QAnon has been named one of the largest extremism networks in the United States. The conspiracy theory, which began as a claim that President Trump (and Robert Mueller) were saving the world from cannibal pedophiles, grew out of 4chan message boards. Now it’s gone mainstream and it’s reaching moms and Instagram health gurus.
The group is reportedly led by “Q,” a so-called Trump insider who makes anonymous online postings. Followers of QAnon believe a lot of things but it boils down to a central message: Trump controls everything. It’s been embraced by the president and numerous politicians, but it has faced growing criticism about its presence online.
Boasting millions of devoted followers on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, there’s been little oversight by tech companies on regulating QAnon. The theory is also a major driver in misinformation, particularly about the 2020 election. Members of Congress have condemned the movement on Capitol Hill and in legislation, saying more needs to be done to address moderating its internet reach.
Facebook announced in October that it was banning the group from its platform, but it’s unclear how well the social networking site will enforce its new rules. Some civil rights groups claim Facebook’s actions compromise free speech; government agencies, meanwhile, have shown QAnon has been linked to real-world violence.
Social media algorithms, like Facebook’s, make QAnon-related content easily accessible for people who are dedicated followers or just simply curious. Before people know it, users can find themselves down a rabbit hole. All it takes is one click.
Follow this storystream for all of Vox’s QAnon coverage and updates.
Dylan Scott
Trump refuses to say the QAnon conspiracy theory is false
Brendan Smialowski/AFP via Getty Images
President Donald Trump says he doesn’t know whether the QAnon conspiracy theory, which falsely contends prominent Democrats and global elites are part of a pedophile ring that only Trump can stop, is true or not.
At Trump’s NBC News town hall on Thursday, held in lieu of a debate with Joe Biden after a dispute over the format, moderator Savannah Guthrie gave Trump as many opportunities as she could to denounce the theory. QAnon went viral on extremist internet forums before gaining more traction after it spread to YouTube, Reddit, and more mainstream websites.
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Rebecca Heilweil
The member of Congress who’s trying to stop QAnon
Tom Williams
On Tuesday, Facebook announced that it would be expanding its ban on QAnon, and has since begun a purge of Groups and Pages that reference the fringe, far-right conspiracy theory.
The announcement came less than a week after the United States House of Representatives voted in favor of a resolution condemning QAnon that urged Americans to seek “information from authoritative sources and to engage in political debate from a common factual foundation.” The text of the bill referenced some of the worst parts of the QAnon theory, including its anti-Semitism and its undermining of legitimate child safety efforts, while also censuring “all other groups and ideologies that encourage people to destroy property and attack law enforcement.”
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Emily Stewart
Facebook is banning political ads ... after the election
Sarah Silbiger/Getty Images
Facebook is going to temporarily ban all political ads … but only after the 2020 election, a move that solves neither its organic content problem nor the problematic political ads appearing on its platform prior to voting.
On Wednesday, the social media giant announced that it will temporarily stop running social, electoral, and political ads in the United States after the polls close on Election Day, November 3. The measure is an effort “to reduce opportunities for confusion and abuse,” wrote Guy Rosen, Facebook’s vice president of integrity, in a blog post announcing the decision. The company will notify advertisers once it lifts the policy post-election, but it didn’t indicate when that would be. In early September, Facebook said it would ban new political ads the week before the election, but ads that have already been in the mix prior to then will continue to appear in News Feeds.
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Rebecca Heilweil
Facebook bans QAnon (again)
Facebook said in a Tuesday press release that it “will remove any Facebook Pages, Groups and Instagram accounts representing QAnon” from its platforms. Although it’s unclear how Facebook is defining affiliations with QAnon accounts, this announcement appears to be one of the broadest bans Facebook has ever imposed.
The new ban expands on the social network’s previous actions against the conspiracy theory and its followers. In August, Facebook announced that it had removed hundreds of QAnon Facebook Groups and Pages for “discussions of potential violence.” The company now says it will remove such Pages and Groups “even if they contain no violent content.” The announcement also comes after Facebook’s announcement last week that it will promote credible information about child safety, after QAnon hijacked related hashtags like #SaveTheChildren.
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Shirin Ghaffary
Facebook and Twitter said they would crack down on QAnon, but the delusion seems unstoppable
Doug Chayka for Vox
James Wolfe, 45, no longer believes in the conspiracy theory QAnon. For a year, though, it dominated his life.
“The thing with QAnon is that Q is dropping these little breadcrumbs every day or every couple days,” said Wolfe. “It’s so easy to feel you’re special or in on something.”
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Rebecca Jennings
What we can learn about QAnon from the Satanic Panic
Joseph Prezioso/AFP via Getty Images
For many supporters of the #SaveTheChildren movement, face masks are part of the problem. Rather than saving lives by slowing the spread of Covid-19, proponents argue, letting your child wear a mask makes it harder for them to cry for help, which they will need to do, because there are evil people, right now, coming to kidnap them.
“Save the Children,” like so many other moral panics, sounds like such a plainly obvious force of good, that to question it feels like you are marching under the banner of “f*ck the Children.” What do you say, for instance, to someone who believes that there are 800,000 children being trafficked every year, and that the government does nothing to stop it?
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Adam Clark EstesandRebecca Heilweil
Why mail-in voting conspiracy theories are so dangerous in 2020
Tara Jacoby for Vox
As the 2020 election enters its final phases, it feels like a lot could go wrong in the United States. Reports warn that hackers from Russia and China are targeting both parties, while the fringe conspiracy movement QAnon slips into the mainstream and possibly influences voters. And millions of people are talking about a different conspiracy theory, one that posits that the election has already been stolen.
Believers say this still-unfolding scandal goes all the way to the top. It gets weird, too. According to some, a sinister millionaire is ripping equipment out of post offices so they can’t properly process mail-in ballots. Others say foreign governments are printing millions of fraudulent mail-in ballots and that “deep state” goons are raiding nursing homes to tamper with senior citizens’ mail-in ballots. One way or another, President Trump is almost always supposedly involved in these plots — either orchestrating the conspiracy or fighting the America-hating intruders. And at the end of the day, this conspiracy theory boils down to one very bad but also mundane thing: voter fraud.
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Anna North
How #SaveTheChildren is pulling American moms into QAnon
Stephen Maturen/Getty Images
The posts often beg followers to speak out, “get loud,” or wake up. Some feature bold text on a colorful background, matching the aesthetic of many Instagram slideshows this year. Others show photos of beloved children, laughing with their parents.
Some are posted by small accounts with few followers, while others have gotten more than 100,000 likes. But all share the same message: Child sex trafficking is out of control in the US and around the world, and no one is paying attention. And they end with the hashtag #SaveTheChildren.
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Shirin Ghaffary
Facebook bans blackface and certain anti-Semitic conspiracy theories
AFP via Getty Images
Facebook will start banning posts that contain blackface or that promote anti-Semitic conspiracy theories that Jewish people are running the world.
The social media giant announced the expansion of its hate speech policies in a press call on Tuesday morning. Under the new policy, Facebook will no longer allow visual or written posts that depict “caricatures of black people in the form of blackface” or “Jewish people running the world or controlling major institutions such as media networks, the economy or the government.”
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Aaron Ross Coleman
Tuesday’s Georgia runoff could help launch the Congressional QAnon Caucus
Rick Loomis/Getty Images
Marjorie Taylor Greene, currently the leading candidate in the race for Georgia’s 14th Congressional District seat, has a campaign that marries two powerful political forces: conspiracy theories and racism.In doing so, Greene could give new energy to Trumpism in the next Congress.
Like President Donald Trump, Greene has played on racist tropes, anti-Semitism, and conspiracy theories to amass a reputation for repudiating political correctness in favor of “truth-telling.” She has, for instance, called Q, the purported leader of the QAnon conspiracy theory — which claims Trump will save the US from “deep state” pedophiles and other malcontents — a patriot. She’s called George Soros, a Jewish Democratic donor, a Nazi. And she boasts a long history of decrying Islam, denying racial inequality, and defending Confederate memorabilia.
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Cameron Peters
The QAnon supporters winning congressional primaries, explained
Thomas O’Neill/NurPhoto/Getty Images
“Where we go one, we go all” is a frequent slogan of adherents to QAnon, a fringe conspiracy theory that posits the existence of a pedophilic “deep state” working against President Donald Trump.
Now, it looks like at least a couple of them could be going to Washington.
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Katelyn Burns
A QAnon supporter just won a Republican primary for US Senate
John Rudoff/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images
In winning the Oregon GOP primary for the US Senate Tuesday, Jo Rae Perkins became the seventh Republican congressional candidate who openly supports QAnon, a pro-Trump conspiracy theory that maintains the president is secretly fighting “deep state” operatives and Democratic pedophiles.
Perkins won a four-way race for the party’s Senate nomination, earning just short of 50 percent of the vote. Former naval officer Paul Romero finished second with 30 percent. Perkins will face off with incumbent Democratic Sen. Jeff Merkley in the general election on November 3, which Merkley is expected to win.
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Aaron Rupar
Trump’s latest Twitter meltdown features QAnon, accidental self-owns, and a lot of “OBAMAGATE”
Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images
With the coronavirus continuing to ravage the country both in human and economic terms and his poll numbers sagging, President Donald Trump spent his event-free Mother’s Day posting up a storm — sending the sort of public statements that would have been cause for national concern in any previous era.
When the smoked cleared, the 126 tweets or retweets Trump posted ending up being one of his most prolific posting days in history, falling just 16 short of the single-day posting record he set during his impeachment trial in January. Although the American public has become somewhat numb to Trump’s Twitter diatribes, the quantity was notable — and so was the lack of quality.
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Aaron Rupar
Trump spent his holidays retweeting QAnon and Pizzagate accounts
Nicholas Kamm/AFP via Getty Images
In December 2015, Donald Trump infamously appeared on conspiracy theorist Alex Jones’s Infowars show, praised his “amazing” reputation, and vowed that “I will never let you down.” His Twitter behavior indicates that’s one promise he’s doing his best to keep.
Trump’s December demonstrated that instead of becoming more “restrained” on social media — something he promised to do just before his inauguration — he’s turning it up to 11. He broke personal records with the numbers of tweets he posted. And tweets he shared over the holidays indicate he’s feeling more shameless than ever about retweeting sketchy accounts that have promoted conspiracy theories portraying his political enemies as satanist pedophiles.
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Jane Coaston
The Mueller investigation is over. QAnon, the conspiracy theory that grew around it, is not.
NurPhoto via Getty Images
One would think that a conspiracy theory that’s based on the idea that special counsel Robert Mueller and President Donald Trump are working together to expose thousands of cannibalistic pedophiles hidden in plain sight (including Hillary Clinton and actor Tom Hanks) and then send them to Guantanamo Bay would be doomed. Mueller’s investigation has ended and Attorney General Bill Barr’s summary of Mueller’s report has been published — all without any mention of pedophiles, cannibals, or child murderers.
One would be wrong.
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Kaitlyn Tiffany
How QAnon conspiracy theorists hit #2 on Amazon’s best-sellers list
Amazon
The conspiracy theory QAnon — which started on 4chan in the fall of 2017, then bubbled up across Reddit, YouTube, Twitter, and the celebrity sphere — is now topping some of Amazon’s best-sellers lists, NBC News reported Monday.
QAnon followers claim to believe, among other things, that Hillary Clinton is the leader of a Satanic cabal that feeds on the blood of children and profits off sex trafficking, and that special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into the 2016 election is actually a ruse designed to cover up his close friendship and partnership with Donald Trump. The two are supposedly working together to take Clinton down and her various demonic helpers.
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