QAnon , a widely
believed right-wing conspiracy theory. QAnon developed in the early years of
Donald Trump’s presidency through the anonymous posts of a
commentator who initially called himself “Q Clearance
Patriot,” later shortened to Q. Q claimed to be an intelligence
officer working in the government with access to secret information. Through
a series of cryptic online posts, Q asserted that Trump was secretly
battling a satanic cabal of pedophiles who fed on the blood of children.
Among those supposedly members of this group were Democrats and liberal
commentators. According to this theory, President Trump would eventually
bring the conspiracy’s members to justice in a bloody reckoning
called “The Storm.” These ideas resonated with Trump’s
critique of the so-called “deep state,” the entrenched
government bureaucracy that he claimed kept him from enacting his programs.
In the aftermath of the 2020 presidential election, many QAnon members
followed Trump’s assertion that the voting was rigged, and
participated in the storming of the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021. When
the "Storm" failed to occur, some QAnon followers were disillusioned and
dropped out of the movement. While its exact membership is unknown,
QAnon-related sites on various social media platforms are estimated to have
around 100,000 dedicated followers, with as many as 8 million recorded views
of videos promoting the conspiracy. The impact of QAnon on the
“real” world has been felt through the election of politicians
associated with the movement to the House of Representatives in 2020,
including Marjorie Taylor Green from Georgia and Lauren Boebert from
Colorado. The movement has also spread to Germany and other countries around
the world.
See A. Merlan, Republic of Lies: American Conspiracy Theorists and Their Surprising Rise
to Power (2020), M. Rothschild, The Storm is Upon Us:
How QAnon Became a Movement, Cult, and Conspiracy Theory of
Everything (2021).
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