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Two soldiers meeting Pence on a tarmac
US Vice-President Mike Pence with members of the Broward County, Florida SWAT team on November 30, 2018; the man at the left of the image is displaying a red and black "Q" patch used by believers of the QAnon conspiracy theory. The photo was tweeted, removed, and then substituted in Pence's feed.
 
A zoom in on one soldier's uniform that has a patch with a black "Q" on a red background, and another that is a black field with an axe and scythe crossed over one another
Detail from photo showing the QAnon patch. The black-and white patch to the left has been reported to be that of the SWAT team. Regulations forbid wearing either patch, and the deputy was reprimanded and removed from the SWAT team as a result.
 
QAnon (/kjuːəˈnɒn/) is a far-right conspiracy theory detailing a supposed secret plot by an alleged "deep state" against President Donald Trump and his supporters. The theory began with an October 2017 post on the anonymous imageboard 4chan by "Q", who was presumably an American individual, but probably became a group of people. Q claimed to have access to classified information involving the Trump administration and its opponents in the United States. Analysis by NBC News found that three people took the original Q post and expanded it across multiple media platforms to build internet followings for profit. QAnon was preceded by several similar anonymous 4chan posters such as FBIAnon, HLIAnon (high level insider), CIAAnon, and WH Insider Anon.

Q has accused many liberal Hollywood actors, Democratic politicians, and high-ranking officials of being members of an international child sex trafficking ring. Q also claimed that Donald Trump feigned collusion with Russians to enlist Robert Mueller to join him in exposing the ring and preventing a coup d'état by Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and George Soros. "Q" is a reference to the Q clearance used by the U.S. Department of Energy. QAnon believers commonly tag their social media posts with the hashtag #WWG1WGA, signifying the motto "Where We Go One, We Go All".

QAnon adherents began appearing at Trump re-election campaign rallies during the summer of 2018. TV and radio personality Michael "Lionel" Lebron, a promoter of the theory, was granted a photo opportunity with President Trump in the Oval Office on August 24, 2018. Bill Mitchell, a broadcaster who promotes QAnon, attended a White House "social media summit" in July 2019.

At an August 2019 rally, a man warming up the crowd before President Trump spoke used the QAnon motto "where we go one, we go all," later denying that it was a QAnon reference. This occurred hours after the publication of a report stating that the FBI determined QAnon to be a potential source of domestic terrorism, the first time that a fringe conspiracy theory had been so rated by the agency. The number of QAnon adherents was unclear, but they had a large presence on social media, particularly Twitter. A Facebook internal analysis reported in August found millions of followers in thousands of groups and pages. Followers had also migrated to dedicated message boards such as Endchan and 8kun, where they organized to wage information warfare to influence the 2020 elections. On June 24, 2020, Q exhorted followers to take a "digital soldiers oath," and many did using the Twitter hashtag #TakeTheOath. In July 2020, Twitter banned thousands of QAnon-affiliated accounts and changed its algorithms to reduce the spread of the conspiracy theory.

Theory

The conspiracy theory, disseminated mainly by supporters of Trump as The Storm and The Great Awakening—QAnon's precepts and vocabulary are closely related to the religious concepts of millenarianism and apocalypticism, leading it to be sometimes construed as an emerging religious movement—has been widely characterized as "baseless", "unhinged", and "evidence-free". Its proponents have been called "a deranged conspiracy cult" and "some of the Internet's most outré Trump fans".

According to Travis View, who has studied the QAnon phenomenon and written about it extensively for The Washington Post, the essence of the conspiracy theory is that:
"there is a worldwide cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles who rule the world, essentially, and they control everything. They control politicians, and they control the media. They control Hollywood, and they cover up their existence, essentially. And they would have continued ruling the world, were it not for the election of President Donald Trump. Now, Donald Trump in this conspiracy theory knows all about this evil cabal's wrongdoing. But one of the reasons that Donald Trump was elected was to put an end to them, basically. And now we would be ignorant of this behind-the-scenes battle of Donald Trump and the U.S. military—that everyone backs him and the evil cabal—were it not for 'Q.' And what 'Q' is—is basically a poster on 4chan, who later moved to 8chan, who reveals details about this secret behind-the-scenes battle, and also secrets about what the cabal is doing and also the mass sort of upcoming arrest events through these posts."
Followers of QAnon also believe that there is an imminent event known as "The Storm" in which thousands of people, members of the cabal, will be arrested, possibly sent to Guantanamo Bay prison or face military tribunals, and the U.S. military will brutally take over the country. The result of "The Storm" will be salvation and a utopia on earth.

History

Background

On October 30, 2016, a Twitter account posting white supremacist material which said it was run by a New York lawyer falsely claimed that the New York City Police Department (NYPD) had discovered a pedophilia ring linked to members of the Democratic Party while searching through Anthony Weiner's emails. Throughout October and November 2016, WikiLeaks had published John Podesta's emails. Proponents of the theory read the emails and alleged they contained code words for pedophilia and human trafficking. Proponents also claimed that Comet Ping Pong was a meeting ground for Satanic ritual abuse.

The story was later posted on fake news websites, starting with Your News Wire, which cited a 4chan post from earlier that year. The Your News Wire article was subsequently spread by pro-Trump websites, including SubjectPolitics.com, which added the claim that the NYPD had raided Hillary Clinton's property. The Conservative Daily Post ran a headline claiming the Federal Bureau of Investigation had confirmed the theory.

Anons

In its most basic sense, an "anon" refers to any anonymous or pseudonymous internet poster.

The concept of anons "doing research" and claiming to disclose otherwise classified information, while a key component of the QAnon conspiracy theory, is by no means exclusive to it. Before Q, a number of so-called anons also claimed to have special government access.

On July 2, 2016, an anonymous poster known as "FBI Anon", a self-described "high-level analyst and strategist" who claimed to have "intimate knowledge of the inner workings of the Clinton case", began offering lies about the 2016 investigation into the Clinton Foundation and claimed that Hillary Clinton would be imprisoned if Trump became president. Around that time, another figure known as "HLI Anon", standing for "High Level Insider Anon", hosted long question and answer sessions, dispensing various conspiracy theories, including one that claimed Princess Diana was murdered after trying to stop the September 11 attacks.

Soon after the 2016 United States elections, two anonymous posters known only as "CIA Anon" and "CIA Intern" falsely claimed to be high-ranking CIA officers, and in late August 2017, an account called "WH Insider Anon" offered a supposed preview that something that was "going to go down" regarding leaks that would supposedly affect the Democratic Party.

Origin

A person identifying as "Q Clearance Patriot" first appeared on the /pol/ board of 4chan on October 28, 2017, posting in a thread titled "Calm Before the Storm", which was a reference to Trump's cryptic description of a gathering of United States military leaders he attended as "the calm before the storm". "The Storm" is QAnon parlance for an imminent event when thousands of alleged suspects will be arrested, imprisoned and executed. Q later moved to 8chan, citing concerns that the 4chan board had been "infiltrated".

The poster's username implied that the anonymous poster holds Q clearance, a United States Department of Energy security clearance required to access to Top Secret information on nuclear weapons and materials.

False claims and beliefs

HRC extradition already in motion effective yesterday with several countries in case of cross border run. Passport approved to be flagged effective 10/30 @ 12:01am. Expect massive riots organized in defiance and others fleeing the US to occur. US M's will conduct the operation while NG activated. Proof check: Locate a NG member and ask if activated for duty 10/30 across most major cities.
—QAnon's first post on the /pol/ message board of 4chan, on October 28, 2017
 
Q's posting campaign has a history of false, baseless, and unsubstantiated claims. Beginning with the first posts incorrectly predicting Hillary Clinton's imminent arrest and followed by more false allegations, such as claiming that North Korean Supreme Leader Kim Jong-un is a puppet ruler installed by the Central Intelligence Agency, Q's posts have become more cryptic and vague, allowing followers to map their own beliefs onto them. By generating a keyboard heatmap of Q's supposedly coded messages, information security researcher Mark Burnett concluded that they "are not actual codes, just random typing by someone who might play an instrument and uses a QWERTY keyboard", adding that "almost all the characters" in the codes alternate between the left and right hands, or the characters are close to each other on the keyboard.

Some of Q's other allegations include his February 16, 2018 false claim that U.S. Representative and former Democratic National Committee chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz hired Salvadoran gang MS-13 to murder DNC staffer Seth Rich, and their March 1, 2018 apparent suggestion that German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the granddaughter of Adolf Hitler. A July 7, 2018 article published in The Daily Beast also noted that Q falsely claimed that "each mass shooting is a false-flag attack organized by the cabal". Other beliefs held by QAnon adherents include that Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, George Soros, and others are planning a coup while simultaneously involved as members of an international child sex trafficking ring. According to this idea, the Mueller investigation is actually a counter-coup led by Donald Trump, who pretended to collude with Russia in order to hire Robert Mueller to secretly investigate the Democrats. Another recurring theme is that certain Hollywood stars are pedophiles, and that the Rothschild family are the leaders of a satanic cult. By interpreting the information fed to them by Q, QAnon adherents come to these conclusions.

On multiple occasions, Q has dismissed his false claims and incorrect predictions as willful misinformation, claiming that "disinformation is necessary". This has led Australian psychologist Stephan Lewandowsky to emphasize the "self-sealing" quality of the conspiracy theory, highlighting its anonymous purveyor's use of plausible deniability and noting that evidence against the theory "can become evidence of [its] validity in the minds of believers". Author Walter Kirn has described Q as an innovator among conspiracy theorists in his approach of enthralling his readers with 'clues' rather than directly presenting his claims: "The audience for internet narratives doesn’t want to read, it wants to write. It doesn’t want answers provided, it wants to search for them."

QAnon theorists have touted drinking bleach (known as MMS, or Miracle Mineral Solution) as a "miracle cure" for coronavirus.

Like in Pizzagate, QAnon followers believe that children are being abducted in large numbers to supply a child trafficking ring. By 2020, some followers began using the Twitter hashtag #SaveTheChildren, co-opting a trademarked name for the child welfare organization Save the Children. Data from the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children indicates that the overwhelming majority of missing children are runaways; the second largest cause is abduction by family members, with less than 1% being nonfamily abductions.

Identity of "Q"

There has been much speculation regarding the motive and the identity of the poster, with theories ranging from the poster being a military intelligence officer, to Donald Trump himself, to the posting campaign being an alternate reality game by Cicada 3301. Because 4chan is anonymous and does not allow registration by users, any number of people originally may have posted using the same handle. The poster came to use a frequently changing tripcode to authenticate on 8chan after migrating there as they feared 4chan had been "infiltrated".

The Italian leftist Wu Ming foundation has speculated that QAnon has been inspired by the Luther Blissett persona, which was used by leftists and anarchists to organize pranks, media stunts, and hoaxes in the 1990s. "Blissett" also published the novel Q in 1999.

As Q relies on a tripcode to verify themself, and the tripcode is verified by 8chan's server and not reproducible on other imageboards, Q was not able to post when the website went down following the 2019 El Paso shooting. This apparent conflict of interest, combined with statements by 8chan's founder Fredrick Brennan, the use of a "Q" collar pin by 8chan owner Jim Watkins, and Watkins' financial interest in a QAnon super PAC which advertises on 8chan, have led to widespread speculation that either Watkins or his son, 8chan's administrator Ron Watkins, knows the identity of Q. Both deny knowing "Q"'s identity.

Analysis

QAnon may best be understood as an example of what historian Richard Hofstadter called in 1964 "The Paranoid Style in American Politics", related to religious millenarianism and apocalypticism. The vocabulary of QAnon echoes Christian tropes—for instance "The Storm" (the Genesis flood narrative or Judgement Day), and "The Great Awakening", which evokes the historical religious Great Awakenings from the early 18th century to the late 20th century. According to one QAnon video, the battle between Trump and "the cabal" is of "biblical proportions", a "fight for earth, of good versus evil." The forthcoming reckoning is said by some QAnon supporters to be a "reverse rapture" which means not only the end of the world as it is now known, but a new beginning as well, with salvation and a utopia on earth for the survivors.

Within less than a year of existence, QAnon became significantly recognized by the general population. According to an August 2018 Qualtrics poll for The Washington Post, 58% of Floridians are familiar enough with QAnon to have an opinion about it. Among those who did have an opinion, most were unfavorable. The average score on the feeling thermometer was just above 20, a very negative rating, and about half of what other political figures enjoy. Positive feelings toward QAnon were found to be strongly correlated with being susceptible to conspiracy thinking.

According to a March 2020 Pew survey, 76% of Americans said they had never heard of the QAnon movement. One in five people had heard "a little about it" while 3% said they heard "a lot."

Role of anti-Semitism

The conspiracy theory's targeting of George Soros and the Rothschild family has led Jewish-American magazine The Forward as well as The Washington Post to accuse it of containing "striking anti-Semitic elements" and "garden-variety nonsense with racist and anti-Semitic undertones". A Jewish Telegraphic Agency article published in August 2018 stated that "although not specifically, some of QAnon's archetypical elements—including secret elites and kidnapped children, among others—are reflective of historical and ongoing anti-Semitic conspiracy theories".

The Anti-Defamation League reported that while "the vast majority of QAnon-inspired conspiracy theories have nothing to do with anti-Semitism", "an impressionistic review" of QAnon tweets about Israel, Jews, Zionists, Rothschilds, and George Soros, "revealed some troubling examples" of antisemitism.

Appeal and disillusionment

Experts have classified the appeal of QAnon as similar to that of religious cults. According to an expert in online conspiracy, Renee DiResta, the QAnon pattern of enticement is similar to that into cults in the pre-Internet era where, as the targeted person was led deeper and deeper into the group's secrets, they become more and more isolated from friends and family outside of the cult. In the Internet age, QAnon virtual communities have little "real world" connection with each other, but online, they can number in the tens of thousands. Rachel Bernstein, an expert on cults who specializes in recovery therapy, says that "What a movement such as QAnon has going for it, and why it will catch on like wildfire, is that it makes people feel connected to something important that other people don't yet know about. ... All cults will provide this feeling of being special." There is no self-correction process within the group, since the self-reinforcing true believers are immune to correction, fact-checking, or counter-speech, which is drowned out in the groupthink of the cult. The cultish quality of QAnon has led some to characterize it as a possible emerging religious movement. Part of the appeal of QAnon is its game-like quality, in which followers attempt to solve riddles presented in Qdrops by connecting them to Trump speeches and tweets, and other sources. Some followers use a "Q clock" consisting of a wheel of concentric dials to decode clues based on the timing of Qdrops and Trump tweets.

Travis View, a researcher who studies QAnon, says of it that it is as addictive as a video game, and offers the "player" the appealing possibility of being involved in something of world-historical importance. According to View, "You can sit at your computer and search for information and then post about what you find, and Q basically promises that through this process, you are going to radically change the country, institute this incredible, almost bloodless revolution, and then be part of this historical movement that will be written about for generations." View compares this to mundane political involvement in which one's efforts might help to get a state legislator elected. QAnon, says View, competes not in the marketplace of ideas, but in the marketplace of realities.

Nonetheless, some QAnon believers have eventually started to realize that they have been isolated from family and loved ones, and suffer loneliness because of it. For some, this is a pathway to slowly beginning the process of divesting themselves of their cultish beliefs, while for others, the isolation reinforces the benefits they get from belonging to the cult. View says that,
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 to them as leaders who understand what's going on better than the rest of us.
Some Q followers break away when they recognize the content of the theories is not self-consistent, or they see that some of the content is directly aimed at getting donations from a specific audience, such as evangelical or conservative Christians. This then "breaks the spell" the conspiracies had over them. Others start watching Q-debunking videos; one former believer says that the videos "saved" her.

Disillusionment can also come from the failure of the theories' predictions. Q had predicted Republican success in the 2018 US midterm elections, and claimed that Attorney General Jeff Sessions was involved in secret work for Trump, with apparent tensions between them a cover. When Democrats made significant gains and Trump fired Sessions, there was disillusionment among many in the Q community. Further disillusionment came when the predicted December 5 mass arrest and imprisonment in Guantanamo Bay detention camp of enemies of Donald Trump did not occur, nor did the dismissal of charges against Trump's former National Security Advisor, Michael Flynn. For some, these failures began the process of separation from the QAnon cult, while others urged direct action in the form of an insurrection against the government. Such a response to a failed prophecy is not unusual: apocalyptic cults such as Heaven's Gate, the People's Temple, the Manson Family, and Aum Shinrikyo resorted to mass suicide or mass murder when their expectations for revelations or the fulfillment of their prophecies did not come about. Psychologist Robert Lifton calls it "forcing the end". This phenomenon is being seen among some QAnon believers. Travis View echoes the concern that disillusioned QAnon believers might take matters into their own hands as Pizzagate believer Edgar Maddison Welch did in 2016, Matthew Phillip Wright did at Hoover Dam in 2018, and Anthony Comello did in 2019 when he murdered Mafia boss Frank Cali, believing himself to be under the protection of President Trump.

Prominent QAnon follower Liz Crokin, who in 2018 asserted that John F. Kennedy Jr. faked his death and is now Q, stated in February 2019 that she was losing patience in Trump to arrest the supposed members of the child sex ring, suggesting that the time was approaching for "vigilante justice." Other QAnon followers have adopted the Kennedy theory, asserting that a Pittsburgh man named Vincent Fusca is Kennedy in disguise and would be Trump's 2020 running mate. Some attended 2019 Independence Day celebrations in Washington expecting Kennedy to appear.

Role in U.S. elections

Hiding the "Q" at Trump campaign rally