QAnon’s ‘Save the Children’ morphs into popular slogan
MORRIS, Ill. (AP) — At a busy intersection in this small Illinois town, Lynn Vermillion smiles at passing drivers who honk their support for the colorful posters she and friends wave: “Save Our Children. Save their Children. Save ALL the Children.”
As the U. S. presidential campaign heated up in recent months, the 57-year-old mother of two and others like her took to city and suburban streets nationwide to join rallies calling for an end to child trafficking.
The “Save the Children” effort emerged earlier this year as a splinter movement from QAnon, the group of internet conspiracy theorists who believe without evidence that President Donald Trump is secretly fighting a supposed network of celebrities and government officials who are running a child trafficking ring.
The movement’s rise has complicated the efforts of the humanitarian organization called Save the Children and other nonprofits that work to help the world’s needy children.
Vermillion, who works in home health, said she is not a QAnon supporter and tries hard to filter out conspiracy theories that enter her Facebook feed. She said she supports the “Save the Children” movement because she wants to protect children and believes Trump is the only candidate taking the issues of child sex abuse and trafficking seriously.
“Why are we finally talking about it? Because we have a president who’s talking about it,” she said last month as she and about 30 others sought to bring attention to the movement in Morris, a conservative stronghold of about 15,000 people 60 miles (about 100 kilometers) from Chicago.
She promoted her event on Facebook, as many other women are doing. Some also use the platform to launch private groups where they swap tips, ru
mors and stories about child trafficking.
Men t ions o f #SavetheChildren on Twitter began climbing in June and peaked in August when the hashtag was used more than 800,000 times during the first week of that month, according to an analysis by the media intelligence firm Zignal Labs conducted for The Associated Press.
The movement gained popularity as posts about QAnon spiked on Facebook and Instagram this year, prompting millions of likes, shares and comments on the platforms, a separate AP review of public social media posts found.
While Trump has not made “Save the Children” part of his campaign, he has twice publicly praised QAnon’s mission. Under his administration, however, federal prosecutors have less aggressively prosecuted child sex trafficking cases.
“I do know they are very much against pedophilia,” Trump said during his televised town hall this month, when asked about QAnon. “They fight it very hard.”
As the movement’s popularity grows, Save the Children — a century-old, London-based humanitarian organization that aided 144 million children worldwide last year with a mission of ensuring kids grow up healthy, educated and safe — found its trademarked name coopted on social media. The charity has repeatedly said it is not associated with the SavetheChildren hashtag used to spread conspiracy theories.
The conspiracies also distort the reality of how people become victims of human trafficking, experts have said.
Washington-based Polaris, the nonprofit group that runs the National Human Trafficking hotline, created a myth-busting resource page on its website focused on debunking some misinformation that surfaced from QAnon after receiving hundreds of calls about human trafficking conspiracy theories over the summer.