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The QAnon Conspiracy Theory: A Security Threat in the Making?
- bearjaws 6y agoAs someone with a family member who is falling into this non-sense, I will tell you it is extremely dangerous. We essentially have some teenager on 4chan trolling an entire audience of probably hundreds of thousands of individuals. They now believe Trump is our savior and the deep state wants to take him down. There are violent undertones to the entire conspiracy and I do worry they are going to turn into terrorists.
- _fat_santa 6y agoIt's funny, I remember seeing the original thread on 4chan for QAnon, not sure if I was actually on the site or just saw a screencap. Anyways I thought it was kind of dumb and tolling, got a laugh and went on with my day. I think 2-3 days later I see QAnon being talked about on Fox News and CNN. My exact thought was "some guy in his basement must be thrilled that his shitpost on 4Chan landed on national TV". It's crazy how people have fallen for it. Because if you read the actual conspiracy theory of QAnon it's batshit insane. The world order is being taken over by the Obama's and Democrats and the only guy that can save us is that dude that used to be on The Apprentice. Like how do people not read that and think that the story is just too perfect to be true. Like seriously: Obamas are bad, Democrats and Hillary wants to take over the world. But WAIT WAIT!!! DONALD J TRUMP of all people is going to save you from the evil Democrats!
- bearjaws 6y agoThere are also members who believe Hillary and Biden are clones, controlled by the deep state. How????? When did we get to CLONES?
- mindslight 6y agoOne of the effects of mass media psychosis is feeling that what you're seeing is a simulation. Biden on TV looks like Biden, but isn't actually physical Biden himself - therefore clones.
- krapp 6y ago>Because if you read the actual conspiracy theory of QAnon it's batshit insane. The world order is being taken over by the Obama's and Democrats and the only guy that can save us is that dude that used to be on The Apprentice. Minus the part where Donald Trump is the literal Messiah, most of QAnon's beliefs have been mainstream among the American right wing for years. The only real difference in that regard is the shifting of the Overton window, so what used to be the subject of fringe rants on AM talk radio is now more or less accepted in the mainstream.
- tjpnz 6y ago>We essentially have some teenager on 4chan trolling an entire audience of probably hundreds of thousands of individuals. That's the most plausible explanation and I've explained it that way to several people already. Doesn't work though - you'll either be dismissed or discover later on that they've found a way of reconciling it with their already crackpot worldview.
- matwood 6y agoMaybe that's how it started, but I think foreign actors work to amplify what's happening. I can't help but thinking of this paper though: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137759/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6137759/ > Conclusions. Whereas bots that spread malware and unsolicited content disseminated antivaccine messages, Russian trolls promoted discord. Accounts masquerading as legitimate users create false equivalency, eroding public consensus on vaccination. Substitute any other absurd topic. By having any discussion at all, it legitimizes position.
- xhkkffbf 6y agoOkay, but why is this theory so different? There are lots and lots of conspiracy theories from every corner of the political sphere. Why is this one a real security threat?
- krapp 6y agoFrom the abstract of the article, literally the first paragraph: Abstract: The QAnon conspiracy theory, which emerged in 2017, has quickly risen to prominence in the United States. A survey of cases of individuals who have allegedly or apparently been radicalized to criminal acts with a nexus to violence by QAnon, including one case that saw a guilty plea on a terrorism charge, makes clear that QAnon represents a public security threat with the potential in the future to become a more impactful domestic terror threat.
- xhkkffbf 6y agoYes, but that doesn't explain why it's different from other conspiracy theories. Some people have told me with a straight face that they believe the CIA is hiding something funny in vaccines and so they won't take a COVID-19 shot. Others prattle on and on about the Jews. Some use events long ago (slavery, war, etc) as a justification for vandalism, theft and violence today. I understand how QAnon is driving some people nuts, but there are lots of theories that are driving people nuts. Many crimes are justified by different theories.
- rblatz 6y agoThis already happened because of QAnon. https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/22/us/pizzagate-attack-sentence.html https://www.nytimes.com/2017/06/22/us/pizzagate-attack-sente... These people see a powerful satanic child raping cabal of power that run things from the shadows. Their champion is Donald Trump, if he were to lose this election it's not a reach to see an uptick in these sorts of attacks. Because, honestly, if this conspiracy were true, the only moral thing to do would be to oppose it.
- carry_bit 6y ago
- dogman144 6y agoOne has to believe there's a deliberate intelligence effort signal boosting this a fair bit, meshed within the various layers of accounts/platforms propagating it. Similar example of practices: https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2020/07/ghostwriter-influence-campaign.html https://www.fireeye.com/blog/threat-research/2020/07/ghostwr... The above relies on a fair bit of identity building as well, so Q's source/breeding in more anon platforms helps all the better. Intense stuff.
- zozbot234 6y agoI mean, I wouldn't be surprised if 'intelligence' [sic] actors were involved in signal-boosting all sorts of wacky urban legends and conspiracy theories - so why not Pizza gate and Q as well?
- jkhdigital 6y agoKind of like how intelligence actors fabricated Russiagate from whole cloth?
- Grakel 6y agoNo that was a lot more than just signal boosting.
- confeit 6y agoI am convinced that Q, if not started, was quickly taken over and turned into a Russian psyop. I expected the Mueller report to validate this (gross online astroturfing campaigns by state actors), but unless it is in the redacted parts, it is not there. But even casually investigating banned Twitter accounts used for Russian propaganda, you see a lot of clear connections with the "totally organic" Christian MAGA Qanon soccer mom accounts. Leaves me mere speculation: I believe Q was initially conceived in case Trump had lost the election. It was to be a group of useful idiots/unwitting agents protesting about the "rigged" election, maybe even riled up to the point of taking up arms. Then when Trump won it was repurposed to sow disinformation about child sacrifice and child porn rings by the elite democrats. 9/11 saw the same thing: Massive efforts by Russia and Middle Eastern countries to seed inside job conspiracy theories. With the result that many Americans now believe 9/11 was an inside job, and can't really trust their government anymore (social cohesion damaged). I believe some of these unwitting agents are so impressionable and gullible, that they can be made to act as "manchurian candidates", doing the bidding of foreign intelligence agencies (spreading propaganda, muddying the waters with disinformation and conspiracy, picking up a gun and going out to free children from a basement of a pizza parlor). I believe these intel agencies are able to infiltrate grassroots movements and subvert their ideals to be hostile to their host countries. I believe these agencies are able to create fake online realities, where unwitting agents are made to be believe they are part of something big, and everyone agrees with them, while they are psychologically manipulated.
- 082349872349872 6y agoCompare "The Paranoid Style in American Politics" (1964) https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-american-politics/ https://harpers.org/archive/1964/11/the-paranoid-style-in-am... with examples from 1797 onward.
- hammock 6y agoInteresting. From the article: "In recent years we have seen angry minds at work mainly among [redacted], who have now demonstrated in the [redacted] movement how much political leverage can be got out of the animosities and passions of a small minority."
- raphlinus 6y agoFor discussion, I advance a hypothesis that's occurred to me: at least some of the same people are behind both QAnon and c19study.com. I don't have hard evidence of this, but in looking at the social graphs around the c19study Twitter accounts, I see significant QAnon representation (the account @LynnFynn3 shows prominently in the intersection of the two). Like QAnon, the people behind c19study are very careful to hide their true identities. I find it plausible that they're marketing the same basic stuff to different audiences, c19 to people who fall for stuff that sounds like science that isn't. Of course, there's another explanation for the overlap, that people who are susceptible to conspiracy theories promoted by anonymous instigators are likely to buy into both. This hypothesis is consistent with them being completely separate, just using similar tactics. I have a pretty good idea who the coder is behind the c19 site. If you're a reporter who would find this useful, or somebody who is better than me at tracking this stuff down, feel free to get in touch. (Note: other people, including Brian Krebs, have had a crack at this)
- aleister_777 6y agoIt seems like the media is talking about this more than anyone else at this point. There have literally been over 2000 articles written to debunk this. The content has been banned from reddit, twitter and other platforms. Why is everyone so vigilant to call it "dangerous"? Why not flat earth and chem trails? Why all the attention for this one thing?
- MattGaiser 6y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAnon#Incidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QAnon#Incidents It is spawning a fair bit of violence.
- endtime 6y agoI read through that whole list, and the only thing that involved any actual violence was a mafia killing, which it wasn't clear actually had anything to do with Q. I don't know anything about this Q stuff (I don't even know what they believe), and I'm certainly not endorsing it, but your link does not support your claim.
- jeffbee 6y agoThe pizzagate shooting can be viewed as an early qanon consequence. Aspects of qanon are basically riffs on pizzagate, and the two factions have essentially merged.
- compscistd 6y agoBecause flat earth and chem trails don’t encourage policy changes or have representation from (potential) elected officials
- soneca 6y agoI believe they reached a scale of followers that none of these others have
- sunseb 6y agoMedia are endlessly debunking QAnon and PizzaGate, yet no media is investigating things like Epstein network (Mr Clinton traveled like 30 times in the famous island - he must really liked the beach).
- sunseb 6y agoBlack Live Matters and QAnon = two sides of the same coin brainwashing people. Blue (democrats) or Red (republicans): pick your poison.
- ekorz 6y agoThe Turing test has completed. This account has failed.
- alexilliamson 6y agoYou might not agree that Black lives matter, but it's not a conspiracy theory. With BLM, people are opting in to a social movement rooted in observed police violence. QAnon is not tethered to reality in the slightest.
- sunseb 6y agoYes, you are right, BLM is not really a conspiracy theory. It's worst than that actually, it's neo-Marxism propaganda that is turning the US into a dystopian society. Hint: communism never ever did work anywhere in the world. https://medium.com/unsafe-space/a-liberal-for-trump-484abb7dc8aa https://medium.com/unsafe-space/a-liberal-for-trump-484abb7d...
- alexilliamson 6y agoYou can imagine someone arriving at a personal philosophy that aligns with BLM, independently and through their own introspection. No one is going to independently arrive at the philosophy of QAnon just by pondering the world, again because it has very little to do with reality. It sounds like you agree they are not two sides of the same coin?
- Krasnol 6y ago> that is turning the US into a dystopian society As an outsider and someone who have fled real Socialism let me tell you one thing: your country looks pretty much like a dystopian society already.
- deleted 6y ago
- secondcoming 6y agoAmerica is bat-shit crazy.
- drcongo 6y agoThis is going to get voted down to hell, but I'd like to reply before it does: America really does have a long history of huge numbers of people believing absolutely insane things. QAnon is the new satanic panic. I'd love to know how and why, but I think the answer is probably just religion.
- elliekelly 6y agoI’ve seen quite a few people connect the rise of “main stream” conspiracy theories in the US to the demise of religion here. I suppose I could see that as a plausible explanation. But why is it that Europe seemed able to move on from religion without turning to conspiracies? Is the answer as simple as Europe reaching the secular “tipping point” before the age of social media?
- tmpz22 6y agoI disagree, look at the origins of the Mormon religion and just their first 50 years of history - this stuff has been happening forever and it usually involves groups of people being killed/raped/tortured for being against it.
- Dirlewanger 6y agoThis is a gross oversimplification, but America was founded by wealthy farmers who believed the conspiracy theories of the day that Great Britain wanted to ruin the colonies, when in reality they just wanted them to pay taxes for the expensive wars that happened there. A healthy distrust of all forms of government is basically required to be an American. It's their greatest attribute, but it's also damned the country in numerous ways.
- cvhashim 6y agoExactly https://www.npr.org/2020/05/19/858812580/conspiracy https://www.npr.org/2020/05/19/858812580/conspiracy
- m_ke 6y agoA good listen about QAnon: https://youtu.be/lf3xlx9K0DI https://youtu.be/lf3xlx9K0DI Big issue with QAnon is that unlike normal standalone conspiracy theories, this one engulfs all other ones into a single plot.
- whywhywhywhy 6y ago> this one engulfs all other ones into a single plot This is nothing new, the shapeshifting lizard conspiracy already did this.
- dleslie 6y agoThat's really not so different than many previous popular conspiracy theories. Replace QAnon's pedophile elite with one of: - The Catholic Church - Free Masons - Rosicrutians - Illuminati - Jewish Bankers - Satanist Elites - Lizard People - The CIA - UN Globalists w/ Agenda 21 - And so on... What makes a conspiracy theory really _stick_ is when it confounds a _kernel of truth_. The more convincing and defensible that kernel of truth is, the easier it is to build conjecture upon. Ie, the CIA probably isn't directing world affairs, but they do certainly engage in political actions to disrupt the course of nations, and so many extrapolate their influence to extents we don't have evidence for. QAnon's kernel of truth is the incredibly alluring and defensible idea that politicians cannot be trusted and many are not working in our best interest. From there... The sky's the limit.
- m_ke 6y agoI agree, but as mentioned here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24159257 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24159257 QAnon has morphed into a master conspiracy to unite all of these crazy groups. The same people that push Qanon are also pushing anti mask, anti vaccine and etc conspiracies.
- dleslie 6y agoI saw that, but I'm not convinced that the breadth of scope is what's interesting. The other targets of interest I mentioned are also often "big tent" or "broad umbrella" conspiracies that pull in many others. Ie, Lizard people come from the Hollow Earth and are conspiring with Planned Parenhood and UN Agenda 21 to depopulate the planet; this is a believed conspiracy you can find on conspiracy boards. What makes QAnon different is that it's a movement that exists largely as a result of the sophistication of modern social networks and the ability of small groups of people to wield enormous platforms on them. The Anti-Vax, Birther and Sandy Hook conspiracies were sort of the early progenitors of this medium: they took the conversations off the aged PHPbb boards and various sub-reddits and on to the social networks. QAnon is often _the same people_ simply continuing to talk with each other. They've just been learning how to use the tools at their disposal, and have become proficient at it.
- tomc1985 6y agoLooks like the site is down -- it's a conspiracy! /s
- 99_00 6y agoAll misinformation is a risk and threat. But Qanon seems minor when compared to others that are perpetuated by major news organization and undermine democracy: Russia collusion conspiracy theory, fine people on both sides hoax (the belief that the President called neo-nazis fine people). These have much more public and institutional support than QAnon.
- sonotathrowaway 6y agoI’m sure Trump’s love of neo-nazi imagery, slogans, ideas, policies, and people is just a coincidence, like the video he tweets of his supporters yelling ‘white power’. I’m sure it’s all a hoax, like his support of the very fine neo-nazis that killed heather heyer or the trump tower meeting with veselnitskya.
- sudosysgen 6y agoThe ad with the downwards red triangles had me spooked, personally. https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/18/trump-campaign-runs-ads-with-marking-once-used-by-nazis-designate-political-prisoners/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2020/06/18/trump-cam...
- 99_00 6y agoSaying he loves Nazi imagery is mind reading. He condemned the neo-nazis at Charletsville. He never said they were very fine people.
- onyva 6y agoThese attempt at spinning the discussion is lame. Russia collusion is not a conspiracy, nor the fact that trump is a neonazi sympathizer. Like father like son.
- 99_00 6y ago>Russia collusion is not a conspiracy It's a "conspiracy theory", not a "conspiracy". >Like father like son. Proverbs aren't arguments or evidence.
- kodyo 6y agoWhen people lose faith in the people who are supposed to be telling the truth, they look for other things to fill the gap. The media is unreliable to say the least, government is compromised and corrupt, the academy is both self-serving and "woke." Why wouldn't alternative explanations for things seem appealing at this point?
- throwaway_pdp09 6y agoYour post is the 4th made from an account created 12 months ago. What that means I don't know. But it's signalling a lot of 'you can't trust anything' which is interesting.
- kodyo 6y ago"What that means I don't know." I see you're doing your own research. Very QAnon.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y agoShould I not do research and checking?
- kodyo 6y agoNo, I was messing with you. I don't post a lot. But I'm a sucker for conversations about the consequences of our institutions being full of shit.
- blackflame7000 6y agoNot the way you do it.
- throwaway_pdp09 6y agoHow should I have done it?
- hammock 6y agoWhat if we thought of QAnon as a political party?
- dleslie 6y agoIt's not so dissimilar to the Tea Party movement in its early days. That was a fringe tax-revolt movement that relied heavily on misconceptions and ignorance about how progressive taxation works and who benefits from social spending; and it really took off when it gained assistance from private capital and public figures.
- luxuryballs 6y agoI think that whole misconception and ignorance of how it works thing was more of the astro turfing rebuttals to delegitimize the movement. In reality you didn’t need any understanding of the tax system to see that the taxes are too high and entitlements are out of control, many of them insolvent.
- dogman144 6y agoIs it just me, or is there a fair bit of down-voting occurring on pretty rational takes on this thread. ...and the post got flagged!
- ipnon 6y agoIt is a controversial issue regarding identity and perception. You can't agree to disagree. One side believes pedophelia is being enabled, the other side believes brainwashing is deploying as a political weapon. The topic abhors rationality. It's a wedge in political discourse, because it is seemingly immoral to take the middle ground.
- raphlinus 6y agoAlso recommended, a deep dive into QAnon from the Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/qanon-nothing-can-stop-what-is-coming/610567/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/qanon-n...
- vsareto 6y agoIt's also worth examining the material itself: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtjTRYrF8X4&list=PL18vrD9EPjAC7cQGB9fIzJcziJg4xwZkT https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OtjTRYrF8X4&list=PL18vrD9EPj... and https://qanon.pub/ https://qanon.pub/ are popular stops. The media is often presenting a less-crazy image of QAnon than it actually is. It is growing in influence: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/11/qanon-facebook-groups-growing-conspiracy-theory https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/aug/11/qanon-facebo...
- jerkstate 6y agoThe general public was subjected to years of "RussiaGate" conspiracy theory nonsense, so I don't find complaints about "QAnon" credible.
- happytoexplain 6y agoYou haven't made any connection between the two clauses of your sentence.
- bsenftner 6y agoThis is the result of under funding education, and allowing the boundary between church and state to blur. Those with a religious fairy tale cause and effect understanding of reality, QAnon makes perfect sense. While anyone with a firm foundation in reality sees pure nonsense.
- ipnon 6y agoIt's important to note that QAnon first appeared on 4chan, not a religious forum. I don't think religiosity is a good explanation for QAnon belief. Religiosity like church attendance is declining in America for instance. Instead, think of the stereotypical 4chan user. Lonely, asocial, engaged in a meme subculture separate from the mainstream. It's this psychological social distance and lack of identification with the mainstream that is key. This personality type exists throughout American society. My claim is that these people take pure nonsense to heart because they have no firm foundation in reality. They are too plugged in.
- quercusa 6y agoIs this an online version of Jim Jones and the Peoples Temple, in which a charismatic (though here anonymous) leader knows how to push the psychological buttons of a lot of disaffected people?
- fouric 6y ago> retaining the central belief that a cabal of powerful elites control the world, using their power to covertly abuse children They're going to need to be more precise about the Pizzagate conspiracy, because the above wording very closely describes the Jeffrey Epstein case, which has been proven to be true.
- happytoexplain 6y agoI don't understand - why is it misleading to describe Pizzagate that way because a powerful elite abused children?
- fouric 6y agoThe article is worded such that it implies that the given scenario is a false conspiracy theory, while in fact the scenario did happen. Conflating the two scenarios both implicitly discredits the Epstein case and also makes no compelling argument that Pizzagate is false.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- notacoward 6y ago"in the making"? No, in the now. It doesn't matter if half the people pushing all this are just bored teenagers in it for the lulz. Even if that's the case, they're feeding into the genuine delusional and often dangerous behavior of a few who seriously believe in it. They're also feeding enough garbage into public discussions that real content is obscured, much like jamming a radio signal with noise. Especially with an election coming up, QAnon is already a security threat.
- luxuryballs 6y agoTo be clear I think the allegations of wrongdoing are FAR more likely to be correct than the theory that someone in the government is actually doing something to stop it.
- aleister_777 6y agoIt's also notable though that some themes that Q covers, such as Trump being spied on, are showing progression with a significant milestone today with the guilty plea of Kevin Clinesmith. https://www.thedailybeast.com/kevin-clinesmith-former-fbi-lawyer-plans-to-plead-guilty-to-falsifying-documents-in-russia-probe-per-report https://www.thedailybeast.com/kevin-clinesmith-former-fbi-la... Q first mentioned Clinesmith in August 2018. So it raises a question of why the huge pushback and dedication of resources from the media, when, they could just be reporting on it instead of trying to discredit it. Sounds like whatever is going to happen is going to happen regardless so we'll all just wait and see.