SherbyNode - /page/gopher.mu

Micron Document

Gopher Proxy

Main menu Proxy Menu Search Engine Back

gopherpedia.com:70 gopherpedia.com:70/0//QAnon

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

======================================================================

= QAnon =

======================================================================

Introduction

======================================================================

QAnon is a far-right American political conspiracy theory and

political movement that originated in 2017. QAnon centers on the

fabrications of an anonymous individual or individuals known as "Q

Clearance Patriot", more commonly known as "Q". Q's claims have been

relayed and developed by online communities and influencers. Their

core belief is that a cabal of Satanic, cannibalistic child molesters

in league with the deep state is operating a global child sex

trafficking ring and that Donald Trump is secretly leading the fight

against them. QAnon has direct roots in Pizzagate, another conspiracy

theory that appeared on the Internet one year earlier, but also

incorporates elements of many different conspiracy theories and

unifies them into a larger interconnected theory. QAnon has been

described as a cult.Description of QAnon as a cult:

During the first presidency of Donald Trump, QAnon followers believed

the administration would conduct arrests and executions of thousands

of members of the cabal on a day known as "the Storm" or "the Event".

QAnon conspiracy believers have named Democratic politicians,

Hollywood actors, high-ranking government officials, business tycoons,

and medical experts as members of the cabal of pedophiles. QAnon is

described as antisemitic or rooted in antisemitic tropes, due to its

fixation on Jewish financier George Soros and conspiracy theories

about the Rothschild family, a frequent target of antisemites.

Though QAnon has its origins in older conspiracy theories, it was set

in motion in October 2017 when Q first posted on the website 4chan. Q

claimed to be a high-level government official with Q clearance, with

access to classified information about the Trump administration and

its opponents. Q soon moved to 8chan, making it QAnon's online home.

Q's often cryptic posts, which became known as "drops", were collected

by aggregator apps and websites and relayed by influencers. QAnon

became a viral phenomenon beyond the internet and turned into a

political movement. QAnon followers began to appear at Trump campaign

rallies in August 2018, and Trump amplified QAnon accounts on Twitter.

QAnon's conspiracy theories have also been relayed by Russian and

Chinese state-backed media, social media troll accounts, and the

far-right Falun Gong-associated Epoch Media Group.

Following its emergence in American politics, QAnon spawned movements

around the world. The exact number of QAnon adherents is unclear.

After increased scrutiny of the movement, social media platforms such

as Twitter and Facebook began taking action to stop the spread of the

conspiracy theory. QAnon followers have perpetrated acts of violence.

Members of the movement took part in the 2020 United States

presidential election, during which they supported Trump's campaign

and waged information warfare to influence voters. After Joe Biden

won, they were involved in efforts to overturn the results of the

election. Associates of Trump, such as Michael Flynn, Lin Wood and

Sidney Powell, have promoted QAnon-derived conspiracy theories. When

these tactics failed, Trump supporters - many of them QAnon followers

- attacked the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. The Capitol attack led

to a further, more sustained social media crackdown on the movement

and its claims. Though the QAnon movement in its original form lost

traction after the 2020 election, some of the concepts it promoted

went on to permeate mainstream American political discourse.

Pizzagate

===========

According to QAnon researcher Mike Rothschild, "while Q has a number

of precursor conspiracy theories and scams... no conspiracy theory

feeds more immediately into Q than Pizzagate". The Pizzagate theory

began in 2016 with the leak of Clinton campaigner John Podesta's

emails, which promoters of the theory believed contained a secret code

detailing child sexual abuse. Pizzagate followers said that

high-profile Democrats were sexually abusing children at a Washington,

D.C. pizzeria, which led to an armed attack on the establishment by a

gunman who believed those claims.

The allegations of child sexual abuse and the centrality of the

Clinton family to this abuse became a key part of the QAnon belief

system, but in time the Clintons' centrality was de-emphasized in

favor of more general conspiratorial claims of an alleged worldwide

elite of child sex traffickers. Q referred to Pizzagate claims without

using the term. QAnon followers often used the hashtag

#SaveTheChildren to promote the Pizzagate conspiracy theory. This

caused protest from the unrelated non-governmental organization Save

the Children.

Influence of 4chan culture

============================

The investigative journalism website Bellingcat called or "Human

Trafficking General" threads on the board of 4chan "the missing link"

between Pizzagate and QAnon. Instead of focusing on a limited supply

of email material to comb through, the culture allowed users to

actively participate in the imagined storylines. A key poster was

Anonymous5 (also known as "Frank"), who claimed to be a child

prostitution investigator. But the lack of a coherent narrative was a

constraint on the trend, and it never achieved Pizzagate's

popularity.

The main tenets of the QAnon ideology were already present at 4chan

before Q's appearance, including claims that Hillary Clinton was

directly involved in a child sex ring, that Robert Mueller was

secretly working with Trump, and that large-scale military tribunals

were imminent. Q's posts specifically targeted individuals who were

hated in the community beforehand, namely Clinton, Barack Obama, and

George Soros. Bellingcat says that the idea of the "Storm" was copied

from another poster named Victory of the Light, who predicted the

"Event", in which mass, televised arrests of the "Cabal" were

forthcoming.

Previous "anons"

==================

In its most basic sense, an "anon" is an anonymous or pseudonymous

Internet poster. The concept of anons "doing research" and claiming to

disclose otherwise classified information, while a key component of

the QAnon conspiracy theory, is not exclusive to it. Q was preceded by

so-called anons who also claimed to have special government access. On

July 2, 2016, the anonymous poster "FBIAnon", a self-described

"high-level analyst and strategist" who claimed to have "intimate

knowledge of the inner workings of the Clinton case", began posting

false information about the 2016 investigation into the Clinton

Foundation and claimed that Hillary Clinton would be imprisoned if

Trump became president. Around that time, "HLIAnon", standing for

"High-Level Insider Anon", hosted long question-and-answer sessions,

dispensing various conspiracy theories, including that Princess Diana

was murdered after trying to stop the September 11 attacks. Soon after

the 2016 United States elections, two anonymous posters, "CIAAnon" and

"CIAIntern", falsely claimed to be high-ranking Central Intelligence

Agency (CIA) officers, and in late August 2017, "WHInsiderAnon"

offered a supposed preview that something was "going to go down"

regarding leaks that would affect the Democratic Party.

Origin and spread

======================================================================

A 4chan user named "Q Clearance Patriot" first appeared on the site's

/pol/ board on October 28, 2017, posting in a thread titled "Calm

Before the Storm", a phrase Trump had previously used to describe a

gathering of American military leaders he attended. "The Storm" later

became QAnon parlance for an imminent event in which thousands of

alleged suspects would be arrested, imprisoned, and executed for being

child-eating pedophiles. The poster's username implied that they held

Q clearance, a United States Department of Energy security clearance

required to access Top Secret information on nuclear weapons and

materials.

Q's first post said that Hillary Clinton was about to be arrested,

which would cause massive unrest and be followed by numerous other

arrests. A second message was posted a few hours later, saying that

Clinton was being "detained" though not arrested yet and that Trump

was planning to remove "criminal rogue elements". The post also

alluded cryptically to George Soros, Huma Abedin and Operation

Mockingbird.

Q's activity surged in November, with most posts expanding upon

previous theories about Hillary Clinton. Other conspiracy theories

were added involving Barack Obama, Saudi Arabia, and Iran. An Internet

community developed around analyzing posts attributed to Q, and

several conspiracy theorists became minor celebrities in the

community. Followers started looking for "clues" to confirm their

beliefs, including common phrases and occurrences. In November 2017,

Trump sipping water from a bottle was interpreted as a secret sign

that the mass arrests would soon take place.

QAnon went further than Pizzagate by implying a worldwide cabal and

incorporating elements from other conspiracies. One of the earlier

rumors QAnon followers spread was that such figures as Hillary

Clinton, her daughter Chelsea, and Senator John McCain had already

been arrested and indicted, and were wearing ankle monitoring

bracelets during their public appearances. In the following months,

the QAnon community helped spread other rumors such as the

"Frazzledrip" theory, which purported the existence of a "snuff" video

showing Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin murdering a child, drinking

her blood and taking turns wearing the skin from her face as a mask.

In November 2017, two 4chan moderators, Paul Furber (also known as

"BaruchtheScribe", a South African conspiracy theorist with an

interest in U.S. politics) and Coleman Rogers (also known as "Pamphlet

Anon"), worked with YouTuber Tracy Diaz to promote QAnon to a wider

audience. This involved setting up the r/CBTS_Stream subreddit, where

subscribers came to talk about QAnon. The subreddit was permanently

closed in March 2018 due to incitement of violence and posting private

information. QAnon spread to other social media, including Twitter and

YouTube. Rogers and his wife, Christina Urso, launched Patriots'

Soapbox, a YouTube livestream dedicated to QAnon, which they used to

solicit donations. Future U.S. representative Lauren Boebert was a

guest on Patriots' Soapbox during her 2020 congressional campaign.

Posts by Q moved to 8chan, with Q citing concerns that the 4chan board

had been "infiltrated". Thereafter, Q posted only on 8chan. In August

2019, 8chan was shut down after it was connected with the El Paso

shooting and other violent incidents. Followers of QAnon then moved to

Endchan, until 8chan was restored under the name 8kun.

Mainstream attention

======================

{{Multiple image

| direction = horizontal

| width = 150

| image1 = Pence posing with QAnon police crop.jpg

| alt1 = Two soldiers meeting Pence on a tarmac

| image2 = Pence posing with QAnon police detail.jpg

| caption1 = Vice President Mike Pence with Broward County

SWAT team members, on November 30, 2018; the man on the left wears ...

| alt2 = Detail of one soldier's uniform, showing a patch

with a black "Q" on a red background, and a second patch with a black

field bearing an axe and scythe crossed over one another

| caption2 = ... a "Q" patch '(close-up)' used by followers

of QAnon. The deputy was reprimanded and removed from the SWAT team as

a result.

The photo was tweeted, removed, and then replaced in Pence's feed.

| align =

| total_width = 400

}}

QAnon first received attention from the mainstream press in November

2017. 'Newsweek' called it "Pizzagate on steroids". Gossip columnist

Liz Crokin, a Pizzagate follower, was one of the first public figures

to embrace QAnon. She went on to become one of the movement's most

prominent influencers. Fox News personality Sean Hannity and comedian

Roseanne Barr spread the news about it to their social media followers

in early 2018, and the conspiracy theory gained traction on the

mainstream right. At this time, 'InfoWars' host and far-right

conspiracy theorist Alex Jones claimed to be in personal contact with

Q. This led to the presence of QAnon followers at a July 2018 Trump

rally for the midterm elections in Tampa, Florida, the first visible

presence of the QAnon movement at Trump rallies.

Some Christian pastors introduced their congregations to QAnon ideas.

The Indiana-based Omega Kingdom Ministry tried to combine QAnon and

Christianity, with Q posts and Bible quotes both read during church

services. Some Christians, such as pastor Derek Kubilus, call QAnon

heresy, but most U.S. pastors have not taken a stand against it. More

generally, QAnon's rise coincided with increasing radicalization and

violent episodes in American far-right movements.

QAnon-related merchandise was widely available on Amazon's online

marketplace in 2018. 'QAnon: An Invitation to the Great Awakening', a

book said to be authored by a group of 12 QAnon followers, neared the

top of Amazon's bestsellers list in 2019, possibly through algorithmic

manipulation. Also in 2019, QAnon blogger Neon Revolt (an alias of

former aspiring screenwriter Robert Cornero Jr.) self-published the

book 'Revolution Q: The Story of QAnon and the 2nd American

Revolution', which became an influential text among the QAnon

community and was also distributed by Amazon. In 2020, 'Politico'

noted that 100 titles associated with QAnon were available on Amazon

Marketplace, in many different languages and with generally positive

reviews.

Sites dedicated to aggregating the Q posts, also called "drops" or "Q

drops", became essential for their dissemination and spread. QMap was

the most popular and famous aggregator, run by a pseudonymous

developer and overall key QAnon figure known as "QAPPANON". QMap shut

down shortly after the British fact-checking organization Logically

published a September 2020 report that identified QAPPANON as a New

Jersey-based security analyst named Jason Gelinas. Multiple online

communities were created around QAnon: in 2020, Facebook conducted an

internal investigation that revealed that the social network hosted

thousands of QAnon-themed groups and pages, with millions of members

and followers. One QAnon influencer, Austin Steinbart, stood out by

claiming that Q was his own time-traveling future self.

According to Reuters, Russian-backed social media accounts promoted

QAnon claims as early as November or December 2017. Russian

government-funded state media such as RT and Sputnik have amplified

the conspiracy theory since 2019, citing QAnon as evidence that the

United States is divided by internal strife. In 2021, a report from

the Soufan Center, a research group focused on national security,

found that one-fifth of 166,820 QAnon posts in the United States

between January 2020 and February 2021 originated in foreign

countries, primarily Russia and China, and that China was the "primary

foreign actor touting QAnon-narratives online". The far-right Falun

Gong-associated Epoch Media Group, including 'The Epoch Times', has

also been a major promoter of the conspiracy theory.

University of Southern California professor and data scientist Emilio

Ferrara found that about 25% of accounts that use QAnon hashtags,

retweet 'InfoWars' or had retweeted One America News Network were

bots.

International following

=========================

Marc-André Argentino, a researcher of the movement, noted in August

2020 that QAnon-dedicated Facebook pages existed in 71 countries

worldwide. In January 2021, researcher Joel Finkelstein told 'The

Washington Post' that the German and Japanese QAnon movements were

"strong and growing", though according to a later 'New York Times'

report, the Japanese version (also known as "JAnon" []) remains a

fringe belief even among conspiracy theorists. Three pro-QAnon groups

in Japan are known to exist as of 2022: J-Anon, QArmyJapanFlynn and

YamatoQ. In April 2022, the Tokyo Metropolitan Police arrested several

members of YamatoQ for breaking into a health clinic which provided

COVID-19 vaccinations.

Between March and June 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, QAnon

activity nearly tripled on Facebook and nearly doubled on Instagram

and Twitter. By that time, QAnon had spread to Europe, from the

Netherlands to the Balkan Peninsula.

In Germany, far-right activists and influencers have created a German

audience for QAnon on YouTube, Facebook, and Telegram, estimated at

200,000 in 2020. German Reichsbürger groups adopted QAnon to promote

its belief that modern Germany is not a sovereign republic but rather

a corporation created by Allied nations after World War II, and

expressed hope that Trump would lead an army to restore the 'Reich'.

A March 2022 study by the Center for Monitoring, Analysis and

Strategy, a German think tank, found that more than one in ten people

in Germany agreed with QAnon's theories and that Alternative for

Germany (AfD) and Freedom Party of Austria (FPÖ) voters were more

likely to believe in QAnon.

In Russia, a similar conspiracy theory, the "Soviet Citizens"--which

claims the Russian Federation is a Delaware-based LLC that occupies

the legal territory of the Soviet Union--also became susceptible to

QAnon beliefs.

A 2020 survey conducted in Britain found that one in four respondents

believed in QAnon-related theories, though only 6% supported QAnon. In

October 2020, anti-racist advocacy group Hope not Hate said that

British influencer Martin Geddes ran "one of the most popular QAnon

Twitter accounts in the world". In October 2021, Rémy

Daillet-Wiedemann, a French QAnon-associated conspiracy theorist, was

charged with terrorism for having planned a coup against the French

government. Various associates of Daillet-Wiedemann were also arrested

and charged in late 2021 and early 2022.

Many Canadians have also promoted QAnon. In July 2020, a gunman and

QAnon follower drove a vehicle into the grounds of Rideau Hall, the

temporary residence of Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau, to

"arrest" Trudeau over COVID-19 restrictions and firearm regulations. A

February 8 article in 'The Guardian' described the 2022 convoy

protests in Canada as the result of coordination between QAnon,

conspiracy theorists, anti-vaccine and anti-government organizations.

Romana Didulo, a Philippines-born Canadian woman claiming to be

Canada's rightful "Queen", built an online following in the course of

2021, creating a cultlike organization using QAnon and sovereign

citizen concepts. Because of Didulo's network of followers and calls

for violence, researchers identified her in 2022 as one of the most

dangerous QAnon influencers in Canada.

Cam Smith, an Australian researcher tracking far-right activity

online, noticed mentions of QAnon in Australia's local communities as

early as 2018. In 2020, when lockdown measures were imposed in

Melbourne to contain an outbreak of COVID-19, a group of QAnon

adherents from Queensland traveled there to protest, promoting QAnon

as they went. A 2020 paper by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue

revealed that Australia was the fourth-largest producer of QAnon

content, after the United States, the United Kingdom and Canada.

The movement has spread to Spain and Latin America, with countries

like Costa Rica, Colombia, Argentina, Mexico, Paraguay and Brazil

having an online presence. 'La Nación' reported in 2020 that the

Facebook page "QAnon Costa Rica", which was spreading misinformation

and fake news, had called for the ousting of President Carlos Alvarado

and praised right-wing figures such as far-right presidential

candidate Juan Diego Castro Fernández and controversial deputies

Dragos Dolanescu Valenciano and Erick Rodríguez Steller. In Spain, the

far-right Vox party was accused of endorsing anti-Biden conspiracy

theories linked to QAnon on its Twitter account by claiming that Biden

was the candidate "preferred by pedophiles". An RTVE news report found

that most Spanish QAnon supporters identified Vox as their preferred

political party.

Q's posts

===========

Q made thousands of posts on 4chan and 8chan/8kun. These "drops" were

often allusive, cryptic, and impossible to verify; some included

strings of characters that are allegedly coded messages. Q used a

conspiratorial tone, with phrases like "I've said too much" or "Some

things must remain classified to the very end". To sustain faith in a

final victory over the "cabal", Q used recurring phrases such as

"Trust the plan", "Enjoy the show", and "Nothing can stop what is

coming". Q's messages typically claimed that everything was going as

planned, that Trump was in control, and that all his adversaries would

end up in prison. Q also encouraged followers to do their own research

by telling them to "Follow the White Rabbit". QAnon followers used the

"White Rabbit" reference both as a hashtag and as the name of a

Facebook group that had around 90,000 members in 2020.

Many early posts advanced claims about "deep state" collusion with

foreign powers. In 2018, Q mentioned geopolitical conspiracies such as

the Obama administration having planned to send technology to Iran and

North Korea. Later, Q found new targets such as Planned Parenthood,

which they accused of harvesting fetuses for profit, or Ruth Bader

Ginsburg, who they said was a member of the cabal. Over the years,

other topics of interest included Russian interference, child

trafficking, Jeffrey Epstein, Antifa and Hunter Biden. Becoming

increasingly vague over time, Q's posts allowed followers to map their

own beliefs onto them and develop new variations of the theory.

The author Walter Kirn has described Q as an innovator among

conspiracy theorists by enthralling readers with "clues" rather than

presenting claims directly: "The audience for internet narratives

doesn't want to read, it wants to write. It doesn't want answers

provided, it wants to search for them." But Q often made specific

predictions that did not prove correct:

{{columns-list|colwidth=50em|

* Hillary Clinton was about to be arrested and would attempt to flee

the country

* John Podesta would be arrested on November 3, 2017, and public riots

would be organized to try and prevent the arrest of other public

officials

* A major event involving the Department of Defense would take place

on February 1, 2018

* People targeted by Trump would commit suicide 'en masse' on February

10, 2018

* There would be a car bombing in London around February 16, 2018

* A "smoking gun" video of Hillary Clinton would emerge in March 2018

* Something major would happen in Chongqing on April 10, 2018

* There would be a "bombshell" revelation about North Korea in May

2018

* The Trump military parade would "never be forgotten"

* The Five Eyes "won't be around much longer"

* Mark Zuckerberg was going to leave Facebook and flee the United

States

* Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey would be forced to resign "next" (in the

context of the prediction of Zuckerberg's resignation)

* Pope Francis would have a "terrible May" in 2018

}}

On multiple occasions, Q has dismissed these incorrect predictions as

deliberate, claiming that "disinformation is necessary". This has led

Australian psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky to emphasize the

"self-sealing" quality of the conspiracy theory, highlighting its

anonymous purveyor's use of plausible deniability and noting that

evidence against it "can become evidence of [its] validity in the

minds of believers". The numerous false, unsubstantiated claims Q has

posted include:

* That the CIA installed North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as a puppet

ruler

* That U.S. Representative and former Democratic National Committee

chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz hired Salvadoran gang MS-13 to murder

DNC staffer Seth Rich

* An apparent suggestion that German chancellor Angela Merkel is Adolf

Hitler's granddaughter

* That Obama, Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and others are planning a

coup against Trump and are involved in an international child

sex-trafficking ring

* That the Mueller investigation was a counter-coup led by Trump, who

pretended to conspire with Russia in order to hire Mueller to secretly

investigate the Democrats and expose the child sex-trafficking ring

* That the Rothschild family leads a satanic cult, a centuries-old

antisemitic trope against the family

The cabal and "the Storm"

===========================

QAnon's core beliefs are that the world is controlled by a secret

cabal of Satan-worshipping child molesters, Trump is secretly battling

to stop them, and Q reveals details about the battle online. The cabal

is thought to cover up its existence by controlling politicians,

mainstream media, and Hollywood. Q's revelations imply that the

cabal's destruction is imminent but also that it will be accomplished

only with the support of the "patriots" of the QAnon community. This

will happen at a time known as "the Event" or "the Storm", when

thousands of people will be arrested and possibly sent to Guantanamo

Bay prison or face military tribunals. The U.S. military will then

take over the country, and the result will be salvation and utopia.

QAnon followers believe the cabal includes Democratic Party

politicians like Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, business

people like George Soros and Bill Gates, religious leaders like Pope

Francis and the Dalai Lama, scientists like Anthony Fauci, and

entertainers like Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres, Lady Gaga and

Chrissy Teigen. Tom Hanks is a special target for QAnon believers.

When Hanks went into quarantine at the beginning of the COVID-19

pandemic, they spread a rumor that he had been arrested on child abuse

charges. Other similar allegations followed and in July 2021, some

QAnon adherents took seriously an article from Real Raw News, a fake

news website, that claimed the U.S. military had executed Hanks. On

the contrary, some QAnon followers believe other celebrities like

Chris Cornell, Chester Bennington, Avicii, and Anthony Bourdain were

murdered to cover-up their alleged involvement in a human trafficking

documentary.

The claim that Trump stimulated the conspiracy of Russian interference

in the 2016 presidential election to enlist Robert Mueller in the

fight against the cabal involved the idea that Mueller would not only

expose the sex-trafficking ring, but also prevent a 'coup d'état' by

Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and George Soros.

One key tenet in QAnon's narrative until the 2020 election was the

recurring prediction that Trump would be re-elected in a landslide and

spend his second term bringing about "the Storm" by undoing the deep

state, disbanding the cabal and arresting its leaders. After Trump

lost and Q stopped posting, QAnon followers continued to search for

previously unseen clues in old posts or creating new spin-offs of the

theory. They subsequently made predictions about Trump remaining

president or returning to power, such as:

* Joe Biden's inauguration on January 20, 2021, would be an elaborate

trap set for the Democrats, who would be arrested 'en masse' and

executed while Trump retained power.

* Trump would be inaugurated on March 4, 2021, as the 19th president.

* Trump would be inaugurated again on March 20, 2021. After this did

not happen, QAnon adherents predicted it would happen on August 13,

2021.

* The Arizona audit would prove election fraud, handing the state to

Trump, and other states would follow suit in a "domino effect",

resulting in Trump being reinstated as president.

* The 2021 California gubernatorial recall election result would be

proven fraudulent, which would catalyze a national fraud audit,

resulting in Trump returning to power.

* John F. Kennedy (the 35th president of the United States, who was

assassinated in 1963) or his son John F. Kennedy Jr. (who died in a

plane crash in 1999) would appear alive in front of a crowd in Dallas

on November 2, 2021, and announce Trump's reinstatement as president

and the installation of Kennedy Jr. as vice president.

Child sex trafficking and satanic sacrifice

=============================================

QAnon effectively merged with Pizzagate by incorporating its beliefs

namely that children are being abducted in a child trafficking ring,

which followers equate with the cabal. They also see Trump as the only

person fighting this criminal network. Added to this is the belief

that politicians and Hollywood elites engage in "adrenochrome

harvesting", in which adrenalin is extracted from children's blood to

produce the psychoactive drug adrenochrome. This comprises claims that

children are tortured, or sacrificed in Satanic rituals, to harvest

the adrenaline that comes from fear. The aforementioned "Frazzledrip"

video in which Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin allegedly murdered a

child was said to depict an "adrenochrome harvest". One version of the

QAnon theory posits that the child abusers use adrenochrome as an

elixir to remain young. In reality, adrenochrome has been produced by

organic synthesis since at least 1952 and is synthesized for research

purposes by biotechnology companies, which will then sell it to

anyone; as it is not a controlled substance, medical or recreational

use of the chemical is easy to access.

In June 2020, a group led by QAnon promoter Timothy Charles Holmseth,

which called itself the Pentagon Pedophile Task Force despite having

no connection with the Pentagon or any U.S. governmental agency,

attracted attention by spreading false claims about tens of thousands

of children being held hostage and tortured in New York City. Also by

2020, some followers began using the Twitter hashtag #SaveTheChildren

(#SaveOurChildren was also used), co-opting a trademarked name for the

child welfare organization Save the Children. This led to an August 7

statement by Save the Children on the unauthorized use of its name in

campaigns. In September, Facebook and Instagram tried to prevent

#SaveTheChildren from being associated with QAnon by redirecting users

who searched for the hashtag to the child welfare group. In October,

Facebook announced it would try to limit the hashtag's reach.

In the same period, QAnon followers also created a conspiracy theory

that falsely accused furniture company Wayfair, a competitor of

Overstock in which QAnon promoter Patrick Byrne had been the CEO, of

selling expensive furniture to launder money gained from child sex

trafficking.

Similar groups in both the U.S. and the U.K. helped organize street

protests that they say raise awareness of child sexual abuse and human

trafficking. These protests and hashtags have often avoided social

media restrictions and tend to attract more women and a more

politically diverse and younger crowd than typical QAnon groups,

including people opposed to Trump and his leadership. These groups are

considered to be linked to the Pastel QAnon community.

QAnon's child abuse allegations against popular entertainers are based

on the unproven claims of the actor Isaac Kappy, who in 2018 accused

multiple Hollywood stars of pedophilia.

Travis View wrote in a 'Washington Post' column that QAnon and

Pizzagate conspiracy theorists harm the credibility of the fight

against child sexual abuse, as their baseless claims are a distraction

from actual crimes. Followers of these theories have also credited

themselves for arrests of criminals in which they had no part: QAnon

promoter Jordan Sather credited Jeffrey Epstein's arrest to 4chan and

8chan, while none of the investigative reporting nor the indictment

referenced these forums. Some of the conspiracy theories about

Epstein's death have also brought people to QAnon.

In May 2022, 'The New York Times' reported that QAnon supporters were

intercepting child migrants at the Mexico-United States border and

collecting information about their families on the premise that they

were falling prey to sex-trafficking schemes.

Other QAnon beliefs

=====================

QAnon Anonymous, a podcast dedicated to analyzing and debunking the

QAnon movement, calls it a "big tent conspiracy theory" due to its

ability to evolve and add new claims. QAnon has incorporated elements

from many other preexisting conspiracy theories, such as those about

the Kennedy assassination, U.F.O.s and 9/11. In 2018, Liz Crokin

promoted the theory that John F. Kennedy Jr. faked his death and is Q.

Other followers adopted variations of the Kennedy conspiracy theory,

asserting that a Pittsburgh Trump supporter named Vincent Fusca is

Kennedy Jr. in disguise and would be Trump's 2020 running mate. In

November 2021, hundreds gathered in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, the site

of President Kennedy's assassination, believing they would witness the

return of Kennedy Jr., or both Kennedys. Attendees expected the event

would herald Trump's reinstatement as president, that Trump would step

down to allow Kennedy Jr. to become president, and that Kennedy Jr.

would then name Michael Flynn as his vice president. According to

QAnon researcher Will Sommer, about 20% of QAnon followers believe the

JFK Jr. theory, while the majority finds it too "farcical on its

face".

Due to the overlap between the two movements, some QAnon followers

have joined the sovereign citizens, a loose grouping of vexatious

litigants and tax protesters whose set of pseudolegal beliefs implies

that most laws and taxes are illegitimate and can be safely ignored if

one uses the correct procedures. In 2022, the Anti-Defamation League

reported that sovereign citizen ideology was attracting a growing

number of QAnon adherents, as their belief in the Biden

administration's illegitimacy meshed well with sovereign citizens'

broader anti-government views.

In 2018, Q said that "vaccines [not all]" were part of the Big Pharma

conspiracy. Later on, as anxiety and isolation linked to the COVID-19

pandemic fostered a rise of conspiracy theories and anti-vaccine

discourse, many in the movement used the pandemic to promote QAnon.

Very little of this was directed by Q posts, and Q did not mention the

pandemic until March 23, 2020 (when they called COVID-19 the "China

virus"), not using the name "COVID-19" until April 8. But influencers

in the QAnon community were openly anti-mask and anti-vaccine, and

helped spread denialism as well as other misinformation about the

pandemic. QAnon conspiracy theorists touted drinking an industrial

bleach (known as MMS, or Miracle Mineral Solution) as a "miracle cure"

for COVID-19. Q suggested that hydroxychloroquine, endorsed by Trump

at the time, was a cure for the disease, and accused Democrats of

forcing infected patients into nursing homes, deliberately causing

most COVID-related deaths in the U.S. Some QAnon followers have said

that the pandemic is fake; others have claimed that the "deep state"

created it. QAnon adherents also helped promote the conspiratorial

video 'Plandemic'.

In March 2022, CNN, France 24, and Foreign Policy reported that QAnon

promoters were echoing Russian disinformation that created conspiracy

theories about United States-funded laboratories in Ukraine. Russian

state media falsely claimed that "secret United States biolabs" were

creating weapons, a claim refuted by the U.S., Ukraine, and the United

Nations. In reality, the laboratories were first established to secure

and dismantle the remnants of the Soviet biological weapons program,

and since then have been used to monitor and prevent new epidemics.

The laboratories are publicly listed, not secret, and owned and

operated by host countries such as Ukraine, not the U.S. QAnon

followers have claimed to justify the Russian invasion of Ukraine as

an effort by Putin and Trump to destroy "military" laboratories in

Ukraine.

Until the invasion of Ukraine, QAnon-adjacent groups were hostile to

China. In March 2022, analyst Elise Thomas wrote in a report for the

Institute for Strategic Dialogue: "The dynamics of the invasion are

shifting their views. In an astoundingly short space of time, Xi

Jinping appears to have been recast from a villain to a hero in the

QAnon conspiracy pantheon."

Supporters have also become invested in the NESARA economic conspiracy

theory. In 2022, 'Bellingcat' reported that many QAnon-related

Telegram channels were becoming increasingly devoted to NESARA

content.

Some adherents expressed belief in the reptilian conspiracy theory,

asserting that the Satanic cabal alleged to be in power consists of

shapeshifting reptilian humanoids. According to multiple news reports,

this led some to kill suspected "lizard people". A California father

attempted to kill his children for fear that they had inherited

"serpent DNA" from their mother, while a Seattle-based member of the

far-right Proud Boys who frequently alluded to and promoted

QAnon-linked material on Facebook, sought to murder his brother on

suspicion of reptilian ancestry.Multiple sources:

Identity of Q

===============

The Q persona is claimed to be that of a well-connected individual

with access to highly sensitive government information, who put

themself at risk by disclosing the information online. Q used a calm,

authoritative tone, rarely interacted with other posters, and never

argued with those who disagreed with their claims. In 2021,

'Bellingcat' analyzed several little-known posts published by Q during

the days that followed the first "drops". While containing text

identical to later messages unambiguously authored by Q, these also

showed Q being "out of character" and behaving in a manner similar to

4chan's other anonymous posters. 'Bellingcats theory is that the

author of these messages had not yet perfected the Q persona and was

still settling into the voice of their online alter ego, which implies

that Q was originally one 4chan poster among many instead of a

powerful government insider.

Q's motives and identity have been the subject of much speculation and

assumptions, both among QAnon followers and critics. Hypotheses on Q's

identity have included a military intelligence officer, a Trump

administration insider, but also public figures such as Michael Flynn,

Stephen Miller, or Trump himself. In 2018, during the early days of

QAnon, it was speculated that Q could be the puzzle organization

Cicada 3301 creating the movement as a form of live action

role-playing game, or a left-wing artist collective (emulating another

collective, Luther Blissett, that authored a novel titled 'Q') playing

an elaborate prank on right-wing online culture.

Multiple people

=================

By 2020, it became accepted among researchers that the pseudonymous

entity known as Q has been controlled by multiple people in

cooperation. A stylometric analysis has suggested that two people

likely wrote Q's posts, and that their "distinct signatures clearly

correspond to separate periods in time and different online forums".

An analysis of metadata of images posted by Q found that they were

likely posted by someone in the Pacific Time Zone.

By design, anonymous imageboards such as 4chan and 8chan obscure their

posters' identities. Those who wish to prove a consistent identity

between posts while remaining anonymous can use a tripcode, which

associates a post with a unique digital signature for any poster who

knows the password. There have been thousands of posts associated with

a Q tripcode. The tripcode associated with Q has changed several

times, creating uncertainty about the poster's continuous identity.

Passwords on 8chan are also easy to crack, and the Q tripcode has been

repeatedly compromised and used by people pretending to be Q. When

8chan returned as 8kun in November 2019 after several months of

downtime, the Q posting on 8kun posted photos of a pen and notebook

that had been pictured in earlier 8chan posts to show the continuation

of the Q identity, and continued to use Q's 8chan tripcode.

Paul Furber and the Watkins family

====================================

Fredrick Brennan, the original owner of 8chan, said in June 2020 that

"Q either knows Jim or Ron Watkins or was hired by Jim or Ron

Watkins". He later said that "If [Jim Watkins is] not 'Q' himself, he

can find out who 'Q' is at any time. And he's pretty much the only

person in the world that can have private contact with 'Q'."

In September 2020, Brennan speculated that the Q account was initially

run by another person, with Jim and Ron Watkins taking over in late

2017 or early 2018. Brennan's theory is that the original 'Q' poster

was Johannesburg resident Paul Furber, a 4chan and 8chan moderator and

one of the first online commentators to promote QAnon. Evidence for

this theory includes that Q's first password ("Matlock") was cracked

on New Year's Day 2018 and, due to the nature of tripcodes, Furber was

asked to verify that the new Q (with a new password/tripcode) was the

same IP address as the old Q. Furber described this as "a lot of

work", but something he'd been "called to do". Brennan further

suspects that Ron Watkins seized control of the account from Furber by

using his login privileges as 8chan's administrator. Furber has denied

ever being Q. Both Jim and Ron Watkins have said they do not know Q's

identity and have denied being Q.

The documentary filmmaker Cullen Hoback spent three years

investigating the origins of QAnon and its connection to 8chan,

conducting extensive interviews with Jim and Ron Watkins and Brennan.

In the last episode of 'Q: Into the Storm', the 2021 HBO docuseries he

produced from this research, Hoback showed his final conversation with

Ron Watkins, who stated on camera:

I've spent the past... almost ten years, every day, doing this kind

of research anonymously. Now I'm doing it publicly, that's the only

difference.... It was basically... three years of intelligence

training teaching how to do intelligence work. It was basically what

I was doing anonymously before but never as Q. [Watkins then laughed

and added:] Never as Q. I promise. Because I am not Q, and I never

was.

Hoback viewed this as an inadvertent admission by Watkins, and

concluded from this interview and his other research that Watkins is

Q. Watkins again denied being Q shortly before the series premiered.

On February 19, 2022, 'The New York Times' reported that analysis of

the Q posts by two independent forensic linguistics teams using

stylometry techniques indicated that Paul Furber was the main author

of the initial Q posts, and Ron Watkins took over at the start of

2018. The change seems to have occurred after Q moved from 4chan to

8chan. At the time, Furber had complained that Q had been "hijacked"

and that Ron Watkins was complicit. Furber responded to inquiries by

saying that Q's writing style had influenced his own, not the other

way around.

Before Q's reappearance in June 2022, 8kun changed its salt, meaning

it would have been impossible for a user to have the same tripcode as

before. Yet Q's tripcode remained the same as it was in 2020,

suggesting that 8kun's administrators either knew Q was going to post

again or made the post themselves. Soon after, 8kun changed its salt

back to the original. Jim Watkins also confirmed the new Q drops'

authenticity within hours of their publication.

Slogans and vocabulary

========================

The spread of QAnon has been accompanied by a series of slogans,

catchphrases, buzzwords and hashtags that helped boost its popularity

and online presence. Terms like 'the cabal' or 'the Storm', and Q's

recurring phrases like "Trust the plan" or "Enjoy the show" are among

the most popular. Q's "drops" are also known as "crumbs" (Q has used

the term) or "breadcrumbs". In turn, followers of the conspiracy who

analyze these posts have called themselves "bakers" who assemble the

"crumbs" to make "dough", or "bread", as they weave the clues into a

better understanding of the narrative.

One early rallying cry among QAnon followers was "Follow the White

Rabbit". A popular QAnon slogan is "Where we go one, we go all"

(frequently abbreviated as "WWG1WGA"), first used by Q in April 2018.

The phrase "Do your own research" (or "Do the research") encourages

people to look for "clues" that will confirm QAnon narratives. "Q sent

me" has been a declaration of "allegiance" to Q.

Other common phrases in QAnon parlance include "white hat" (a Trump

supporter), "black hat" (someone in league with the deep state),

"Great Awakening" (the point at which the public wakes up to the

truth), "red pill" ("taking the red pill" means achieving QAnon

awareness), or "sheeple" (a disparaging term for people who believe

the mainstream media narrative). "17anon" has sometimes been used as

an alternative spelling of QAnon (Q being the 17th letter of the

alphabet) and a way of circumventing social media algorithms.

Derivative elements

=====================

Conspiracy theories have long been present in United States politics,

including those promoted by right-wing groups like the John Birch

Society. As it incorporates elements from many other conspiracy

theories, QAnon displays similarities with previous narratives,

imagery and moral panics, whether political or religious in nature. In

'Salon', Matthew Rozsa wrote that QAnon may best be understood as an

example of what historian Richard Hofstadter called "The Paranoid

Style in American Politics", the title of his 1964 essay on religious

millenarianism and apocalypticism. Like Pizzagate, QAnon has some

resemblance to the Satanic panic of the 1980s, when hundreds of

daycare workers were falsely accused of abusing children.

Apocalypticism and Millenarianism

===================================

QAnon's "explicitly Christian" vocabulary echoes longstanding

Christian theological and eschatological traditions, particularly

those rooted in apocalypticism and millenarian expectations. Central

to QAnon's narrative are concepts such as the "Storm" (the Genesis

flood narrative or Judgment Day), the "Great Awakening" (evoking the

reputed historical religious Great Awakenings of the early 18th

century to the late 20th century), and an emphasis on prophecy,

leading it to be sometimes construed as an emerging religious

movement.

QAnon followers, while seeing Trump as a flawed Christian, also view

him as a messiah sent by God "who will triumph over Satan through a

series of cataclysmic events". According to one QAnon video, the

battle between Trump and "the cabal" is of "biblical proportions", a

"fight for earth, of good versus evil". Some QAnon supporters say the

coming reckoning will be a "reverse rapture", that is "a revelation

that means not only the end of the world but a new beginning",

according to American political author Alexander Reid Ross.

Evangelical influences

========================

Religious studies scholar Julie Ingersoll argues that evangelicals

have "helped make widespread acceptance of QAnon possible by weaving

their theological commitments to apocalypticism, conspiracies and

persecution narratives into the larger American culture." Messianic,

apocalyptic, and spiritual warfare themes which became popular in

evangelical media beginning in the 1970s - as well as conspiracy

theories such as the New World Order that are popular among the same

demographic - have been described as influences on the QAnon belief

system, as well as aspects of QAnon that appeal to evangelicals.

The apocalyptic stories are seen by Christians as fictional depictions

of real future events, giving them real-world significance. American

studies scholar S. Jonathon O'Donnell argues that QAnon, which sees

Trump as fighting a demonic deep state, has significant commonalities

with Christian spiritual warfare - and their followers overlap as

well. "QAnon is, in effect, one part Frank Peretti spiritual warfare,

one part 'Left Behind' series apocalypticism, and one part Elders of

Zion antisemitic conspiracy theory, packaged together in a

tantalizing, self-involving variation on 'Celebrity Apprentice'

reality television and social media", writes one scholar.

Dualism

=========

The movement "strikingly builds on Christian dualism". This worldview

divides reality into a stark struggle between good and evil, leaving

little room for nuance or compromise. Theological frameworks such as

presuppositionalism, which claims that all true knowledge is revealed

by God as opposed to faulty human reason, have been argued to lead to

us-versus-them thinking which easily expands from the theological

sphere to the political in QAnon.

Christian dualism itself was influenced by earlier religious

traditions, particularly Manichaeism, a syncretic religion, blending

elements of Christianity, Buddhism, and Zoroastrianism, founded by

Mani, that flourished in Central Asia. Manichaeism depicted the world

as a cosmic battlefield between absolute forces of light and darkness,

a theme that carried into medieval Christianity through fears of

heresy, witchcraft, and demonic infiltration, finds a modern

counterpart in QAnon's vision of a hidden war between Trump and the

deep state. By portraying political opponents as not merely corrupt

but satanic, QAnon replicates this centuries-old dualistic tradition

in a contemporary setting.

The hidden enemy

==================

A central element of QAnon's worldview is the belief in a hidden,

malevolent force controlling society. This concept echoes medieval

anxieties, such as fears surrounding witchcraft, secret societies, and

demonic conspiracies blamed for societal ills. In particular, it

closely mirrors accusations from texts like the 'Malleus Maleficarum',

which claimed that witches secretly conspired with Satan to corrupt

society from within. Historian Niall Ferguson argues that such moral

panics often emerge during times of instability, as societies search

for scapegoats and simplified explanations for complex crises.

QAnon further incorporates themes from early-Christian Gnosticism,

particularly the idea that the true nature of the world is hidden and

accessible only to those with special insight or "gnosis". QAnon

adherents similarly see themselves as uniquely able to discern the

secret evil manipulating events behind the scenes. Additionally, this

hidden-enemy narrative frequently overlaps with historical antisemitic

tropes, portraying shadowy elites controlling world affairs. The

fusion of these elements creates a potent narrative that positions

followers as warriors engaged in a cosmic battle against a concealed,

all-powerful adversary.

Satanic rituals and child victims

===================================

The 'Malleus Maleficarum' argued that witches forged explicit pacts

with the Devil--engaging in spells, nocturnal sabbaths, and ritual

sacrifices--to undermine Christian society. These accusations drew

from earlier antisemitic conspiracies like the medieval blood libel,

which falsely accused Jewish communities of murdering children for

ritualistic purposes. Similarly, QAnon claims a secret global elite

actively performs satanic rituals, including child sacrifice and

"adrenochrome" harvesting--echoing both medieval witch-hunts and more

recent moral panics, such as the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, which

involved widespread allegations of ritual Satanic abuse, often derived

from claims made during the controversial Recovered Memory movement of

the 1990s. Although distinct phenomena, both panics similarly depicted

their subjects as actively worshiping evil and collaborating with

demonic forces, fueling a climate of fear and suspicion.

Historian Niall Ferguson notes that such narratives of hidden evil

frequently emerge during societal instability, providing emotionally

powerful scapegoats to simplify complex crises. By portraying

themselves as protectors of innocent children threatened by concealed

demonic forces, QAnon adherents leverage deep-rooted cultural fears

and historical anxieties to justify their worldview and mobilize

followers. The emphasis on protecting children also made it possible

for the movement's messaging to successfully spread through social

media algorithms, rather than being censored as a "violence-charged

conspiracy theory". According to sociologists Sarah Louise MacMillen

and Timothy Rush, QAnon's "obsession with both the purity of innocence

of children and babies may connect strongly and be a collective

psychotic projection out from concerns about abortion--the protection

of innocence can be coopted for modern fascistic tendencies."

Antisemitism

==============

According to the Anti-Defamation League, while "the vast majority of

QAnon-inspired conspiracy theories have nothing to do with

anti-Semitism", they described a review of QAnon tweets about Israel,

Jews, Zionists, the Rothschilds, and Soros as "reveal[ing] some

troubling examples". Ethan Zuckerman and Mike McQuade have argued that

QAnon "is more anti-elite than explicitly anti-Semitic". 'The

Washington Post' and 'The Forward' magazine have called QAnon's

targeting of Jewish figures like George Soros and the Rothschilds

"garden-variety nonsense with racist and anti-Semitic undertones" and

containing "striking anti-Semitic elements". A Jewish Telegraphic

Agency article in August 2018 asserted: "Some of QAnon's archetypical

elements--including secret elites and kidnapped children, among

others--are reflective of historical and ongoing anti-Semitic

conspiracy theories."

QAnon's adrenochrome-harvesting claims have been linked to blood libel

by the followers (who believe in the truthfulness of both) and

researchers of QAnon. Blood libel is a medieval antisemitic myth that

says Jewish people murder Christian children and use their blood to

make matzo for Passover. In February 2022, social media users shared

images of a sculpture of Simon of Trent, whose death was falsely

blamed on the town's Jewish population, as evidence that elites

harvest adrenochrome from children's blood.

Genocide scholar Gregory Stanton has called QAnon a "Nazi cult

rebranded" and a new version of 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion',

a fabricated antisemitic text published in 1903, deriving from

antisemitic canards. Republican QAnon follower Mary Ann Mendoza was

noted for her reference to the antisemitic text when she retweeted a

Twitter thread about the Rothschild family, Satanic High Priestesses,

and American presidents saying, "'The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion'

is not a fabrication. And, it certainly is not anti-Semitic to point

out this fact." An April 2021 Morning Consult poll found that 49% of

Americans who believe in QAnon agree with the 'Protocols', and that

78% of Americans who agree with the 'Protocols' also believe in QAnon.

In 2021, the Anti-Defamation League reported that neo-Nazis were

exploiting the absence of leadership among QAnon adherents on Telegram

to promote antisemitic conspiracy theories. QAnon conspiracy theorists

have promoted 'Europa: The Last Battle', a neo-Nazi propaganda film

which promotes antisemitic conspiracy theories, including Holocaust

denial. They have also promoted content from Disclose.tv, a German

disinformation outlet with a following that includes Holocaust deniers

and neo-Nazis.

Appeal

========

Experts have classified QAnon's appeal as comparable to those of

religious cults. According to an expert in online conspiracy, Renee

DiResta, QAnon's pattern of enticement is similar to that of cults in

the pre-Internet era where, as the targeted person was led deeper and

deeper into the group's secrets, they became increasingly isolated

from friends and family outside the cult. Online support groups

developed for those whose loved ones were drawn into QAnon, notably

the subreddit r/QAnonCasualties, which grew from 3,500 participants in

June 2020 to 28,000 by October. QAnon virtual communities have little

"real world" connection with each other, but online they can number in

the tens of thousands. Rachel Bernstein, an expert on cults who

specializes in recovery therapy, said, "What a movement such as QAnon

has going for it, and why it will catch on like wildfire, is that it

makes people feel connected to something important that other people

don't yet know about.... All cults will provide this feeling of being

special." There is no self-correction process within the group, since

the self-reinforcing true followers are immune to correction,

fact-checking, or counter-speech, which is drowned out by the cult's

groupthink. QAnon's cultish quality has led to its characterization as

a possible emerging religious movement. It has also been called a

syncretic movement.

Travis View, a researcher who studies QAnon, says that it is as

addictive as a video game, and offers the "player" the possibility of

being involved in something of world-historical importance. According

to View, "You can sit at your computer and search for information and

then post about what you find, and Q basically promises that through

this process, you are going to radically change the country, institute

this incredible, almost bloodless revolution, and then be part of this

historical movement that will be written about for generations." View

compares this to mundane political involvement in which one's efforts

might help to get a state legislator elected. QAnon, says View,

competes not in the marketplace of ideas, but in the marketplace of

realities. The belief in "The Plan" that Q alleged was in place to

defeat the deep state and the cabal boosted the confidence of QAnon

followers, who were told that things were happening behind the scenes

and that victory would inevitably follow if they trusted Trump and the

secret plan. QAnon believers try to solve riddles presented in Q's

posts by connecting them to Trump speeches and tweets and other

sources. 'The New Yorker' has likened QAnon to "a form of interactive

role-playing". Some followers used a "Q clock" consisting of a wheel

of concentric dials to decode clues based on the timing of Q's posts

and Trump's tweets.

American sociologist Mark Juergensmeyer says he "find[s] QAnon

consistent with many other extremist religiopolitical movements ...

including those that have arisen in response to the recent global

crises of mass migration, economic globalization, and now a global

pandemic". Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate

and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, said

QAnon has "the visceral appeal of an anti-elite message that is

elastic enough to capture a lot of folks who feel fear and

disenfranchisement from the current political system". Scholar Mia

Bloom describes it as "unique among conspiracy theories in its ability

to mutate and adapt to its environment," stating "[i]t has

successfully absorbed local grievances abroad and takes on whatever

local issues are central". She also argues that QAnon's acceptance of

movements such as vaccine skepticism have helped it spread into

unexpected demographics that share those commonalities.

Survey data showed in late 2020 that a quarter of those who knew about

QAnon thought there was some truth to it. In a conspiracy theory

environment, primary institutions of society that once served as

trusted impartial authorities are easily rejected if they contradict

the theory, making it difficult to counter the thinking of QAnon

followers.

Disillusionment

=================

Travis View of the QAA Podcast says:

People in the QAnon community often talk about alienation from family

and friends.... Though they typically talk about how Q frayed their

relationships on private Facebook groups. But they think these issues

are temporary and primarily the fault of others. They often comfort

themselves by imagining that there will be a moment of vindication

sometime in the near future which will prove their beliefs right. They

imagine that after this happens, not only will their relationships be

restored, but people will turn to them as leaders who understand

what's going on better than the rest of us.

Disillusionment can also come from the failure of the theories'

predictions. Q predicted Republican success in the 2018 US midterm

elections and claimed that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was involved

in secret work for Trump and that despite outward tension, the two

were allies. When Democrats made significant gains and Trump fired

Sessions, many in the Q community were disillusioned.

Further disillusionment came when a predicted December5 mass arrest

and imprisonment in Guantanamo Bay detention camp of Trump's enemies

did not occur, nor did the dismissal of charges against Trump's former

national security advisor Michael Flynn. For some, these failures

began a separation from QAnon, while others urged direct action in the

form of an insurrection. Psychologist Robert Lifton said such a

response to a failed prophecy is not unusual: apocalyptic cults such

as Heaven's Gate, the People's Temple, the Manson Family, and Aum

Shinrikyo resorted to mass suicide or mass murder when their

expectations did not materialize. Lifton called this "forcing the

end". View echoed the concern that disillusioned QAnon followers might

take matters into their own hands as Pizzagate follower Edgar Maddison

Welch did in 2016, Matthew Phillip Wright did at Hoover Dam in 2018,

and Anthony Comello did in 2019, when he murdered Mafia boss Frank

Cali, believing he was under Trump's protection. In February 2019, Liz

Crokin said that she was losing patience waiting for Trump to arrest

the supposed members of the child sex ring, and warned that people

might conduct "vigilante justice".

Demographics

==============

According to an August 2018 Qualtrics poll for 'The Washington Post',

58% of Floridians were familiar enough with QAnon to have an opinion

about it. Of those who had an opinion, most were unfavorable. The

average score on the feeling thermometer was just above 20, a very

negative rating, and about half of what other political figures enjoy.

Positive feelings toward QAnon were strongly correlated with

susceptibility to conspiracy thinking.

According to a March 2020 Pew survey, 76% of Americans had never heard

of QAnon, 20% had heard "a little about it", and 3% said they had

heard "a lot". The survey showed 39% of those identifying as liberal

democrats knew a little or more about Qanon while only 18% of people

who were republican or leaned republican reported knowing a little or

more about Qanon. In September 2020, a Pew survey of the 47% of

respondents who said they had heard of QAnon found that 41% of

Republicans and those who lean Republican believed QAnon was good for

the country, compared to 7% of Democrats and those who lean

Democratic.

An October 2020 Yahoo-YouGov poll found that even if they had not

heard of QAnon, a majority of Republicans and Trump supporters

believed top Democrats were engaged in sex-trafficking rings and more

than half of Trump supporters believed he was working to dismantle the

rings.

In February 2021, an American Enterprise Institute poll found that 29%

of Republicans believe the central claim of QAnon, that "Donald Trump

has been secretly fighting a group of child sex traffickers that

include prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites." A March 2021 Public

Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and Interfaith Youth Core survey

found similar results: Republicans (28%) were twice as likely as

Democrats (14%) to agree that the "elites" would soon be swept from

power by a coming "storm"; Republicans (23%) were three times as

likely as Democrats (8%) to agree that "Satan-worshipping pedophiles"

control the government and media; and Republicans (28%) were four

times as likely as Democrats (7%) to agree that "true American

patriots may have to resort to violence" to resolve the situation.

Surveys have found that conspiracy theories such as QAnon are most

popular among white Americans, especially evangelicals. A May 2021

PRRI survey confirmed that white evangelicals are among QAnon's

strongest supporters, but also found that Hispanic Protestants are

drawn to the movement in even larger proportions. According to the

PRRI's figures, the core QAnon belief that global elites form a group

of Satan-worshipping pedophiles and child sex traffickers is held in

the U.S. by 26% of Hispanic Protestants, 25% of White evangelical

Protestants, 24% of other Protestants of color, 18% of Mormons, 16% of

Hispanic Catholics, 14% of African American Protestants, 14% of other

Christians, 13% of non-Christian religious people, 11% of White

Catholics, 11% of religiously unaffiliated people, 10% of white

mainline Protestants, and 8% of Jews.

An analysis of four 2021 PRRI surveys showed that belief in QAnon

increased in the U.S. after Trump left office. In March 2021, 14% of

Americans considered themselves QAnon believers, increasing to 17% by

October. In the average of the four surveys, about 22% of Americans

believed that there was a "storm coming soon that will sweep away the

elites in power", and 16% shared the core QAnon belief that the

government, the media and the financial elite are controlled by

Satanic pedophiles. In 2024, another poll conduced by PPRI found that

19% of Americans believed in the core theories associated with QAnon,

up from 14% in 2021, and that the number rose to 32% among

Trump-supporting Republicans.

Pastel QAnon

==============

Pastel QAnon, identified by Concordia University researcher Marc-André

Argentino, is a collection of techniques aimed predominantly at

indoctrinating women into the conspiracy theory, mainly on social

media sites like Instagram, Facebook, Telegram and YouTube. It co-opts

the aesthetics and language of social media influencers, often using

personal anecdotes and gateway issues (i.e. child sex-trafficking) to

frame QAnon beliefs as reasonable.

Post-2020 election

====================

After Trump lost the 2020 election, the rate of Q's posts sharply

declined and Q stopped posting altogether one month later. The last

"drop" for 18 months was on December 8, 2020. Mike Rothschild, author

of a book on QAnon, said in 2021 that he doubted Q would ever come

back, as the movement had "outgrown the need for new drops" and

Trump's election loss had invalidated the core QAnon prophecy, but he

added that Q might resume posting if "the community really needed new

drops to keep it moving forward".

The inauguration of Joe Biden as president was a major disappointment

for QAnon followers, who were convinced that Biden had won the

election through voter fraud and his victory would be invalidated.

Many QAnon adherents believed that something momentous would happen

during the ceremony, and Trump would remain in power. The inauguration

ultimately went on as planned. According to a book on the psychology

of QAnon followers, 'Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of

QAnon', "The inauguration was a particularly difficult prophecy to get

wrong, and the result has been that some QAnon believers experienced

deep melancholy, suicidal ideation, or engaged in self-harm". On

inauguration day, Ron Watkins wrote in a message board post: "We gave

it our all, now we need to keep our chins up and go back to our lives

as best we are able. We have a new president sworn in and it is our

responsibility to respect the Constitution." Other QAnon followers

believed Biden's inauguration was "part of the plan".

Conservatives such as Steve Bannon and Bill Still denounced QAnon,

calling it a psyop created by U.S. intelligence or the FBI. In a

leaked conversation, Michael Flynn, once among the highest-profile

QAnon supporters, called it a "disinformation campaign to make people

look like a bunch of kooks", suggesting that it might have been

conducted by "the Left" or the CIA.

After Biden's inauguration, analysts expressed concern that the

disillusionment could lead hardline QAnon adherents to be recruited by

groups such as the alt-right, white nationalists or neo-Nazis.

A group of Telegram channels called the Sabmyk Network has been

promoting a variation of QAnon by targeting followers of the

conspiracy theory who have been disillusioned by Q's failures in

prediction. Set up by German artist Sebastian Bieniek, the network

(described as a new religion or cult) shares QAnon beliefs but also

believes in a leader-prophet, Sabmyk, who will lead humanity's

"awakening". The network has tried to link Trump to Sabmyk.

On June 24, 2022, Q, or someone who possesses their details, posted on

8kun after an 18-month hiatus. The post claimed that Cassidy

Hutchinson, who testified at the sixth public hearing on the January 6

Attack, was involved in a plot to disparage Trump. Other Q posts were

published in 2022, notably one suggesting that the midterm elections

would be rigged, but these messages received much less engagement than

previous "drops". An article in 'Vice News' suggested that this showed

the QAnon movement had "moved past requiring new Q drops to bolster

itself": journalists Mack Lamoureux and David Gilbert commented that

during Q's absence, the QAnon community had continued formulating

theories and other influencers had "stepped into the power vacuum". As

a result, conspiracy theories had continued influencing public

discourse, while conservative politics and media became infused with a

"more watered-down version of QAnon".

Commenting in 2022 on the influence of QAnon on public discourses,

social scientist Donald Moynihan said that "the most vivid importation

of the QAnon worldview" was the use of the term 'groomers' and other

phrases associated with the LGBT grooming conspiracy theory. He

accused Christopher Rufo, one of its main promoters, of having

"construct[ed] a new moral panic using QAnon messaging", which he

likened to "the McCarthyite tactic of attaching a negative label" (in

that case, pedophilia) to "people holding different beliefs".

As of 2024, QAnon adherents are still active online. They rejoiced at

Donald Trump's return to power. According to Mike Rothschild, even

though there seems to be less interest than before in content

analyzing Q's "drops", ideas that QAnon helped popularize, such as the

need to confront an evil "deep state" or anti-vaccine conspiracy

theories, have become commonplace on the right. Rothschild commented

that "QAnon as a movement based around secret codes and clues and

riddles doesn't so much exist anymore. But it doesn't need to exist

anymore because its tenets have become such a major part of mainstream

conservatism and such a big part of the base of people that reelected

Donald Trump".

Incidents

======================================================================

QAnon's followers have been part of controversial, sometimes violent

events. In 2020, QAnon followers were involved in the presidential

election, during which they supported Trump's campaign. QAnon

personalities moved to dedicated message boards, where they organized

to wage information warfare to influence the election. One in 50

tweets about voting in the 2020 United States presidential election

came from QAnon accounts. Two in 25 accounts using the hashtag

#voterfraud, which spread unsubstantiated allegations of voting fraud,

were QAnon accounts.

Vandalism of America's Stonehenge

===================================

In 2019, the tourist attraction and archaeological site America's

Stonehenge was vandalized with power tools. On March 4, 2021, New

Hampshire State Police arrested Mark L. Russo, a member of QAnon, and

charged him with criminal mischief. Two inscriptions were etched into

the so-called "sacrificial table": the QAnon slogan WWG1WGA meaning

"Where we go one, we go all" and IAMMARK, Russo's Twitter handle. By

using a pseudonym to search social media, researcher Chris Walters

found photographs showing the site as well as items later found by the

police. Later it was determined that two QAnon followers had had adult

sons who had died. Both believed that the "sacrifical table" was real

and that their sons had been killed by a worldwide conspiracy led by

Hillary Clinton in order to extract adrenochrome, which they believed

could renew life.

Attempts to overturn the 2020 U.S. election

====================================================================================================

QAnon followers supported the efforts of Trump's legal team to

overturn the election through multiple lawsuits and submitted

conspiracy theories of their own. They theorized that voting machines

made by Dominion Voting Systems had deleted millions of votes for

Trump. This was repeated on the far-right cable news outlet One

America News Network, and Trump tweeted the segment to his followers.

One specific QAnon-affiliated conspiracy theory, known as Italygate

and pushed in the last weeks of Trump's presidency, alleged that the

American election had been rigged using technology from the United

States Embassy in Rome with the help of an Italian hacker, an Italian

general and the Vatican.

Several elected leaders, including Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor

Greene and Arizona House Election Chairwoman Kelly Townsend were well

known QAnon adherents before the 2020 election and who helped lead

attempts to overturn the election in the aftermath. In June 2020,

Townsend posted a QAnon video with a flaming "Q" to her social media

and followed high-profile QAnon accounts. Some local Arizona politics

reporters have referred to Townsend as the QAnon Queen of the

Legislature.

Based on a misinterpretation of the District of Columbia Organic Act

of 1871 by the sovereign citizen movement,Multiple soures:

* according to which it transformed the federal government into a

corporation and rendered illegitimate every president elected

thereafter, some QAnon followers claimed that the 18th president

(Ulysses S. Grant, in office from 1869 to 1877) was the last

legitimate president. They believed that Trump would be sworn in as

the 19th president on March 4, 2021. The original inauguration date

until the Twentieth Amendment changed it to January 20 in 1933, and

that he would restore the federal government.Multiple sources:

* Based on intelligence that an identified but undisclosed militia

group might attempt an attack on the Capitol on that date, the U.S.

Capitol Police issued an alert on March 3. House leadership

subsequently rescheduled a March 4 vote to the previous night to allow

lawmakers to leave town.

The Anti-Defamation League, British security firm G4S, and nonpartisan

governance watchdog Advance Democracy Inc, studied QAnon posts and

warned of the potential for violence on January 6, 2021. Violence did

occur that day, as the attempts to overturn the election culminated

with the attack on the U.S. Capitol. Multiple QAnon-affiliated

protesters participated in the disturbance. Rioters were either seen

wearing clothing with Q-related emblems or identified as QAnon

followers from video footage. One participant whose attire and

behavior attracted worldwide media attention was Jake Angeli, a QAnon

supporter nicknamed the "QAnon Shaman". Ashli Babbitt, a rioter who

was shot dead by police as she was trying to break into the Speaker's

Lobby, was a committed follower of QAnon. The day before the attack,

she had tweeted: "the storm is here and it is descending upon DC in

less than 24 hours".

The attack led to a crackdown on QAnon content on social media. On

April 19, 2021, the Soufan Center reported that Russia and China had

amplified and "weaponized" QAnon at the time of the Capitol attack "to

sow societal discord and even compromise legitimate political

processes."

German coup attempt

=====================

Several QAnon adherents were charged with participation in the 2022

coup d'état plot in Germany, which involved groups of far-right

activists and conspiracy theorists, such as the Reichsbürger movement.

Media, advocacy groups, and public figures

============================================

Journalists have debunked QAnon's basic tenets. In 2018, 'The

Washington Post' called its proponents "a deranged conspiracy cult"

and "some of the Internet's most ' Trump fans".

In December 2017, the Russian television network RT aired a segment

discussing "QAnon revelations", calling the anonymous poster a "secret

intelligence operative inside the Trump administration known by

QAnon". On March 13, 2018, Cheryl Sullenger, vice president of the

anti-abortion group Operation Rescue, called QAnon a "small group of

insiders close to President Donald J. Trump" and called their posts

the "highest level of intelligence to ever be dropped publicly in our

known history". On March 15, Kyiv-based , the official newspaper of

the Communist Party of Ukraine, published an article calling QAnon a

"military intelligence group". On March 31, actor Roseanne Barr

appeared to promote QAnon, covered by CNN, 'The Washington Post', and

'The New York Times'. Radio talk show host Lionel became an outspoken

QAnon supporter. In April and October 2021, actor Jim Caviezel

appeared at conservative conferences and endorsed aspects of the

QAnon.

In June 2018, a 'Time' magazine article listed Q among the 25 Most

Influential People on the Internet in 2018. Counting more than 130,000

related discussion videos on YouTube, 'Time' cited the wide range of

the conspiracy theory and its more prominent followers and news

coverage. On July 4, the Hillsborough County Republican Party shared

on its official Facebook and Twitter accounts a YouTube video on

QAnon, calling them a "mysterious anonymous inside leaker of deep

state activities and counter activities by President Trump". The posts

were soon deleted.

In August 2018, following the presence of QAnon supporters at Trump's

Tampa, Florida rally for the midterm elections, MSNBC news anchors

Hallie Jackson, Brian Williams, and Chris Hayes dedicated portions of

their programs to the conspiracy theory. 'PBS NewsHour' also ran a

segment on QAnon the next day. In August, 'Washington Post' editorial

writer Molly Roberts wrote, "'The storm' QAnon truthers predict will

never strike because the conspiracy that obsesses them doesn't exist.

But while they wait for it, they'll try to whip up the winds, and the

rest of us will struggle to find shelter."

FBI domestic terrorism assessment

===================================

In May 2019, an FBI "Intelligence Bulletin" memo from the Phoenix

field office identified QAnon-driven extremists as a domestic

terrorism threat. The document cited arrests related to QAnon, some of

which had not been publicized before. According to the memo, "This is

the first FBI product examining the threat from conspiracy

theory-driven domestic extremists and provides a baseline for future

intelligence products.... The FBI assesses these conspiracy theories

very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information

marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual

extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts."

According to FBI's counterterrorism director Michael G. McGarrity's

testimony before Congress in May, the FBI divides domestic terrorism

threats into four primary categories, "racially motivated violent

extremism, anti-government/anti-authority extremism, animal

rights/environmental extremism, and abortion extremism", which

includes both abortion-rights and anti-abortion extremists. The fringe

conspiracy theory threat is closely related to the

anti-government/anti-authority subject area. On December 19, 2018, a

Californian man whose car contained bomb-making materials he intended

to use to "blow up a satanic temple monument" in the Springfield,

Illinois, Capitol rotunda to "make Americans aware of Pizzagate and

the New World Order, who were dismantling society" was arrested. The

FBI said another factor driving the intensity of anti-government

extremism is "the uncovering of real conspiracies or cover-ups

involving illegal, harmful, or unconstitutional activities by

government officials or leading political figures".

Congressional resolution

==========================

In August 2020, two U.S. Representatives, Democrat Tom Malinowski and

Republican Denver Riggleman, introduced a bipartisan simple resolution

(H. Res. 1154) condemning QAnon. Malinowski said the resolution's aim

was to repudiate "this dangerous, anti-Semitic, conspiracy-mongering

cult that the FBI says is radicalizing Americans to violence". The

resolution urged law enforcement and homeland security agencies "to

continue to strengthen their focus on preventing violence, threats,

harassment, and other criminal activity by extremists motivated by

fringe political conspiracy theories" and encouraged the U.S.

intelligence community "to uncover any foreign support, assistance, or

online amplification QAnon receives, as well as any QAnon

affiliations, coordination, and contacts with foreign extremist

organizations or groups espousing violence".

In September 2020, Malinowski received death threats from QAnon

followers after being falsely accused of wanting to protect sexual

predators. The threats were prompted by a National Republican

Congressional Committee (NRCC) campaign advertisement that falsely

claimed that Malinowski worked against plans to increase registration

for sex offenders in a 2006 crime bill while he was working as a

lobbyist for Human Rights Watch.

The resolution passed on October 2, 2020, in a 371-18 vote. Seventeen

Republicans (including Steve King, Paul Gosar, and Daniel Webster) and

one independent (Justin Amash) voted no; Republican Andy Harris voted

"present". According to Will Sommer in 'The Daily Beast', the

resolution does not have the force of law. Before the vote, Malinowski

told 'Slate' magazine, referencing the NRCC ad: "I don't want to see

any Republicans voting against fire on the House floor this week and

then continuing to play with fire next week by running these kinds of

ads against Democratic candidates."

Republican individuals and organizations

==========================================

In 2019, two Republican congressional candidates expressed support for

QAnon theories. In early 2020, Jim Watkins created the "Disarm the

Deep State" super PAC, whose stated aim was to "mobilize a community

of patriots in order to remove power from Deep State members". In

November 2020, it was reported that the PAC had raised just $4,736,

including a $500 loan from Watkins's lawyer.

In 2020, there were 97 QAnon followers in the primaries, of whom 22

Republicans and two independents ran in the elections of that year.

Businesswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene won an August 2020 runoff to

become the GOP nominee in the 14th Congressional District in Georgia.

In 2020, she said many of Q's claims "have really proven to be true".

Months into the Trump presidency, she stated in a video: "There's a

once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of

Satan-worshiping pedophiles out, and I think we have the president to

do it". Jo Rae Perkins, the 2020 Republican Senate candidate in

Oregon, tweeted a video on the night of her May primary victory

showing her holding a WWG1WGA sticker and stating that she "[stood]

with Q and the team. Thank you Anons, and thank you patriots." She

expressed regret at having later deleted the video on the advice of a

political consultant. The next month she took the "digital soldiers

oath" that Q had requested followers to do three days earlier.

On June 30, 2020, incumbent Republican U.S. representative Scott

Tipton lost a primary for Colorado's 3rd congressional district to

Lauren Boebert in an upset. Boebert expressed tentative support for

QAnon in an interview, but after winning the primary, attempted to

distance herself from those statements, saying "I'm not a follower."

Boebert was elected to Congress that November. Angela Stanton-King, a

Trump-backed candidate running for the Georgia House seat of the late

congressman John Lewis, posted on Twitter that Black Lives Matter is

"a major cover up for pedophilia and human trafficking" and "the storm

is here". Stanton-King told a reporter that her posts did not relate

to QAnon, asserting, "It was raining that day." Weather records did

not show precipitation in her area on the day of the post.

In August 2020, 'The New York Times' said that the Texas Republican

Party's new slogan ("We Are the Storm") was taken from Q. Texas

Republican Party officials denied this, saying it was inspired by a

biblical passage and has no connection to QAnon. In May 2021,

representative Louie Gohmert and Texas Republican Party chairman Allen

West attended the "For God & Country: Patriot Roundup" conference

organized by QAnon followers in Dallas.

Also in August 2020, representative Liz Cheney became the

highest-ranking House Republican to take a stand against QAnon, which

she called a "dangerous lunacy that should have no place in American

politics". Other Republican Party members who have spoken out against

QAnon include senator Ben Sasse, former Florida governor Jeb Bush and

senator and former presidential candidate Mitt Romney. In March 2021,

representative Peter Meijer said that the Republican Party should

unequivocally condemn QAnon and other conspiracy theories, and

commented: "The fact that a significant plurality, if not potentially

a majority, of our voters have been deceived into this creation of an

alternate reality could very well be an existential threat to the

party". Representative Adam Kinzinger launched a PAC called "Country

First", aimed at countering conspiracy theories and Donald Trump.

In April 2024, the 'Washington Post' published an article saying that

since 2021 QAnon had "mostly evaporated" after Q stopped posting new

messages, but that the movement and its worldview had "largely been

folded into the broader Republican Party".

====Donald Trump====

According to Media Matters for America, as of August 2020, Trump had

amplified QAnon messaging at least 216 times by retweeting or

mentioning 129 QAnon-affiliated Twitter accounts, sometimes multiple

times a day. QAnon followers came to refer to Trump as "Q+". On August

24, 2018, Trump hosted Michael William "Lionel" Lebron, a leading

QAnon promoter, in the Oval Office for a photo op. Shortly after

Christmas 2019, Trump retweeted over a dozen QAnon followers.

On August 19, 2020, Trump was asked about QAnon during a press

conference; he replied: "I don't know much about the movement, other

than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate." An FBI

Field Office in Phoenix has called QAnon a potential domestic terror

threat, but Trump called QAnon followers "people who love our

country". When a reporter asked Trump if he could support a notion

that suggests he "is secretly saving the world from this satanic cult

of pedophiles and cannibals", he responded: "Well, I haven't heard

that, but is that supposed to be a bad thing or a good thing?"

Presidential candidate Joe Biden responded that Trump was aiming to

"legitimize a conspiracy theory that the FBI has identified as a

domestic terrorism threat".

On October 15, 2020, when given the opportunity to denounce QAnon at a

"town hall"-style campaign event, Trump refused to do so and instead

pointed out that QAnon opposes pedophilia. He said he knew nothing

else about QAnon and told his questioner, Savannah Guthrie of NBC

News, that no one can know whether the premise of QAnon's conspiracy

theory is true. "They believe it is a satanic cult run by the deep

state," Guthrie informed him. When Guthrie asserted that the

conspiracy was not true, Trump responded, "No, I don't know that. And

neither do you know that."

In September 2022, an Associated Press analysis found that Trump was

embracing QAnon more openly than before. Trump was reposting Q drops

and QAnon memes on Truth Social, and more than a third of the accounts

he had reposted in the last month had themselves shared QAnon slogans,

videos or imagery. Trump has played the song 'Mirrors' at public

events. The song has been associated with QAnon since it was

re-published as 'WWG1WGA' by a YouTube user named "Richard Feelgood".

The song's author, Will van de Crommert, has disavowed Trump and

QAnon.

Mike Pence

============

On August 21, 2020, Vice President Mike Pence said that he did not

"know anything about" QAnon except that it was a conspiracy theory

that he "dismisse[d] out of hand". When asked whether he would

acknowledge the administration's role in "giving oxygen" to the

belief, Pence shook his head and said, "Give me a break." Pence also

commented that the media giving attention to QAnon amounted to

"[chasing] shiny objects".

After the election, as the date of the 2021 United States Electoral

College vote count approached and Pence showed no intention of

blocking the certification of Biden's win, QAnon figures vilified him

as a traitor. After Pence's lawyers fought a lawsuit that aimed to

make him refuse to count electoral votes for Biden, Lin Wood said that

Pence would "face execution by firing squad" for "treason". A few

hours before the count started on January 6, Wood tweeted that Pence

should resign immediately and that charges should be brought against

him. Following the attack on the Capitol, Wood called Pence a "child

molester" on Twitter. After his Twitter account was suspended, Wood

used Parler to call again for Pence's execution by firing squad.

Michael Flynn

===============

Former lieutenant general and head of the Defense Intelligence Agency

Michael Flynn, who served as Trump's National Security Advisor, became

popular among QAnon followers, who took a 2016 quote from Flynn about

Trump having been elected by an "army of digital soldiers" and started

calling themselves "digital soldiers". QAnon followers also adopted

three stars as a symbol to display solidarity with Flynn, as a

reference to Flynn having been a three-star general in the U.S. army.

In August 2019, a "Digital Soldiers Conference" was announced for the

next month in Atlanta. The stated purpose was to prepare "patriotic

social media warriors" for a coming "digital civil war" against

"censorship and suppression". The announcement of the event

prominently displayed a Q spelled in stars on the blue field of an

American flag, with the three stars making up the tail of the "Q"

being highlighted separately to reference Flynn's military status.

Scheduled speakers for the event, which was hosted by Yippy CEO Rich

Granville, included Flynn and George Papadopoulos, as well as Gina

Loudon, a Trump friend and member of his campaign media advisory

board, singer Joy Villa, and Bill Mitchell, a radio host and ardent

Trump supporter.

On July 4, 2020, Flynn posted to his Twitter account a video of

himself leading a small group in an oath with the QAnon motto, "Where

we go one, we go all". Analysts said the oath was part of QAnon's

attempt to organize "digital soldiers" for the political and social

apocalypse they see coming. Flynn's apparent declaration of allegiance

to QAnon made him the most prominent former government official to

endorse the conspiracy theory. Member of Trump's legal team and

Flynn's representative Sidney Powell denied that the oath was related

to QAnon. During the preceding days, numerous QAnon followers took the

same "digital soldier oath" on Twitter, and used the same #TakeTheOath

hashtag Flynn did.

After his November 2020 pardon and the election results, Flynn became

more closely associated with QAnon, endorsing a website that sold

QAnon merchandise, creating a Digital Soldiers media company, and

saying he planned to launch a news media outlet also called "Digital

soldiers". He appeared on various far-right media, pushing

QAnon-affiliated conspiracy theories. Flynn's activism fueled

speculation among QAnon followers that he would help them take

control, or that he was Q himself. QAnon supporters expressed their

commitment in social media posts by using the phrase "Fight like a

Flynn" or variations thereof.

In February 2021, several weeks after the Capitol riot, Flynn

distanced himself from QAnon theories by saying in an interview:

"There's no plan. There's so many people out there asking, 'Is the

plan happening?' We have what we have, and we have to accept the

situation as it is." But he did not outright disavow the QAnon

movement. In May 2021, Flynn was a keynote speaker at the "For God

& Country: Patriot Roundup" conference organized in Dallas, Texas

by QAnon influencer John Sabal. At the end of the year, though, Flynn

appeared to have rejected QAnon as a whole.

In March 2021, Flynn's brother, retired lieutenant general Jack Flynn,

and his wife filed a $75 million defamation suit against CNN, alleging

the network had falsely accused them of being QAnon followers. They

asserted that the video Flynn had posted in July 2020, which CNN had

broadcast, depicted their pledging an oath to the Constitution, not to

QAnon. The suit claimed Flynn alone had recited the QAnon motto,

"where we go one, we go all", though the video showed all the other

participants had done so. The plaintiffs also said they "are not

followers or supporters of any extremist or terrorist groups,

including QAnon". In December 2021, federal district court judge

Gregory Howard Woods largely rejected CNN's motion to dismiss the

case, allowing it to proceed to determine whether the Flynns had been

portrayed in a false light.

Lin Wood

==========

Lin Wood, a lawyer who worked with Trump's reelection campaign and

participated in the election lawsuits, promoted QAnon conspiracy

theories. His Twitter profile included the hashtag #WWG1WGA, a slogan

associated with QAnon.References:

* Among other baseless QAnon-associated claims, he accused Chief

Justice John Roberts of child rape and murder. Wood also claimed that

QAnon supporter Isaac Kappy was murdered for attempting to transmit

information to Trump.References:

* On January 11, 2021, Delaware Superior Court Judge Craig A.

Karsnitz cited Wood's social media postings in his reasons for an

order revoking Wood's right to appear before the court.References:

* via bloomberglaw.com. Karsnitz said that he had "no doubt" that

Wood's tweets played a role in inciting the attack on the Capitol.

Sidney Powell

===============

Attorney Sidney Powell, a member of Trump's legal team, denied

knowledge of QAnon in January 2020, though in the following months she

retweeted major QAnon accounts and catchphrases and appeared on QAnon

channels on YouTube.

After leaving Trump's team, Powell remained involved in post-election

lawsuits and was embraced by QAnon followers, discouraged that

predictions of a Trump landslide victory and coming revelations about

his enemies had not materialized.References:

* Powell's evidence in the lawsuit she filed in Georgia to overturn

the election result included an affidavit from Ron Watkins. In this

document, Watkins stated that his reading of an online user guide for

Dominion Voting Systems software led him to conclude that election

fraud might be "within the realm of possibility". Watkins did not

provide any evidence of fraud.

In May 2021, Powell asserted that Trump "can simply be reinstated",

that "a new inauguration date is set". The date for this was

supposedly August 13 of the same year.References:

Kelly Townsend

================

Former Arizona State Senator Kelly Townsend is a longtime conspiracy

theorist, feeding conspiracies such as the Obama birther conspiracy to

Trump before he was elected. She posted the QAnon "Q" symbol to her

social media account in 2018 and has consistently aligned with QAnon

theories, including calling all vaccines "communist". In 2021,

Townsend supported activists active in the election denial movement in

a spirit similar to the events that occurred at the U.S. Capitol on

January 6, 2021, urging parents to take control of school board

meetings related to COVID-19 restrictions and mask mandates.

Throughout the process of securing the Arizona audit conducted by

QAnon conspiracy theorist Doug Logan from Cyber Ninjas, Townsend

worked closely with QAnon adherent Liz Harris, who rented one of her

condos to QAnon board owner Ron Watkins so he could run for office in

Arizona in 2022.

Along with Roger Stone associate Jerome Corsi, Sheriff Joe Arpaio, and

2020 Maricopa County Sheriff candidate and then chief Arpaio staffer

Jerry Sheridan, Townsend worked with informant Dennis Montgomery. In

2020, she worked with Corsi again, claiming the 2020 election was

stolen from Trump and emailing Corsi a document of Arizona senators

endorsing Trump electors in an attempt to overturn the 2020 election.

In the lead-up to January 6, 2021, Townsend sponsored a bill that

would designate Trump electors from Arizona and promoted the Arizona

audit and stolen election claims.

Liz Harris

============

When Ron Watkins, son of Jim Watkins, who owned the image board that

QAnon posts were posted on, came to the U.S. from Japan to run for

Congress, he listed a property owned by Liz Harris who is also a

prominent QAnon influencer, as his primary address. After QAnon

supporter Kelly Townsend was voted out of office in Arizona during the

2022 midterms, Harris was elected for a short time before being

expelled for lying during an ethics investigation that was

investigating her for promotion of conspiracies.

Kash Patel

============

Kash Patel, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has

appeared on more than 50 podcasts that have promoted or shared

QAnon-related content. In 2022, while serving on Truth Social's board,

Patel said the platform was trying to "incorporate" QAnon "into our

overall messaging scheme to capture audiences." He has signed copies

of his children's book with the QAnon slogan "WWG1WGA" and promoted

the hashtag on Truth Social.

QDrops app

============

QDrops, an app that promoted the conspiracy theory, was published on

the Apple App Store and Google Play. It became the most popular paid

app in Apple's online store's "entertainment" section in April 2018,

and the tenth-most popular paid app overall. It was published by Tiger

Team Inc, a North Carolina couple, Richard and Adalita Brown. On July

15, 2018, Apple pulled the app after an inquiry from NBC News.

In mid-May 2020, Google removed three other appsQMAP, Q Alerts! and Q

Alerts LITEfrom the Android app store for violating its terms of

service.

Anti-QAnon subreddits

=======================

Some social media forums, such as the subreddits r/QAnonCasualties and

r/ReQovery, aim to assist either former followers and supporters of

QAnon conspiracies or those whose family members engaged in the

conspiracy.

Removal of content

====================

In March 2018, Reddit banned one of its communities discussing QAnon,

/r/CBTS_Stream, for "encouraging or inciting violence and posting

personal and confidential information". Some followers moved to

Discord. Several other communities were formed for discussion of

QAnon, leading to further bans on September 12, 2018, in response to

these communities "inciting violence, harassment, and the

dissemination of personal information", which led to thousands of

followers regrouping on Voat, a Switzerland-based Reddit clone that

has been described as a hub for the alt-right. In early 2019, Twitter

removed accounts suspected of being connected to the Russian Internet

Research Agency that had disseminated a high volume of QAnon-related

tweets that used the #WWG1WGA slogan.

In May 2020, Facebook announced its removal of five pages, 20

accounts, and six groups linked to "individuals associated with the

QAnon network" as part of an investigation into "suspected coordinated

inauthentic behavior" ahead of the 2020 United States election. On

August 19, Facebook expanded its Dangerous Individuals and

Organizations policy to address "growing movements that, while not

directly organizing violence, have celebrated violent acts, shown that

they have weapons and suggest they will use them, or have individual

followers with patterns of violent behavior". As a result of this

increased vigilance, Facebook reported having already "removed over

790 groups, 100 Pages and 1,500 ads tied to QAnon from Facebook,

blocked over 300 hashtags across Facebook and Instagram, and

additionally imposed restrictions on over 1,950 Groups and 440 Pages

on Facebook and over 10,000 accounts on Instagram". In the month after

its August announcement, Facebook said it deleted 1,500 QAnon groups;

such groups by then had four million followers. In October 2020,

Facebook said it would immediately begin removing "any Facebook Pages,

Groups and Instagram accounts representing QAnon, even if they contain

no violent content". The company said it would immediately ban any

group representing QAnon.

In July 2020, Twitter announced it was banning more than 7,000

accounts connected to QAnon for coordinated amplification of fake news

and conspiracy theories. In a press release, Twitter said, "We've been

clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behavior that has

the potential to lead to offline harm. In line with this approach,

this week we are taking further action on so-called 'QAnon' activity

across the service." It also said that the actions could apply to over

150,000 accounts.

Facebook banned all QAnon groups and pages in October 2020. That day,

QAnon followers speculated that the action was part of a complex Trump

administration strategy to begin arresting its enemies, or that

Facebook was attempting to silence news of this occurring; neither is

true. Some followers speculated that a Justice Department "national

security" news conference scheduled for the next day would relate to

charges against Democrats, including Hillary Clinton. The Justice

Department actually announced the investigation and arrest of Islamic

State members. Etsy also announced that it would remove all

QAnon-related merchandise from its online marketplace. The products

were still available there as of January 2021.

In an interview with CNN, YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki said much QAnon

material was "borderline content" that did not explicitly break its

rules, but that changes in the site's methodology for recommendations

had reduced views of QAnon-related content by 80%. Three days later,

YouTube announced that it had modified its hate and harassment

policies to bar "content that targets an individual or group with

conspiracy theories that have been used to justify real-world

violence", such as QAnon and Pizzagate. It would still allow content

discussing QAnon if it did not target individuals.

Hashtags and accounts associated with QAnon have since been banned by

numerous social networks including Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, and

Instagram. In particular, the 2021 United States Capitol attack led to

a crackdown on QAnon-related content on social media platforms during

the days that followed. Twitter suspended Lin Wood's account on

January 7 and those of Sidney Powell, Michael Flynn and other

high-profile QAnon figures the next day. On January 12, Facebook and

Twitter announced that they were removing "Stop the Steal" content and

suspending 70,000 QAnon-focused accounts, respectively. More waves of

deletions followed on various platforms. Amazon removed a pro-QAnon

book after the Capitol riots, and many platforms took action against

QAnon-related content after the incident. In May 2021, a report

published by the Atlantic Council concluded that QAnon content was

"evaporating" from the mainstream web.

Migration to alt-tech

=======================

The mass deletions of QAnon-related accounts on the most popular

social media outlets led many members of the movement to migrate to

alt-tech platforms. Notably, Parler grew in popularity among QAnon

followers and conservatives in general in early 2021. Gab also became

increasingly popular in these environments, especially after Parler

went offline for several weeks following the Capitol attack.

In the course of 2021, various alt-tech platforms allowed QAnon

influencers and adherents to regroup, with Gab and Telegram becoming

particularly important hubs of QAnon communities.

Return to Twitter/X

=====================

In April 2022, QAnon followers celebrated Elon Musk's proposed

purchase of Twitter, believing that Musk's free speech approach would

allow them back onto the platform. After Musk acquired the platform in

October of the same year, various QAnon-related accounts were

reinstated and resumed posting about the conspiracy theory. By

December the conspiracy theory began to make a comeback on Twitter.

Suspected Q author Ron Watkins was subsequently reinstated on the

platform in January 2023, while in March Musk defended the "QAnon

Shaman" by calling for Jacob Chansley to be freed. In May, the

Anti-Defamation League documented a surge of QAnon content on Twitter,

now X, described as a resurgence.

See also

======================================================================

* Apophenia, the tendency to perceive connections and meaning between

unrelated things

* Cult of personality

* List of conspiracy theories

* Secret decoder ring, a promotional item that taps into a common

fascination with secret codes

* 'Sound of Freedom', 2023 film with alleged ties to the QAnon

movement

* "Epstein didn't kill himself"

* Radical Right

* Satanic Panic

* Operation Trust

License

=========

All content on Gopherpedia comes from Wikipedia, and is licensed under CC-BY-SA

License URL: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/

Original Article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAnon

you're on gopherpedia.com^70/0//QAnon

back link is gopherpedia.com:70/1/