QAnon

[61] The main tenets of the QAnon ideology were already present at 4chan before Q's appearance, including claims that Hillary Clinton was directly involved in a pedophile ring, that Robert Mueller was secretly working with Trump, and that large-scale military tribunals were imminent.

Soon after the 2016 United States elections, two anonymous posters, "CIAAnon" and "CIAIntern", falsely claimed to be high-ranking Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officers, and in late August 2017, "WHInsiderAnon" offered a supposed preview that something was "going to go down" regarding leaks that would affect the Democratic Party.

[63] A 4chan user named "Q Clearance Patriot" first appeared on the site's /pol/ board on October 28, 2017, posting in a thread titled "Calm Before the Storm",[1] a phrase Trump had previously used to describe a gathering of American military leaders he attended.

One of the earlier rumors QAnon followers spread was that such figures as Hillary Clinton, her daughter Chelsea, and Senator John McCain had already been arrested and indicted, and were wearing ankle monitoring bracelets during their public appearances.

[71] In the following months, the QAnon community helped spread other rumors such as the "Frazzledrip" theory, which purported the existence of a "snuff" video showing Hillary Clinton and Huma Abedin murdering a child, drinking her blood and taking turns wearing the skin from her face as a mask.

[72][73] In November 2017, two 4chan moderators, Paul Furber (also known as "BaruchtheScribe",[63] a South African conspiracy theorist with an interest in U.S. politics)[74] and Coleman Rogers (also known as "Pamphlet Anon"),[63] worked with YouTuber Tracy Diaz to promote QAnon to a wider audience.

German Reichsbürger groups adopted QAnon to promote its belief that modern Germany is not a sovereign republic but rather a corporation created by Allied nations after World War II, and expressed hope that Trump would lead an army to restore the Reich.

[134] La Nación reported in 2020 that the Facebook page "QAnon Costa Rica" was spreading misinformation and fake news, called to depose President Carlos Alvarado and praised right-wing figures such as far-right presidential candidate Juan Diego Castro Fernández, and controversial deputies Dragos Dolanescu Valenciano and Erick Rodríguez Steller.

[165] QAnon followers believe the cabal includes Democratic Party politicians like Joe Biden, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, business people like George Soros[10] and Bill Gates,[166] religious leaders like Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama,[10] Anthony Fauci,[77] and entertainers like Oprah Winfrey, Ellen DeGeneres,[10] Lady Gaga[167] and Chrissy Teigen.

[161][159] One key tenet in QAnon's narrative until the 2020 election was the recurring prediction that Trump would be reelected in a landslide and spend his second term bringing about "the Storm" by undoing the deep state, disbanding the cabal and arresting its leaders.

[173] They subsequently made predictions about Trump remaining president or returning to power, such as: QAnon effectively merged with Pizzagate by incorporating its beliefs – namely that children are being abducted in a child trafficking ring, which followers equate with the cabal.

[196][197] These protests and hashtags have often avoided social media restrictions[198] and tend to attract more women and a more politically diverse and younger crowd than typical QAnon groups, including people opposed to Trump and his leadership.

[167][200][201] Travis View wrote in a Washington Post column that QAnon and Pizzagate conspiracy theorists harm the credibility of the fight against child sexual abuse, as their baseless claims are a distraction from actual crimes.

[222][223][224] Q suggested that hydroxychloroquine, endorsed by Trump at the time, was a cure for the disease, and accused Democrats of forcing infected patients into nursing homes, deliberately causing most COVID-related deaths in the U.S.[68] Some QAnon followers have said that the pandemic is fake; others have claimed that the "deep state" created it.

A California father attempted to kill his children for fear that they had inherited "serpent DNA" from their mother, while a Seattle-based member of the far-right Proud Boys who frequently alluded to and promoted QAnon-linked material on Facebook, sought to murder his brother on suspicion of reptilian ancestry.

[266] Religious studies scholar Julie Ingersoll argues that evangelicals have "helped make widespread acceptance of QAnon possible by weaving their theological commitments to apocalypticism, conspiracies and persecution narratives into the larger American culture.

[268] According to the Anti-Defamation League, while "the vast majority of QAnon-inspired conspiracy theories have nothing to do with anti-Semitism", "an impressionistic review" of QAnon tweets about Israel, Jews, Zionists, the Rothschilds, and Soros "revealed some troubling examples".

[180][274][275][259] In February 2022, social media users shared images of a sculpture of Simon of Trent, whose death was falsely blamed on the town's Jewish population, as evidence that elites harvest adrenochrome from children's blood.

According to View, "You can sit at your computer and search for information and then post about what you find, and Q basically promises that through this process, you are going to radically change the country, institute this incredible, almost bloodless revolution, and then be part of this historical movement that will be written about for generations."

[301] Brian Levin, director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, said QAnon has "the visceral appeal of an anti-elite message that is elastic enough to capture a lot of folks who feel fear and disenfranchisement from the current political system".

[314] In February 2021, an American Enterprise Institute poll found that 29% of Republicans believe the central claim of QAnon, that "Donald Trump has been secretly fighting a group of child sex traffickers that include prominent Democrats and Hollywood elites.

[321] Pastel QAnon, identified by Concordia University researcher Marc-André Argentino,[322][323] is a collection of techniques aimed predominantly at indoctrinating women into the conspiracy theory, mainly on social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, Telegram and YouTube.

He accused Christopher Rufo, one of its main promoters, of having "construct[ed] a new moral panic using QAnon messaging", which he likened to "the McCarthyite tactic of attaching a negative label" (in that case, pedophilia) to "people holding different beliefs".

According to Mike Rothschild, even though there seems to be less interest than before in content analyzing Q's "drops", ideas that QAnon helped popularize such as the need to confront an evil "deep state" or anti-vaccine conspiracy theories, have become commonplace on the right.

[387] In August 2018, following the presence of QAnon supporters at Trump's Tampa, Florida rally for the midterm elections,[159][388] MSNBC news anchors Hallie Jackson, Brian Williams, and Chris Hayes dedicated portions of their programs to the conspiracy theory.

[394][395] On December 19, 2018, a Californian man whose car contained bomb-making materials he intended to use to "blow up a satanic temple monument" in the Springfield, Illinois, Capitol rotunda to "make Americans aware of Pizzagate and the New World Order, who were dismantling society" was arrested.

[415] Angela Stanton-King, a Trump-backed candidate running for the Georgia House seat of the late congressman John Lewis, posted on Twitter that Black Lives Matter is "a major cover up for pedophilia and human trafficking" and "the storm is here".

[455][456][38] In December 2021, federal district court judge Gregory Howard Woods largely rejected CNN's motion to dismiss the case, allowing it to proceed to determine whether the Flynns had been portrayed in a false light.

[461] In 2021, Townsend supported activists active in the election denial movement in a spirit similar to the events that occurred at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, urging parents to take control of school board meetings related to COVID-19 restrictions and mask mandates.

[21] In May 2020, Facebook announced its removal of five pages, 20 accounts, and six groups linked to "individuals associated with the QAnon network" as part of an investigation into "suspected coordinated inauthentic behavior" ahead of the 2020 United States election.