FBI Says QAnon, Internet Conspiracy Theorists Are National Security Threats | Hacker News Reader

FBI Says QAnon, Internet Conspiracy Theorists Are National Security Threats

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113 pointsElof96 comments

There's a certain amount of irony here given the FBI's history (I'm thinking of COINTELPRO).

I support conspiracy theorists. I think they are canaries in the coal mine of free speech. Right now we seem to be wrestling with the fear that someone can write something online, someone else can read it, buy a gun, and go do something illegal. While I find this worrying, I think any cure would be worse than the disease.

Maybe they were canaries in the coal mine of free speech but now some of them have been co-opted to do real arm e.g. Russian trolls pushing anti-vax memes [1].

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137759/

> I think they are canaries in the coal mine of free speech.

Interesting take on it. I remember years back Chomsky had defended the right of some despicable Holocaust denier to publish his stuff https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Faurisson_affair. I always wonder if he would do it again today.

I hope someone will. Intellectual discussion seems to always play second fiddle to emotion and personal attacks (attack the idea, please, instead of the person).

Takes courage to stand up to a mob, online or in person. We need to defend the right to discuss distasteful things, and even to wonder if they are true (should I add a holocaust disclaimer here?).

Does it make a difference if there is no true discussion or debate, but instead one party that simply desires to spread misinformation? (Party in this context not meaning a US political party)

It makes no difference whatsoever: because otherwise we need to appoint a referee that gets to decide what counts as misinformation.

Intellectual discussion has no chance against a mob of people who are convinced that you're against them, and anything you say to try to prove you're not is just more evidence of how awful you are.

The people whose speech you're defending aren't interested in intellectual discussion or good-natured adversarial debate. They want to kill people, deprive them of rights, shout down everyone who disagrees with them, and justify all of this with a tissue of lies and conspiracy theories grounded primarily in bigotry and self-importance.

Doesn't mean they are any less entitled to the right of free speech.

> They want to kill people, deprive them of rights, shout down everyone who disagrees with them, and justify all of this with a tissue of lies and conspiracy theories grounded primarily in bigotry and self-importance.

You're talking about a vocal / violent minority of conspiracy theorists. Most are investigating their theories about possible conspiracies. Is there anything a conspiracy theorist could say, to try and prove they aren't against you?

Because your blanket description of 'the people whose speech I'm defending', and your implication they should be denied the freedom to speak their theories, makes you look disinterested in an intellectual discussion with any conspiracy theorist.

The problem is that conspiracy theory and moral panics are not victimless crimes. I grew up with an ultrarightwing christian conspiracy theorist who claimed my mother was a witch that was satanically ritual abusing me and my brother and "sacrificing" us to Satan. He also believed she was a serial killer running a daycare scheme that allowed her to mass slaughter children in the name of Satan. I was basically coerced into confessing this shit by the church when I was in kindergarten because I was caught by the playground attendant looking up girls skirts. My mother always wore jeans so I didn't understand the concept of a dress so I was picking up their skirts because I didn't understand the purpose of the garment. But the play ground attendant assumed it was sign that I was being sexually abused. My dad came to pick me up took me to the church shrink who basically coached me to say a bunch of really fucked up shit about my mother. She ended up loosing any custody of me and was not allowed to even be in the same room as me without police supervision until I was 18. She had to register as a sex offender.

Don't believe me? Read this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Day-care_sex-abuse_hysteria

I am an adult survivor of this abuse. So when you tell me that you support conspiracy theorists it makes me sick. Fuck them, they ruined me and my mother's life. Do you have any idea how hard it was for me to undo the indoctrination and brain washing I basically went through? And its not like these are your run of the mill conspiracy theorists that believe in aliens and JFK grassy knole shit. This ruins lives. When I see people like QAnon who front ideas like Pizza Gate and Alex Jones claiming Sandy Hook was a false flag and ruining the lives of people that lost their kids with death threats. Fuck them. And if you support them, fuck you too.

If you want further reading I recommend reading Satan's Silence

You're making the same class of mistake made by people who support (for instance) the death penalty against criminals in group X because their loved one was a victim of one of those criminals.

I empathize with you and understand that your experience must have been very difficult. That said, there are fundamental freedoms that must be defended even when the group in question is distasteful. Freedom to speak your mind -- and possibly propagate dumb conspiracies -- is one of them.

You are not free to ruin someone's life with lies, that is not how freedom of speech works. These are not dumb conspiracies they are psychological abuse. Look at QAnon, they basically convinced a guy to go shoot up a pizza parlor because of that kind of rhetoric.

Freedom to speak your mind, when it directly leads to the infringement of others' rights, is not a fundamental right. I have no right to say "Hey, so-and-so is a cheat, don't do business with them," however strongly I believe it, when they're not. I have no right to say "You should rob a bank, and I'll teach you how." I have no right to say "This herb will cure your disease" merely because I believe it, if nobody has convinced the government to also believe it. Heck, I don't even have the right to repeat your comment, except in specific ways and circumstances.

It is true that fundamental rights must be preserved even when used distastefully. But the fundamental right of freedom of speech is not a right to say whatever whenever, and it is not at all clear to me that propagating dumb conspiracies in a way that leads to violence is within the line. (Nor propagating smart conspiracies—since it's not the conspiracy itself that makes it questionable here.)

Your idea of the limitations of our right to free speech seems to depend on a referee; otherwise, it seems that you are conflating the idea of 'rights' with 'legality'.

> I have no right to say "Hey, so-and-so is a cheat, don't do business with them," however strongly I believe it, when they're not.

Who gets to say they are or are not a cheat? Spreading false rumours is reprehensible, but within your right to speak freely: just like the so-called cheat has the right to sue the rumour-maker for defamation.

> I have no right to say "You should rob a bank, and I'll teach you how."

It's illegal to encourage/enable illegal actions, but you have the right to do illegal things - just like you have the right to bear the consequences of your illegal actions.

> I have no right to say "This herb will cure your disease" merely because I believe it, if nobody has convinced the government to also believe it.

What if the herb (or cutting-edge treatment developed in some other country) works beautifully in another country, but the FDA in the US doesn't recognize it yet? You've set up the US government as the referee who gets to decide when we are allowed to have our right to free speech.

> I don't even have the right to repeat your comment, except in specific ways and circumstances.

You have the right to repeat the comment however you like - but you also have the right to be sued under copyright and defamation laws.

> fundamental rights must be preserved even when used distastefully

They are also, as recognized in the US declaration of independence, unalienable: the government has no say in whether we get to have them.

> not at all clear to me that propagating dumb conspiracies in a way that leads to violence is within the line...since it's not the conspiracy itself that makes it questionable here

As you point out; someone theorizes about a Bad Person, someone reads that conspiracy stuff online, and decides to 'do something' about it, and tries to shoot that Bad Person. In the US Code, inciting to commit a crime looks like this: "whoever...solicits, commands, induces, or otherwise endeavors to persuade such other person to engage in such conduct".

So what exactly do you mean by "in a way that leads to violence"? Because what the US code describes is vastly different from "theorizing about the existence of a conspiracy", however 'out there' the conspiracy is. And in at least the example of the pizzagate shooter, he persuaded himself of his actions - the conspiracy just made him think that a Very Bad Thing was happening there. And there is nothing wrong with theorizing about the existence of a conspiracy of people doing Bad Things.

If you define "right" as "you have the ability to do X and face legal consequences for having done it," then I an absolutely in favor of the right of free speech of the Pizzagate folks to get themselves arrested. So, great, we all believe in free speech for everyone.

What word would you like to use for "the ability to do X without legal consequence from the government"? Because that seems like a more interesting discussion.

>If you define "right" as "you have the ability to do X and face legal consequences for having done it,"

This is a completely useless definition, as it means literally everyone has a right to everything. E.g. I have a "right" to murder you and then face the legal consequences for doing so.

(Yes, that's my point.)

> "the ability to do X without legal consequence from the government"

That would be, 'it's not illegal'. I think there are four different things in play here.

a) a fundamental right, because you are human; this is something that a government ought to respect.

b) something which the government has said is legal to do; i.e., something the goverment says is OK.

c) the responsibilities which a citizen must bear; or, what happens if you break the law

d) the rights to which a citizen is entitled: the respect which the government actually gives you.

I guess I conflated some of those things.

> If you define "right" as "you have the ability to do X and face legal consequences for having done it,"

That would be a combination of (a) and (c), where you have the human right to say what you please, but as a citizen you have to deal with the consequences. That's different from, say, murder, where you don't have the human right to murder and you also broke the law (and have to face the consequences). It's a trivial distinction in most cases, but not all.

Let us evaluate your statement.

>You're making the same class of mistake made by people who support (for instance) the death penalty against criminals in group X because their loved one was a victim of one of those criminals.

First, I am not making a statement for or against capital punishment. That is a strawman argument and false dichotomy. Second, there is no overlap between criminal and civil jurisprudence and capital punishment here.

>That said, there are fundamental freedoms that must be defended even when the group in question is distasteful. Freedom to speak your mind -- and possibly propagate dumb conspiracies -- is one of them.

There is not a unlimited waiver of consequences for making false statements defined anywhere in the first amendment. Defamation, libel and slander are examples of speech that can be prosecuted under the law. Defamation in my case would be false statements that an individual made specific criminal allegations as well as engagement in certain sexual misconduct. To suggest that this is protected speech is not only wrong but dead wrong.

Indeed, there were many true conspiracies in the nation's history, some of them which sound absolutely false and ridiculous until you read the declassified documents. The CIA's experiments with LSD, the FBI's threats to MLK, COINTELPRO as you mentioned, the Tuskegee syphilis experiment, these are all sordid (and true) episodes in US history that perfectly fit the "conspiracy theory" mold. If one of these events happened today and people uncovered it, they would be relentlessly mocked as "Russian trolls" by blue checks on Twitter, ignored by the mainstream media, and blocked by centralized social media gatekeepers like YouTube and Facebook.

(Needless to say, the US is not the only country with skeletons in its closet. Many others are worse.)

Some so-called "conspiracies" -- not all, not even most, but some -- ARE true. They are usually pretty horrible, and they deserve to be exposed. Do we really want to suppress conversations that could uncover these kind of institutional crimes? It's not like the bought-and-paid-for media is going to do it.

My opinion: violent people are going to find something to lash out no matter what. It might be an obsession with a celebrity, an ideology, a conspiracy theory, a religion, a politician, a neighbor or coworker, or something else. Rather than playing whack-a-mole with possible "triggers" for violence, realize that potential triggers are everywhere and adjust strategy accordingly.

Do you feel the same about al-Qaeda? (Not a trick question–honestly I would be willing to argue in favor of al-Qaeda's freedom of speech, including their freedom to advocate their ideology in the US. And I work in a high-rise building in lower Manhattan.)

It seems like designating anyone as a terrorist or stating that any ideology is a root cause of a national security threat is a direct risk to the freedom of speech. Yet it seems valid and important for a country's executive to do so.

theres freedom of speech and then theres free broadcasting. theres a difference between blocking people from having conversations with each other, and choosing not to give away free broadcast.

the problem right now is that there are probably around 20 gatekeepers for nearly all broadcast in the country. if you want the massess to hear you, you need to convince some of those 20 to lend you broadcast space. (facebook, google, twitter, disney, verizon, att, sony, microsoft, comcast, charter, iheartradio, nationalamusement, sinclair, tribune, gannett, hearst, advanced publications, associated press, thompsonreuters, discovery. who did i miss.) if you have a propaganda message to get out, you just need to feed it to those 20 places and get your generals up on their screens.

those twenty companies conspiring (either directly, or just being aligned because taking the same side benefits them) to silence a message does violate the principal of freedom of speech in some way, but can we really compel them to offer conspiracy theorists equal air time? forcing them to displace speech they prefer for speech they down violates their own speech. im not sure telling these companies what they should and shouldnt be allowed to say is the right way forward, vs decentralizing communication platforms and dealing with the repercussions of a system that cant be censored.

I would imagine that a future decentralized platform would end up similar to something like ublock filter lists. Some sort of default "these are the servers you want to follow to see most of the world news." For it to work, the default setting needs to be something most people can just click NEXT on and never think of again.

Access to platforms (and the freedom of the press) is an important topic, yes, but I'm not sure what it has to do with the question of whether the FBI calling a group of people with odious opinions a national security threat endangers their freedom of speech.

>Not a trick question–honestly I would be willing to argue in favor of al-Qaeda's freedom of speech, including their freedom to advocate their ideology in the US.

I guess where I am going is, do you favor their equal access to private broadcast services? If no, then its functionally equivalent to suppression their speech rights, given our current environment, because all public speech needs to exit out 1 of those 20 megaphones.

Otherwise its like supporting everyones right to their own billboard, but saying the government or an oligopoly gets to control the land access of who gets to place one hear a highway.

A billboard away from a highway is like a tree falling in a forest without someone to hear it, from an auditory perspective, it didnt happen.

I don't think it's functionally equivalent to suppression of their free speech rights, because I don't believe in free speech as an abstract virtue of society, I believe in free speech as a check on the powers of an oppressive government. If you want to tell people about the faults of the government and organize resistance, you're never going to get the support of established media channels, regardless of whether you're in a democracy or a monarchy or a communist state. But it is still important that you be able to set up person-to-person communication networks and hold meetings of like-minded people and try to persuade people to your cause without being imprisoned.

I think al-Qaeda's speech acts are difficult to distinguish from a genuine homegrown resistance/revolutionary movement, and I worry that laws that criminalize advocating its ideology can also be used to crush a budding resistance movement and censor the spread of material the government finds embarrassing.

Someone can run an entertainment channel under the guise of a news service to influence the thoughts of millions. Which is more dangerous?

The article lists specifically 5 conspiracy theories: QAnon, Pizzagate, some kind of “Zionist Occupation Government” theory, Sandy Hook "Crisis Actor", and New World Order theory. Some of these I've never heard of.

I'm concerned what this will do to squash legitimate criticisms and questions. Recall, Pizzagate accused Epstein and his associates of pedophilia (and described his airplane as well). If the FBI considers accusing epstien and his associates of pedophilia a national security threat, we are in trouble.

Epstein wasn't much of a secret, he was convicted (and got a ridiculously favorable plea deal) back in 2008.

I think ridiculously favorable is probably an understatement. It was more like he wasn't punished at all and the documents weren't made public at all.

It wasn't until the internet funded Mike Cernovich 10k to sue to make the records public (which the Miami Herold then joined in with) that probably ultimately led to a new case being formed in NYC.

https://youtu.be/mtiV0VJsc9c?t=4m20s

Here's another great explainer of just how ridiculously favourable that deal was: https://youtu.be/VXtI-8dq7B0

And yet seemingly up until recently people were completely unaware of the Epsteins.

This really should frighten people, to be honest. There is a lot of public information out there that people are completely oblivious to, simply because the media giants don't cover it. They attempt to discredit QAnon but they fail at doing so because their articles are void of facts. They have an obvious narrative but nobody seems to care.

People who believed Epstein was involved in child trafficking were considered conspiracy theorists up until a few weeks ago. What about the others close to Epstein? Who got him off the hook last time? How do you explain away James Alefantis' photos on his Instagram? Who is he close to? How do you deal with Laura Silsby, who is now Laura Galyer, and her adventures in Haiti? Podesta and especially his "art"? I can go on and on.

Am I a conspiracy theorist for being concerned about what the hell is going on?

It's important to keep in mind that the term 'conspiracy theory' was first weaponised as part of a 1976 psyop https://www.coreysdigs.com/c-i-a-3-letter-agencies/cia-coine...

The nature of conspiracy theories like these is they draw false connections between things that are often true, in order to make larger false claims. That means sometimes they raise the profile of true things, but that's just a side effect of their real purpose.

Can we agree that attempting to 'connect the dots' between known facts should not be considered a threat to national security? That's my concern.

Connecting the dots? That’s fine.

Making up new dots? That’s not.

> Making up new dots? That’s not.

To clarify: does the FBI get to say which dots have been fabricated?

Someone has to.

Should it be the FBI? I dunno. But there is no Universal Truth that will defend itself and make people who lie turn purple, so we have to depend on people to make that call at some step along the line.

> Someone has to.

I don't think so. When there isn't a Universal Truth to turn to, we should not consider people who disagree with authority to be a threat to the security of the nation.

All conspiracy theories connect to reality just enough to provide an on-ramp for new adherents. Your "if" statement above is exactly how it works. No. No one, least of all the FBI, is saying anything of the sort you wrap your if statement around. Please don't step onto the on-ramp of conspiracy theory mania and please don't encourage others who might be less stable than you or have lower cognitive abilities than you to do so either.

If anything this stuff helps real crooks like Epstein by muddying the water and making the whole subject area look silly. I sometimes wonder if some of it is intentional. Seems like a great way to cover things up in an age where actually keeping secrets is hard.

I know if I were running a human trafficking, prostitution, and blackmail operation and wanted to cover it up I'd start by spreading wild theories and false accusations about elite Satanic cartoon villain cults doing exactly what I'm doing. That way the whole topic would get an aura of crankiness and reputable media would stay away.

Disinformation is like radar chaff. You just blow out a lot of noise and nobody knows where the signal is. The real secrets might leak but it doesn't matter because they just merge and blend in with all the bullshit.

A grassroots explanation for this stuff is more likely of course, if only for Ockham's razor reasons. My point is that no good is accomplished by spreading nonsense.

ah yes. I personally like to refer to this as a stargate theory. for example, if the gov actually had a piece of alien technology capable of opening a wormhole to other planets, perhaps the best way to cover it up would indeed be to create a public tv show about it. That way, anyone who tried to argue for its veracity would immediately be considered a borderline lunatic.

I know a few people who are into UFO stuff and think that's exactly what was done to cover up evidence of alien presence. They also think a lot of the more common conspiracy-type mythology and fringe stuff in the UFO circuit is nonsense put out there to make the topic look silly.

It would definitely work.

Well, Stargate SG-1 specifically had the US Air Force fully on-board as consultants and even occasional guest appearances by genuine Air Force brass.

So...maybe there really is something under Cheyenne Mountain? ^_^

> I know if I were running a human trafficking, prostitution, and blackmail operation and wanted to cover it up I'd start by spreading wild theories and false accusations about elite Satanic cartoon villain cults doing exactly what I'm doing. That way the whole topic would get an aura of crankiness and reputable media would stay away.

I'm sure that keeping the "reputable" media away helps with teasing out the really big fish behind the blackmail operation. If the fish don't know how close you are to netting them, they can't get away.

> If anything this stuff helps real crooks like Epstein by muddying the water and making the whole subject area look silly. I sometimes wonder if some of it is intentional. Seems like a great way to cover things up in an age where actually keeping secrets is hard.

Absolutely. Karl Rove famously said something to the effect of "accuse them of what you're the most guilty of".

My money says that's why there is the Pizzagate thing -- Trump's clear ties to Epstein are absolutely damming, so spin up the Pizzagate and make sure to mention Bill Clinton's ties to Epstein as well.

> Disinformation is like radar chaff. You just blow out a lot of noise and nobody knows where the signal is. The real secrets might leak but it doesn't matter because they just merge and blend in with all the bullshit.

There is a RAND Corp report about this: The Russian Firehose [of Propaganda] https://www.rand.org/pubs/perspectives/PE198.html

Is the new world order theory all that dangerous? It's been around for decades and regularly tied in with other conspiracy theories. The worst it's done that I'm aware of is be tied in with "agenda 21" conspiracies and helped stall action on climate change.

One field office in Arizona wrote a single report...

Am I missing something? How does one field off speak for the entirety of the FBI? If this was coming from the director of the FBI it would have a bit more grit.

Reply All has done good episodes on this (https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/n8homa/122-the-qanon...) and PizzaGate (https://gimletmedia.com/amp/shows/reply-all/emhwl5) for anyone who wants a high level summary.

These comments, or even the article at this point, need to be purged. This article is related to HN but most of these comments aren’t. The content of these comments belongs on Reddit or Twitter. They are snarky, one liners, flame-baity, etc.

I complained about this as well --- there's an anti-pattern on HN where almost anyone can come up with something to say about the FBI, or a joke about QAnon, but comparatively few will have anything germane to say, with the inevitable result of trash-fire threads.

But HN is also doing a good job on this particular thread of flagging those comments, which you should do as well.

If you're morbidly curious about QAnon conspiracies, but can't stomach actually digging in yourself, these guys do a pretty entertaining job of covering whatever the current conspiracy is.

https://twitter.com/QanonAnonymous

Politics isn’t just what politicians do anymore than voting is all that citizens do.

‘In 2013, Surkov was characterized by The Economist[1] as the engineer of "a system of make-believe", "a land of imitation political parties, stage-managed media and fake social movements".’[2]

[1] https://www.economist.com/news/europe/21577421-what-departur...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladislav_Surkov

Blogspam of https://news.yahoo.com/fbi-documents-conspiracy-theories-ter...

(But I expect this will disappear into flag-oblivion shortly anyway)

The danger is, as the article mentions, conspiracy theories range from relatively benign to actively harmful and dangerous. They've become more and more weaponized as a way of finding villains, outlets for violence, anger etc which then results in innocent people being murdered. Or, in the case of one incident, someone killing a mob boss and putting his entire extended family at risk.

Which, I mean, this is all related to the tech industry as a whole because Youtube, Twitter, Facebook etc all feed into the cycle of extremism because it increases engagement. It's hard to ignore the profound shift as a result of content not only being easily accessible but also targeted directly at various groups of people and monetized. I've already had to talk with my parents because they've fallen into the trap of following or believing Facebook posts which perpetuate falsified information. It's only going to get a lot worse before it gets better.

It's not only worse, though. The internet has also made it much easier to access and spread true information. Without the internet, there could be no WikiLeaks. Let's not forget, as well, that the most objectively harmful "fake news" in recent American history was not perpetrated by random Facebook posts, but by the major news outlets themselves, and even heavily pushed by the New York Times - the disinformation campaign surrounding Iraqi WMD.

Like a lot of "dangerous" speech online I wish the government would focus their efforts on helping the people who are getting sucked in to these ideologies rather than trying to police them. I have a friend who went down the conspiracy theory rabbit hole shortly after his dad died. He's very clearly mentally unwell. He owns several firearms and sometimes I do worry about him snapping. But there's just no reasoning with him when it comes to his conspiracies or seeking medical treatment.

He's not a criminal. I hope he doesn't become one. Once upon a time he was a really nice guy. But I think he (and society) would benefit a lot more from some support and mental health treatment than surveillance.

Mods, could you change the url/title to that of the original source at Yahoo?

https://news.yahoo.com/fbi-documents-conspiracy-theories-ter...

sounds like the FBI considers them a threat...

Or maybe just the agency’s Phoenix bureau.

I was under the impression that QAnon was a documented fabrication - that it was a deliberate hoax concocted on 8chan (or somewhere similar) for the “lulz,” with the message trail to prove it.

You might be thinking about this https://news.artnet.com/opinion/q-anon-hoax-1329983

China was served opium by its opponents and I guess the US is being served spiralling destructive conspiracy theories.

Seems like there isn't much the government can do about influencers spouting off dangerous rhetoric causing ignorant followers to do harm. Could the FBI actually arrest these people for inciting extremism or are they protected by free speech?

not all that tangential: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Szk7XXEb_sQ

Really makes you hope this doesn't just make them dial it up to 11 in response..

The FBI announcing this now, given there is an American President obsessed with internet conspiracy theories and theorists, to the extent that he invites QAnon supporters to the Whitehouse, does perhaps feel a smidgen like shutting the stable door long after the horse has bolted. And as others have noted here, the QAnon nonsense itself is just malarkey in the first place. The only ultimate point of QAnon is that of a collaborative joke to reel in media and idiots. Is all quite strange really. Is an online hive acting as a farcical Rasputin on modern US power structures, for the most part as a practical joke.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com