QAnon: What It Is and How It Has Grown

By Boaz Fox ‘23

    All across chat forums and dark corners of the internet, a conspiracy theory group known as QAnon is gaining prevalence among conservatives.
    QAnon is a conspiracy theory that first appeared in late 2017 on the chat forum 4chan when an anonymous user now known as Q claimed to have high-level security clearance within the U.S. government and that President Trump would soon expose, arrest and execute thousands of evil pedophiles that were controlling America. This one post soon went viral, and a burgeoning  internet community grew along with it.

    President Trump has long been a fan of conspiracy theories. His campaign piggybacked off of birtherism, the belief that former President Barack Obama was not an American citizen and was born in Kenya, a claim repeatedly disproven. Trump has retweeted stories alleging that Obama had failed to kill Osama bin Laden and had covered up the failure. He alleged during the 2016 campaign that Senator Ted Cruz’s father had assassinated John F. Kennedy. Based on these patterns, it makes sense that President Trump would help spread a conspiracy theory that benefits him. 
    “The whole phenomenon is worse, largely because of encouragement by politicians who engage in conspiracy theories, particularly President Trump,” Joseph Uscinski, a professor of political science at the University of Miami, said in an interview with the Forward. “When more elites like the President are doing this stuff, that’s bad and that’s dangerous.”
    By taking advantage of social media, QAnon has spread quickly among the right. Hundreds of thousands watch QAnon conspiracy videos on YouTube, millions follow QAnon Facebook groups and there are thousands of QAnon-related Twitter accounts. It certainly does not help that Trump refuses to condemn the baseless conspiracy theory, and has even retweeted tweets from QAnon-affiliated Twitter accounts and praised prominent believers. 
    The conspiracy theory has also started to creep into the legislative branch of the government. This November, two QAnon supporters, Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-Ga.) and Lauren Boebert (R-Colo.), were elected to serve the 118th Congress in the House of Representatives. These Representatives not only don’t condemn QAnon, like Trump they publicly affirm their beliefs that QAnon is the truth. 
    The QAnon conspiracy claims that a Satanic cabal of pedophiles secretly rules the world and consumes the blood of children, and that President Trump is fighting a secret war against them. 
    Strange as it is, the conspiracy may seem familiar. This is because QAnon is practically a modern revival of the age-old antisemitic blood libel, the belief that Jews use the blood of Christian children for making Matzot.
    Even though QAnon “is not explicitly antisemetic…any old conspiracy theory has elements of antisemitism. When you see references to a global cabal or a global deep state of elites, these are clearly associated with Jewish control by elites, bankers and globalists — all elements that smack of antisemitism,” Vegas Tenold, a reporter at the Anti-Defamation League, said. 
Though antisemetic rhetoric is nothing new, the fact that this conspiracy is so widespread is concerning. 
    “Q inherently is not a violent ideology,” Tenold said, “but there are a lot of underlying issues here, and you might argue that Q is a catalyst. Given how massive QAnon is now, posting about government fraud, evil Satanists, things like that, I’m surprised there isn’t more violence.”
Since QAnon’s inception, followers have grown increasingly violent. In May 2018, a man was arrested for trespassing after he occupied a tower on a cement plant in Tuscon, Arizona, claiming that the plant was a front for a “child sex trafficking camp.” In June that same year, a man who was arrested on terrorism charges for blocking traffic on the Hoover Dam with an armored truck claimed that he was on a mission to force the Justice Department to release a document that Q alleged would put Hillary Clinton in prison. 
    In March 2019, a man was arrested for murdering a crime family boss because he thought the boss was a “deep state” operative. In March 2020, a woman was arrested for kidnapping her two children, who she had lost custody of, after posting QAnon related memes on her Facebook and wearing QAnon shirts at Trump rallies.
    ​Unlike other conspiracy theories, QAnon and its antisemetic rhetoric have been spread through more mainstream channels such as government officials and social media. As it and its level of violence grow, it continues to become a more concerning phenomenon.