QAnon promotes pro-Trump creed, anthropologist says 0:56
(CNN) - It
started with a tweet from a QAnon supporter at 2:09 in the morning: #SubpoenaObama.
Although it lacked context, the cryptic message made sense to anyone attuned to the unfounded conspiracy theory that the Obama administration, prior to leaving office in 2017, had taken active steps to undermine Trump's incoming presidency.
Within a minute, the same Twitter account sent out another tweet encouraging others to push the hashtag, adding that if they do, "good things will happen."
Dozens of QAnon enthusiasts obeyed and before long the hashtag was on fire, sometimes racking up roughly 4,000 tweets per hour, according to the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), which tracks misinformation on social media channels.
Along the way, #SubpoenaObama was tweeted by influential conservatives like Glenn Beck and former Fox Nation Diamond and Silk personalities.
The next day, May 14, the hashtag had apparently caught the attention of President Trump, who used Twitter to urge Republican Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, to call Obama to testify.
"He knew EVERYTHING," Trump tweeted, referring to Obama.
"Just do it."
advertising
Later that day, Graham announced an investigation into the matter, although he excused himself from Trump's request to subpoena Obama himself.
A person wears a QAnon hoodie at a pro-Trump rally on October 3 on Staten Island in New York.
The example highlights a little-known facet of QAnon, NCRI experts said.
Rather than being a nebulous group that organically amplifies messages at the grassroots level, QAnon also appears to be an occasional architect of messages that, through coordinated behavior, reach the most powerful factions of the Republican Party.
"QAnon is a disinformation network (that) has grown like a virus to attack the pillars of our democracy, in a systematic way, with specific forms of disinformation that are strategic," said Joel Finkelstein, co-founder of NCRI, who has published a recent report he provided to CNN on QAnon that includes the finding about the hashtag #SubpoenaObama.
"Working with the highest levels of power in our country, they have found ways to hijack our national conversation," added Finkelstein.
QAnon's influence increased this year despite the ridiculous - some would say cult - claim at its core: that Trump is fighting a clique of Satan-worshiping elites who are dedicated to pedophilia and child sacrifice.
So substantial is QAnon's follow-up that many Republican elected officials have been reluctant to condemn him.
The group's most vocal Republican critic, Representative Denver Riggleman of Virginia, who is an adviser to the NCRI, is serving the final days of his term.
This week, as one of his last acts, he plans to launch a rebuke to the movement in plenary of the House.
"A lot of people make fun of QAnon, think he's just a bunch of, let's face it, a bunch of idiots who believe anything on the Internet," Riggleman told CNN.
But there is something sinister.
It is something much more dangerous here.
MIRA
: QAnon, the network that promotes conspiracy theories and supports Trump, is it a new religion?
From marginal to mainstream
A woman holds up a QAnon sign to the media as attendees wait for Donald Trump to speak at a campaign rally in Moon Township, Pennsylvania, on September 22.
Three years after its birth on the Internet fringes, QAnon seems to have gone mainstream.
A number of celebrities and
influencers
have shared QAnon-related rhetoric and content on several occasions, including Congresswoman-elect Marjorie Taylor Greene, former White House national security adviser Michael Flynn and retired Boston Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling.
A handful of artists like James Woods and Larry the Cable Guy have retweeted QAnon fans.
A September report by a researcher at Tufts University found that about 1 in 6 American adults trust QAnon as a trusted source at least some of the time.
Still, the same poll, led by civic studies professor Brian Schaffner, found that most Americans have not heard of QAnon, and that even among those who view QAnon favorably, only 38% accept the fundamental belief that a worldwide network tortures and sexually abuses children in satanic rituals.
"Just saying you like QAnon doesn't seem like basically a believer in all of QAnon's conspiracy theories, or even knowing them all," Schaffner told CNN.
“I think some people just say they like QAnon, because, 'Oh, I think Trump likes QAnon, and I like Trump.
So I probably like QAnon, although I don't really know much about it and I didn't pay attention to it. '
Cynthia Miller-Idriss, a professor of education and sociology at the American University in Washington, said the QAnon movement spread rapidly over the summer and intersects with other conspiracy ideas.
"It has mobilized some really worrying violence and ways in the extreme periphery," he said.
"But I think it's also amplifying a lot of content that undermines people's faith in the elections, in the integrity of election results, (and) that undermines people's faith in the vaccine" for the coronavirus.
Rooted in old anti-Semitic tropes of elite conspiratorial cabal, QAnon distinguishes itself from other extremist groups online in that it tends to attract middle-aged adults, Miller-Idriss said.
“You have 15-year-olds at home who ask themselves: 'What do I do?
My mom thinks she's going to fight child trafficking networks… she spends all her time online doing that and has lost touch with reality, '"said Miller-Idriss, whose team partnered with NCRI on the report.
"QAnon believers can radicalize very quickly, sometimes in a matter of weeks."
The NCRI report emphasizes that QAnon takes advantage of well-intentioned people by exploiting the fear of existential threats.
"We must focus on the humanity of the people trapped in QAnon," he says.
“The QAnon conspiracy movement thrives on dehumanization.
Through compassion and patience, people can be drawn to it.
Much of the group's mystique comes from the anonymity of its 'leader', a figure named 'Q' who initially began periodically posting encrypted messages on an online message board called 4chan before switching to 8chan, which is now known as 8kun.
The followers then voraciously decode the tracks.
These so-called "breadcrumbs" led Q's followers to some strange lies: Osama bin Laden's double was killed by special forces in 2011 and the terrorist is still alive (a claim that was retweeted by Trump);
a circle of Hollywood stars are pedophiles;
George Floyd's death was staged in police custody;
Trump is planning a mass arrest of officials and celebrities;
Mueller's investigation was actually investigating a child trafficking ring.
A separate analysis from Advance Democracy, Inc., a nonpartisan governance watchdog, shows that QAnon accounts also played a role in popularizing an unfounded and incendiary hashtag about President-elect Joe Biden.
The first apparent use of #PedoBiden on Twitter came in 2016 from an account now associated with QAnon, according to Advance Democracy analysis.
About 10% of tweets with that hashtag came from accounts related to QAnon as of September this year, when Trump retweeted the hashtag, the analysis found.
MIRA
: Will YouTube ban QAnon?
This says the CEO of the company
Where QAnon first appeared
The account associated with QAnon that first used the hashtag #PedoBiden was responding to a tweet with the text "Fart Joe?"
which was posted by Mike Cernovich, a central figure behind the "Pizzagate" conspiracy theory that culminated in December 2016 with a man firing an assault rifle inside a Washington pizzeria because he was searching for a pedophile ring to target. had read online.
After finding no evidence of such a ring, he turned himself in to authorities.
But that conspiracy theory laid the groundwork for QAnon.
QAnon also amplified the falsehood that Dominion Voting Systems, an electoral software company, shifted millions of votes from President Trump to President-elect Joe Biden.
The Advance Democracy report found that 14% of the nearly 110,000 tweets that used the #dominion hashtag between November 2 and 12 came from accounts affiliated with QAnon.
Some of QAnon's activity has spread to the real world.
A QAnon supporter is accused of murdering a crime boss in New York last year, believing he was a member of the "deep state."
In February, a man in Arizona pleaded guilty to a terrorism charge after blocking a bridge near Hoover Dam with an armored vehicle in 2018, echoing demands from QAnon supporters that the federal government release a report. .
Trump himself has expanded accounts affiliated with QAnon more than 265 times, according to a comprehensive and widely cited analysis by Media Matters, a left-wing media monitoring group.
On Tuesday morning, Trump retweeted an influential QAnon supporter: Ron Watkins, a former administrator of 8kun, owned by his father, Jim Watkins.
It has been widely speculated, without evidence, that one or both Watkins could be Q, or know who Q is;
they have denied that they are Qs or have helped create Q posts, according to
The Washington Post.
In an apparent attempt to hint at electoral fraud, Ron Watkins tweeted Monday that incoming Acting Attorney General Jeffrey Rosen, who will replace William Barr in the final weeks of the Trump administration, had recently written an essay on foreign influence in the American elections.
Watkins' tweet was labeled by Twitter as a disputed argument;
Trump retweeted it anyway.
The NCRI report included another example that appears to show how a QAnon hashtag reached the mainstream.
#Obamagate, which is short for the unfounded theory that the Obama administration sought to undermine Trump's presidency, was first used by a QAnon-affiliated Twitter account, according to Media Matters.
A hashtag analysis by the NCRI found that most of the hashtags used in conjunction with #Obamagate are related to QAnon, such as #QAnon, # WWG1WGA, and #TheGreatAwakening - a reference to how, according to QAnon's prophecy, the day the that a large number of people finally realize the truth of the conspiracy.
Mixing #Obamagate with Q-related hashtags "suggests that the movement (QAnon) played a key role in spreading the conspiracy theory" of Obamagate, says the NCRI report.
In the #SubpoenaObama example, after Trump asked Graham to "just do it," the creator of the hashtag, who called himself E. and whose account was suspended, took a moment to gloat.
Hours after Trump tagged Graham on May 14, E., whose identifier, @ followthe17, is a reference to how Q is the 17th letter of the alphabet, retweeted Trump's admonition, along with a screenshot of the original from E. promises her 20,500 followers the day before: "Hello #QAnons - If you trend #SubpoenaObama, good things will happen."
E. topped the retweet and screenshot with a simple message: a winking emoji.
Trump followed up on the night of May 14 with what appeared to be a wink tweet.
Thank you to all my great keyboard warriors.
You guys are better, and much brighter, than anyone else at Madison Avenue (ad agencies).
There is no one like you! "
LOOK
: QAnon sympathizers in Berlin: some say that Trump "is an angel" or that Merkel is "Hitler's daughter"
Trump refuses to convict QAnon
It's unclear how aware Trump is of QAnon's coordinated efforts, but he has refused to condemn the group and has even praised it.
"I heard that these are people who love our country," he said in August, in the White House meeting room.
During a tense forum interview with NBC News' Savannah Guthrie in mid-October, Trump declined to report QAnon before moving on to a critique of Antifa.
"I don't know anything about it," Trump said.
«I know they are very against pedophilia, they fight very hard against it… I will tell you about what I know.
I know about Antifa and I know about the radical left.
Earlier this month, it was revealed that Trump, in a recent meeting, said that QAnon consists of people who "basically believe in good governance," according to a source familiar with the matter.
Many Republican lawmakers have also been reluctant to denounce the organization.
In September, Riggleman, the outgoing Republican Congressman from Virginia, and Rep. Tom Malinowski, a Democrat from New Jersey, introduced a bipartisan measure condemning QAnon.
It passed without a hitch, but 17 Republicans and one libertarian voted against it.
Thirty-four Republicans and six Democrats did not vote on the non-binding resolution.
Riggleman lost his seat during the primary season in June, when Virginia's Congressional District 5 Republican Committee nominated his opponent, Bob Good, nearly a year after Riggleman sparked controversy by officiating a same-sex wedding between two of his friends.
(Good defeated his Democratic rival, Cameron Webb, on November 3.)
Riggleman, a former Air Force intelligence officer who has worked as a contractor for the National Security Administration on computer network operations, told CNN that he recognizes the different "language of radicalization" in QAnon's messages.
"This is very dangerous," he said.
"I think we are on the razor's edge right now."
CNN's Nelli Black and Yahya Abou-Ghazala contributed to this report.
QAnon
