QAnon
QAnon is a far-right American political conspiracy theory and political movement that originated in 2017. QAnon centers on fabricated claims made by an anonymous individual or individuals known as "Q". Those 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.
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.
Background
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, 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 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.File:Million MAGA March IMG 4606a.jpg|thumb|alt=Man wearing a t-shirt with a design consisting of a block letter "Q" overlaid with an American flag pattern|A pro-Trump protester wearing a t-shirt emblazoned with a common QAnon logo, at the "Stop the Steal" rally on November 14, 2020
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 and Coleman Rogers, 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.