On 28 November 2017, an anonymous user posted an item on the /pol/ board of 4chan claiming to have top-level Q-clearance. In a thread titled “The Calm before the Storm,” he, she or they claimed that high -ranking military officials were secretly meeting to coordinate a simultaneous sting resulting in the arrests of 100 or more prominent persons for conspiracy. Specifically, they accused President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of trafficking young children for the sexual and culinary delights of an elite secret cabal funded by that perennial bugbear of right-wing conspiracism George Soros.* It would seem that after getting their rocks off on the kiddies, these stars and their high-powered comrades would supposedly kill and eat them. Afterward they would drink their blood in praise of Satan. Most important, the only one who could conquer these forces, stop the madness and restore order was the current occupant of the Oval Office, President Donald Trump, with help from former FBI Director Robert Mueller.
Okay. That’s a lot to unpack, especially with respect to irony. To start with, 4chan itself has had a history of posting child pornography on its site.** Second, there is such a thing as Q-clearance. Problem is, it only exists within the Department of Energyfor purposes of monitoring issues pertaining to nuclear power.*** The source also said that military brass had something to do with the planning of these stings. Their actions would fall within the purview of the Department of Defense. Yet, the source here is talking about mass arrests, which would be a matter for the Department of Justice, specifically the FBI and the US Marshals. In other words, whoever posted this showed betrayed a serious lack of knowledge about how the United States government actually works. It’s also curious when you consider that more credible stories along these lines (i.e., cases of alleged child sex-trafficking with actual evidence, such as in the Franklin Credit Union Scandal) all implicated right-wing political figures, whereas the targets of these allegations are almost exclusively in the political center and moderately liberal.
And to top it off, an alliance between Trump and Mueller? A man who gave evidentiary credence to the notion that the former’s Presidency was in substantial part aided by an enemy nation?
Irony aside, this initial post brought to mind Pizzagate, an unfounded allegation that Clinton had run a child sex-trafficking ring at a restaurant popular with Democratic politicos. During the first year of the Trump administration, a some social media influencers attempted to resurrect the story long after one of the believers of this story, Edgar Welch, ironically proved it untrue by actively going to the restaurant in question and looking for the missing kids, in the process firing three shots from his rifle. One of these influencers, a YouTuber by the name of Tracy Diaz, found support from a like-minded party using the account handle CrusadersPost. CP wished her a happy birthday that April. Four days after Q-clearance (Q for short) posted about an upcoming political storm, Diaz posted the first of what we would now come to know as the Qanon videos on YouTube. Naturally, the video blew up, as the kids say, and spawned other videos. Diaz subsequently increased her involvement on Twitter and Reddit.
The kicker: a Reuters investigation by Joseph Menn found that CrusadersPost and other social media users encouraging Diaz had accounts originating in Russia. She posted the video on 2 November 2017. By months end, these accounts would post the character string ‘QAnon’ in excess of 17,000 times, thus severely amplifying the story and spreading it out to a wider circle of internet users.
The strategy was consistent with Russian disinformation strategies. As Nina Jankowicz explained to NBC News:
One of the Kremlin’s favorite tactics is to inspire confusion and doubt to sow distrust in government. Qanon certainly does that....
Amplifying the conspiracy theory also makes it look like it has more supporters, distracting from more substantive issues in the online discourse.
One of the more fascinating aspects of QAnon is the technical savvy of its propagators. They demonstrated an intense awareness of the algorithms that govern such social media platforms as YouTube. As explained during the first two episodes of the New York Times podcast Rabbit Hole, YouTube’s initial algorithms attempted to find what a user tends to watch through his or her previous searches, and then provide links for suggested content that is somehow linked through theme or keyword. Consequently, the links you click on could lead to other material that is similar, but not identical to, the content you were originally watching.
Eventually, you could very well find yourself watching QAnon material when you started out interested in something else. People curious about the JFK, RFK and MLK assassinations could very well funnel down to the level of Q. Usually, however, it’s the more unsubstantiated conspiracy hypotheses that can get you there faster. This would include flat-earth followers, anti-vaxers and Covid-deniers. But parapolitics are hardly the only chutes leading down to Q-Land. QAnon adherentshave wandered in because of an interest in medicine/holistic health, video games and other vestiges of popular culture.****
You would be correct in assuming that the bulk of Q-activity and interest occurs online, with very little happening in meatspace. However, the small part that oozes out of cyberspace packs quite a wallop in the real world. Two QAnon proponents, Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia and Lauren Boebert of Colorado, won elections to the US House of Representatives.***** In a bizarre turn of events, QAnon supporter Anthony Comello blew away Gambino family crime boss Francesco Cali on 13 March believing the Mafioso to be part of this Satanic baby-eating cult.
True, we usually don’t mourn the death of mobsters. Yet Comello had no evidence of a conspiracy, let alone Cali’s guilt or complicity in it. One therefore has to realize that a person rationalizing the murder of a Mafia man can also rationalize the murder of anyone else he mistakes for an organized criminal, for example an innocent person whose last name sounds Italian. And why stop there? He might shoot anyone he thinks looks Italian American, whether they are or not.
By now, you’re probably thinking, “C’mon, that's kinda extreme. Who’d be that fanatic and that daffy?” I dunno. Who’d be fanatic and daffy enough to storm the Capitol to lynch the sitting Vice President of the United States?
Comello’s actions highlight a larger issue, one that many political pundits and the majority of the public have given voice to: namely the irrationality of QAnon. Indeed some have begun to view the movement as a cult. To be honest and fair, I must reserve judgment on that, for I have difficulty seeing their actions and beliefs, strictly speaking, as such although I concede the fact that there are many cult-like aspects to them. First of all, there’s the charismatic leader figure, namely Trump. But unlike other cults, the leader does not issue specific orders for his minions to obey. Rather, it’s more the case that senior members of the movement attempt to divine the will and intent of the leader and his messenger, Q. Unlike cults where mandatory verbatim of the catechisms lead to a machine-like precision of message, QAnon peoplelearn a number of data, much of which have no empirical basis and more likely represent someone improvising random statistics off the tops of their heads. Members repeat them, of course but in their own language, resulting not in a machine-like precision but rather a near machine-like imprecision. While you might think that’s a small distinction, this would be more analogous to someone hearing talking points on Fox (or for that matter MSNBC) and propagating them through conversation and social media.
Arguably the most cult-like element, the tendency of QAnonners to distance or isolate themselves from friends and family, might give us the best understanding of what’s going on. As Kelly Weill wrote in a 23 December 2018 Daily Beast article:
Kimberly’s boyfriend was tired of hearing the QAnon videos she watched around their small apartment. To keep the peace, she started keeping the videos to herself. ‘I live in headphones now…. My boyfriend is...I don’t know how to describe it. We have very different views. He does not think this QAnon thing is anything except nonsense. I drastically disagree…..’
Travis View is a researcher monitoring the QAnon conspiracy. Over the course of the movement, he’s seen believers discuss a growing estrangement from loved ones.
‘People in the QAnon community often talk about alienation from family and friends…[though] they typically talk about how Q frayed their relationships on private Facebook groups. But they think these issues are temporary and primarily the fault of others. They often comfort themselves by imagining that there will be a moment of vindication sometime in the near future which will prove their beliefs right. They imagine that after this happens, not only will their relationships be restored, but people will turn them as leaders who understand what's going on better than the rest of us.’
Here, Weill is referring to an issue I’ve brought up before on The X-Spot when talking about the Children of God cult. Antinomianism denotes the belief in a secret knowledge that the rest of the world either ignores, or cannot understand. Sociologist Dr. Stephen Kent (University of Alberta), an expert on new religious movements, says that one typically finds this in coercive cults. It’s a means by which a cult can convince itself that they alone know the truth, and that they alone can take the necessary action to save humanity from itself, even if that action is illegal, immoral or fatal to the adherent.
While QAnon has leadership, it does not seem to reflect not so much a top-down authoritarian structure with those at the bottom constantly supplicating their superiors for attention, credit, favor, or in many cases food, shelter and water, as would occur in most cults. Rather, leadership tends to serve more of a facilitating function, showing incoming members the ropes, divining the cryptic statements of Trump and Q, and so on. As you can see in the Daily Beast article, no one ordered Kimberly to stay away from her non-believing boyfriend (which is standard procedure in virtually all coercive cults). The rift developed because of her commitment to a belief rooted instatus-anxiety, and a commitment to her peers, people she considers not below or above her, but rather equals who are newer to the cause or older. As View states in the above quote, these people see themselves as leaders of a new vanguard that saves America. The equality of the movement, which I see as one its most seductive features, indicates a belief that no one is indispensable. At the same time, no one is expendable, hence their oft-repeated mantra, “Where we go one, we go all.”
If I wantedto slap the hell out of Trigger(or in other words beat a dead horse), I could also point out that the most senior QAnon member, Ron Watkins, son of 8chan proprietor Jim Watkins, suggested that other members “...go back to our lives as best we are able” after the inauguration of President Biden quashed all hope that Trump would miraculously serve a second term.****** As you’ve no doubt surmised, QAnon still exists, although reports disagree as to whether its growing or shrinking. So much for following the suggestion of leadership. Membership clearly acts on its own initiative, both collectively and individually.
As Lt. Columbowould say, one more thing. Although its history and effects have spilled over into meatspace, as noted earlier in this post, QAnon has so far been a cyberspace phenomenon. It has relied on a closed loop of information sources and adherents who offer each other mutual support, what we used to call “strokes” in my graduate psychology classes. As with cults, people undergoing a nadir in their lives often reach out for support, especially to others who, at least initially during the lovebombing stage, accept them wholeheartedly and without question, in the process projecting the cult as the only entity that accepts them as special.
Let’s see. Can you think of some recent event that has resulted in widespread crisis, financial hardship and isolation from social contacts? Something like a global pandemic?
Fig. 1. Chart detailing the growth of QAnon
As you can see in the above chart the growth of QAnon spiked in late-Marchof 2020, almost the exact time when most states required shutdown of all non-essential business and imposed curfews. In effect, these actions prohibited people from interacting face-to-face with their colleagues. If they worked for non-essential businesses, they were now out of a job. They couldn’t even commiserate with those in the same boat because the social hubs of bars and restaurants closed for indefinite periods. Many states even forbade gatherings of six or more people inside private homes. Those inflicted spent weeks in quarantine whether symptomatic or not.
In short, we can see from this graphic that the spike of QAnon membership coincides with heightened anxiety on the international, national, local, community and personal level. And in perhaps the most devastating irony of all, the Q-people have, from the start, denied the existence of Coronavirus or downplayed its effects and prevalence. Along with other Trump acolytes most consistently resisted social-distancing measures, masks, the monitoring of symptoms, and ultimately vaccinations. It will probably be a long time before we can correlate their advocacy to the deaths of those in agreement with them, or the deaths of those following their advice. But the sad fact remains that the bigger they are, the bigger their body count.
Oh, yeah. They can always blame that on Obama and Clinton, right?
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*QAnon would cite actor Tom Hanks, model Chrissy Tiegen, songstress Beyoncé Knowles-Carter, talk-show host Oprah Winfrey comedian John Oliver and other notables as participants in this Satanic baby-eating cult. Some have noted that celebrities of color are over-represented in these lists, This jibes quite neatly with the study done by Dr. Diana Mutz (University of Pennsylvania, Political Science & Communications), who found that the election of Donald Trump represented a backlash against the first African American US President.
**Ali Saad, Collin Campbell, Ronald Ohlson, Thaddeus Mitchell and an unidentified fifteen year-old were all arrested for downloading child pornography from 4chan. Also, when QAnon switched it’s main hosting venue to the message board 8chan, Mother Jonesreporters AJ Vicens and Ali Breland discovered that the site’s owner, Jim Watkins, owned a number of domains expressly related to pedophilia.
***In 1997, Peter Benchley (of Jawsfame) penned a novel titled Q-Clearance. It’s easy to speculate that someone aware of the book applied this concept in this post because it was obscure and sounded cool.
****YouTube has since tweaked this algorithm in order to make this kind of linkage and rabbit hole effect less likely, especially with respect to controversial issues. It’s not that the videos have been removed from the site, necessarily. It’s just that they’re no longer as easy to find, because Google has limited their linkability.
*****Greene posted a series of Tweets in defense of QAnon. Twitter has since deleted them. As reported in 2 August 2019 edition of the Atlanta Journal-Constitution she added statements “...encouraging her followers to message her with questions so she can ‘walk you through the whole thing.’” Boebert endorsed Q-Anon on two web shows hosted by supporters. Both Greene and Boebert appear to have backed off from their support of QAnon since the inauguration of President Joseph Biden.
******A six-part 2021 HBO documentary titled Q: Into the Storm asserts that Ron Watkins was the person who posed as Q in the 28 November 2017 4chan post.
