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 become 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. In the
Internet age, 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.
Conspiracy theories have tended to make
headway in times of societal uncertainty, and help people to feel
more in control in the face of disturbing information. 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". 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 conspiracy theory, making it very difficult to
counter the thinking of QAnon followers.
Disillusionment
Travis View 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 December
5 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 the process of separation from the QAnon
cult, while others urged direct action in the form of an insurrection
against the government. 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 for revelations or the fulfillment of their prophecies
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 himself to be under Trump's protection.
Liz Crokin, a believer in QAnon who in
2018 asserted that John F. Kennedy Jr. faked his death and is now Q,
said in February 2019 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" if he took
too long. Other followers have adopted the Kennedy conspiracy theory,
asserting that a Pittsburgh man named Vincent Fusca is Kennedy 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
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 would name Flynn
as his vice president.
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
that his victory would be invalidated—many QAnon adherents believed
until the last minute that something momentous would happen during
the ceremony, resulting in Trump remaining in power. The inauguration
ultimately went on as planned. Biden being inaugurated was an
especially difficult moment for Q followers: some became depressed,
had suicidal thoughts, or self-harmed as a result, as they felt
betrayed by Q. 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 that Biden's
inauguration was "part of the plan". Around this
point, many prominent conservatives, such as Steve Bannon and Bill
Still, began to denounce QAnon, calling it a "psyop"
(psychological operation) created by U.S. intelligence or the FBI. In
a leaked text message conversation, Michael Flynn, once among the
highest-profile QAnon supporters, called QAnon 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.
A group of Telegram channels called the
Sabmyk Network has been promoting a variation of QAnon by primarily
targeting followers of the conspiracy theory who have been
disillusioned by Q's failures in prediction. Set up by controversial
German artist Sebastian Bieniek, the network (described as a new
religion or cult) shares mainline QAnon beliefs but also believes in
an idiosyncratic mythology surrounding a leader-prophet, Sabmyk, who
will lead humanity's "awakening". The network has
tried to link Trump to Sabmyk.
Polling and demographics
In 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 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 found to be strongly correlated
with susceptibility to conspiracy thinking.
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". 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 is good for
the country, while 7% of Democrats and those who lean Democratic
believed that.
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 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.
Incidents
Since QAnon's emergence, followers of
the conspiracy theory have been part of a number of controversial,
sometimes violent events.
In 2020, QAnon followers were actively
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 in an
attempt 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.
Attempts to overturn the 2020 U.S.
Election
2021 United States
Capitol attack
As the allegations of voting fraud
spread further after Trump lost the election, QAnon followers
supported his legal team's efforts to overturn the election through
multiple lawsuits, and submitted conspiracy theories of their own.
QAnon followers advanced that voting machines made by Dominion Voting
Systems had deleted millions of votes for Trump. This was repeated on
a segment on the far-right cable news outlet One America News
Network, and Trump tweeted this segment to his followers. The
Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency announced that the
election was "the most secure in American history",
with "no evidence that any voting system deleted or lost
votes, changed votes or was in any way compromised".
One specific QAnon-affiliated
conspiracy theory, known as Italy-gate and pushed in the last weeks
of Trump's presidency, alleged that the American election had been
rigged using technology from the U.S. Embassy in Rome, with the help
of an Italian hacker, the complicity of an Italian general and the
involvement of the Vatican.
Based on a false interpretation of the
District of Columbia Organic Act of 1871 by the sovereign citizen
movement, 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. 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 made various warnings 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 behaviour 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-related content, pages and accounts on social media platforms,
including Facebook and Twitter. On April 19, 2021, the Soufan Center
reported that Russia and China had amplified and "weaponized"
QAnon stories around the time of the Capitol attack "to sow
societal discord and even compromise legitimate political processes."
Reactions
Media, advocacy groups, and public
figures
On December 28, 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,
the 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 Rabochaya Gazeta [UK],
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, which
was subsequently covered by CNN, The Washington Post, and The New
York Times.
On June 28, 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.
On August 1, 2018, following the
previous day's large 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 a portion of their
respective programs to the conspiracy theory. PBS NewsHour also ran a
segment on QAnon the next day. On August 2, 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." On August 4, former White House Press Secretary
Sean Spicer was asked to comment on QAnon in his "ask
me anything" session on the /r/The Donald subreddit.
In response to the question "Is Q legit?", Spicer
answered "No." On June 29, 2020, Reddit banned
/r/The Donald for frequent rule-breaking, for antagonizing the
company and other communities, and for failing to "meet
our most basic expectations".
Official
response
FBI domestic terrorism assessment
A May 30, 2019, FBI "Intelligence
Bulletin" memo from the Phoenix Field Office identified
QAnon-driven extremists as a domestic terrorism threat. The document
cited a number of 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 counter-terrorism
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
On August 25, 2020, two U.S.
Representatives, Democrat Tom Malinowski and Republican Denver
Riggleman, introduced a bipartisan simple resolution (H. Res. 1154)
condemning QAnon and rejecting its conspiracy theories. Malinowski
said the resolution's aim was to formally repudiate "this
dangerous, anti-Semitic, conspiracy-mongering cult that the FBI says
is radicalizing Americans to violence". The resolution also
urged the FBI and other 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 politicians and
organizations
In 2019, two Republican congressional
candidates expressed support for QAnon theories. 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.
Trump and connected individuals
Donald Trump
According to Media Matters for America,
as of 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. 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."
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
College vote count approached and Pence showed no intention of
blocking the certification of Biden's win, QAnon figures vilified him
as a traitor. A few hours before the count started on January 6, Lin
Wood tweeted that Pence should resign immediately and that charges
should be brought against him. After the attack on the Capitol, Wood
called on Parler for Pence's execution by firing squad.
Michael Flynn
Former lieutenant general and head of
the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn, who had briefly 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".
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. 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.[n] 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
Attorney Lin Wood, 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.
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. 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. Karsnitz said that he had "no doubt" that
Wood's tweets played a role in inciting the attack on the Capitol.
In May 2021, Wood (alongside fellow
attorney Sidney Powell and Michael Flynn) was a keynote speaker at
the "For God & Country: Patriot Roundup"
conference in Dallas.
Sidney Powell
Another member of Trump's legal team,
conservative attorney Sidney Powell, denied knowledge of QAnon in
January 2020, though in the following months she retweeted major
QAnon accounts and catchphrases and appeared on QAnon shows on
YouTube.
Upon leaving Trump's team, Powell
remained involved in post-election lawsuits and was embraced by QAnon
followers. Many of them had become discouraged that years of
predictions of a Trump landslide victory and coming revelations about
his enemies had not materialized. Powell's evidence in the lawsuit
she filed in Georgia to overturn the election result included an
affidavit from Ron Watkins. In his affidavit, 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
legitimate evidence of fraud.
In May 2021, Powell asserted at the
aforementioned QAnon conference that Trump "can simply be
reinstated" that "a new inauguration date is set",
eliciting cheers from the crowd. The date for this was supposedly
August 13 of the same year.
Other
On three occasions during 2019 and
2020, Trump's deputy chief of staff and social media director Dan
Scavino tweeted ticking-clock memes QAnon followers use to signify
the countdown until the "Storm". Trump's personal
attorney, Rudy Giuliani, also occasionally retweeted posts with the
#QAnon hashtag and follows many QAnon advocates. Eric Trump,
in a summer 2020 tweet (later deleted), promoted his father's rally
in Tulsa with an image of a large "Q" and the text
"Where we go one, we go all". A videographer found
numerous QAnon supporters in the crowd, identified by their QAnon
shirts showing large "Q"'s or "WWG1WGA"
(short for "Where we go one, we go all").
At a Trump reelection rally several
hours after an FBI counter-terrorism memo linked the spread of
conspiracy theories to anti-government terrorism became known,
WalkAway campaign founder Brandon Straka, a former liberal Democrat
who is now a Trump supporter, addressed the crowd, saying, "Where
we go one, we go all".
Online platforms
Publishing of personal information
On March 14, 2018, Reddit banned one of
its communities discussing QAnon, /r/CBTS_Stream, for "encouraging
or inciting violence and posting personal and confidential
information". After that, 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.
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
the "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 apps – QMAP, Q Alerts! and Q Alerts LITE – from 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 related content
In early 2019, Twitter removed accounts
suspected of being connected to the Russian Internet Research Agency
that had disseminated a high volume of tweets related to #QAnon that
also used the #WWG1WGA slogan.
On May 5, 2020, Facebook announced its
removal of five pages, twenty 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
first month after its August announcement, Facebook said it deleted
1,500 QAnon groups; such groups by then had four million followers.
On October 6, 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.
On July 21, 2020, Twitter announced it
was banning more than seven thousand accounts in connection with
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 may apply
to over 150,000 accounts.
Facebook banned all QAnon groups and
pages on October 6, 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.
In an October 12, 2020, 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 January 2021 attack
on the Capitol 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 on the following 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.
QAnon-related merchandise was widely
available on Amazon's online marketplace in 2018; in 2019, a
pro-QAnon work by 12 QAnon followers neared the top of Amazon's
bestsellers list, possibly through algorithmic manipulation. In
2020, Politico noted that 100 titles associated with QAnon were
available on Amazon marketplace, in many different languages and with
generally positive reviews. QAnon-related merchandise was also
available on Etsy and Teespring, and pages relating to the conspiracy
theory were on Patreon and GoFundMe. On October 7, 2020, Etsy
announced that it would remove all QAnon-related merchandise from its
online marketplace; the products were still available there as of
January 2021. Amazon removed the 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. Parler is one such
"free speech" social media platform which gained 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.
