Indeed, many have legitimate concerns about the government’s response to the pandemic. Media Matters has compiled a list of 77 candidates for congressional seats who have indicated support for QAnon and at least one of them, Georgia’s Marjorie Taylor Greene, will in all likelihood be elected in November 2020.Ġ6:24 What is QAnon and why is it so dangerous? – video explainerįew of those who turned up at these events would describe themselves as QAnon supporters. QAnon is gaining traction as a political force in the Republican party in the US. Participation in QAnon also often involves vicious online harassment campaigns against perceived enemies, which can have serious consequences for the targets. While most QAnon followers will not engage in violence, many already have, or have attempted to, which is why the FBI identified the movement as a potential domestic terror threat. When Twitter took similar action, it limited features for approximately 150,000 accounts. The largest Facebook groups had approximately 200,000 members in them before Facebook banned them. It’s a kind of participatory internet scavenger hunt with perceived high stakes and a ready-made community of fellow adherents.Įxperts in conspiracy theories point out belief in QAnon is far from common.
Cryptic and elliptical, they often consist of a long string of leading questions designed to guide readers toward discovering the “truth” for themselves through “research”. “Q”, posing as a government insider with top security clearance, has made more than 4,000 posts so far. Another QAnon canard is a modern remix of the age-old antisemitic blood libel. The idea of the all-powerful, world-ruling cabal comes straight out of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, a fake document used throughout the 20th century to justify antisemitism. QAnon evolved out of Pizzagate and includes many of the same basic characters and plotlines without the easily disprovable specifics.īut QAnon also has its roots in much older antisemitic conspiracy theories. QAnon has its roots in previously established conspiracy theories, some relatively new and some a millennium old. QAnon is a wide-ranging and baseless internet conspiracy theory that has been on the fringes of rightwing internet communities for years, but its visibility has exploded in recent months amid the social unrest and uncertainty of the coronavirus pandemic.
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