The rise of QAnon
A bizarre conspiracy theory dubbed QAnon is gripping America’s Right – and moving from the fringes into the mainstream
What is the QAnon theory about?
Its central tenet is that President Trump is waging a secret war against an elite group of Satan-worshipping paedophiles who operate in government, business and the media. These paedophiles, according to the conspiracy theory, include Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, George Soros and a host of liberal Hollywood actors. They kidnap, abuse and even eat children, with the connivance of the “deep state” – officials secretly controlling government policy. However, thousands of members of this shadowy cabal will be arrested in an event called “The Storm”, when they will be sent to Guantánamo Bay, the US internment camp in Cuba that was established during America’s “war on terror”. These arrests will lead to a transformation of US society dubbed the “Great Awakening”.
And where does it come from?
In October 2017, an anonymous figure named “Q” – so called because he claims to be an official with access to top secret data known as “Q clearance” – posted a series of messages on 4chan, a web forum favoured by right-wingers and white supremacists. They laid out the theory and predicted the imminent arrest of Hillary Clinton. Q, or people claiming to be him, went on to post a series of wild claims on 4chan and similar sites: Kim Jong Un is a CIA puppet; mass shootings are “false flag” attacks by liberals. Followers were given a steady diet of “Q-drops”, clues about the global plot, interspersed with conspiratorial clichés like “follow the money”. It has been plausibly suggested that it all began as a hoax, which others then monetised by soliciting donations.
Why is it so popular?
This sort of conspiratorial thinking dates back centuries (see box), but has been supercharged by the internet. Q’s central conspiracy theory was proceeded by a similar one, dubbed #Pizzagate, which took hold during the 2016 US election and posited that Clinton and other top Democrats were running a child sex-ring in the basement of a pizzeria in Washington DC. (In 2016, a North Carolina man armed with two loaded guns went to the pizzeria, and discovered there was no basement there and no children in it.) QAnon, as it became known, is a sort of uberconspiracy theory, so vague and sprawling that it has absorbed many others: anti-vaccination fantasies; the idea that Covid-19 is a hoax; those involving the Kennedy family. One popular version claims that John F. Kennedy Jr faked his fatal plane crash in 1999 and will emerge as Trump’s vice-presidential candidate.
What’s different about QAnon?
It seems to be not just a theory, but something more like a movement, perhaps even a Trumpist cult. QAnon has an evangelical aspect to it: adherents are encouraged to convert friends and family, a practice they call “red-pilling” in a reference to the film
The Matrix, whose protagonist’s eyes are opened when he takes a red pill.
In June, a “Q-drop” encouraged followers to take “the oath”: a version of that taken by US senators, followed by the words: “Where we go one, we go all”, abbreviated to “WWG1WGA!”.
How far has it spread?
It’s big, but it’s hard to say quite how big. QAnon first hit the headlines in summer 2018, when Trump supporters began wearing clothes bearing the letter “Q” at his rallies; but it has exploded on social media this year. QAnon-ist David Hayes notched up 33 million views for his YouTube videos explaining its tenets. The Guardian last week reported that there were 170 QAnon groups on Facebook and Instagram, with some 4.5 million members. The pandemic seems to have made people more susceptible: the BBC found that membership of public groups rose by 700% from March. Twitter recently banned 7,000 accounts that had posted QAnon material and had launched coordinated attacks on enemies. However, a recent Washington Post poll found that most Americans, Left and Right, had a very negative view of QAnon.
Is it influencing US politics?
Yes: some Republican candidates have sought to tap into the movement’s growing popularity. So far in this election cycle, around 50 avowed QAnon supporters have run or are running for national office. One, Marjorie Taylor Greene, this month secured the Republican nomination for a safe Congressional seat in Georgia, having previously described QAnon as “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to take this global cabal of Satan-worshipping paedophiles out”. Trump himself has retweeted messages from QAnon-supporting accounts; his former national security adviser, Michael Flynn, recently recited the oath in a Twitter video. One of Trump’s sons, Eric, posted the same slogan on Instagram this summer; some fanatics have even claimed Trump himself is Q.
How dangerous is QAnon?
There is a long history of Americans motivated by paranoid farright theories committing violent crimes. The FBI last year labelled QAnon a domestic terror threat. In 2018, a heavily armed man blocked a bridge over the Hoover Dam with an armoured truck; he claimed to be on a QAnon-related mission. In 2019, a New York man was accused of shooting dead a Mafia boss after becoming obsessed with QAnon.
Can’t it be debunked?
Unsurprisingly, there’s a mountain of evidence which could debunk it: Q’s founding claim, that Hillary Clinton would shortly be arrested, was false. But like many such theories, it seems to be hard to rebut. Q himself has since claimed that his false predictions were deliberate, declaring that “disinformation is necessary”. “It’s too easy to dismiss this as a hustle or a joke that went out of control,” says Ethan Zuckerman of the MIT Media Lab. “But for some very large number of people, this is a reflection of how they think the world works.”