vefalt.blogg.se

QAnon has spread into other extremist ideologies, including those supported by sovereign citizens, who believe laws don’t apply to them. Gelinas was later fired from his job as senior vice president in Citigroup’s technology department as a result.Įventually, QAnon ideas spread from message boards into the mainstream, and the movement now includes merchandise that has been sold on Etsy, Amazon and other platforms.

QMap was subsequently shut down in September when the website’s owner was identified as New Jersey information security analyst Jason Gelinas, who offered no comment when the site went down. And websites created for Q followers, such as QMap, had over 10 million site visits in July alone. Just months after Q’s initial post, the theory started appearing on other social media sites such as YouTube and Facebook. Nevertheless, followers continue to mine Q’s posts, trying to decode them for information about an alleged master plan in which President Trump will take down the cabal (“deep state”) they believe is working against him. Q’s first post claimed that “HRC” (presumably Hillary Rodham Clinton) was on the run and would be extradited with massive riots resulting – none of which occurred. Q claimed to be a high-level government informant nicknamed Q because of their supposed clearance, the Department of Energy’s equivalent of “top secret.”

He was sentenced to four years in prison in 2017.Ĭryptic posts by the anonymous “Q” (hence “QAnon”) then began showing up on message boards such as 4chan, 8chan and 8kun in October 2017. Nevertheless, the rumors spurred at least one believer – Edgar Maddison Welch – to go to the restaurant with an AR-15 to look for the non-existent basement, where in December 2016 he fired shots into a door that led to a server closet. The ideas behind QAnon became more popular after the “Pizzagate” conspiracy theory, which promoted a falsehood that Hillary Clinton was running a child sex-trafficking ring out of the basement of Comet Ping Pong, a pizza restaurant in Washington, D.C. A May 2019 FBI bulletin from its Phoenix office describes “conspiracy theory-driven domestic terrorists” as a growing threat, and specifically mentioned QAnon. President Trump has also retweeted QAnon claims. Of those, a few will probably win election. The SPLC Action Fund counted roughly 90 candidates running for office in 2020 who have shared QAnon messaging or stated their openness to the conspiracy theory. QAnon believers are also getting involved in politics. QAnon conspiracy theories are able to adapt to a variety of extant conspiracy theories and spread through more networks. Videos of anti-mask confrontations, according to NBC News, have become a badge of honor in conspiracy circles, and provide examples of people fighting their shadowy enemy cabal in the real world. People are spending more time at home on the internet, where social media algorithms can lead them to extremist content, especially with regard to alternative health communities. The COVID-19 pandemic has also created space for the expansion of QAnon beliefs through anti-mask and anti-vaccine conspiracy theories. 3 in the borough of Staten Island in New York City. A person wears a QAnon sweatshirt during a pro-Trump rally on Oct.