Explaining the conspiracy theorists known as Qanon

Those watching President Donald Trump’s rally Tuesday in Tampa, Fla., couldn’t help but be exposed to a fringe movement that discusses several loosely connected and vaguely defined — and baseless — conspiracy theories.

In one shot on Fox News, the president was partially obscured by a sign in the crowd reading “We Are Q.” In another shot during the president’s speech, a sign promoting the debunked Seth Rich conspiracy theory, with the hashtag #Qanon, came into focus in the center of the screen. Some attendees wore T-shirts with a blocky Q. Others held up signs with the letter.

They were all self-described “followers of Q,” an anonymous person or group of people who claim to be privy to government secrets. That supposedly classified information has been revealed on the 4chan and 8chan message boards and spread around mainstream internet platforms like Youtube, Facebook and Twitter. Q has attracted people — the exact number is hard to know — eager to consume his “breadcrumbs,” or new details in a sprawling web of conspiracy theories.

Give me the basics so I can try to understand what’s going on

Here is the short version: Q claims to be a government insider exposing an entrenched, international bureaucracy that is secretly plotting all sorts of nefarious schemes against the Trump administration and its supporters. The character uses lingo that implies he or she has a military or intelligence background.

It’s a stew of various, but connecting, conspiracy theories that generally hold Trump as a conquistador battling a cabal of anti-american saboteurs who have taken over government, industry, media and various other institutions of public life in a plan to ... well, the overarching goals of the nefarious actors are not clear.

Give me the slightly longer version

A growing group of people (more on the scale and scope of that community below) are coalescing around a collection of theories and half-thoughts that they believe reveal an untold story of current world events. To decode what they believe is actually happening, followers of Q sift through the president’s tweets,

CHRIS O’MEARA / AP Supporters of President Donald Trump shout down a CNN news crew before a rally in Tampa, Fla. Amid the “Trump 2020” placards, the “Women for Trump” signs and other T-shirts, the most inscrutable message that came out of Trump’s Tampa rally on Tuesday...