Tag: QAnon

Donald Trump Is Gone, But QAnon’s Sex Trafficking Conspiracies Are Here To Stay

After years of propaganda and misleading statistics, child sex trafficking conspiracies have become a gateway to right-wing extremism.

Christine Priola had worked in the Cleveland public school district for nearly 20 years when she resigned suddenly on Jan. 7, the day after she stormed the US Capitol, marching into the Senate chamber with a sign that said, “The children cry out for justice.”

“I will be switching paths to expose the global evil of human trafficking and pedophilia, including in our government and children’s services agencies,” she wrote in her resignation letter.

“This world is run on the blood of innocent children, please look into it,” she told a local news crew a few days later. Continue reading.

Secret Facebook groups reveal America’s top soldiers’ racist beliefs, election lies and QAnon theories

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A disturbing number of Facebook users who belong to America’s military and other special forces have deep-rooted beliefs and views on racism and other conspiracy theories such as the QAnon movement and the falsehoods surrounding the presidential election. 

NBC News has conducted an analysis of hundreds of social media posts shared in four secret Facebook groups for “current and former Rangers, Green Berets and other elite warriors. The publication notes that most of the politically charged content was shared within two groups—SF Brotherhood – PAC and US Special Forces Team Room.

Collectively, there are more than 5,000 Facebook users within those two groups with some users belonging to both private groups. Across the board, the U.S. Special Operations Command consists of approximately 70,000 personnel. Additionally, the special operations forces also have thousands more retired members. The highlighted Facebook posts cover a vast canvas of conspiracy theories. Continue reading.

Watch this insane interview with Trump supporter who is clearly divorced from reality

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Donald Trump so successfully pushed his “Big Lie” about election fraud that his supporters stormed the capitol on January 6th. And now, it seems, conservative lies about the insurrection have convinced some of his supporters that the riots never even happened.

CNN’s Donie O’Sullivan on Saturday conducted a fascinating interview with Kinnet Ehring McSweeney at Trump National Doral.

“And I do believe that the election was stolen and I do believe it was a peaceful rally that day,” McSweeney said, when in fact the opposite is true. “And that, just because people who were in the capitol were wearing Trump shirts and Trump hats doesn’t necessarily make them Trump supporters — anybody can get one of those shirts.” Continue reading.

A QAnon revelation suggests the truth of Q’s identity was right there all along

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The extremist movement’s leader had purported to be a top-secret government operative. But a possible slip-up in a new documentary about QAnon suggests that Q was actually Ron Watkins, the longtime administrator of the 8kun message board.

The identity of Q, the supposed top-secret government operative and prophet of the extremist ideology QAnon, has for years been a fiercely debated mystery. But a possible slip-up in a new documentary suggests the answer was always the most obvious one: Ron Watkins, the longtime administrator of the message board 8kun, the conspiratorial movement’s online home.

Most major QAnon researchers have long speculated that Watkins had written many of the false and cryptic posts alleging that former president Donald Trump was waging war against an elite international cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles. Watkins has long denied his involvement, saying he was merely a neutral backroom operator of the site and never a participant.

But in the Sunday finale for the HBO series “Q: Into the Storm,” filmmaker Cullen Hoback points to what he argues is a key piece of evidence that Watkins had lied about his role in the more than 4,000 messages Q had posted since 2017. Continue reading.

Many QAnon followers report having mental health diagnoses

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QAnon is often viewed as a group associated with conspiracy, terrorism and radical action, such as the Jan. 6 Capitol insurrection. But radical extremism and terror may not be the real concern from this group.

QAnon followers, who may number in the millions, appear to believe a baseless and debunked conspiracy theory claiming that a satanic cabal of pedophiles and cannibals controls world governments and the media. They also subscribe to many other outlandish and improbable ideas, such as that the Earth is flat, that the coronavirus is a biological weapon used to gain control over the world’s population, that Bill Gates is somehow trying to use coronavirus vaccinations to implant microchips into people and more.

As a social psychologist, I normally study terrorists. During research for “Pastels and Pedophiles: Inside the Mind of QAnon,” a forthcoming book I co-authored with security scholar Mia Bloom, I noticed that QAnon followers are different from the radicals I usually study in one key way: They are far more likely to have serious mental illnesses. Continue reading.

Could the people behind QAnon really be doing it just for the lolz?

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There’s a scene in HBO’s new six-part documentary about the rise of QAnon in which Fredrick Brennan, the founder of 8Chan, speculates as to why anyone would want to own a website infamous for hosting everything from mass shooters’ manifestos to child porn to the world’s most consequential conspiracy theory. The 27-year-old, who relinquished his administrative duties in 2016 and now wants to see his creation wiped off the internet, compares it to owning a yacht. The implication being that while neither generate income, both are a trophy or a status symbol for people with money to burn.

The least interesting parts of Q: Into the Storm are the ones featuring actual foot soldiers attending rallies, posting content to YouTube, and talking to filmmaker Cullen Hoback about how they’ve reordered their existence around a mysterious figure’s so-called intelligence “drops.” At its core, the documentary is a character study of the people who created the infrastructure behind the movement. The film excels at demystifying the denizens of a shadowy corner of the internet. There’s the aforementioned Brennan, who constantly strokes a Pomeranian like a cartoon villain, as well as a current 8Chan admin who drinks white wine with ice cubes and is partial to wearing Affliction tees. But at the center of the plot are Jim and Ron Watkins, a creepy father-son duo obsessed with antique fountain pens and raising pigs. They’re who now run the site and who Hoback ultimately concludes are posting as Q. Continue reading.

New doc makes convincing case right-winger who’s denied he’s QAnon’s ‘Q’ is lying

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In an upcoming 6-part investigation into QAnon appearing on HBO beginning on March 21, the man suspected of being the mysterious “Q” — who has promoted conspiracy theories about dark doings in the U.S. government– is confronted by the producers and once again denied the assertion despite substantial information that casts doubt on his refusal to own up.

According to a report from Newsweek, in the first episode of Q: Into the Storm, Ron Watkins, son of 8kun’s founder Jim Watkins, appears uncomfortable while denying being Q under questioning.

he report states, “Many of the extreme beliefs and theories behind QAnon stem from thousands of coded and cryptic messages which began appearing on 4chan—a forerunner of 8chan—before moving to 8kun,” before adding, “The coded messages or ‘drops’ would be interpreted by QAnon followers to form what would evolve into the radical claims made by the movement involving satanic pedophiles and the ‘deep state.'” Continue reading.

Rep. Boebert makes a baffling and conspiratorial claim, saying the GOP may retake Congress ‘before 2022’

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Rep. Lauren Boebert, a far-right GOP congresswoman known for embracing the QAnon conspiracy theory, covered a lot of ground on Monday night during a town hall event in Montrose, Colorado — where she railed against everything from “cancel culture” to the $1.9 trillion COVID-19 relief package that President Joe Biden recently signed into law. Things became especially bizarre near the end of the event when Boebert expressed hopes that Republicans will retake both houses of Congress before the 2022 midterms.

One of the attendees asked Boebert if there is “any hope for the people” when “top-level government officials…. violate the law,” adding, “Will they ever be held accountable?”

Boebert responded, “I want to tell you, I heard someone who is in very close contact with President Trump and the ins and outs of the White House under that administration. They talked to the owners of the Epoch Times, and they said, ‘Don’t change anything, you are right over the target.’ So, anyone who tries and tells you that this is a fringe newspaper — don’t listen to them. I have very good sources that tell me this is very good information.” Continue reading.

Commentary: Here’s why QAnon didn’t show up for Trump’s ‘real inauguration’ on March 4

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Security was bolstered in Washington, D.C., on March 4 after intelligence uncovered a possible plot to “breach the Capitol” by adherents of QAnon, who reportedly believed that Donald Trump would return to power on that date.

Some followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory believed Trump was cheated out of a second term and that March 4 would mark his victorious return to power to confront a secret global cabal of satanist liberals.

“We have obtained intelligence that shows a possible plot to breach the Capitol by an identified militia group on Thursday, March 4,” the US Capitol Police said in a statement. Continue reading.

Life amid the ruins of QAnon: ‘I wanted my family back’

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An epidemic of conspiracy theories, fanned by social media and self-serving politicians, is tearing families apart.

She bought ammunition, camping gear, a water purifier and boxes of canned food. Then, Tyler’s mother started wearing a holstered pistol around the house, convinced that 10 days of unrest and mass power outages were coming.

The chaos would culminate, she assured her son, in former president Donald Trump’s triumphant return to power on March 4, the original Inauguration Day before the passage of the 20th Amendment in 1932.

Tyler, 24, had been living with his mother an hour north of Minneapolis since he graduated college in 2019. The paranoia and fear that had engulfed his home had become unbearable in the months since Trump began to falsely claim that the 2020 election had been stolen from him. Continue reading.