Origins: QAnon started on fringe website 4chan, where a poster calling themselves Q left messages claiming to be a senior federal official and purporting to reveal a ‘deep state’ cabal intent on bringing down Donald Trump.
Q grew out of the discredited ‘Pizzagate’ conspiracy theory that top Democrats and Hollywood celebrities were involved in pedophilia and cannibalism from the basement of a Washington D.C. restaurant, but quickly picked up steam with ‘Q’ leaving ‘clues’ and claims that Trump was going to bring down the deep state.
A major conspiracy theory has continued to be that there is a cabal of Satan-worshiping pedophiles made up on politicians and celebrities, including President Jose Biden Jr., Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Oprah Winfrey, Tom Hanks, Ellen DeGeneres, and even Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama.
Whenever the conspiracies turn out to not be true, followers rationalize that the inaccuracies are part of Q’s larger plan.
Since its inception, QAnon has grown to be an umbrella term for a range of conspiracy theories.
Who is Q? There may now be multiple people posing as Q on the anonymous 4chan boards.
A QAnon believer blocked the bridge near Hoover Dam with a homemade armored tank in the name of the movement, and later pleaded guilty to terrorism
Conspiracy theories: QAnon believers subscribe to many different conspiracy theories, and they look for hints and clues from politicians they support, including former President Donald Trump. More theories below.
Hoover Dam: In June 2019, 32-year-old Matthew Wright, a QAnon supporter, blocked the bridge near Hoover Dam in Arizona with a homemade armored vehicle in a 90-minute stand-off. He pleaded guilty to terrorism charges and has written two letters to Donald Trump from jail, which include the sign-off, which has become the QAnon motto: ‘For where we go one, we go all.’
Michael Flynn: Trump’s former national security adviser became a martyr figure for QAnon believers after he took a plea deal from Special Counsel Robert Mueller, admitting he lied about his Russia contacts. QAnon conspiracy have spun Flynn pleading guilty into him being a persecuted victim of the deep state — and some even claim he is ‘Q.’
Many believers put three star emojis next to their Twitter handles. But the retired three-star general has denounced any connections to the group and pulled out of participating in an event after finding out it was hosted by a QAnon believer.
QAnon believers make former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn out to be a martyr after taking a plea deal with Robert Mueller
QAnon Political Candidates: Jo Rae Perkins, 64, won the Republican primary in Oregon in May to run for a Senate seat against incumbent Democratic Senator Jeff Merkley. “I stand with Q and the team,” she said when asked about her interest in the group. She insisted she goes to QAnon message boards as a “source of information” and claims media focuses too much on the group. Perkins won 49 per cent of the vote against three other Republicans.
Marjorie Taylor Greene came in first place in the Republican primary in a deep-red Georgia district, and was elected to the US House of Representatives in November 2020. She claims to have stopped believing in QAnon in 2018, but continues to make controversial statements, and was forced to apologize in June for comparing mask mandates to the Holocaust.