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US Vice-President Mike Pence with members of the SWAT team of Broward County, Florida, on November 30, 2018; the man at the left of the image is displaying a red and black “Q” patch used by believers of the QAnon conspiracy theory. The photo was tweeted, removed, and then substituted in Pence’s feed.
Detail from photo showing the QAnon patch. The black-and white patch to the left has been reported to be that of the SWAT team. Regulations forbid wearing either patch, and the deputy was reprimanded and removed from the SWAT team as a result.[1]
QAnon[a] (/kjuːəˈnɒn/) is a far-right conspiracy theory[2][3][4][5][6][7] alleging that a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles running a global child sex-trafficking ring is plotting against President Donald Trump, who is battling them,[8] leading to a ‘day of reckoning’ involving the mass arrest of journalists and politicians.[9] No part of the theory is based on fact.[10][11][12][13] The theory began with an October 2017 post on the anonymous imageboard 4chan by “Q“, who was presumably an American individual,[14] but probably became a group of people.[15][16] Q claimed to have access to classified information involving the Trump administration and its opponents in the United States. NBC News found that three people took the original Q post and expanded it across multiple media platforms to build internet followings for profit. QAnon was preceded by several similar anonymous 4chan posters, such as FBIAnon, HLIAnon (High-Level Insider), CIAAnon, and WH Insider Anon.[17]
Q has accused many liberal Hollywood actors, Democratic politicians, and high-ranking officials of being members of the cabal. Q also claimed that Trump feigned collusion with Russians to enlist Robert Mueller to join him in exposing the ring and preventing a coup d’état by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and George Soros.[18][19][20] “Q” is a reference to the Q clearance used by the U.S. Department of Energy. QAnon believers commonly tag their social media posts with the hashtag #WWG1WGA, signifying the motto “Where We Go One, We Go All”.
QAnon adherents began appearing at Trump reelection campaign rallies in August 2018.[21] TV and radio personality Michael “Lionel” Lebron, a promoter of the theory, was granted a photo opportunity with Trump in the Oval Office on August 24, 2018.[22] Bill Mitchell, a broadcaster who promotes QAnon, attended a White House “social media summit” in July 2019.[7][23] At an August 2019 rally, a man warming up the crowd before Trump spoke used the QAnon motto “where we go one, we go all”, later denying that it was a QAnon reference. This occurred hours after the publication of a report that the FBI had determined QAnon to be a potential source of domestic terrorism, the first time the agency had so rated a fringe conspiracy theory.[24][25] According to analysis conducted by Media Matters, through August 20, 2020, Trump had amplified QAnon messaging at least 216 times by retweeting or mentioning 129 QAnon-affiliated Twitter accounts, sometimes multiple times a day.[26][27]
Into 2020, the number of QAnon adherents was unclear, but they had a large presence on social media, particularly Twitter. On June 24, 2020, Q exhorted followers to take a “digital soldiers oath”, and many did, using the Twitter hashtag #TakeTheOath.[28] In July 2020, Twitter banned thousands of QAnon-affiliated accounts and changed its algorithms to reduce the theory’s spread.[29] A Facebook internal analysis reported in August found millions of followers across thousands of groups and pages; Facebook acted to remove and restrict QAnon activity later that month.[30][31] Followers had also migrated to dedicated message boards such as EndChan and 8kun, where they organized to wage information warfare to influence the 2020 elections.[32]
Theory
The conspiracy theory, disseminated mainly by supporters of Trump as The Storm and The Great Awakening—QAnon’s precepts and vocabulary are closely related to the religious concepts of millenarianism and apocalypticism,[33] leading it to be sometimes construed as an emerging religious movement[34][35][36]—has been widely characterized as “baseless”,[21][37][38] “unhinged”,[39] and “evidence-free”.[40] Its proponents have been called “a deranged conspiracy cult”[20] and “some of the Internet’s most outré Trump fans”.[41]
According to Travis View, who has studied QAnon and written about it extensively for The Washington Post, the essence of the theory is that:
there is a worldwide cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who rule the world, essentially, and they control everything. They control politicians, and they control the media. They control Hollywood, and they cover up their existence, essentially. And they would have continued ruling the world, were it not for the election of President Donald Trump. Now, Donald Trump in this conspiracy theory knows all about this evil cabal’s wrongdoing. But one of the reasons that Donald Trump was elected was to put an end to them, basically. And now we would be ignorant of this behind-the-scenes battle of Donald Trump and the U.S. military—that everyone backs him and the evil cabal—were it not for “Q.” And what “Q” is is basically a poster on 4chan, who later moved to 8chan, who reveals details about this secret behind-the-scenes battle, and also secrets about what the cabal is doing and also the mass sort of upcoming arrest events through these posts.[33]
Followers of QAnon also believe that there is an imminent event known as “The Storm”, in which thousands of people, members of the cabal, will be arrested, possibly sent to Guantanamo Bay prison or to face military tribunals, and the U.S. military will brutally take over the country.[33] The result of The Storm will be salvation and utopia on earth.[42]
History
Background
See also: Pizzagate conspiracy theory
| David Goldberg | |
|---|---|
| @DavidGoldbergNY |
Rumors stirring in the NYPD that Huma’s emails point to a pedophila ring and @HillaryClinton is at the center. #GoHillary #PodestaEmails23
October 30, 2016[43]
On October 30, 2016, a Twitter account posting white supremacist material which said it was run by a New York lawyer falsely claimed that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) had discovered a pedophilia ring linked to members of the Democratic Party while searching through Anthony Weiner‘s emails.[44][45] Throughout October and November 2016, WikiLeaks had published John Podesta’s emails. Proponents of the theory read the emails and alleged they contained code words for pedophilia and human trafficking.[46][47] Proponents also claimed that Comet Ping Pong was a meeting ground for Satanic ritual abuse.[48]
The story was later posted on fake news websites, starting with Your News Wire, which cited a 4chan post from earlier that year.[44] The Your News Wire article was subsequently spread by pro-Trump websites, including SubjectPolitics.com, which added the claim that the NYPD had raided Hillary Clinton‘s property.[44] The Conservative Daily Post ran a headline claiming the Federal Bureau of Investigation had confirmed the theory.[49]
Anons
In its most basic sense, an “anon” refers to any anonymous or pseudonymous internet poster.[50]
The concept of anons “doing research” and claiming to disclose otherwise classified information, while a key component of the QAnon conspiracy theory, is by no means exclusive to it. Before Q, a number of so-called anons also claimed to have special government access.
On July 2, 2016, an anonymous poster known as “FBI Anon”, a self-described “high-level analyst and strategist” who claimed to have “intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the Clinton case”, began offering lies about the 2016 investigation into the Clinton Foundation and claimed that Hillary Clinton would be imprisoned if Trump became president. Around that time, another figure known as “HLI Anon”, standing for “High Level Insider Anon”, hosted long question-and-answer sessions, dispensing various conspiracy theories, including one that claimed Princess Diana was murdered after trying to stop the September 11 attacks.
Soon after the 2016 United States elections, two anonymous posters known only as “CIA Anon” and “CIA Intern” falsely claimed to be high-ranking CIA officers, and in late August 2017, an account called “WH Insider Anon” offered a supposed preview that something that was “going to go down” regarding leaks that would supposedly affect the Democratic Party.[17]
Origin
A person identifying as “Q Clearance Patriot” first appeared on the /pol/ board of 4chan on October 28, 2017, posting in a thread titled “Calm Before the Storm”,[14] a reference to Trump’s cryptic description of a gathering of United States military leaders he attended as “the calm before the storm”.[14][51] “The Storm” is QAnon parlance for an imminent event when thousands of alleged suspects will be arrested, imprisoned and executed.[33] The poster’s username implied that they hold Q clearance,[52][53] a United States Department of Energy security clearance required to access Top Secret information on nuclear weapons and materials.[54] An NBC News investigation found that in November 2017, two moderators of the board, “BaruchtheScribe” and “Pamphlet Anon”, reached out to YouTuber Tracy Diaz to promote Qanon. The three then created a Reddit community (subreddit) “CBTS_Stream”, which was key in spreading the theory. Posts by “Q” later moved to 8chan, citing concerns that the 4chan board had been “infiltrated”.[17] The theory then spread to Facebook and YouTube.[17] In March 2018, the subreddit, which had 20,000 subscribers, was banned for “encouraging or inciting violence and posting personal and confidential information”. “Pamphlet Anon” then launched “Patriots’ Soapbox”, a YouTube livestream channel dedicated to the theory. One archived livestream appears to show him logging in to “Q”’s 8chan account before the feed quickly cuts out.[17]
False claims and beliefs
See also: Murder of Seth Rich conspiracy theoryHRC extradition already in motion effective yesterday with several countries in case of cross border run. Passport approved to be flagged effective 10/30 @ 12:01am. Expect massive riots organized in defiance and others fleeing the US to occur. US M’s will conduct the operation while NG activated. Proof check: Locate a NG member and ask if activated for duty 10/30 across most major cities.
—QAnon‘s first post on the /pol/ message board of 4chan, on October 28, 2017[55]
Q’s posting campaign has a history of false, baseless, and unsubstantiated claims. Beginning with the first posts incorrectly predicting Hillary Clinton’s imminent arrest and followed by more false allegations, such as claiming that North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un is a puppet ruler installed by the CIA.[56] Q’s posts have become more cryptic and vague, allowing followers to map their own beliefs onto them.[57] By generating a keyboard heatmap of Q’s supposedly coded messages, information security researcher Mark Burnett concluded that they “are not actual codes, just random typing by someone who might play an instrument and uses a QWERTY keyboard”, adding that “almost all the characters” in the codes alternate between the left and right hands, or the characters are close to each other on the keyboard.[58]
Some of Q’s other allegations include their February 16, 2018, false claim that U.S. Representative and former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz hired Salvadoran gang MS-13 to murder DNC staffer Seth Rich,[51][59] and their March 1, 2018 apparent suggestion that German Chancellor Angela Merkel is Adolf Hitler‘s granddaughter.[60] A July 7, 2018, article in The Daily Beast also noted that Q falsely claimed that “each mass shooting is a false-flag attack organized by the cabal”.[61] Other beliefs held by QAnon adherents include that Obama, Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and others are planning a coup while simultaneously involved as members of an international child sex trafficking ring. According to this idea, the Mueller investigation is actually a counter-coup led by Trump, who pretended to collude with Russia in order to hire Mueller to secretly investigate the Democrats.[20] Another recurring theme is that certain Hollywood stars are pedophiles, and that the Rothschild family leads a satanic cult.[19] By interpreting the information Q feeds them, QAnon adherents come to these conclusions.[20]
On multiple occasions, Q has dismissed their false claims and incorrect predictions as willful misinformation, claiming that “disinformation is necessary”.[62] 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 the theory “can become evidence of [its] validity in the minds of believers”.[55] 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.”[63]
QAnon theorists have touted drinking an industrial bleach (known as MMS, or Miracle Mineral Solution) as a “miracle cure” for COVID-19.[64][65][66][67]
As in Pizzagate, QAnon followers believe that children are being abducted in large numbers to supply a child trafficking ring. By 2020, some followers began using the Twitter hashtag #SaveTheChildren, coopting a trademarked name for the child welfare organization Save the Children, leading to an August 7 statement by Save the Children on the unauthorized use of its name in campaigns.[68][69] Data from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children indicate that the overwhelming majority of missing children are runaways; the second-largest cause is abduction by family members, with less than 1% being nonfamily abductions.[70][71]
Identity of “Q”
There has been much speculation about the motive and the identity of the poster, with theories ranging from a military intelligence officer, to Trump himself, to an alternate reality game by Cicada 3301.[15] Because 4chan is anonymous and does not allow registration by users, any number of people originally may have posted using the same handle. The poster came to use a frequently changing tripcode to authenticate on 8chan after migrating there as they feared 4chan had been “infiltrated”.[35]
The Italian leftist Wu Ming foundation has speculated that QAnon is inspired by the Luther Blissett persona, which leftists and anarchists used to organize pranks, media stunts, and hoaxes in the 1990s. “Blissett” published the novel Q in 1999.[72]
As Q relies on a tripcode to verify themself, and the tripcode is verified by 8chan’s server and not reproducible on other imageboards, Q was not able to post when the website went down following the 2019 El Paso shooting.[73] This apparent conflict of interest, combined with statements by 8chan’s founder Fredrick Brennan, the use of a “Q” collar pin by 8chan owner Jim Watkins, and Watkins’s financial interest in a QAnon super PAC that advertises on 8chan, have led to widespread speculation that either Watkins or his son, 8chan’s administrator Ron Watkins, knows Q’s identity.[35][74] Some have speculated that Jim Watkins himself is Q.[75] Both Jim and Ron Watkins deny knowing Q’s identity.[35][76]
Analysis
QAnon may best be understood as an example of what historian Richard Hofstadter called in 1964 “The Paranoid Style in American Politics“, related to religious millenarianism and apocalypticism.[33] The vocabulary of QAnon echoes Christian tropes—”The Storm” (the Genesis flood narrative or Judgement Day) and “The Great Awakening”, which evokes the historical religious Great Awakenings from the early 18th century to the late 20th century. According to one QAnon video, the battle between Trump and “the cabal” is of “biblical proportions”, a “fight for earth, of good versus evil.” The forthcoming reckoning is said by some QAnon supporters to be a “reverse rapture” which means not only the end of the world as it is now known, but a new beginning as well, with salvation and a utopia on earth for the survivors.[42]
Within less than a year of existence, QAnon became significantly recognized by the general population. According to an August 2018 Qualtrics poll for The Washington Post, 58% of Floridians are 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.[41][77] Positive feelings toward QAnon were found to be strongly correlated with being susceptible to conspiracy thinking.[77]
According to a March 2020 Pew survey, 76% of Americans said they had never heard of QAnon, 20% had heard “a little about it”, and 3% said they had heard “a lot”.[78][79]
Role of antisemitism
The conspiracy theory’s targeting of Soros and the Rothschilds has led The Washington Post and Jewish-American magazine The Forward to accuse it of containing “striking anti-Semitic elements” and “garden-variety nonsense with racist and anti-Semitic undertones”.[80][20] An August 2018 Jewish Telegraphic Agency article said, “although not specifically, some of QAnon’s archetypical elements—including secret elites and kidnapped children, among others—are reflective of historical and ongoing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories”.[81]
The Anti-Defamation League reported that while “the vast majority of QAnon-inspired conspiracy theories have nothing to do with anti-Semitism”, “an impressionistic review” of QAnon tweets about Israel, Jews, Zionists, the Rothschilds, and Soros “revealed some troubling examples” of antisemitism.[82]
The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, another example of a conspiracy theory likely to have been subtly exploited by foreign intelligence services to exacerbate preexisting weaknesses and suspicions in a national culture for the purpose of stoking internecine damage to its unity and institutions, has intersected with the QAnon conspiracy theories, with a Republican QAnon fan retweeting a Twitter thread about the Rothschild family, Satanic High Priestesses, and American presidents saying that “The Protocols Of The Elders Of Zion Is Not A Fabrication. And, It Certainly Is Not Anti-Semitic To Point Out This Fact.”[83][84] The retweeter later denied knowing the content of the thread, although anti-Semitic references appeared in the first few tweets.[85] Similarly, Trump has denied knowing anything about QAnon except that QAnon fans like him and “love our country.”[86]
By 2020, QAnon followers were advancing a theory that Hollywood elites were engaging in “adrenochrome harvesting,” in which adrenaline is extracted from children’s blood to be oxidized into the psychoactive drug adrenochrome. Adrenochrome harvesting is rooted in antisemitic myths of blood libel dating to the Middle Ages, claiming that Jews murder Christian children for their blood for use in religious rituals.[87][88][89]
QAnon believers have promoted a centuries-old antisemitic trope about an international banking conspiracy orchestrated by the Rothschild family.[90] Mary Ann Mendoza, who sits on the advisory board of Women for Trump, was scheduled to speak at the 2020 Republican convention, but was dropped hours before her appearance after it became known she had promoted the trope on Twitter.[91]
More at: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAnon