What the fuQ?!
Q Anon & the Return of Paranoid American Politics
Pittsburgh DSA
Content Warning!
Any conversation about conspiracy theories will contain topics that may be upsetting or inappropriate for some people. Some of the topics we will be discussing include:
Breadcrumbs
What is Q Anon?
Q Anon is a conspiracy theory that has grown to resemble a cult or a New Age religion (1)
It’s an “Ur-conspiracy”; any other conspiracy theory can be nested under the umbrella of Q Anon, which has helped the overall growth of conspiracy theories in recent years (2)
Q Anon first appeared on the anonymous message board 4chan, then moved to 8chan and finally to 8kun. Most Q followers don’t read Q drops on 8kun, they’ll read them on an aggregator like the now-defunct QMap.pub.
Q Anon in interactive and the lore is crowd-sourced. The ideas it draws together were all common topics on the 4chan board /pol/ when Q started posting. The interactive and investigative aspect becomes addictive for Anons and draws them further into the world of Q.
The Rise of Q
Several factors had led to the dramatic spike in Q Anon adherents in the last year:
Q Anon and other New Age conspiracy theories are still spreading like wildfire across Instagram and TikTok. This trend of bohemian lifestyle influencers spreading conspiracy theories was nicknamed “Pastel Q Anon” by Q researcher Marc-Andre Argentino (4)
(5)
(5)
The Storm
There are almost an infinite number of different and conflicting beliefs within Q Anon but the central concepts are the same. From Bellingcat:
Here is the core of the Q Anon myth: with the aid of a small group of military intelligence officers called the Q team (one or more of whom is supposedly responsible for writing the drops), President Donald Trump is waging a shadow war against a cabal of Satan-worshipping, child-eating pedophiles who are conspiring to obstruct and overthrow him. The military will arrest them en masse in an event called “the Storm.”... After the Storm, military tribunals will ensure that these baby-eating traitors are executed or sentenced to life in prison. Faced with overwhelming proof of the cabal’s existence, a stunned public will mourn; rage; and ultimately unite behind President Trump, ushering in a golden age of patriotism and prosperity. (6)
This is a fundamentally Evangelical belief; God has anointed President Trump to go to war with the Satanic cabal of deep state actors. The Storm is a religious and biblical battle between the forces of good and evil. The Great Awakening is the return of Americans to a state of salvation and grace.
Linked Conspiracy Theories
Pizzagate/Pedogate - Pizzagate was the threshold through which most Anons were ushered into the world of conspiracy theory. The short version: the Clinton campaign emails from John Podesta that were leaked during the 2016 election contained a code that was being used to discuss the trafficking of children for ritual sacrifice. This code came in the form of different pizza-related words and people came to believe that the trafficking ring was being conducted out of the basement of Comet Ping Pong in Washington DC. Comet Ping Pong does not have a basement. (7)
Frazzledrip - Hillary Clinton and former Clinton aide Huma Abedin were filmed ripping off a child’s face and wearing it as a mask before drinking the child’s blood in a Satanic ritual sacrifice, and that video was then found on the hard drive of Abedin’s former husband, Anthony Weiner, under the code name “Frazzledrip.” (8)
Spirit Cooking - A ritual in which Marina Abramovic supposedly mutilated a child during an illuminati ritual with the Clintons and the Podestas (9)
Save the Children/Wayfair - In the summer of 2020 a piece of misinformation claiming that 800,000 children go missing in the US every year went viral on Instagram and TikTok. This sparked nationwide “Save the Children” marches and rallies. A similar piece of misinformation had been floating around Reddit but went viral around the same time alleging that the online retailer Wayfair was smuggling children through its website. (10)
Who is Q?
Q first appeared on 4chan on October 28, 2017 (11)(1)
Chan boards are all anonymous, each poster having the name “Anon” followed by a numerical “trip code” that acts as a unique identifier which is tied to their password.
The poster claimed to have Q level security clearance, hence “Q Anon”
Q’s trip code has changed multiple times, the password for the Q account has been accidentally (or not accidentally) posted publicly before the account disappeared only to reappear with a new trip code later.
It’s fairly likely there have been more than one author of Q’s posts (12)
Theories
Ron and or Jim Watkins - Founder of 8chan and 8kun, Jim and his son Ron have been huge Q supporters for a long time. This theory was proposed by Frederick Brennan who created 8chan (13)(14)
Jason Gelinas - The owner and developer of Qmap.pub, the largest Q drop aggregator. He was known only as QAppAnon until he was doxxed in late 2020 (15)
Donald Trump - Some Anons believe Q is actually Trump posing undercover
Michael Flynn (Sr. or Jr.) - Both of the Flynns have been big Q cheerleaders since the beginning
JFK Jr. aka Vincent Fusca - Mainstream Anons seem to find this theory “embarrassing”
Where We Go One, We Go All
The Paranoid Style in American Politics
“The Paranoid Style in American Politics” was an essay (later book) written by historian Richard Hofstadter in 1964 and published in Harper’s Bazaar.
“In fact, the idea of the paranoid style as a force in politics would have little contemporary relevance or historical value if it were applied only to men with profoundly disturbed minds. It is the use of paranoid modes of expression by more or less normal people that makes the phenomenon significant.” (16)
Hofstadter identified 3 basic elements of conspiracy in American politics:
Hofstadter discusses the state of “dispossession” (20) the conspiracy theorist feels. We can align this to Marx’s theory of alienation; for those Anons in the working classes alienation from their labor and from their fellow worker sends them looking for meaning. In a capitalist state, meaning is transient and self-serving and thus the state and culture cannot offer meaning to a person in a state of alienation. Thus they become dispossessed.
For the petit-bourgeois Anon, their meaning has been defined by control and power; consolidation of capital upwards threatens their class position and forces them to reconcile their perpetual state of alienation from labor and the labor product.
How did we get here?
Economic uncertainty
American Protestantism and Individualism
Isolation and the desire for meaning
Nothing Can Stop What’s Coming
Since Q Anon has gone mainstream, instances of violence tied to Q Anon followers have been increasing steadily (23), notably a rise in the number of parental kidnappings (24) and in several cases, murders (25)
Since #SavetheChildren started trending early in the summer there have been over 200 independent rallies organized across the US, and dozens in Europe and Japan
In 2020 two Q Anon supporting candidates won their congressional races; Marjorie Taylor Green of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado.
On January 6, 2021, a mob of right wing protestors stormed the Capitol after a speech made by Donald Trump condemning the Congressional certification of the 2020 Presidential Election. Of the four protestors who died, two were Q Anon followers, including Ashli Babbitt, the woman shot by Capitol police. (26)
What happens to the Q Anon movement after Trump is anyone’s guess; if anything the trajectory of the conspiracy theory has shown itself to be wildly unpredictable.
There’s probably going to be fracturing:
Violence is probably likely, though how widespread or organized is yet to be determined.
Tick Tock