evidence: Given their effectiveness as an emotional tool, Brooks thinks such sharing of conspiracy theories has become the most powerful community bonding mechanism of the 21st century.[289] Conspiracy theories usually have a strong political component[299] and books such as Hofstadter's The Paranoid Style in American Politics describe the political efficacy of these alternate takes on reality. Some attribute Trump's political success to making such narratives a regular staple of Trumpist rhetoric, such as the purported rigging of the 2016 election to defeat Trump, that climate change is a hoax perpetrated by the Chinese, that Obama was not born in the United States, multiple conspiracy theories about the Clintons, that vaccines cause autism and so on.[300] One of the most popular though disproven and discredited conspiracy theories is QAnon, which asserts that top Democrats run an elite child sex-trafficking ring and President Trump is making efforts to dismantle it. An October 2020 Yahoo-YouGov poll showed that these QAnon claims are mainstream, not fringe beliefs among Trump supporters, with both elements of the theory said to be true by fully half of Trump supporters polled.[287][288]