Qanon’s riot role.
WASHINGTON — The siege on the U.S. Capitol played out as a Qanon fantasy made real: The faithful rose up in their thousands, summoned to Washington by their leader, President Donald Trump.
They seized the people’s house as politicians cowered under desks. Hordes wearing T-shirts emblazoned with the “Q” symbol and toting Trump flags closed in to deliver justice, armed with zip ties and rope and guns.
The “#Storm” envisioned on far-right message boards had arrived. And two women who had died in the rampage — both Qanon devotees — had become what some were calling the first martyrs of the cause.
The siege ended with police retaking the Capitol and Trump ultimately being impeached. But the failed insurrection marked a grim milestone in how Qanon’s paranoid conspiracy theory has radicalized Americans, reshaped the Republican Party, and gained a forceful grip on right-wing belief.
Born in the internet’s fever swamps, Qanon played an unmistakable role in energizing rioters during the real-world attack Jan. 6. A man in a “Q” T-shirt led the breach of the Senate, while a shirtless, fur-clad believer known as the “Q Shaman” posed for photographers in the Senate chamber.
Twitter later purged more than 70,000 accounts associated with the conspiracy theory, in an acknowledgment of the online potency of Qanon.
The baseless conspiracy theory, which imagines
Trump in a battle with a cabal of deep-state saboteurs who worship Satan and traffic children for sex, helped drive the day’s events and facilitate organized attacks.
A pro-trump mob overwhelmed Capitol Police officers, injuring dozens and one officer later died as a result. One woman was fatally shot by police inside the Capitol. Three others in the crowd died of medical emergencies.
Qanon devotees joined with militia members and white supremacists in the Capitol assault after finding one another on internet sanctuaries: the conservative forums of Thedonald.win and Parler; the anonymous extremist channels of 8kun and Telegram; and the social media giants of Facebook and Twitter, which have scrambled in recent months to prevent devotees from organizing on their sites.
Qanon didn’t fully account for the rampage, and the theory’s namesake — a top-secret government messenger of pro-trump prophecies — has largely vanished, posting nothing in the past 35 days and only five times since Trump’s election loss.
But Qanon’s prominence at the Capitol raid shows how powerful the conspiracy has become, and how quickly it has established a life of its own. Qanon activity has surged on fringe right-wing platforms and encrypted messaging apps in the past week, with believers offering increasingly outlandish theories and sharing ideas for how they can further work to overturn the results of the Nov. 3 contest — with violence, if necessary.
Even as Trump is set to exit the White House, Qanon’s grip on the conservative psyche is growing.
Two Republican members of Congress, Reps. Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado, have voiced support for Qanon, while others have tweeted its slogans. State legislators across the country have further lent it credence while backing Trump’s claims of electoral theft despite a lack of evidence and dozens of swift rejections in court.
“The takeaway from this is that disinformation is a threat to our democracy,” said Joel Finkelstein, cofounder of the Network Contagion Research Institute, a research group that studies online disinformation. “And we’re not nearly done.”
As much of the nation — including leading Republicans — expressed horror at last week’s events, a different narrative was playing out in the parallel online universe that has grown around Trump’s presidency and helped sustain it through perpetual upheaval.
The siege was described on Twitter by one Qanon devotee as “the least we can do.”
Experts tracking the Qanon conspiracy movement believe a new president may only exacerbate feelings of resentment and victimhood that have nurtured the baseless philosophy. Against the backdrop of Qanon, Trump was able to position himself as an outsider, fending off secret enemies, even while in the Oval Office. Once he’s really on the outside, that sense could grow.
“This will be a new cause,” said Mary Mccord, a Georgetown Law professor and former national security official at the Justice Department. “Democrats in the White House.”