Much has been written about the damage the Q conspiracy has done to individuals, families, even nations. Little has been said, however, about how difficult it has made the task of the novelist—specifically, the novelist who writes novels featuring vampires.
The Q phenomenon is complex, and there are many variants. Most basically, however, it presupposes global elite that controls world finance and media. Q theory also posits that this group also practices a Satanic religion, engages in ritual pedophilia and harvests a drug—adrenochrone—from abused children that provides prolonged youth. Moreover, it is believed that this group has infiltrated the governments and civil services of Western nations and is assiduously working towards a totalitarian one-world government. Although not central to this theory, there is a strong likelihood that Q adherents will believe that covid is caused by 5G towers, that the covid vaccine contains microchips that will provide tracking information and that the Wayfair company sells children in cabinets.
Qanon, as has been pointed out many times, recycles several tropes from earlier conspiracy theories, most notably anti-Semitic canards such as the belief that Jewish people are conspiring to global dominance through control of the banking the media systems, and that they practice blood libels (specifically, the murder of Christian children).
One point that, I think, is not often made is that the Qanon narrative also has strong affinities with the vampire story (which shares tropes with anti-Semitism).
Creatures like vampires extend well into folk history, but the current iteration began in Eastern Europe in the early 1700s, with stories of grave desecrations and the dead returning to harm the living. When these reports first entered Western public consciousness, the figure of the vampire became a metaphor for exploitative or parasitical relationships. Very early it was used to describe the financial market. Voltaire wrote that the only real vampires were the “stock-jobbers, brokers, and men of business, who sucked the blood of the people in broad daylight” (1764). Marx later employed the metaphor more specifically, to describe the parasitical economic relationships: “Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks” (1867).
Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1867) established the dominant paradigm for the vampire story. Although class issues are not central to the novel, Stoker’s representation of the vampire roughly aligns with these metaphoric usages. Dracula is an ancient aristocrat, living in a remote corner of Europe, parasitically feeding off a hapless peasantry. He himself produces nothing, and the poverty and stagnation of Transylvania can be ascribed to his despotic rule. Dracula’s primary antagonist is Dr. Van Helsing, a medical expert and solid member of the rising professional class. By defeating Dracula—and ridding the world of this old evil—he clears the path for progress.
This story is also an encapsulation of the Qanon narrative. With the Qanon narrative, however, the metaphor has become literal: it isn’t that a global elite lives off the world economy in a manner akin to mythic vampires—adherents believe that this elite literally are vampires, who really do eat children. Or, that the global elite are in fact humanoid lizards who eat children.
So—and this is the problem—where does that leave the vampire novel? If we live in a world where a substantial number of people believe that something like vampires really exist, how can one write a vampire novel without recirculating tropes now associated with Qanon?
And this is a small part of a bigger dilemma. There are many valid critiques to be made of globalism, big pharma, the growing power of the super wealthy and, yes, scientism too. And, in a rational world, such criticism would serve as a useful social corrective. Qanon’s constant loony barrage, however, makes this dialogue impossible.
It’s almost like a conspiracy.
Travel Only By Night 