon And Parasitic Christianity, Nate Carlson
Faith Down The Rabbit Hole: A Critical Rhetorical Interrogation Of Q-Anon And Parasitic Christianity, Nate Carlson
Masters Theses
Over the course of the last six years, the conspiracy theory community known as Q-Anon has risen to prominence across the internet, coming to encapsulate a significant portion of the United States’ conservative and protestant populations. This study applies the act of Critical Rhetoric as proposed by McKerrow (1989) to the Q-Anon “drops”; message board posts wherein Q, the enigmatic leader of Q-Anon, preached conspiratorial ideology and misinformation to his followers. A pattern of Christian theology being usurped and retooled by Q as a method of faith-based political radicalization emerged throughout the texts, and this phenomenon was named “Parasitic Christianity.” …