What is QAnon? An introduction to the conspiracy theory that's eating America | Hacker News Reader

What is QAnon? An introduction to the conspiracy theory that's eating America

salon.com

31 pointsedward15 comments

Apparently it's been discovered that QAnon is actually the founder of 8 Chan.

> If you type in on Twitter: 'Q Jim Watkins' you'll see how the true owner of Q got doxed recently. Q . pub, Q-map/Q-anon is tied to current 8chan owner Jim Watkins. He's known for escaping America to the Philippines after suggesting that 8chan would be a safe-haven for: 'Peadophiles.' He's a rampant conspiracy theorist. His IP not only tied to Q-anon it's also tied to a obscure Twitter knock-off site that's popular with White-Supremacists called GAB and also links to The Daily Stormer which is a Neo-Nazi: 'news' site. Jim Watkins is Q and it's a essentially a viral front solely dedicated to spreading anti-Semitism as well as white supremacy online through various social media platforms.

https://twitter.com/tamarafurey/status/1298052647686033408

https://twitter.com/HW_BEAT_THAT/status/1297616337984843776

https://twitter.com/bitburner/status/1298358752773431296

Was it ever suggested that qdrop.pub was run by "Q" themself? I'm not familiar with the site, but just looking at it it seems to be little more than a "search results" page for 8ch posts with a particular tripcode.

While it's possible I'm missing something, this doesn't seem very conclusive.

Twitter. That bastion of authoritative research.

Given that your preferred institution of authoritative research is Q dumps, I'd monitor the velocity of projectiles you're launching from your transparent-silicon domicile.

https://www.nbcnews.com/tech/tech-news/how-three-conspiracy-...

And what points have I made in discussion where I link attribution to a Q dump?

You basically never attribute your points to anything.

But the tracking of the things you say to Q-conspiracy nonsense is extremely telling regarding your info sources.

Does anything know if other countries have the same levels of conspiracy theory belief as the United States? I've tried to research this and largely come up empty.

from personal experience (born in Germany, lived in several EU countries, spent some time in the US), no. There are conspiracy theories that are somewhat equivalent to QAnon in spirit like the "Reichsbürger" one in Germany which asserts that the state really is some sort of corporation owned by Jews or the US or something along these lines and it has a modest following, but it is completely outside of civil society.

The US seems relatively unique mostly because it doesn't have any legal or information infrastructure to battle these sorts of misinformation. As soon as conspiracy-theories venture into anti-semitism or hate (as they regularly do), there exist legal tools to shut them down in Europe, and there is a healthy public news/broadcasting infrastructure in most countries that manages to keep a common reality intact.

ESL/EFL teacher here. Yes. A Spanish engineer who was my student recently thinks the moon landing was faked. A Puerto Rican accountant thinks the CIA has weather-controlling satellites and steers hurricanes to PR. Many Europeans think 9/11 was done by Bush. Many, many Arabs that I've taught say the holocaust never happened, and that Jews are responsible for a hundred unrelated things.

> if other countries have the same levels of conspiracy theory belief as the United States?

From what I am aware of, at least in western Europe a lot of new fake stories indeed have their origin directly from the internet and English speaking sources.

It's that bad: even different politicians, who theoretically should have some people in charge of checking what they should talk about, repeat publicly things that they probably get from the internet.

Additionally, I'm aware of more than one medical practitioner also spreading misinformation about the pandemics, obviously also after reading initially English-originated fake stories.

Internet is more powerful than most would like to accept in spreading false beliefs internationally.

Just an example, a report from Turkey about that:

https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/why-the-far-right-conspira...

stating:

"Websites, pages, social media groups and accounts have appeared in the UK, Germany, France, and Italy, and are gathering a large following."

In Germany, covered by NBC:

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/qanon-supporters-join-tho...

"BERLIN — Thousands of protesters, some waving flags with the symbol of the QAnon conspiracy movement, gathered in the German capital Berlin on Saturday to demonstrate against social restrictions in place due to the coronavirus pandemic."

A report from the Switzerland (German, the relevant part translated to English follows):

https://www.blick.ch/news/schweiz/das-fbi-stuft-sie-als-terr...

"It was hardly a coincidence that QAnon fanatics marched publicly for the first time in Switzerland in May. The big Q on T-shirts and signs was omnipresent at the corona demos of radical anti-vaccination opponents and right-wing esotericists in Bern and Zurich.

Celebrities also acted as a fire accelerator for the growing movement in Europe: vegan chef Attila Hildmann, musician Xavier Naidoo and pop singer Robbie Williams. They all spread QAnon propaganda. Xavier Naidoo said in a Telegram video: “I've slowly been able to put the puzzle together. Because that is an industry, a huge industry that tortures and murders children. " Now one could dismiss these horror stories as outrageous nonsense if the story did not have concrete consequences. Because radicalization on the internet is increasingly leading to real violence."

In Italy:

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/italy-bill-gates-arrest/

"The politician in this video is Italian Parliament Member Sara Cunial. She’s part of Italy’s “5 Star Movement,” a political party that has been blamed for a rise of measles in Italy after pushing an anti-vaccination agenda. Cunial, who was briefly suspended from the party in 2018 after likening vaccines to “free genocide” in a Facebook post, was fined in April 2020 for violating one of the country’s shelter-in place policies to visit a beach. (Cunial claims she was never fined.)

Cunial’s speech before the Italian Parliament hit on a number of popular (and discredited) conspiracy theories regarding COVID-19. For instance, she linked the spread of the disease to the rise of 5G technology, claimed that Gates was working to de-populate the world, and said that the “ID2020” coalition was working to secretly implement digital microchips via mandatory vaccines."

Edit:

The link to the second article by Robert Guffey on Salon:

https://www.salon.com/2020/08/23/the-deep-twisted-roots-of-q...

From there, writing about one writer of fiction:

"To Shaver's credit, he never tried to base a church on his theories."

Another writer of fiction however actually did base a church on his own weird texts:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xenu

Reading that article, I can't help but wonder if the effects of solitary confinement begin to manifest as a kind of pervasive low-level mental illness after people have no physical, real life social contact for days on end. The plot points of the conspiracy sound like the experience of talking to someone who has been alone in their head long enough that they index on connections they made themselves, and they expect you to share their reference points. The details of these social hallucinations don't matter, it's the fact of them at all, and what might be causing them that is the important piece to me. I've met people seized by stupid ideas, and any attempt to dislodge the idea from the outside will trigger its immune response, so you just smile and nod and change the subject.

Having travelled the periphery of evangelical circles, there is an element of that culture where metaphor and belief blur. What secular people might describe using terms from psychology or literary narrative, some evangelicals use a mythopoetic framework for discussing everyday struggles instead.

The author references the idea of a "Big Lie," which I see as a fast filter for building a pipeline of people who are susceptible to being unmoored from reality if you just give them some enticement. From this, I think QAnon most resembles a new folk religion of isolated people, which is the effect of their social atomization. It's what you get when you disconnect people from each other and they need to understand the world in stories and create new ties. Viewed that way, it could look less like a single conspiracy theory and more like a modern variation of something like a "Voodoo," or a reactionary "syncretic religion," as described in wiki: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncretism

Interesting idea, but QAnon dates to at least 2017. Also, are people who believe in QAnon actually isolating? I would guess that if COVID-19 is a hoax to you and your social circle, you're continuing to meet in person.

The isolation I'm referring to is the effect of post-social media polarization that started around 2008 and the social isolation that seems to result from it, where the people attracted to QAnon are ones who are among the "left behind," in the progressive worldview. It's reactionary, as they are the focal point of a global movement whose defining attribute is that it uses these people and their culture as a symbol and a reference point to align against, so many of them resort to whatever community they can still find.

the sad thing is this recent media hysteria has done more to legitimize Q in the eyes of Qanon'ers than anything else. Since the very first Q post to /pol/ on 4chan back in the end of October 2016, where Q prophesied that Hillary Clinton would be arrested the next day for treason, the community of Conspiracy Theorists have been evenly divided about whether Q is real or a LARP. clearly, a majority of the Q prophecies have turned out to be false and never happened (i.e "Trust Sessions, Trust Wray").

But now that the Leftist media is putting Qanon on the front pages and in the opening monologues of their talk shows, it's causing the opposite unintended consequence: if Qanon was so fake, then why are famous journalists and billion dollar media conglomerates talking about Qanon as if it is real? Therefore, it must be real.

The media always needs a boogeyman. And if no boogeyman exists, then the media will fabricate it. In 2016, it was the AltRight, which didnt really exist in a big way in meatspace. Now in 2020 the new Boogeyman is Qanon, which also doesnt exist in a large physical sense outside of obscure forums and memes. I really hate how the media does this. It's a form of bullying, to pick a fringe group that nobody takes seriously and elevate them to the next National Enemy. It's also stupid, because instead of the media focusing on real issues, like oh say COVID or the economic collapse or civil unrest in 100's of cities, naw, the media chooses to focus on the lamest most powerless and kooky group of conspiracy theorists.

thanks a lot media. no wonder everyone calls them the Fake News now.

I guess this is the media's version of Trust the Plan.

This is a little disingenuous, isn't it? I'm no cheerleader for mainstream media and agree that they can/often manipulate facts or selectively report certain things, but I'm not sure if QAnon is that thing.

Is it realistic to say that QAnon is being covered instead of "COVID or the economic collapse or civil unrest in 100's of cities"? I think these topics still take center stage in reporting currently.

And QAnon is not merely some small internet thing -- many QAnon followers have won primaries, so assuming that in aggregate these candidates have some chance at winning (they do; see GA-14 for example) it's also weird to dismiss them as powerless when they are likely to hold elected office.

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