What is QAnon and How Do They Figure in Kremlin Propaganda?
What is QAnon and How Do They Figure in Kremlin Propaganda?
A basic introduction to QAnon
While this group has been relatively quiet in recent months, it's very likely that they will get more active the closer we get to the US presidential election in November. It's imperative for everyone to be familiar with them. For those who don't know anything about QAnon, here's a basic introduction.
What is QAnon?
I'm going to begin by saying that QAnon is not to be confused with the hacktivist group Anonymous. The latter group is the one that was involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement and they've launched cyberattacks against various government agencies, corporations, the Ku Klux Klan, and the Church of Scientology. They frequently appear in public wearing the Guy Fawkes mask from the comic book and movie V is for Vendetta. Anonymous has expressed its hostility towards QAnon for stealing its branding and has threatened to sabotage its operations and expose its followers.
QAnon is a decentralized far-right political conspiracy and political movement. Their beliefs and actions are based on the supposed revelations (known in the movement as “drops”) of a person who is known as only Q.
Who is Q?
Its adherents claim that Q is the pseudonym of an individual who is a high-level government official who has a Q clearance so he has access to classified information about the Trump Administration and its opponents. Periodically Q will provide drops about some secret thing that the government is supposedly doing but the mainstream media refuses to report on (or has completely silenced it). Q has attracted his share of devoted adherents, such as the woman in the video below:
What is Q's real identity?
It depends on who you ask. According to this HBO documentary series, Q could be either be Jim Watkins, the owner of the fringe message board 8kun (previously known as 8chan), or his son and former administrator of 8kun, Ron Watkins.
Two teams of researchers from Switzerland and France have run Q's online posts through artificial intelligence and linguistic analysis software and they came up with two likely culprits. One is Ron Watkins, whom I mentioned in the last paragraph. The other is South African software developer Paul Furber.
According to fellow Substacker Jim Stewardson, Q is Michael Flynn, a retired US lieutenant general, former national security advisor for the Trump Administration, and pardoned felon. Stewardson has written several posts on his own Substack, MindWar, making the connection between Q and Flynn.
How did QAnon begin?
In 2016 an online rumor, known as Pizzagate, began to circulate on boards like 4chan claiming that Hillary Clinton and other top Democrats were running a secret child sex slavery ring in the basement of a pizza parlor in Washington, DC. The rumors persisted despite the fact that the pizza parlor in question is located in a building that doesn't even have a basement.
One of the 4chan users who posted under the name Q Clearance Patriot claimed that Hillary Clinton would be arrested for pedophilia soon. The same poster also claimed that he saw some of the top secret documents at his Q clearance job that said that thousands of alleged suspects would be arrested, imprisoned, and executed for being “child-eating pedophiles.” Even though neither of those events ever happened the poster, who is now nicknamed Q, had gained a following among those who were prone to believing in conspiracy theories.
Two 4chan moderators, Paul Furber and Coleman Rogers, worked with YouTuber Tracy Diaz to promote QAnon to a wider audience. Rogers and his wife, Christina Urso, had set up a YouTube livestream that was dedicated to spreading the word about QAnon. Soon Q and QAnon began to spread to a variety of social media platforms like Reddit and Twitter.
Q would later move on to posting exclusively on the then-named 8chan board (now known as 8kun) because Q felt that 4chan had been infiltrated without elaborating on how it had been infiltrated and who did the infiltrating.
What are their beliefs and causes?
QAnon claims that the world is dominated by a secret cabal of Satan-worshipping child molesters. This cabal consists of Democratic Party politicians, Bill Gates, George Soros, religious leaders, and certain Hollywood celebrities. According to Q, Donald Trump is dedicated to battling that cabal in order to stop them and free the enslaved children. (Never mind the fact that Trump was friends with the late pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and one of the women who have accused Trump of rape claimed that she was only 13 when it happened.) The cabal is thought to cover up its existence by controlling politicians, mainstream media, and Hollywood. Q says that the cabal's destruction is imminent only with the help of fellow QAnon members. This destruction will happen at a time that's known as “the Event” or “the Storm.”
Q says that the reason why this cabal abducts and rapes children is that their young bodies produce more adrenaline as a result of the stress from sexual abuse. This excess adrenaline is harvested from children's bodies and is made into the psychoactive drug adrenochrome, which is then used by the abusers as an elixir to remain young.
This core belief has resulted in QAnon encouraging its adherents to use the hashtag #SaveTheChildren online, which created confusion with the name of the longstanding child welfare organization Save the Children.
This core belief also led to a conspiracy theory that accused the furniture company Wayfair of laundering money it had gained from child sex trafficking. The “evidence” is a list of storage cabinets that Wayfair was selling where each model had a girl's name. This led QAnon followers to conclude that an abducted girl was being hidden in each storage cabinet that was named after her.
Interestingly Wayfair is a competitor of Overstock, whose former CEO Patrick Byrne is a QAnon promoter. Byrne left his position in 2019 when it was revealed that he had an affair with Russian agent Maria Butina.
QAnon has been denounced as antisemitic because of its fixation on the Jewish financier George Soros and the wealthy Jewish Rothschild family.
Why do QAnon members wear t-shirts or carry signs that say WWG1WGA? And what does WWG1WGA stand for?
WWG1WGA is the slogan of the entire QAnon movement, which hypes that movement as actually being a community of individuals that are willing to stand united together for the sake of the movement. WWG1WGA stands for “Where We Go One, We Go All.” It originated as a line from the 1996 Jeff Bridges film White Squall but QAnon has misattributed this line to President John F. Kennedy.
How is John F. Kennedy Jr. involved in QAnon?
Here's some background information taken from the Wikipedia. John F. Kennedy Jr. was the son of President John F. Kennedy, who was assassinated shortly before John Jr. turned 3. As an adult, John Jr.’s most notable achievement in his life was as the co-creator and writer for George, a magazine that sought to combine coverage of politics with fashion, lifestyle, and celebrities.
On March 31, 1999 John F. Kennedy Jr. was photographed sitting next to Donald Trump at a New York Knicks-Indiana Pacers game at Madison Square Garden in New York City. At the time Trump was simply a celebrity businessman but that photo was a harbinger of things to come.
Four months after that photograph was taken John Jr., who had a pilot's license, decided to fly a light airplane from New Jersey with his wife, Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and her sister, Lauren Bessette. The original plan was to fly to Martha's Vineyard, drop Lauren off, then continue to fly to the Kennedy family compound in Hyannis Port so John and Carolyn would attend the wedding of his cousin, Rory Kennedy. The plane crashed before it reached Martha's Vineyard, killing all three on board. John Jr. was 38 when he died.
Many QAnon followers believe that John F. Kennedy Jr. actually faked his own death and he is currently living in Pittsburgh as a Trump supporter named Vincent Fusca. A side-by-side comparison shot of both John F. Kennedy Jr. and Vincent Fusca shows that the only thing that the two men have in common is the dark hair.
According to QAnon, JFK Jr. was originally supposed to emerge from hiding to join the Donald Trump presidential campaign in 2020 and run as Trump's vice president, replacing Mike Pence. When that failed to materialize (because JFK Jr. is dead), hundreds of QAnon believers gathered in Dallas at Dealey Plaza in November, 2021—the site and anniversary month when President Kennedy was assassinated—believing that they would witness either the return of JFK Jr. or the return of both JFK and JFK Jr. Attendees expected Donald Trump to be reinstated as president. Trump would then step down as president while handing the office over to JFK Jr., who would then name Michael Flynn as vice president.
It all became moot when neither JFK showed up at Dealey Plaza because they are both dead.
Of course QAnon have no explanation for this scenario: If JFK Jr. faked his own death, did his wife and sister-in-law, who were also on board that fateful airplane, also fake their deaths as well? If so, then where are the sisters? And if they actually died in that plane crash and JFK Jr. had faked his death, then who was piloting that plane on that fateful trip? Neither Carolyn Bessette Kennedy nor Lauren Bessette had a pilot's license so they couldn't legally fly any plane.
Isn't QAnon just a bunch of people with crazy beliefs who should be simply ignored?
The only problem is that many of the QAnon believers aren't simply harmless people with eccentric beliefs. There is a huge overlap of QAnon believers who are also supporters of Donald Trump's MAGA movement. Many of them had participated in the storming of the US Capitol building on January 6, 2021 in an attempted coup to prevent Joe Biden from becoming the next president of the United States. One of its most notable participants in that riot actually uses the name of the group in his own nickname: QAnon Shaman.
There are also individual incidents that happened due to QAnon. A father in California believed in a QAnon claim that the Satanic cabal that is really in power in the US consists of shape-shifting reptilian humanoids. He killed his own children because he feared that they had inherited “serpent DNA” from their mother.
Didn't QAnon make a Hollywood movie or something?
Sound of Freedom is a movie that was released last year that was based on the true story of Tim Ballard, an anti-human trafficking activist who founded the organization Operation Underground Railroad. The film depicted Ballard going to Colombia to rescue trapped children from a crime syndicate.
It was originally made on a shoestring budget in 2018 for 20th Century Fox, before QAnon became a big thing. The film was initially shelved when Disney purchased Fox but it was later distributed by a small independent studio called Angel Studios. Yet it became one of the hit movies of the summer, which is amazing when you consider the fact that last summer was known as “Barbenheimer” due to the release of two major blockbusters on the same day that both became the biggest hits that summer—Barbie: The Movie and Oppenheimer.
The big secret to Sound of Freedom's success is this unique marketing campaign that Angel Studios came up with: During the showing of the end credits Jim Caviezel, who portrayed Ballard in the film, delivered a special message urging viewers to buy more tickets and giving them to coworkers, friends, and family so they can watch the movie as well. The end credits included a QR code so people could take out their smartphones and get instantly connected to a website where they can immediately order more tickets. This campaign, which Angel Studios called “pay it forward,” was a rousing success at the box office.
Despite more people buying extra tickets for others, many movie theaters had empty seats even though a certain film screening was advertised as sold out. Apparently some of the people who received free tickets from their friends, relatives, coworkers, and acquaintances had opted not to watch that movie.
While QAnon didn't have anything to do with the making of this movie, its theme of ending child sex slavery resonated with the group since it dovetails nicely with its core beliefs.
Much to the chagrin of the executives of Angel Studios and the film's director Alejandro Monteverde, Sound of Freedom have become closely associated with QAnon. The film's star Jim Caviezel is an active promoter of QAnon and he had made a number of pro-QAnon statements during an appearance on a podcasts hosted by Jordan Peterson and Steve Bannon around the same time that the film was playing in theaters.
But that wasn't all. A crowd-funding contributor of the film, Fabian Marta, was arrested and charged with accessory to child kidnapping but the charges were later dropped.
On top of all that, Tim Ballard, who was the inspiration for Sound of Freedom, was pressured to resign from the organization that he founded after an investigation into sexual misconduct involving seven women who claimed that he would bring each woman with him on overseas trips to act as his “wife” while he attempted to rescue children. He would then pressure the woman into sharing a bed, showering together, and even participate in sexual acts with him in order to fool those traffickers into thinking that they were actually a married couple. Some of those women have since filed lawsuits against Ballard while making later additions to those lawsuits claiming that one of the late Mormon leaders, President M. Russell Ballard of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, “sanctioned” the couples ruse and was aware of one of the sexual assaults, wherein Tim Ballard allegedly went to a woman’s home and raped her.
Another woman has also filed a lawsuit against Ballard and Angel Studios for defamation and slander because of the way that she was portrayed as a villain in Sound of Freedom.
Which famous people support QAnon?
Sound of Freedom actor Jim Caviezel isn't the only notable person who has spoken openly about his support for QAnon. Here are a few other people who have also expressed support for QAnon.
Alex Jones. It's natural that a man who has long spread all kinds of conspiracy theories on his InfoWars show would be attracted to QAnon.
Curt Schilling. The former Boston Red Sox pitcher has shared QAnon theories several times on his Twitter/X account.
Roseanne Barr. The comedian has tweeted in the past about her support for QAnon.
Pete Evans. The celebrity chef has shared a number of conspiracy theories.
Eddie Bravo. The comedian and martial arts fighter has spoken openly about QAnon.
James Woods. The actor has spread some QAnon related theories on Twitter/X.
In addition there are at least three members of the US House of Representatives who are sympathetic to QAnon. In some ways, this is even more concerning than Hollywood celebrities siding with QAnon because these people are capable of making laws and policies that affect the US. All three are Republican women who are aligned with Donald Trump's MAGA movement. So here are the QAnon Three:
Maya Flores
Marjorie Taylor Greene
Lauren Boebert
How is the Kremlin involved with QAnon?
Many QAnon adherents tend to echo Kremlin propaganda claiming that the Russian invasion of Ukraine was justified because of the presence of secret US-funded biolabs in Ukraine that are making dangerous weapons. The reality is that these laboratories are not secret, they are owned by Ukraine and not the US, and they were originally set up to secure and dismantled the remnants of the Soviet biological weapons program but they are now used to monitor and prevent new epidemics in Ukraine.
The Kremlin has realized that QAnon will echo its propaganda, especially if it aligns with QAnon beliefs so it creates propaganda that is tailor-made for QAnon in the hopes that QAnon will freely parrot it. To the Kremlin, QAnon is a very useful asset.
For more information about QAnon:
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