QAnon



Disinformation is real. Disinformation is necessary. Public riots are being organized in serious numbers in an effort to prevent the arrest and capture of more senior public officials. On POTUS'[s] order, a state of temporary military control will be actioned and special ops carried out. False leaks have been made to retain several within the confines of the United States to prevent extradition and special operator necessity.

QAnon (also known as the Storm or the Great Awakening) is a conspiracy theory, popular meme, howling vortex of madness, and right-wing fantasy about a "deep state" conspiracy against former United States President Donald Trump. It acts as the "grand unified conspiracy theory", and also "fails at every level to stand up to critical examination." Following on the heels of similar bullshit such as Pizzagate (which occupies a small spot on the QAnon map below), QAnon postulates a fantastic web of deceit that wraps up Trumpism, deep state fearmongering, Satanic pedophilia, cannibalism rings controlled by the Democratic Party, investigations into Russian meddling in the 2016 U.S. presidential election, the 2017 Las Vegas shooting, and New World Order paranoia into a package easily and wholeheartedly promoted by Internet cesspools and Alex Jones. It originated in 2017 from a series of incoherent 4chan posts made by someone calling themselves "Q".

The name "Q" is likely based on the US government's top-secret The theories put forth in the conspiracy mirror anti-semitic tropes from centuries past. With that in mind, while they argue their enemies are in a secret Satanic cult, QAnon can ironically be considered such as well.

Q likely wouldn't have become as widespread if it wasn't for social media, particularly Facebook and Twitter. Facebook had in fact been warned about the dangers of its active promotion of conspiracies and QAnon in particular as early as 2016 and 2017 by Brooke Binkowski, then a Snopes employee on loan to them. Facebook did nothing about QAnon for as long as possible since promotion of conspiracies was basically part of their business model.

QAnon's followers have been engaged in countless acts of criminal behavior incited by the conspiracy theory, resulting in the filing of criminal charges and one conviction for domestic terrorism.

Before the beginning
Mike Rothschild traced QAnon's origins to three loosely connected, cultish affinity frauds that preceded it: (1994-2001),  (2001-), and the Iraqi Dinar revaluation (c. 2006-). The three frauds shared three general features with what became QAnon: secret intelligence from a guru, a massive event that is always about to occur, and a secret battle between good and evil. Shaini Goodwin, the leader of the Dove of Oneness, was possibly the first 9/11 truther, a conspiracy theory that later was folded into QAnon.

The beginning
The figure(s) now known as "Q" first appeared on 4chan with this post from October 28, 2017:

HRC extradition already in motion effective yesterday with several countries in case of cross border run. Passport approved to be flagged effective 10/30 @ 12:01am. Expect massive riots organized in defiance and others fleeing the US to occur. US M's will conduct the operation while NG activated. Proof check: Locate a NG member and ask if activated for duty 10/30 across most major cities.

Another post that followed soon after implied that Hillary would soon be arrested, another failed prediction. Notably, the first post started out with a lie — Hillary Clinton obviously was never extradited — and a prediction that has not come to pass after after 6 years — also, no massive riots in the US.

It's been argued that the genesis of QAnon parallels that of Discordianism.

The alleged plot
What is the "storm" the POTUS spoke about? it is the draining of the swamp, a giant global hurricane of veracity.

QAnon's central premise is that President Trump is secretly working to take down a global ring of elite, cannibalistic, Satanic pedophiles. They also believe that the investigation into Russian meddling in the 2016 election, led by former FBI director Robert Mueller, is actually an investigation into the so-called "deep state", a cabal of evil, money-grubbing Jews globalists, including Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, responsible for everything from a global pedophile ring to the 2017 Las Vegas shooting. What makes this an anomaly is that it presents an alternate world in which the "good guys" are in control of the entire government. According to University of Miami professor Joseph Uscinski, in most other theories, the shadowy conspiracy in control is malevolent.

QAnon crazies also see hints in Trump's actions. According to the enlightened, when Trump awkwardly took a drink from a bottle of Fiji Water at a press conference in November 2017, it wasn't because he was thirsty; it was actually a secret signal to those in the know that the Storm had begun (or was about to begin). Because as everyone knows, Fiji is a hot spot for child trafficking.

Q believers have a tremendous amount of baggage on the crazy train in the form of crank magnetism: special counsel Robert S. Mueller III is actually investigating high-level Democrats, the Illuminati, the Rothschild conspiracy, "Operation Mockingbird" (an alleged 20th century CIA infiltration of the media), fascism, the hidden meaning of Francis Ford Coppola films, and Christian revivalism. Oh, and J.P. Morgan had the Titanic sunk to take out his millionaire rivals, and "John F. Kennedy Jr. faked his death and joined Trump's secret evil-fighting organization, where he writes 4chan posts under the pseudonym 'Q'."

"Q"


Q had the ability to survive usually only seen in cockroaches.

A fictional personality (or, to the faithful, an "anonymous patriot") central to the Storm, going by the name of "QAnon" ("Q" supposedly standing for Q Clearance, a mid-level Department of Energy clearance not used by law enforcement or intelligence agencies), began posting a series of messages on 4chan's /pol/ board in a thread called "CBTS" (Calm Before the Storm) on October 28, 2017. In these posts, Q claimed that Trump was being protected by the military because the CIA, FBI, and Secret Service are all corrupt. Q's postings take the form of cryptic questions, each of which is supposedly a hint, clue, or riddle containing some awesome revelation that would make treasure hunter Nicolas Cage facepalm and exclaim, "Of course!" The questions are usually the type of stuff found in grade-Z spy novels and often contain their own obvious irony, such as this knee-slapper:

Has POTUS *ever* made a statement that has not become proven as true/fact?

The writing style is likely based on that of a race from Star Trek, and several people who claimed to be "Q" have cited inspiration on the character, specifically the Next Generation version of the character.

Eric Hoffer wrote in The True Believer, his 1951 study of mass movements, that "If a doctrine is not unintelligible, it has to be vague; and if neither unintelligible nor vague, it has to be unverifiable." Messages from Q meet all three of these criteria: argument by gibberish, fallacy of ambiguity and unfalsifiability.

Q's postings are known among enthusiasts as "breadcrumbs", because they're thought to be tidbits of information forming a trail that leads to… well, with a bit of imagination, anywhere. And they're vague enough that they could apply to pretty much anything. Many sound like they were written by Deepak Chopra channeling Alex Jones. The phrase "down the rabbit hole" (a reference to Lewis Carroll's ) is popular among believers who feel they are lucky participants in a great adventure where nothing is random and everything has meaning; to "follow the white rabbit" is to be willingly led on a journey of ridiculous speculations regarding Q's postings. Martin Gardner, who analyzed Carroll's two Alice novels in his book The Annotated Alice, understood how easily Carroll's writings could be (mis)interpreted any way the reader desired. This is similar to how QAnon can be interpreted manifold ways.

We do not need to be told what it means to tumble down a rabbit hole or curl up inside a tiny house with one foot up the chimney. The rub is that any work of nonsense abounds with so many inviting symbols that you can start with any assumption you please about the author and easily build up an impressive case for it.

Q who?
Q is supposedly someone with a high-level military security clearance operating under deep cover, but they curiously prefer sending incoherent messages on a non-secure message board (8chan/8kun) that specialize in doxxing, bigotry, and child porn. Tripcodes, the normal password mechanism for 8chan, have been known to be insecure for a long time, and there have been freely available tripcode crackers since 2016. Q's initial passwords are known ("Matlock"). One conclusion from this is that Q is "either ignorant about security or he's purposefully misleading, or both." The password insecurity made it easy, at least for a time, for anyone with some technical ability to seize control of the Q account. A machine-learning analysis of Q drops by OrphAnalytics strongly suggested that there were two different authors: one on the 4chan drops and another on the 8chan/8kun drops. One can therefore refer to the two Qs as Q4chan and Q8chan.

Like Batman, Q's identity is supposedly a deep, dark secret, and so the kookosphere swirls with speculation. Some name "NSA whistleblower" Thomas Drake, whose anti-Obama posture gained him somewhat of a fanbase on the far-right. DoD official and Trump advisor was also among those that followers once commonly pegged as Q (ironically enough, in 2021, he denied having anything to do with QAnon and stated that the movement should have been squashed by the authorities as soon as it surfaced). Others say it's Steve Bannon. Or Trump himself. Or Donald Trump Jr. Or an artificial intelligence.

Adding to this confusion, many "Q impostors" and fakes have appeared, as well as copycat Anons such as "MegaAnon" and "WH Anon", prompting the faithful to conclude that it's all just part of a "deep state" plot to smear QAnon. Coleman Rogers, the co-host of The Patriot's Soapbox livestream, allegedly showed him logging as Q on 8chan, then trying to pretend it didn't happen. One could believe he actually did this, or that he spoofed people to raise his stature and get more donations.

In reality, however, the supposed deep cover agent Q4chan is most likely one or more 4chan trolls, doing it for the shits and giggles. A consensus among journalists is that Q4chan was Paul Furber ("Baruch the Scribe"), possibly with Coleman Rogers ("PamphletAnon") or Tracy Diaz ("Tracy Beanz"). At the very least, Russian troll accounts were pushing the QAnon bullshit to idiots on Twitter before being purged. As is always the case, conspiracy theorists who fell for this have never stopped to wonder if "Q" is just fucking with them.

After a month of initially posting on 4chan in 2017, Q posts migrated to 8chan, allegedly due to infiltration. On 8chan, Fredrick Brennan, a former owner of the 8chan domain, believes that Q8chan is Jim Watkins and his son Ron Watkins. The two Watkins were the final owners of 8chan and the current owners of its successor, 8kun. Brennan believes that the Watkinses knew they needed Q to attract users, although they have denied knowing who "Q" is. A series of email logs have shown connections between Jim Watkins and QAnon influencers. Ron Watkins, who describes himself as "one of the top network defense analysts in the world", left the email logs open to the public. Watkins gave away the game in a 2021 interview for the HBO series Q: Into the Storm, effectively admitting but then moments later denying that he is Q8chan:

It was basically three years of intelligence training, teaching normies how to do intelligence work. It was basically what I was doing anonymously before, but never as Q. [then smiling and clearing his throat] Never as Q. I promise. I am not Q.

Nevertheless, Watkins had the motive for creating Q8chan (ownership of 8chan/8kun), and left an evidence trail that even predated the first Q post (on TheGoldwater.com in 2016-2017, a site that Watkins owns).

"The Storm"


The term "the Storm" was apparently inspired by a non sequitur mumbled by Trump to the press during a routine photo-op with senior military leaders in October 2017:

TRUMP: "You guys know what this represents? … Maybe it's the calm before the storm." REPORTER: "What storm, Mr. President?" TRUMP: "You'll find out."

Most people were content to dismiss this exchange as merely one of what would over time become many, many examples of a terminally stupid old man having a brain fart in front of a reporter. However, QAnon believers have interpreted these bizarre remarks to mean he was recruited by military intelligence to lead a "quiet coup" to restore "integrity" to the U.S. government, possibly because he was surrounded by high-ranking military officers at the time; hence, he will impose martial law and unleash a "storm" of retribution against Satanic Clintonites, Democratic evildoers, Deep State dirtbags, and RINO cucks. And according to one believer, this coup will succeed because "deep state corruption has a heavy Jewish influence" and "the military has a very low rate of Jewish people". The fate of all those arrested varies. Some people believe they'll be sent to Gitmo, while others expect executions to happen en-masse.

So while the shit was supposed to hit the fan in November 2017, with mass demonstrations (and the suppression thereof), a military coup, and the arrest of hundreds of public officials, the fact that November came and went without any of these things happening appears to have had no effect on QAnon's overzealous supporters. On the contrary, it's apparently made it even more popular.

Post-Mueller


In March 2019, the Russia investigation officially ended, with Robert Mueller turning in his report to the Attorney General Barr. There were no mentions of aliens, pedophile cults, false-flag attacks, cannibalism, or any of the other bullshit beliefs held by QAnon believers. There's now been enough time to show that the QAnon conspiracy is still alive and well, despite having one of its core tenets disproven: Mueller is most certainly not using the Russia investigation as a secret means to destroy Hillary Clinton's supervillain organization. In fact, most QAnon believers hailed the release of the report as just another step towards Trump's endgame. The only thing they seemed to take issue with is the idea that Trump said "I'm fucked", because they can't wrap their heads around the idea of their Dear Leader expressing weakness and doubt.

Unfortunately, this is just how conspiracy theories work, and this one is no different. QAnon had a significant overlap with the conspiracy theory that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg secretly died and had been replaced by a body double. Still, upon seeing the theory disproven, its believers doubled down anyway. In other words, despite being unfathomably stupid, QAnon is going to live in the dark corners of the internet for a long, long time.

Evidence against is evidence for


A staple characteristic of conspiracy theories is that they're impossible to disprove. After all, what would be the fun in that? QAnon goes a step further: one of Q's posts explains his various false predictions and claims by saying "disinformation is necessary." Of course it is. This explanation makes QAnon into a so-called "self-sealing" conspiracy: every time it's proven false, that's just the evil cabal making it seem that way!

Stephan Lewandowsky, a professor at the University of Bristol who studies conspiracy theories, noted this self-sealing nature:

Conspiracy theories often serve an ironic function of providing a sense of order in chaos. People would rather believe that there are evil masterminds out there that pull strings on cataclysmic events than accept the occurrence of random events.

This also helps explain the unfortunate longevity of QAnon, even with dozens of failed predictions, the most famous of which was that July 2018 would be "the month the world discovered the TRUTH."

Some failed prophecies include:


 * John F. Kennedy Jr. faked his own death and later pretended to be Trump supporter Vincent Fusca, who was supposed to reveal his true identity at a Trump rally on July 4, 2019.
 * Austin Steinbart, whom many believe(d) to be Q, allegedly received messages from his future self using "quantum computing". In real life, he was charged with criminal extortion and jailed for violating the terms of his pre-trial release for cheating on a required drug test.
 * Hillary Clinton was supposed to have been imprisoned in 2017. Escape hatch: the Hillary you see now is a clone and the real one is in prison.
 * Trump actually won the 2020 election and he's going to be the one inaugurated. When January 20th came and went, predictions came in with March 4th. When that failed, there were still those who insisted he'd be back any day now.

I want to believe!
A primary driver in the QAnon belief system (as with other conspiracy theories) is that people can connect just about anything that Q posts with all sorts of unrelated trivialities in the real world. The psychological basis for this is known as pareidolia — seeing patterns in a random stimulus. This is reinforced with confirmation bias. Some crazy examples of this are QAnon believers saying that following Trump's election loss in 2020 that:


 * "Trump's back-to-back golf outings over the weekend were proof that the president was in control and that all was going according to plan."
 * "Rudolph W. Giuliani's bizarre Saturday news conference at Four Seasons Total Landscaping, on an industrial block in Philadelphia between a crematorium and an adult-video store, with two Q posts in the past year in which he used the words 'landscape.'"

All aboard the crazy train!


Mueller was hired to investigate Clinton, period. If my theory proves to be correct, this will go down as one of the most brilliant sting operations in history.

Train conductors
Pizzagate promoters such as Liz Crokin and David Seaman took a very active interest in this brand new opportunity to spread batshit insanity. Crokin claimed that Sean Hannity was privately "on board" with the conspiracy theory. Seaman, being an old Pizzagater, has plenty of experience weaving bullshit from out of thin air. On December 24, 2017, Q apparently posted a picture of George Washington crossing the Delaware River. Seaman claimed that the painting showed Washington in the act of "starting the American Revolutionary War" (it doesn't: the war started in Boston more than a year before), and excitedly concluded, "so in other words, the second revolution is upon us and the deep state is being taken out now." (In reality, of course, the painting depicts Washington showing dangerous irresponsibility by standing up in a boat, so it might not be such a poor metaphor for QAnon after all.)

On Twitter in 2018, the main promoters ("gurus") were Dave Hayes ("PrayingMedic"), InTheMatrixxx, and QAnon76. Then of course, there's leading birther and InfoWars esteemed crackpot Jerome Corsi, who was hard at work with the stable geniuses of 8chan to "decipher" Q's crumbs. But none can hope to rival professional insanity dispenser Alex Jones, who has enthusiastically endorsed "the Storm" crackpottery (especially the part about a global Clinton-led pedophilia ring, which happens to fit in nicely with his claims that child sex slaves have been kidnapped and shipped to Mars). Or, well, he did, until Qanon and the merchandise around it started cutting into his bottom line and sales of nutritional supplements. Now Jones claims that QAnon is a false flag meant to make conservatives look like a bunch of paranoid schizophrenics (as if they needed the help).

In September 2018, alt-right conspiracy theorist Jack Posobiec claimed on One America News Network that QAnon was gradually developed by two pro-Trump Twitter trolls named "Microchip" and "Dreamcatcher" in fall 2017, drawing inspiration from the 1999 novel Q by four Italian authors under the pseudonym as well as from an anonymous user with the handle "FBIAnon", who proliferated on 4chan at the time of the 2016 election. Posobiec further claimed that at some point, "Microchip" and "Dreamcatcher" left, and the 8chan QAnon posts are now done by people who are in it for the money.

Pundit Curt Schilling promoted QAnon on his Breitbart podcast. Michael Salla, ufologist and promoter of the idea that extraterrestrials are involved in Earthly politics (exopolitics), has promoted QAnon in at least three web articles. Because she didn't look dumb enough already, TV actress Roseanne Barr promoted QAnon on Twitter in 2017 and 2018 to her 900,000 followers.

Sidney Powell
is a Texas attorney who first obtained prominence for defending Michael Flynn in 2019. Both Powell and Flynn are recognized as major figures within QAnon circles. A year after defending Flynn, Powell joined Donald Trump's legal team, who tried to overturn the 2020 presidential election of Joe Biden… only to be fired by Trump's legal team a few weeks after the election. Apparently her multiple baseless lawsuits (filled with embarrassing spelling and formatting errors) and "evidence" that consisted entirely of conspiracy therories and debunked allegations was too unhinged for Trump. Even Tucker Carlson (of all people) pushed back against her claims on one of his shows, asking to see actual evidence. Powell has retweeted several major QAnon accounts, used rhetoric and imagery associated with QAnon on her social media,  and made a live appearance on a YouTube channel run by "War Drummer", a person who runs a heavily Q-promoting fringe conservative blog that also promotes other conspiracy theories, apocalyptic Christianity, and a similar affection for embarrassing spelling mistakes.

In December 2020, Powell, no longer representing Trump, filed an affidavit claiming voter fraud in the already-certified 2020 Georgia presidential election from Ron Watkins, who claimed in the affidavit to "be an information security expert with nine years of experience as a 'network and information defense analyst' and security engineer." The claim was largely based on his experience running the 8chan (8kun) bulletin board, which he could not do particularly well (the board was down for three months in 2019).

L. Lin Wood, one of Trump's campaign lawyers, was also a QAnon promoter, having put "#WWG1WGA" in his Twitter bio. Along with Powell, he filed several bogus election fraud lawsuits following Trump's loss in the 2020 election.

Michael Flynn
Flynn was initially a QAnon hero, even pledging a generic oath with his family, followed by the QAnon motto "Where we go one, we go all!" and hashtag "#TakeTheOath" in July 2020. By November 2021, however, Flynn had called QAnon "total nonsense" and a "disinformation campaign".

Notable passengers

 * Jake Angeli, aka the Q Shaman, who became famous after appearing in the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot.
 * Jim Caviezel, who played Jesus in The Passion of the Christ, started to praise the Q when planning his new movie about child trafficking titled Sound of Freedom. The movie has been showing to sold-out (but near-empty) theaters, indicating that the film's popularity is highly inflated and floating on a sea of bullshit.
 * Congressman Louie Gohmert, a late arrival in 2021.
 * Matthew Lusk ran as a Republican for Florida's 5th Congressional District in 2020. He stated, "I belong to no secret societies or clubs, Q is one of my issues because it's definitely a leak from high places. I follow Q, but I don’t know who or what Q is." Lusk also subscribes to sub-theories of QAnon, namely "Arkancide"/Clinton body count, deep state, and the antisemitic Federal Reserve conspiracy theory ("Federal Reserve Banksters"). Fortunately for the rest of us, he bowed out of the House race before the primary.
 * Markus "Notch" Persson tweeted, "Q is legit. Don't trust the media," and later confirmed that "I might be the most serious I've ever been."  This was one of the factors leading Microsoft to exclude him from the anniversary event of his creation, the popular video game Minecraft.
 * of Operation Rescue indicated her belief in QAnon based on the claim that Trump would put an end to Planned Parenthood.
 * Ginni Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas, pushed a QAnon and a Sandy Hook "truther" video to then-White House Chief of Staff Mark Meadows in an attempt to have him work to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election.

Congressional runnings
People with political aspirations and their belief in QAnon would sometimes lead to them trying to run for an office, sometimes going up into the national stage. The lists below list the Q believers that tried to campaign for the big leagues, most of which, with few exceptions, would end in a dumpster fire.

2020 elections
There were a plethora of candidates during the 2020 elections that had supported QAnon or had social media posts with relations to Q.

U.S. House
• 2

U.S. Senate
• 1

2022 elections
Similar to 2020, several candidates that were alleged to have supported QAnon ran for Congress in 2022, and in some cases attempted to expand with governorship, and even secretaries of state

U.S. House
• 1

U.S. Senate
• 1

Secretary of State
A nameless group funded by millionaire MyPillow huckster Mike Lindell attempted to "control the election system". The name of which eventually turned out to be the America First Secretary of State Coalition. The plan was to run like-minded individuals for secretaries of state in several states, a position that does in fact supervise and certify elections; additionally, they planned to run a candidate for governor of Pennsylvania, who appoints the secretary of state. The candidates have appeared at conferences sponsored by The Patriot Voice, a grassroots organization funded by two QAnoners. Eventually, out of 17 candidates involved in the coalition, only one managed to win the general election. The known candidates were:

• 2

Governor
• 2

A violent ride
QAnon is batshit crazy. Crazy stuff. Inspiring people to violence. I think it is a platform that plays off people's fears, that compels them to do things they normally wouldn't do. And it's very much a threat.

Journalist Mike Rothschild asked an expert in religious-based extremism, whether it was an overreaction to draw a parallel between Al-Qaeda and QAnon — in Juergensmeyer's opinion, it was not. Since inception, QAnon by comparison has radicalized some followers much more rapidly than other religious extremist organizations, e.g. Al-Qaeda and Aum Shinrikyo. For Al-Qaeda, it was more than 10 years; for Aum Shinrikyo, it was 11 years. For QAnon it was October 28, 2017 to January 6, 2018: it was 70 days. Rather than acknowledge that QAnon itself is leading people to violence, QAnon followers often use the No True Scotsman fallacy to portray people committing violence in the name of QAnon as government plants.

2018

 * In January, Buckey Wolfe was accused of "jamming the tang end of a four-foot long sharpened metal-bladed sword-like instrument" through his brother's head. Wolfe had called 911 and stated "Kill me, kill me, I can’t live in this reality" and "God told me he was a lizard." Wolfe was acquitted by reason of insanity and sent to a psychiatric facility. Wolfe had been a member of the Proud Boys, but also had made QAnon-related postings on Facebook.
 * In March, the Reddit board for QAnon was shut down due to "encouraging or inciting violence and posting personal and confidential information", and its moderators were banned from the site.
 * In May, a charity group in Arizona called Veterans on Patrol was patrolling the state, searching for child sex trafficking operations after having stumbled onto a homeless shelter and coming to the dumbest possible conclusion.
 * In June, Mathew P. Wright of Henderson, Nevada was arrested for allegedly blocking the bridge over the Hoover Dam with his home-made armored vehicle and guns; he held out a sign that was linked to QAnon.
 * In July, Pennsylvanian Gardner Boyd was arrested for allegedly threatening to kill Trump and was reported to have made several references to QAnon.
 * In August, Forrest Clark was arrested for allegedly igniting a forest fire in Orange County, California; Clark had previously posted about QAnon and other conspiracy theories.
 * In September, QAnoner/Pizzagater/flat Earther William Douglas was charged with planning to massacre people at YouTube headquarters following the delisting of his channel.

2019

 * In February, in a bizarre incident of QAnon related violence, the man who shot mob boss Francisco Cali, Anthony Commelo, was a believer in QAnon and was motivated by the belief that said mob boss was a member of the deep state and as such attempted to perform a "citizen's arrest" on the man that went badly.
 * In May, QAnon conspiracists insanely misinterpreted a tweet from James Comey and came to the conclusion that the former FBI director was planning to launch a terrorist attack against a charter school; the school canceled a charity event out of fear that "internet vigilantes" would show up to cause trouble. One of the school's event coordinators later said, "We knew the theory itself was not targeting our event and in fact, it appeared that the QAnon [followers] somehow thought they were keeping us safe. But there was concern that the call-outs to the Anon communities to 'protect the children' could entice these people to show up to our event… there was no win for the festival under these circumstances."
 * In May, an FBI memo from the Phoenix Field Office designated several political conspiracy theories (QAnon, Pizzagate, HAARP, New World Order, Sandy Hook massacre) as domestic threats with the potential to incite violence. As evidence, the FBI cited arrests for criminal activities associated with the conspiracy theories.
 * In December, QAnon follower Cynthia Abcug was charged with conspiracy to commit second-degree kidnapping of her own son. She had lost custody of her son because she was suspected of medical child abuse and factitious disorder imposed on another. Abcug had been drawn to a litigious pseudolaw company called E-Clause that was Christopher Hallett and Kirk Pendergrass (associates of ). E-Clause was founded just before the first QAnon posting, and turned out to be a perfect instrument for grifting QAnon-believing parents who had lost custody of a child, the QAnon parents being ripe for believing that the government (specifically Child Protective Services) was part of a pedophile cabal.

2020

 * QAnon supporters are also preying on the mentally ill. In January, a woman was arrested in Colorado for cooperating with QAnon crazies to kidnap her own child from the state's protective custody. According to police records, the mother went "a bit crazy" after Colorado child welfare officials removed her child from her home, and she was subsequently sucked into the QAnon shitshow. She started appearing in numerous YouTube videos alleging that child protective services "has child trafficking rings in certain areas", stopped going to therapy, and allowed a heavily armed QAnon supporter to stay in her home for her "self-defense". The woman was arrested and charged with felony conspiracy to commit kidnapping. According to police, they received a tip-off from the woman's own daughter, alerting them to the planned raid.
 * In March, Neely Petrie-Blanchard kidnapped her twin daughters, who had been assigned full custody to her mother. Petrie-Blanchard was a QAnon follower who got involved with Christopher Hallett of to try to gain legal custody back of her children. By November, the tide of Hallett's failed lawsuits was turning against him, as were some of his followers. Petrie-Blanchard had been working on her lawsuits with Hallett from his home when she fatally shot him in November.
 * In May, a QAnon-inspired Jessica Prim was charged with 18 counts of criminal possession of a weapon (knives). She had also threatened President Joe Biden and attempted to board the US Naval Ship Comfort on livestream video with the knives.
 * In June, Alpalus Slyman led police on a 100 mph (160 kph) two-state chase with his five children in his van after he binge-watched QAnon videos. Slyman had been influenced by journalist-turned QAnon promoter Timothy Charles Holmseth, who claimed to be the sole journalist authorized to represent the (fictitious) "Pentagon Pedophile Task Force".
 * In July, Corey Hurren drove his pickup truck, which contained multiple firearms, through the gates of an important government building in Canada where Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was living at the time. According to Hurren's plea, Hurren, who was suffering from major depression, wanted to arrest Trudeau over Canada's COVID-19 restrictions and its ban on assault-style firearms. After fleeing his vehicle on foot, Hurren was eventually arrested and charged with threatening to cause death or bodily harm to the prime minister and multiple weapons offenses. Less than an hour earlier, Hurren had posted a meme relating to the "Event 201" COVID-19 conspiracy theory to his Instagram account. He also previously posted in March a QAnon meme referencing Q, the "white rabbit", and several other hashtags linked to QAnon (such as WWG1WGA, PizzaGate, etc.)  On March 11, 2021, Hurren was sentenced to six years in prison, along with a lifetime ban on possessing any firearms, for the above incident.
 * In August, QAnoner Cecilia Celeste Fulbright was arrested for allegedly driving while intoxicated, chasing at least two cars, and intentionally crashing into one car and a barrier, claiming that "was a pedophile and had kidnapped a girl for human trafficking."
 * In October, Emily Jolley was charged with second-degree felony obstruction of justice for allegedly kidnapping her son, for whom she did not have legal custody; Jolley was a QAnon supporter and a follower of an group on Facebook.
 * Due to the violence associated with QAnon, the penny finally dropped at Twitter Safety, and QAnon activity was banned as of July 21, 2020.

2020 election-related violence
One of the first signs that the QAnon following would turn violent occurred when votes in Pennsylvania started to turn against Trump in the 2020 US elections. Two QAnon morons with AR-15s were arrested near the Philadelphia vote counting center, having apparently been traveling there to "straighten things out".

On January 6, 2021 in Portland, Oregon, a man named Cody Levi Melby was arrested in a "Stop the Steal" rally outside the Oregon State House for firing five shots into the side of Portland's federal courthouse. Melby in July 2020 had previously posted videos on YouTube sympathizing with QAnon conspiracy theories, and also ironically angrily warned Black Lives Matter protesters in Portland that "every single time you attack a government installation, or a federal facility, that is an act of treason, that is an act of sedition, that is an act of insurrection."

Douglas Austin Jensen, who wore a QAnon t-shirt, was charged with impeding the performance of a police officer and violent entry during the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot.

Joshua Macias, Pennsylvania, founder of "Vets for Trump", and Antonio LaMotta were arrested in Philadelphia for bringing "two handguns, a semiautomatic rifle and a samurai sword" to a ballot-processing center in November 2020; they had driven there in an SUV with a QAnon bumper sticker. Macias was also observed at the 2021 Capitol riot, violating the terms of his bail from the Philadelphia arrest.

Cleveland Grover Meredith Jr. was charged with making threats against Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, and with illegally bringing firearms to the 2021 Capitol riot.

Two of the people killed at the 2021 riot followed Q: Rosanne Boyland, who was crushed to death by the mob, and Ashli Babbitt, who was shot by a Capitol police officer after she broke into the building.

2021

 * In January, Troy Burke from Michigan shot and killed his wife, Jessica Burke after he was convinced he was receiving messages from people within QAnon telling him to kill her. He believed his wife was a transgender offspring of Joe Biden who trafficked children for sex and had connections to the CIA.
 * In August, in another bizarre and sad incident, a Santa Barbara surfing instructor named Matthew Taylor Coleman was charged with killing his two young children with a spear gun. Reportedly, during an interview with the FBI, Coleman explained that he was "enlightened by QAnon and Illuminati conspiracy theories", and the motivation for the murders was his belief that his wife "possessed serpent DNA" and had passed it on to his children, who he feared were now "monsters" as a result.

2022

 * In September, a man in Walled Lake, Michigan (Igor Lanis) shot and killed both his wife and the family dog, in addition to shooting one of his daughters in the back and the leg (reportedly leaving her with "super traumatic injuries"). When police officers went to investigate the situation, Lanis then shot at police; police officers returned fire and killed him. Lanis's other daughter, who fortunately was at a friend's house for a birthday, posted in the r/QAnonCasualties Reddit sub shortly after the incident and blamed QAnon entirely for the incident. According to her, before Mr. Lanis snapped, he had become increasingly obsessed with QAnon and other conspiracy theories online (such as the Big Lie of Donald Trump and COVID-19 vaccine conspiracy theories) after the 2020 U.S. presidential election. Subsequently, as he started spending "all day and night reading stuff on his phone and laptop" immersed in conspiracy bullshit, his personality became increasingly agitated and getting "really pissy over the smallest things". Lanis had no previous criminal record before this incident, and according to his daughter before going down the conspiracy rabbit hole, he was an "extremely loving and happy person", though prone to mental health issues.
 * In late October, the husband of Nancy Pelosi, Paul Pelosi, was attacked and severely beaten with a hammer by an assailant who broke into the couple's San Francisco home and reportedly shouted "where is Nancy, where is Nancy?". The alleged assailant was identified as David DePape, who previously was slightly notable as a nudist activist and hemp jewelry maker in the San Francisco Bay area in the early 2010s. However, sometime in the mid 2010s (perhaps, if one of his blogs is to be believed, due to Gamergate), DePape became more radicalized and started posting (both on Facebook and on various small blogs) angry conspiracy theories that aligned with QAnon (particularly the Pizzagate-oriented conspiracies concerning pedophilia, transphobia, COVID-19 conspiracies, and anti-semitism). In addition, DePape posted other tangentially related conspiracies, such as Big Lie content promoted by Mike Lindell.

As of February 2021, 56 people had committed QAnon-related crimes, including two Pizzagate-related crimes and 27 QAnon followers involved in the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot. More than two-thirds of the offenders had documented mental health issues according to court records. Ten of the offenders had affiliations with other extremist groups: sovereign citizens (6), Oath Keepers (2), Proud Boys (1), and Wolverine Watchmen (1).

2023
QAnoners Bryan Hill and Tracy Jo Remington set tripwires around their house that were connected to flashbangs, A door-to-door salesman was alleged to have received permanent hearing loss from setting off one of the tripwires and the connected flashbang. Hill and Remington were charged with felony assault and conspiracy following the incident. Remington indicated that she might use a sovereign citizen defense. A tripwire connected to a dangerous device is a mantrap, which is a felony in itself.

In the Trump administration
I don't know much about the movement other than I understand they like me very much, which I appreciate. I have heard that it's gaining in popularity. I've heard these are people that love our country. Trump occasionally likes to throw his most insane group of supporters a bone. At one of his rallies, he gestured approvingly towards a man with a "Q" shirt, and this happened because someone on Trump's team thought it appropriate to give the conspiracist a front-row VIP pass. Trump also likes to retweet posts from QAnon accounts, which, while not directly related to the conspiracy, easily lead interested followers back to it. Most recently, he retweeted a post about Jeanine Pirro from an account that had "Q" as its profile picture.

Trump's pastry chef at his Florida retreat is very vocal on Instagram, and revealed that she sought her current job so that she could serve Trump while he takes down the alleged Democratic pedophile conspiracy. Her posts also suggest that she has interacted with the president's security detail regularly and shows that she enjoys baking QAnon-themed pastries for Mar-a-Lago guests.

While some Republicans do distance themselves from QAnon when confronted with the movement's most egregious behavior, other Republicans appeared to be willing to wink and nudge at the movement... or even outright re-tweet QAnon posters. In particular, Donald Trump was very keen on retweeting QAnon accounts (tweeting at least 90 posts from 49 pro-QAnon accounts since the COVID-19 pandemic began according to a July 12, 2020 Politico analysis), knowing that these people are some of his biggest fans. More troublingly, in 2020, the rhetoric of Donald Trump increasingly started to tack closely to the QAnon narrative, even if Trump did not explicitly mention QAnon in his tweets.

Going viral
All of the dubious claims of this conspiracy theory have been easily debunked, discredited, and immediately recognized as complete and total fabrications, slander, and lies. Despite this, legions of rabid, far-right-wing extremists and conspiracists have embraced and promoted the theory in an increasingly crowded field of loonies inhabiting the cesspools of social media and YouTube. A detailed analysis of the whole fetid affair is documented in a boringly exhaustive copypasta.

In April 2019, the Southern Poverty Law Center documented how the conspiracy theory has strangely become a hit with the sovereign citizen movement, in a stunning example of crank magnetism in action. What makes this strange is that QAnon's base premise is that the government and law ultimately work. However, sovereign citizens and other anti-government extremists believe that they know the "true" law, which has been betrayed by the regular institutions of government, and that the military and Trump will help them save this mythological "true" law.

QAnon has become an all-encompassing conspiracy theory. For instance, in late May of 2019, police in small-town California arrested a crazy lady for building homemade pipe bombs, and QAnon thinks that she was connected to a secret plot by James Comey to blow up a school. This demonstrates that just about anything can be linked to QAnon if one happens to be creative enough.

As a show of just how far this insanity has gone, a QAnon book called QAnon: An Invitation to the Great Awakening was written by many anonymous authors and reached number goddamn 2 on Amazon's algorithmically generated “hot new releases” and best-sellers lists. Among the book's highlights: claims that Democrats eat children, claims that Hillary Clinton runs a global Satanic cabal, and claims that the government created AIDS and Lyme disease. Needless to say, it's a hot mess.

The hacker group Anonymous has since denounced QAnon and Pizzagate, and accused them of being created by state-backed actors and Trump supporters with knowledge of Anonymous's workings to discredit their operations.

Cult, religion, Russian psyop or LARP?
I look at QAnon as a cult… When you get recruited into a mind control cult, and get indoctrinated into a new belief system… a lot of it is motivated by fear. By 2020, QAnon had nearly all of the markings of not just a conspiracy theory, but an outright omniconspiracy cult. Reports have surfaced that some QAnon adherents effectively cut off family and friends to stay with the online QAnon community. According to one man who watched his girlfriend become consumed by the conspiracy, the social isolation and obsession displayed by his girlfriend was reminiscent of losing a loved one to drug addiction. Some people describe that QAnon has effectively brainwashed people close to them into people they no longer know. Terms like "deprogramming" people from QAnon have increasingly appeared in the media.

Where QAnon possibly fails the cult test is in determining who the charismatic leader is. Is it Trump, who is largely ignorant of the details of QAnon? Is it Q who is an anonymous person or persons, whose charisma would seem to be lacking? If one assumes that there is a leader of QAnon, then the 'leader' does not actually force compliance to rules and dogma.

QAnon bears some resemblance to a religion with its focus on prophecy, and its ability to attract white Christian evangelicals, 27% of whom believe in the conspiracy theory.

Russian sockpuppet strongly promoted QAnon on social media. However, cybersecurity experts generally think that it is unlikely that Russia is actively behind QAnon, since Russian psyops have clear objectives unlike QAnon.

In July 2019, a Reddit group called r/QAnonCasualties was created to help people who have lost loved ones to QAnon share stories and advice, and possibly help drag their loved ones out of the wormhole.

There is an argument to be made that QAnon is just live-action puzzle-solving game, but puzzles have correct answers and QAnon never seems to have a definitive answer to the puzzles thus making it more of a case of apophenia. Game designer Reed Berkowitz said that QAnon is not a game, but "A game that plays people."

Q Goes To Washington
On August 11, 2020, QAnon (the conspiracy theory that likes to complain about the "deep state") made significant progress in becoming part of the deep state itself when Marjorie Taylor Greene defeated John Cowan in the Republican primary for Georgia's 14th Congressional District. On November 3rd, Greene defeated her Democratic opponent Kevin Van Ausdal to win her Congressional seat, becoming the first open supporter of the QAnon conspiracy to win a seat in Congress. Greene had previously praised Q as a "patriot" in a video posted to Facebook on November 2017. Unsurprisingly, Greene had previously made racist ranting videos on Facebook, suggesting Islamic nations routinely commit pedophilia, equating Black Lives Matter activists to Ku Klux Klan members, defending Confederate statues, floating a conspiracy theory that the 2017 Las Vegas shooting was a plot to abolish the Second Amendment, describing the election of Ilhan Omar as an "Islamic invasion", and evoking Godwin's Law by calling George Soros a Nazi collaborator. House Leader Kevin McCarthy could have done more to stop her campaign, but he remained neutral. After adding 9/11 conspiracies to her bat-shit beliefs, Leader McCarthy decided to endorse her fully. To no one's surprise, Donald Trump sent a congratulatory tweet in response to her winning the primary, calling her a "future Republican star". Greene earned a key endorsement in May 2020 from white supremacist Chester Doles, who is associated with a variety of skinhead movements, who stated in a post on Russian social media platform VKontakte: "Our friend Marjorie Greene is running for Congress. She’s part of the Q movement. Good friend to have." Greene announced that she would introduce articles to impeach Joe Biden seven days before his presidency even started.

Such was a demonstration of how QAnon was slowly being normalized into Republican populism in 2020. In July 2020, a QAnon mug appeared in the background of a Fox News interview with New York police union head In an interview with  on July 25 2020, Fox News host  said QAnon had "uncovered a lot of great stuff". Social media retweets, hashtags, and memes were posted by Eric Trump, White House deputy communications director Trump's first national security advisor Michael Flynn, and former campaign advisor Roger Stone.

During the 2020 Republican National Convention, a woman named Mary Ann Mendoza (who is an advisory board member for and was also involved with We Build the Wall, at the time indicted for fraud just a few days prior) was scheduled to speak about her son's 2014 death at the hands of a drunk driver who was in the country illegally. Before speaking, however, she tweeted a link to an extremely lengthy thread from a user whose Gab account proudly proclaims it to be affiliated with QAnon. The thread imagined a Hollywood-esque conspiratorial narrative using old Rothschild family and RMS Titanic tropes, implying the age-old conspiracy theory that the Jews run the world. (Among the many gems within this thread are a list of supposed "Original Federal Reserve Board Members", all supposedly linked to the Rothschild family, that didn't even include the first Federal Reserve chairman,, but did for some stupid fucking reason include the .) Although Mendoza deleted the tweet and her speech ended up being canceled due to the ensuing uproar, Mendoza had posted other bullshit in the past (such as linking George Soros to the Rothschild family in a conspiratorial manner, to the point where ONE WORLD GOVT! was of course written in ALL CAPS!) that would not be out of place in a QAnon social media thread.

Becoming a domestic terror threat
QAnon believers will confront facts and reality in court. In 2019, for the first time, the FBI labeled "conspiracy theory-driven domestic extremists" (including QAnon) as a domestic terrorism threat.

In late 2020, QAnon movement adherents started focusing on supporting Donald Trump's dubious claims over the 2020 U.S. presidential election, particularly after Joe Biden won in November and Trump responded by making baseless claims concerning electoral fraud. Due to fears concerning the incidents of real-world violence up to that point, and concerns that this violence will spill into the election itself, several social media sites started cracking down on QAnon. In July 2020, Twitter announced a crackdown on QAnon content. In October 2020, Facebook labeled QAnon a "militarized social movement" and completely banned QAnon across all of their platforms. Also in October 2020, YouTube updated its hate policies to “prohibit content that targets an individual or group with conspiracy theories that have been used to justify real-world violence." banned QAnon merchandise from its marketplace around the same time period. (This "ban", however, was not super-strict; therefore it was often still relatively easy to find QAnon information on these platforms even after the crackdown took place.)



Fears about QAnon violence were realized with QAnon's role in the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot. On January 6th, 2021 (the day that Congress was voting to certify Biden's win), Donald Trump organized a "Save America" rally that included inflammatory speeches by Trump, Rudy Giuliani, and others. The rally devolved into a violent mob who attempted to siege the Capitol building. Several participants were wearing QAnon apparel, or were known as being strongly associated with the movement; many of the ludicrous claims of QAnon were shouted as the mob tried to take over the Capitol.

One woman who was part of this mob, Ashli Babbitt, attempted to break through a door in order to enter the Speaker's Lobby (where lawmakers were evacuating from at the time), and was subsequently fatally shot by Capitol police. An analysis of her social media shows how her exploration of the darker sentiments circulating in online right-wing circles, including a full embracement of QAnon conspiracy theories, had radicalized her to the point of participating in an attempted insurrection, in only a couple years' time.

A man named Douglas Jensen, clothed in a Q shirt, was among the first to break into the US Capitol; he later ended up chasing and menacing a Black police officer.

Shortly after the riots, Cleveland Grover Meredith was arrested for texting plans to shoot the Speaker of the House, Nancy Pelosi. Meredith had put up a billboard saying "#QANON" near his business in 2018, and his social media showed strong interest in far-right disinformation.

A man named Jake Angeli, aka the "QAnon Shaman" (distinguished for wearing a bizarre outfit consisting of fur, a horned helmet, and facepaint, but of course no shirt) entered the Senate floor and demanded to see the person designated to certify the election, Vice President Mike Pence.

This was a wake-up call to many social media companies (where, despite previous bans, plenty of baseless QAnon-oriented misinformation still remained on platforms like Facebook ) regarding the potential violent dangers of the QAnon movement. This prompted them to finally (we hope) take heavier action and remove QAnon from their platform. Shortly after the attempted coup, Twitter suspended 70,000 QAnon accounts, and and  removed merchandise related to the QAnon movement. This was also a wake-up call to government intelligence, who issued a bulletin labeling domestic extremists as the "greatest domestic terrorism threats in 2021", and included QAnon conspiracies as part of the possible motivation.

As of May 2021, 79 QAnon believers were charged with crimes; of these, 40 were charged with crimes in connection with the Capitol coup attempt. One of the alleged insurrectionists, Stephen Baker, has a priceless pseudonym: "Stephen Ignoramus". Before the insurrection, Ignoramus had been recorded on YouTube spewing forth on Holocaust denial, anti-women's suffrage and rights, homophobia and racism.

QAnon and Jews
Despite being inherently antisemitic, the QAnon conspiracy actually has Jewish adherents, particularly orthodox Jews. This occurred because of a QAnon campaign on Telegram called "Save the Children Israel" (which ripped off the charity logo). There is even a Hebrew QAnon channel on Telegram.

QAnon, New Age, and the broader wellness movement
New Age, wellness, and alternative medicine communities have long been known to have a more conspiracist side, including an anti-science oriented distrust of authority, and a rooting in rejected and supposedly "suppressed" knowledge. While the broader part of this loosely defined crowd is more associated with the political left, there's long been parts of it that are strongly into New World Order and shadow government conspiracies, etc., and who overlap with libertarian and sometimes alt-right influences. Perhaps the most iconic example of a New Ager inclined to fully embrace QAnon is the Q Shaman, one of the more notorious participants of the 2021 U.S. Capitol riot, who displayed an eccentric mix of New Age and conspiratorial views.

Long before QAnon, some wellness and New Age oriented platforms were already well known for fully embracing conspiracy theories. For example, Gaia Inc. has long been associated with promoting conspiracy theories. Those on this fringe side also have a long history of supporting anti-vaccination ideology. For instance, in a article in 1994, Loring Dales, the chief of the California Health Department's immunization branch at the time, described "New Age" groups (and religious groups) as a social factor driving vaccine hesitancy at the time. And despite being polar opposites politically, in 2017, showed that the store of wellness-oriented Goop and conspiratorial-oriented Infowars often sold similar snake oil, just with different branding.

So, naturally, some people in these communities were susceptible to a blending of spiritual and health-related beliefs with the conspiracism of QAnon – in an example of what researchers call "conspirituality" – various conspiracy theories spreading through disinformation, and mixing with the pre-existing spirituality and often bullshit health practices of the New Age movement.

During the COVID-19 pandemic, QAnon integrated the ideology of the anti-vaccination movement into their omniconspiracy cult, and while parts of the New Age world began to overlap with QAnon earlier on, this helped the conspiracy theory advance into the broader and more left-leaning wellness movement in 2020. Shared beliefs, such the notion that "Big Pharma" and other equivalent boogeymen were secretly trying to control the political and social order, helped bridge the gap.

QAnon's surface-level focus in 2020 on sex trafficking, and wellness influencers targeting other like-minded individuals with attractive messaging that hid the racism, bigotry, and ugliness of the movement (a phenomenon that was dubbed as by a researcher named Marc-André Argentino)  were additional factors furthering the crossover between QAnon and the wellness, New Age, and alternative health communities. This has alarmed other members of the wellness and New Age communities who recognized that QAnon's core racism, anti-Semitism, and link to violence was incompatible with much of the philosophy that these communities promoted.

Decline and evolution during the Biden administration
When the sudden mass arrest of their opponents didn't materialize and Joe Biden was sworn in without a hitch on the 20th of January, some of the QAnon faithful appeared to lose hope, with a handful even admitting their mistakes and moving on with their lives. Some of them, however, merely did what they have always done when a Q prediction failed to come true: they moved the goalposts. Despite the days passing uneventfully with Trump sitting in retirement in Florida and Biden doing his job in the White House, the more hardcore believers of QAnon continued insisting that executions, military operations and the dramatic return of Trump was just around the corner. A new date was selected for Trump's victory over his perceived enemies: March 4.

This particular date was arrived at by using sovereign citizen logic. Since (according to them) the United States ceased to be a real country in 1871, every government since then has been illegitimate. QAnon supporters latched onto this theory, using it as evidence that Biden is NOT the President, and that March 4 (the old date for Presidential inaugurations, used until 1933) is the inauguration date of the true Republic. (Of course, by this logic, Trump could never have been a legitimate President either, since he himself was inaugurated on 20 January 2017, on the "false" inauguration date of a "non-existent" country. Not that this seems to bother any of these people...) There is absolutely no credible evidence to support any of these claims but they nonetheless became wildly popular amongst believers desperate for any ray of hope. The social media posts about March 4 being significant even caught the attention of security forces in Washington (who decided to stick around until March 12 partly because of this) and also the Trump International Hotel in DC, which seemed eager to capitalize on the potential influx of Trump fanatics. Prices for rooms at the hotel were more than doubled for the date in preparation.

Predictably, on March 4th... nothing happened. Also predictably, in response to yet another failed prediction, some QAnon followers quickly labeled the March 4 prediction as a "false flag". Moving the goalposts again, a new date was chosen: March 20th, 2021, due to this being the anniversary date of the Republican party's founding. Predictably, apart from QAnon's involvement in a few anti-vaccination and anti-COVID-19 restrictions protests on this date, nothing happened once again.

With no new official "Q drops" for months, even as random dates for the supposed mass arrest continued to be proposed on social media, some people started moving into other conspiracy theories. Others gave up, feeling abandoned by the movement, and started to rehabilitate themselves out of the QAnon cult.

By January 2022, QAnon had devolved into a schismatic group of backstabbers, accusing each other of grifting and fighting for audience share in a declining market.

The return?
Strangely enough, on June 24th, 2022, Q, or someone with Q's password has been posting again on 8kun.

Greatest crossover event in conspiracy history
I don’t like to talk about that stuff [Satanism] because it gives those anti-Q people way too much fuel for the fire. There are some truly glorious examples of QAnon stupidity; appropriately there is no "I" before the "Q". Whoever "Q" is, they've managed to pull elements from just about every conspiracy theory under the sun. Here are some highlights.

RMS Titanic
QAnon followers think J.P. Morgan sank the Titanic to form the Federal Reserve. Oh yeah, we're starting you off in the deep end, folks. So to speak. The story goes that many wealthy businessmen were on the Titanic, all of whom opposed the Federal Reserve, and J.P. Morgan intentionally built the Titanic without safety measures to get them all killed. There's also a version of the story that says the men were opponents of the income tax.

Trump's secret war
Just about every aspect of the Trump-Russia thing with Trump and Russia Mueller investigation has been shoehorned by QAnon believers into their narrative about a secret war being fought between Trump and the "deep state". They think that Trump was recruited by military intelligence to fight this deep state because, apparently, we trust the military but not the rest of the government. Key events highlighted by the QAnoners include the raid on Trump's personal lawyer, Michael Cohen (the cabal becomes more aggressive), and Trump's missile strike on Syria (Trump wanted to accommodate the cabal's wishes for some fucking reason).

JFK Jr.
In 1999, John F. Kennedy Jr. died in a tragic plane crash on his way to a family wedding. Or is that just what he wants you to think? Nah, he's pretty damn dead, but QAnon followers have found a bizarre way to work him into their inane imaginings. Hardcore Q believers think that JFK Jr. is actually still alive, having faked his death to secretly fight the evil cabal. Some of them think JFK Jr. is actually Q, and they hold that he faked his death to escape the same fate as his father, who they think was assassinated by the deep state. If JFK Sr. had not been assassinated in 1963, he would have been 104 at the time of the QAnon gathering. Pretending that QAnoners are right, his lifetime of poor health makes such longevity highly unlikely.

The idea gained prominence thanks to the far-right Pizzagate whackjob Liz Crokin going on about it on YouTube, explaining her belief that Q's references to JFK Jr. must mean that he is JFK Jr. and that any ridicule she receives over this stupid idea proves her right. As further evidence, Q believers tout a fake quote from JFK Jr. saying, "If my dear friend Donald Trump ever decided to sacrifice his fabulous billionaire lifestyle to become president he would be an unstoppable force for ultimate justice that Democrats and Republicans alike would celebrate." The fake quote was debunked, of course, not that any QAnon followers would actually give a shit.

To add the shit cherry on the weird-ass cake, some Q followers also picked out a random guy standing at one of Trump's rallies, identified him as a man named Vincent Fusca, and then decided that he must actually be JFK Jr. in disguise. According to them, JFK Jr. is just biding his time until he thinks it's the right moment to emerge from hiding, confirm QAnon, and then replace Mike Pence as Trump's running mate. That all seems, uh, rather unlikely.

On November 2 2021, in a spontaneous event that surprised even extremism researchers, a significant number of QAnon believers (some waving "Trump / JFK Jr." flags) appeared in downtown Dallas near, where John F. Kennedy (JFK Jr.'s father) was assassinated in 1963. They were convinced that JFK Jr. would appear at the plaza, perhaps with several other dead celebrities, at precisely 12:29PM, and announce that he would run for office alongside Donald Trump. Many of these people were followers of a man named Michael Brian Protzman (known online as Negative48). Protzman ran a Telegram channel that combined Protzman's, deeply anti-semitic content, predatory financial scams (often involving cryptocurrency), gematria, QAnon phrases, passages from the Bible, and a strange fantasy world where John F. Kennedy and were the physical second incarnation of Jesus and Mary Magdalene and Donald Trump was the Holy Spirit.

Unfortunately for these QAnon believers, the dead remained deceased and the prediction was yet another dud. Nonetheless, in another sign that QAnon had turned into an outright cult, many of Protzman's most fervent supporters stayed in a local hotel for many days afterwards. There, Protzman continue to preach his nonsense to his devoted believers, such as how the musicians who played at a November 2 2021 Dallas concert were actually dead celebrities such as Elvis Presley and  in disguise. Despite his repeated failed predictions, after the November 2021 event, Protzman managed to entice a small core cult to stick with him by making up fresh new conspiracies, such as one where the Russian invasion of Ukraine was somehow part of a plan to uncover Joe Biden's criminality so that he could be replaced with Trump (who, in Protzman's new conspiracy, was now bizarrely Kennedy in disguise). After years of financially ruining his cult members and tearing apart families to the point where child protective services had to get involved in one case, Potzman died due to a dirt bike accident on June 30, 2023.

Deep state puppet masters
QAnon has also gone with the mandatory George Soros conspiracy theories, but his post "exposing" the leaders of the deep state dusted off some oldies but goodies. Specifically, the Rothschilds, who QAnon sees as significant architects and financial backers, despite their family banking business making less than a percent of what Walmart makes in a year. The family's richest member has a smaller net worth than George Lucas, and their assets are spread out across hundreds, maybe thousands of people. They ain't the puppet masters of shit.

Strangest of all, Q also fingers (heh heh) the House of Saud as being backers of the deep state, which doesn't really mesh with the fact that they seem to be among Trump's closest friends on the global stage. Apparently, selling weapons to the deep state against the wishes of Congress is the path to defeating the deep state. Who knew?

Finally, what QAnon sub-conspiracy would be complete without that old classic, Satanism? Q thinks the Rothschilds are the head of a global Satanic cult which includes the Soros family, the Clinton family, and the Sauds. The three main dynasties, Soros, Saud, and Rothschild, form the so-called "Triangle" because why fucking not bring the Illuminati into this bullshit too?

CIA psyops and fake news
A central feature of Trumpism and QAnon is the concept of fake news. Q has taken it a step further with the concept of "Operation Mockingbird". According to Q, the Central Intelligence Agency (check one off the list) is manipulating the media and has been since the JFK assassination (check). QAnon followers call these CIA operatives "Black Hats", and claim that Black Hats spend their days digging around through classified data with the intent of fabricating fake news stories to pass on to the mainstream media. Apparently, the "Black Hats" are paid with CIA black budget money and foreign accounts; Q specifically mentions the Panama Papers (check) as an example of how this works.

Christianity, pedophilia, sex trafficking, and Hollywood
Polaris, the charity that operates the National Human Trafficking Hotline, had to issue a statement discouraging people from reporting that children were being sold inside expensive cabinets online because callers were flooding its phones with a Q-adjacent conspiracy. The inundated hotline is one example of a problem each of the anti-trafficking representatives I spoke to raised: Even if QAnon is bringing people’s attention to child trafficking in general, it's focusing that attention specifically on a sensationalized, largely inaccurate picture of what trafficking looks like. And that can pull focus and resources away from the actual problem. QAnon (in a similar fashion to Pizzagate) pays an obsessive amount of attention to conspiracy theories surrounding pedophilia and child-sex trafficking, particularly the notion that there is a global conspiracy involving a ring of Satan-worshiping, child-molesting criminals led by prominent Democrats.

In general, QAnon conspiracy theories can be seen as less a concern about the legitimate issues of child abuse, and more an attack on cosmopolitan culture and social changes in American society – anxieties that can be seen in far older moral panics, such as the Satanic Panic of the 1980s, which also shared a core belief that the wealthy and powerful elite was kidnapping and breeding children for the purposes of pornography, sex trafficking, and Satanic ritual sacrifice. QAnon shares the same "us vs. them" mentality with the older "culture wars" of the Moral Majority, codifying mistrust of science, “big government” and celebrity into a black-and-white moral code that dehumanizes perceived cultural enemies with imaginary horrific crimes. QAnon also shares elements with end times, rapture, and dispensationalism theologies in that there is a "savior" that will lead them away from what they perceive as troubled times (in the mythos of QAnon, the "savior" is of course Donald Trump), and also shares the same obsession with applying current events into an over-arching (if messy) narrative that these theologies often had. QAnon also incorporates Christian phrases like "Great Awakening" and Bible phrases in their rhetoric.

Because of these similarities, in 2020, the QAnon conspiracy theory started becoming popular in certain religious circles, particularly denominations that were part of the. The slow infusion of a political and dehumanizing conspiracy theory into religion has worried some pastors, particularly in the white evangelical churches where this movement was taking hold.



Due to the nature of this conspiracy theory / moral panic, it is no surprise that one of the largest targets of these conspiracy theories is actors and actresses and other entertainers. Despite it being very easy to debunk with a simple Google search, in 2020, rumors spread online from time to time that celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey,, , and others had been arrested for sex trafficking. One QAnon believer spread a list of people who supposedly flew on flights with the financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein, that included several (often misspelled) celebrities that in reality had no connection to Epstein. (Of course, the list failed to include Donald Trump, who does have a connection). This led to predictable abusive behavior against some of the celebrities from QAnon followers on social media.

In April 2020, a "documentary" called Out Of Shadows appeared on YouTube. The video accused Hollywood of being run by Satanic pedophilia rings that also "manipulate the multitudes by spreading propaganda" through music videos, various code words, non sequitur connections to legitimate scandals such as MKULTRA and NXIVM, and "connections" to various past government media regulations and agencies, which the film maker clearly had no idea what they were about. The documentary was created by a Hollywood stuntman named Mike Smith, who had a "spiritual awakening" while recovering from an injury suffered while filming a television show. While avoiding mentioning QAnon directly by name, the film relies on many dubious sources with connections to QAnon or other conspiracy outlets, such as Pizzagate / QAnon promoter Liz Crokin and ex-CIA agent Kevin Shipp (who was originally notable in 2011 for going public with a lawsuit against the CIA for poor working conditions, but in 2020 was more notable for his frequent appearances in NaturalNews columns). It is also notable that Mike Smith's Twitter profile references the "#Qanon" and "#WWG1WGA" hashtags. Bizarrely, one of the pieces of "evidence" this film presented (to prove that Hollywood was being run by Satanic pedophilia ring) was actually a portrait of right-wing media: a montage, put together by, that combined multiple Sinclair media newscasters reading word-for-word a transcript that insinuated that most news outlets (except their own, of course) was fake news. Similar in fashion to how the baseless COVID-19 "documentary" Plandemic spread, the film spread virally via various right-wing influencers.

The obsession QAnon has with pedophilia has often frustrated legitimate organizations dedicated to sex trafficking by clogging anti-trafficking hotlines with false reports, and flooding social media with anti-trafficking hashtags that were often accompanied by baseless conspiracy theories instead of useful information.

The reality of sex trafficking is rather different than QAnon proponents would like to have one believe. While it's true that coercive child sex trafficking exists, it is quite rare. First, the legal definition of trafficking is rather different than most people think: it includes situations in which an underage teen has sex with a john in exchange for money, food, drugs, or shelter, even without a pimp being involved. In such cases, the john is considered the trafficker; this is known as Second, most of the survival sex involving children is because "the child is homeless, has run away from foster care or has been kicked out by their parents, often due to being queer or transgender. Many of these kids end up trading sex for money, drugs or a place to sleep because it’s their only way to survive." The problem for these homeless teens is often that foster care and other support systems that could keep them off the streets and out of prostitution are often chronically underfunded. So, the situation then is that deeply conservative parents form a pool of people who are likely to reject their LGBTQ or nonconforming kids, who hate taxes and funding social services, and who form a base for QAnon recruitment. This amounts to a form of psychological projection wherein QAnon supporters baselessly accuse liberals of the most wildly reprehensible actions for which conservatives are in reality at least partly responsible. Actual pimps with actual locked-up prepubescent sex slaves are exactly as rare as you'd expect any business that appeals to such a niche demographic as pedophile rapists to be.

To underscore this point, one of the centers of QAnon on the Internet (being the place where "authorized" "Q drops" have been posted since around 2017) is 8chan (and its newest incarnation, 8kun). In fact, as noted above, the founder (and current arch-nemesis) of 8chan, Fredrick Brennan, believes (with some credible evidence) that the current owner of 8kun, Jim Watkins, is one of the posters of "Q drops". Ironically, in the past, 8chan has been booted off hosts and was temporarily delisted from Google for being a haven of child pornography. Furthermore, on October 2020,  revealed that NT Technology, a hosting firm owned by Watkins, hosted several domain names suggestive of child pornography, with the domain names containing terms such as "preteen" and "child" alongside graphic terms for genitalia and words like "rape".

In June 2019, the tax collector of Florida at the time, Joel Greenberg, was arrested by federal agents for stalking, due to an alleged incident where he harassed a political opponent working in the Seminole County school system with messages from fake "concerned" students and teachers. The messages allegedly contained false accusations that, among other falsehoods, the opponent engaged in sexual misconduct with a student. Later, in a sign that perhaps these false accusations were merely Greenberg engaging in projection, the alleged charges against Greenberg expanded to (among many other charges) an allegation that Greenberg engaged in sex trafficking of a minor. In late March 2021, it was revealed by the New York Times that the investigation also had expanded to include whether a close associate of Greenberg and heavy Donald Trump supporter, Republican Representative had a sexual relationship with a 17-year-old and paid for her to travel with him. Faced with the prospect of an actual high-profile lawmaker who may have been involved with exploiting a minor (but, inconveniently for the QAnon narrative, not a Democrat), QAnon members... accused the Department of Justice and other members of the "deep state" of attempting to "target" Gaetz, and accused the New York Times of "SMEARING" "MAGA Patriots". Some QAnon members even mistakenly thought that the allegations were an attempt by Joe Biden to take out a potential threat for the 2024 presidential election... even though the investigation largely took place during the Trump administration.

Deep state bio-engineered viruses and nefarious humanitarianism
The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic added yet another layer to the conspiracy. A prominent QAnon YouTuber named Jordan Sather (apparently not realizing that multiple strains of coronavirus exist for multiple species) claimed that the coronavirus was a “new fad disease”, and conspired the virus might have been planned by the "deep state". To prove this, he referenced a "patent for the coronavirus", citing a 2015 patent for a vaccine for a disease that only affects chickens. Sather further tweeted that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was a significant contributor to the group investigating this vaccine (indeed the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was a contributor to this research institute, a group that focuses on farm animal infectious disease ). Of course, Bill Gates is part of the "deep state" so Sather implied that "something is definitely fishy with this". Naturally, misinformation that Bill Gates actually created the coronavirus spread like wildfire in the conspiracy social media, crossing over even to anti-vaccination sites like NaturalNews with batshit insane intensity (NaturalNews, true to form, implied that Bill Gates owned "the patent on coronavirus", and this is part of his effort to depopulate the planet. ). Fortunately, Jordan Sather has the perfect bullshit cure for you to drink to wipe out this coronavirus (or in fact every disease known to man): Chlorine dioxide bleach! Miracle Mineral Supplement!

Other assorted insanity
Of course, the globalist cabal doesn't stop with just Soros, the Sauds, and the Clintons! No, it goes much deeper than that.
 * Trump himself retweeted two posts in October 2020 claiming that SEAL Team Six actually failed to kill Osama Bin Laden, and that Obama and Biden had them all assassinated to cover it up.
 * One of Q's rambling threads suggests that Angela Merkel is the daughter of German dictator Adolf Hitler (because why the hell not?) Note that Merkel was born nearly TEN years after Adolf Hitler's suicide.
 * Queen Elizabeth II was part of the cabal and had Princess Diana assassinated by MI6, and somehow this is related to Angela Merkel.
 * Kim Jong Un is a puppet ruler placed in charge of North Korea by the CIA in order to start a war if they need one.
 * The Las Vegas Mandalay Bay shooting was an inside job. (of course)
 * US Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz hired MS-13 to assassinate DNC staffer Seth Rich in retaliation for stealing documents.
 * Online furniture and home goods store is secretly operating a child trafficking ring because... furniture prices are "extremely high" and are "all listed with girls' names"  This false conspiracy theory itself caused actual harm to children.
 * The elite are kidnapping children, terrorizing them, bleeding their blood out, and drinking it in a Satanic torture dungeon ritual sacrifice in order to achieve immortality and get high on… adrenochrome? This is highly reminiscent of the blood libel canard, and can be considered a link between QAnon and anti-Semitism.  Why the elite would need to kidnap children in order to make something which can easily be synthesized by any educated chemist and which apparently does nothing except give users a severe headache has not been adequately explained.
 * Through the miracle of crank magnetism, somewhere in 2018 (probably simultaneously with getting banned on Reddit) the QAnoners discovered the joys of New gematria. Not a day goes by without a Tweet copying a string of popular Q related hashtags including #Gematria in the chain. At least one QAnon-related site has also claimed that the "deep state" is also using gematria. Ironically the non-Q gematria crowd includes Trump as part of the NWO complex and source of the problem, and the two camps pretty much ignore each other's existence. For a bit of individuality and claim to fame, Q has taken a stance that Trump's penchant to Tweet in all capital letters has a special meaning and they pay extra attention to those missives.
 * Bill Gates created fake snow in order to destroy Texas. This one is so easy to disprove, with the charring being generated by the lighter they use to try to melt it, and the water being absorbed by the ice in the snowball.

International following
As the COVID-19 pandemic swept across the world, QAnon turned into a global phenomenon due to disaffected people searching for easy answers to their economic and personal problems. QAnon followers can now be found in at least 71 countries, with the largest Q community in Germany.

Alongside the pandemic, the movement also gained visibility due to being promoted by US President Donald Trump and other prominent Republicans and the movement's ability to tie in conspiracy beliefs that are prominent in other countries.

UK
QAnon theories became increasingly popular in the UK in 2020, often linked with COVID-19 skepticism or denialism, and often foregrounding #saveourchildren/#savethechildren. It has been promoted by all-purpose conspiracy theorists such as Piers Corbyn, as well as getting interest from celebrities such as Robbie Williams. As early as January 2020, John Mappin, a senior figure in Turning Point UK and a supporter of Nigel Farage, flew a QAnon flag over his hotel in Cornwall, England.

Analysis by The Guardian shows that much of the impetus for QAnon's rising popularity there comes from alternative medicine and spirituality websites. Due to the conspiracy theory's versatile set of beliefs, it has proven able to adapt to different environments and thus spread rapidly. In the US, apparently starting in 2020, alt-med promoters also began promoting QAnon alongside their regular fare of bullshit.

Germany
QAnon has gained a tremendous following in Germany thanks to its ability to ride on preexisting conspiracy theories tied to Angela Merkel by the German far-right. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, German conspiracy theorists used a routine NATO exercise to claim that Donald Trump was secretly helping to "liberate" Germany from the Merkel regime. In Germany, it was the far-right that first glommed on to Q and began aggressively pushing it; they were attracted not only by anti-Merkel rhetoric but also by the theory's antisemitic underpinnings. QAnon rallies in Germany tend to accompany far-right symbols like the old German Empire flag. Most Germans subscribing to the theory tend to be under the age of 50, which reflects previous trends of German anti-establishment right.

The theory might be ridiculous, but in Germany it threatens to be a major domestic terrorist threat. Germany is already seeing an uptick in right-wing terrorist incidents, with neo-Nazi and anti-Muslim cells being caught by police. Most disturbing of all was a February 2020 mass shooting that killed 11 people in the city of Hanau, where the perpetrator left behind a manifesto claiming that an evil globalist cabal was controlling the world. The in June 2019 and the synagogue attack in Halle in October that year have also been linked to rhetoric stemming from QAnon or conspiracy theories related to it.

Some notable Germans promoting the conspiracy theory have included celebrity singer/songwriter Xavier Naidoo, vegan chef and activist Attila Hildmann and former newsreader Eva Herman.

Some Reichsbürger believe in QAnon and a mob of them attempted to storm the Bundestag (German parliament building) in 2020. Notably, American QAnon believers were involved in the 2021 U.S. coup attempt.

In December 2022, German authorities arrested 25 Reichsbürger members for alleged to plotting a coup involving storming the Bundestag (again). Among the arrestees were a minor aristocrat, Heinrich XIII (or Prince Heinrich), and a former German MP from the Alternative für Deutschland party, Birgit Malsack-Winkemann. Other arrestees included Reichsbürger members and QAnon believers.

France
France has one of the biggest QAnon communities outside the USA, with links to the fringes of the Yellow vests protest movement and to COVID denialism.

Glossary
Much of the terminology of QAnon can be found in the dissected map, below. Here are some of the meta-terminology used by QAnoners to communicate among themselves: • 2

QAnon map dissection
As the map shows, QAnon functions as a grand unified conspiracy theory because it lumps in just about every imaginable conspiracy theory (together with some historical reference points and almost no context). There are a number of conspiracy theories that are based on bigotry: antisemitism (e.g. concerning George Soros or the illuminati), anti-Catholicism (e.g., concerning Jesuits), anti-African American (concerning the Obamas), and anti-Masonic (also, often antisemitic), and these are baked into the map. In that sense, QAnon can be used both as a mirror for one's own bigotry and as a powerful crank magnet that can attract all sorts of shit from this "rabbit hole".

Notably missing from these two maps is CrowdStrike, a security company that was hired by the DNC, but is now part of the QAnon conspiracy and incredibly was part of the GOP defense of Trump in the impeachment inquiry.

Having trouble reading 5-point ALL CAPS ? Is your mind confused by the non sequitur tornado? View the dissected map here: Unhelpfully, the dissection is still full of non sequitur. The dissection roughly follows the map left-to-right and top-to-bottom.

Great Awakening map
"The Great Awakening Map is the quintessential red-pill navigational chart for Escaping the Matrix and Returning to Source.

The map has been spotted on 8chan in accompaniment with the Q-Map, and has served a vital role in The Great Awakening and Full Disclosure Movement across the entire globe.

Over a decade of metaphysical research was collected prior to the map's release in mid-2018."

The map is actually quite similar to the QAnon map above but regurgitated with different spaghetti code.

Real world "Q" clearance
In the Department of Energy, As a Department of Energy clearance, it relates to nuclear weapons research in the United States. It obviously makes sense that this publicly known and extremely important clearance level would be primarily used to hide everyone's secret pedophilia.

Encyclopædia Dramatica's founder Sherrod DeGrippo once also held a Q level clearance while under US government contract. It was not particularly hard to obtain. "L" is actually a higher level of clearance according to the US government careers website.