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QAnon

Jim Stewartson [Counterinsurgent] has repeatedly claimed that when he decided to look into the origins of the QAnon conspiracy movement in 2020, it took him just three days to identify Flynn as the person behind the anonymous Q figure, and that the entire movement was an effort funded by the Kremlin to undermine US democracy.

QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory group popular among supporters of US President Donald Trump. The conspiracy theory is that an anonymous government official known as "Q" [a government insider with Q-level top security clearance] posts classified information online to reveal a covert effort, led by President Trump, to dismantle a conspiracy involving "deep state" actors and global elites allegedly engaged in an international child sex trafficking ring. QAnon followers believe that Trump is fighting enemies in the "deep state" and a child sex trafficking ring run by satanic pedophiles and cannibals. Covid-19, battered economies, and the Jeffrey Epstein child trafficking saga have all provided fertile ground for incubation and evolution.

The DOE Personnel Security Program is designed to ensure that individuals authorized to access classified information and Special Nuclear Material (SNM) do not pose a threat to national security interests. This assurance is provided by the process for issuing initial and continuing access authorizations (security clearances), which is intended to ensure that only personnel who meet defined Federal standards for honesty, reliability, and trustworthiness are allowed such access. Five types of security clearances exist at DOE: a Q clearance, L clearance, TS clearance, S clearance, and C clearance. A Q clearance permits access to top-secret national security information and restricted data. The government grants a Q clearance to individuals occupying highly important or sensitive positions. Generally speaking, within DOE, a "Q" clearance is equal to "top secret", and the "L" clearance is equal to "secret".

Q appears to have enveloped parts of the Republican Party. The theory has been espoused by a dozen GOP candidates running for elected office, and watchdog group Media Matters identified 59 congressional and Senate candidates across the country that have, at some point, endorsed or are sympathetic to the movement. One of them, Marjorie Taylor Greene, is likely to be elected to Congress in November after she won the Republican primary in a deeply conservative district in Georgia. Greene openly embraces the conspiracy and has notoriously voiced anti-Semitic and Islamophobic views. Trump himself has repeatedly nodded to Q: on the Fourth of July, he amplified Q-related Twitter accounts 14 times. Trump and his sons have retweeted or circulated Q memes more than a 100 times.

QAnon emerged on October 28, 2017 on the imageboard site 4chan in a thread called “Calm Before the Storm,” which claimed Hillary Clinton would be arrested between 7:45am – 8:30am EST on the morning of October 30. That obviously never came to pass, but the theory has been slowly edging towards more mainstream right-wing political circles in the US. QAnon followers have become a regular presence at Trump political rallies, where they often sport paraphernalia bearing "Q" symbols and slogans. Fueled by worldwide anxiety over the coronavirus pandemic, the conspiracy theory has gone global, with proponents in at least 71 countries, according to QAnon researcher Marc-André Argentino. “There has been massive growth,” said Marc-Andre Argentino, a Ph.D. candidate at Canada’s Concordia University and an associate at the Global Network on Extremism & Technology.

They have been seen at protests against lockdowns to curb the spread of COVID-19 in the US, where armed libertarians were out en masse. This development in the US was not entirely new, as these armed militias occupying buildings in the past. In 2015, conspiracists feared refugees were taking over. Today they see dark global forces gaining power amid a global pandemic. The name of billionaire philanthropist George Soros has been tied to many of these theories, giving those who believe in them an excuse to pin the blame on a supposed worldwide Jewish conspiracy.

People who wouldn't have much in common were it not for COVID-19 are forming an unlikely alliance. These demonstrations have drawn people from across the spectrum: conspiracy theorists, anti-democracy activists, those who are against vaccinations and opponents of 5G mobile networks, among others.

The viral "Plandemic" documentary began life on a QAnon Facebook page and was shared by Republican politicians before it was banned on social media sites. In short, it wildly supposed that the coronavirus is the evil spawn of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, who are helping to control the global population via a microchip inserted in all humans during coming coronavirus immunizations, with big pharma and big government complicit in the cover-up.

QAnon accounts on Facebook had more than 3 million followers as of mid-2020 [about one percent of the total US population]. By the end of 2019, according to The New York Times, Trump had retweeted accounts often focused on conspiracy theories, including those of QAnon, on at least 145 occasions. In 2018, Reddit banned QAnon groups from its platform for inciting violence.

What makes QAnon distinct from a run-of-the-mill conspiracy theory is religious zeal and eschatology. At the core is the notion that cleansing the world of evil will redeem a fallen, corrupt world and usher in a new golden age – in what could be described as the birth pangs of a millenarian sect.

Adrienne LaFrance alluded to a gnostic tendency when she wrote that the “language of evangelical Christianity has come to define the Q movement,” which “marries an appetite for the conspiratorial with positive beliefs about a radically different and better future, one that is preordained.” For many adherents, QAnon is a quasi-secular replacement for evangelical Christianity, with a pious assertion of moral superiority and the presumption of secret knowledge - al hallmark of Gnosticism. QAnon is more than political ideology - it provides a spiritual worldview incorporating many Christian themes, explicitly using Bible verses to urge adherents to stand firm against evil. Adherents see QAnon connecting directly to God's hand at work in the world - a clear battle between good and evil that cannot be avoided, and a Great Awakening that is coming. QAnon's syncretism follows the familiar practice of blending traditional Christian beliefs with other systems of thought. Early church fathers such as Irenaeus and Tertullian rejected Gnosticism as heresy.

The first known QAnon-inspired criminal act occurred on 4 December 2016, a North Carolina man was arrested in Washington, DC after he entered the Comet Ping Pong pizza restaurant carrying an AR-15 rifle and a .38 revolver, fired shots at a locked closet door, and aimed his rifle at an employee. The man was motivated by the Pizzagate conspiracy theory, alleging that a child sex-trafficking ring involving nationally known political figures was operating from the basement of the restaurant [which had no basement], according to a plea agreement filed in US District Court.

On 29 May 2018, the leader of an unofficial, local veterans aid group claimed to have discovered a child sex trafficking camp on privately owned land in Tucson, Arizona, according to two news sources of unknown reliability. After local law enforcement investigations discredited the claim, the leader repeatedly alleged a law enforcement cover up and referenced the QAnon conspiracy theory as he and armed group members searched for additional camps, according to multiple sources with varying degrees of access. In addition, the leader and his supporters accused specific residents, businesses, and local officials of aiding or participating in child sex trafficking, according to two sources with indirect access. The group also harassed, threatened, and doxed critics and opponents, according to multiple sources with varying degrees of access, and engaged in criminal activities, according to an indictment filed in an Arizona county superior court.

On 15 June 2018, QAnon follower Matthew Wright had a standoff with law enforcement officers. Wright demanded the release of a Justice Department inspector general report on the Russia investigation that he believed would "reveal all of the things that the deep state was supposedly doing," Travis View, co-host of the QAnon Anonymous Podcast said. The Nevada man used an armored truck to block traffic on the Hoover Dam Bypass Bridge, held up signs conveying a political demand, then fled into Arizona where he was arrested by Arizona Department of Public Safety, who found body armor, rifles, ammunition, and a flash-bang device inside his vehicle, according to law enforcement information. 5 According to a technical source with direct access, the man referenced the QAnon conspiracy theory directly and discussed related conspiratorial beliefs after his arrest. 6 According to an online news source deemed reliable, he sent letters from jail containing a distinctive QAnon slogan to President Trump and other officials claiming he wanted to expose government corruption and lies.

On 19 December 2018, a California man was arrested after being found in possession of bomb making materials with the intent to construct an explosive device, according to information obtained from a law enforcement agency. According to information obtained from a separate law enforcement agency, the individual stated he planned to travel to Springfield, Illinois and blow up a satanic temple monument at the Illinois Capitol rotunda in order to "make Americans aware of 'Pizzagate' and the New World Order (NWO), who were dismantling society."

In 2019 Anthony Comello killed suspected Gambino crime family boss Francesco Cali outside the victim’s home, believing Cali was part of the deep state — the suspected invisible, sinister power structure — according to View. It was one of three homicides linked to QAnon since 2018. "A lot of QAnon followers have this sense of moral righteousness that they are fighting a very noble crusade and this allows them to [use it] as moral justification to do some very dangerous and criminal things, which is the case with all extremists," View said.

QAnon adherents have been implicated in crimes that they claim their QAnon beliefs inspired, including—

• a man was arrested in 2018 for plotting to plant a bomb in the Illinois Capitol rotunda to make Americans aware of the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory;
• a man in Arizona was arrested in 2019 for vandalizing a Catholic church;
• a woman in Colorado was arrested in 2019 for plotting an armed raid to kidnap her child, who had been taken from her custody;
• a woman was arrested in New York with a car full of knives after posting a video accusing Joe Biden of participating in child sex trafficking and threatening to kill him; Eduardo Moreno, a train engineer at the Port of Los Angeles, was arrested on federal charges for allegedly running a locomotive at full speed off the end of rail tracks near the USNS Mercy 31 March 2020. Moreno ran the train off the end of tracks, and crashed through a series of barriers before coming to rest more than 250 yards from the Mercy. No one was injured in the incident, and the Mercy was not harmed or damaged in any way.

Many followers of the QAnon conspiracy theory see themselves as digital warriors battling an imaginary cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who rule the world from the convenience of their keyboards. But the January 6 U.S. Capitol riot by supporters of former President Donald Trump exposed the potential for violence in a movement that reared its head on the fringes of the internet in 2018 and now boasts millions of adherents around the world. At least 34 QAnon adherents participated in the Capitol siege that disrupted the certification of President Joe Biden’s election victory, while 32 other QAnon followers committed ideologically motivated crimes before and after the Capitol insurrection — for a total of 66 who engaged in criminal conduct.

Researchers at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism (START) at the University of Maryland, conducted the most comprehensive study yet of QAnon’s criminal activities. The conspiracy theorists' alleged offenses ranged from weapons possession to kidnapping and murder. The 34 followers who took part in the Capitol riot represent more than 8% of the roughly 400 rioters who have been arrested by 31 March 2021; that shows a greater QAnon presence in the riot than had been previously estimated. The number is likely to increase as the FBI continues to investigate the Capitol riot, said Michael Jensen, a senior researcher at START.

While the vast majority of QAnon believers don't advocate violence, the report shows the movement's potential for violence, an assessment first made by the FBI in 2019. "Not all the violent extremists are jihadists or white supremacists, they come from these conspiracy theory groups as well," Jensen said in an interview.

Among the most notorious QAnon supporters arrested in the Capitol riot was Jacob Chansley, a 33-year-old Arizona man known as "QAnon Shaman." Sporting horns, a bearskin headdress, and red, white and blue face paint, he entered the Senate chamber where he left a threatening note for then Vice President Mike Pence that read, "It's Only a Matter of Time. Justice is Coming,” according to court documents.

Lauren Boebert defeated Colorado U.S. Representative Scott Tipton in the 01 July 2020 Republican Party primary for western Colorado's Third Congressional District. Boebert made a name for herself after loudly protesting Democratic Governor Jared Polis's orders to close businesses to fight the coronavirus pandemic. She opened her Shooters Grill gun-themed restaurant in defiance of closure orders. Boebert said in an interview that she was "very familiar" with the QAnon far-right conspiracy theory, but she stopped short of saying she was a follower.

U.S. President Donald Trump congratulated a supporter of a far-right group for her congressional primary victory in the southern state of Georgia. "Congratulations to future Republican Star Marjorie Taylor Greene on a big Congressional primary win in Georgia against a very tough and smart opponent. Marjorie is strong on everything and never gives up - a real WINNER!" Greene is a supporter of QAnon, which promotes an unfounded theory of a “deep state” political system aimed at undermining Trump’s presidency. Greene, also a gun rights activist, defeated John Cowan, who had the support of several high-profile Republicans, with 57% of the vote to Cowan’s 43%.

In July 2020, Twitter deleted over 7,000 QAnon pages, banning the accounts due to rule violations. The social platform stressed that QAnon-associated content would be removed from trends, recommendations and searches.

Twitter Inc said on 11 August 2020 it would permanently suspend accounts that violate its policies while tweeting about QAnon, a fringe group that claims "deep-state" traitors are plotting against President Donald Trump. Twitter, which announced the change on its Twitter Safety page, said it would not serve content and accounts associated with QAnon in trends and recommendations, and would block URLs associated with the group from being shared on the platform. The suspension, which will be rolled out this week, is expected to impact about 150,000 accounts globally, Twitter said. It said that more than 7,000 accounts have been removed in the last several weeks for violating the company's rules against spam, platform manipulation and ban evasion.

"We've been clear that we will take strong enforcement action on behavior that has the potential to lead to offline harm," Twitter said. "In line with this approach, this week we are taking further action on so-called 'QAnon' activity across the service. "We will permanently suspend accounts Tweeting about these topics that we know are engaged in violations of our multi-account policy, coordinating abuse around individual victims, or are attempting to evade a previous suspension," the company added.

A preliminary investigation by Facebook suggested that there were thousands of groups and pages with millions of members and followers that support the QAnon conspiracy theory. The figures and scale of QAnon activity on Facebook were not previously disclosed by the social platform, as most of the groups are private. Now the top ten groups uncovered were reported to have collectively over a million members, with other 'top' pages purportedly pushing the number of followers past the 3 million mark.

Although conspiracy theory-driven crime and violence is not a new phenomenon, today's information environment has changed the way conspiracy theories develop, spread, and evolve. The advent of the Internet and social media has enabled promoters of conspiracy theories to produce and share greater volumes of material via online platforms that larger audiences of consumers can quickly and easily access. Based on the increased volume and reach of conspiratorial content due to modern communication methods, it is logical to assume that more extremist-minded individuals will be exposed to potentially harmful conspiracy theories, accept ones that are favorable to their views, and possibly carry out criminal or violent actions as a result.

The Internet has also enabled a 'crowd-sourcing' effect wherein conspiracy theory followers themselves shape a given theory by presenting information that supplements, expands, or localizes its narrative. The examples above demonstrate how crowd-sourced conspiracy theories can influence which entities extremists choose to target. These examples also substantiate concerns expressed by some researchers who believe a rise of conspiracism, fostered in part by the Internet, may be accompanied by a search for scapegoats-those believed to be the conspirators' allies, henchmen, or collaborators.

In July 2020, Twitter removed 7,000 accounts associated with QAnon and another 150,000 accounts were hidden from trends and searches. In late August 2020, Facebook took down or restricted more than 10,000 groups, pages and Instagram accounts linked to QAnon, citing a shift in the company’s policy toward movements that have “demonstrated significant risks to public safety,” but do not meet the criteria for an outright ban. TikTok blocked QAnon-related hashtags, and YouTube started providing a context box underneath QAnon videos that links to a Wikipedia page that explains the far-right conspiracy theory.

According to Axios, there was 10 times as much Google search interest in QAnon in July than in January, and QAnon pages and groups on Facebook had 10 times more likes at the end of last month than last July. There had been a 190 percent increase in the daily average number of tweets within popular QAnon hashtags since March compared to the prior seven months.

Q provides ample space for followers of Russian strategist and fascist, Aleksandr Dugin, to converge, while those under the influence of right-wing Brazilian ideologue Olavo de Carvalho can find common ground, too. The Guardian published an investigation 11 August 2020 that studied more than 170 QAnon groups, pages and Instagram accounts totaling 4.6 million followers. It documented dedicated communities in at least 15 countries, among the largest being German, Italian, Polish, Dutch, Australian and British. The FBI assesses anti-government, identity based, and fringe political conspiracy theories very likely motivate some domestic extremists, wholly or in part, to commit criminal and sometimes violent activity. The FBI further assesses in some cases these conspiracy theories very likely encourage the targeting of specific people, places, and organizations, thereby increasing the likelihood of violence against these targets. These assessments are made with high confidence, based on information from other law enforcement agencies, open source information, court documents, human sources with varying degrees of access and corroboration, and FBI investigations.

One key assumption driving these assessments is that certain conspiracy theory narratives tacitly suppo1t or legitimize violent action. The FBI also assumes some, but not all individuals or domestic extremists who hold such beliefs will act on them. The FBI assesses these conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace, occasionally driving both groups and individual extremists to carry out criminal or violent acts.

Although many conspiracy theories appear benign or inconsequential, others create serious risks. Throughout history, such conspiracy theories have fueled prejudice, witch-hunts, genocide, and acts of terrorism.' In the context of domestic terrorism, extremists often view the activities of alleged conspirators as an existential threat that can only be stopped through drastic, or even violent means.

A conspiracy theory is an attempt to explain events or circumstances as the result of a group of actors working in secret to benefit themselves at the expense of others. Conspiracy theories typically allege wrongdoing by powerful others (for example, public officials, business executives, scientists) or societally marginalized groups (for example, Muslims, Jews), and are most prevalent among individuals with extreme political views. Some conspiracy theories point to weak circumstantial evidence, but ignore stronger evidence that would refute their claims. Consequently, they are usually at odds with official or prevailing explanations of events) While a conspiracy theory refers to an allegation that may or may not be true, a conspiracy is a true causal chain of events. Real conspiracies involving illegal, antidemocratic, or harmful activities by high-level government officials and political elites have been exposed in the past and it has been argued that such plots have encouraged conspiracism in society.

Relying on the premises that nothing happens by accident, nothing is as it seems, and everything is connected, conspiracy theorists tend to view every bad outcome as the result of an intentional decision by an evil actor, dismiss disconfirming evidence as "fabricated" by the conspirators, and connect a wide range of seemingly unrelated occurrences to suggest a larger plot. Despite sharing key characteristics and at times featuring similar themes and intersecting plots, conspiracy theories vary greatly in their scope. Some are narrowly focused on a particular event or set of events whereas others suggest broad, expansive narratives that link multiple conspiracies in complex ways to portray a group of evil actors working to manipulate society on a global scale.

Facebook on Aug 20, 2020 said it had removed around 800 QAnon groups for posts that celebrate violence, show intent to use weapons, or try to attract followers with patterns of violent behavior. The social media giant also imposed restrictions on 1,950 more public and private QAnon accounts that it could find. They will no longer be recommended to users and will be harder to find in Facebook searches as well. "At the core of the current interpretation of this ideology, QAnon believes President Trump is the person who will save the world from this network of bad actors and he will uncover the Deep State that exist in the United States and overseas," said Kevin Grisham, associate director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University at San Bernardino.

The FBI assessed anti-government, identity based, and fringe political conspiracy theories very likely will emerge, spread, and evolve in the modern information marketplace over the near term, fostering anti-government sentiment, promoting racial and religious prejudice, increasing political tensions, and occasionally driving both groups and individuals to commit criminal or violent acts. Because some conspiracy theories are highly partisan in nature, political developments, including those surrounding major election cycles such as the 2020 presidential election, likely will impact the direction of these conspiracy theories and the potential activities of extremists who subscribe to them over the long term. Another factor driving the intensity of conspiracy theorizing in the United States, and the subsequent threat from conspiracy-minded extremists, is the uncovering of real conspiracies or cover-ups involving illegal, harmful, or unconstitutional activities by government officials or leading political figures.

US tech giant Facebook announced on 06 October 2020 that it will ban groups that openly support QAnon, a popular conspiracy theory that has led to the spread of misinformation across the United States and other countries. "Starting today, we will remove any Facebook Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts representing QAnon, even if they contain no violent content," Facebook said in a blog post. This marks a departure from Facebook’s earlier policy, which said that QAnon groups would be removed only if they promote violence. "We aim to combat this more effectively with this update that strengthens and expands our enforcement against the conspiracy theory movement," the company said. Under the new regulations, Facebook will look at a range of factors to ascertain whether the group should be banned. These include the group’s name, its biography, the "about section," content posted within the group or by the Instagram account.

Since the beginning of the COVID crisis the party of QAnon promoted hoaxes about the disease and how it should be treated - to the detriment of America's health and American lives. They have consistently downplayed the threat posed by the SARS-CoV-2 virus. As a result, super-spreader events blossomed across the nation. Meanwhile, QAnon was fighting against sound science-based recommendations about how to address the pandemic from wherever they come to the point that the Republican Party became identified as the party that seeks to spread COVID. The delusional QAnon world claimed the January 6th insurrection against the US democrcy was undertaken as a 'false flag' operation by the Black Lives Matter movement and Antifa.