Twitter crackdown no work with, QAnon now among conservative mainstream
Twitter’s decision to crack down on the conspiracy-theory mongering of QAnon underscores the loose-knit group’s increasing reach in to the mainstream folks politics.
From an anonymous 2017 posting claiming bizarre child exploitation and deep state plots, the headless and bodiless movement has earned a location in President Donald Trump’s Twitter stream.
His son Eric posted a QAnon image to promote his father’s recent campaign rally; and more than a dozen Republican individuals for Congress in November openly support the group.
But Twitter’s decision this week to turn off some 7,000 accounts pushing QAnon material came amid rising concerns that the movement could spawn violence.
The FBI this past year said in a written report that QAnon was one of several movements that could drive “both groups and individual extremists to handle criminal or violent acts.”
Anti-mask rallies
QAnon began three years ago with posts on the fringes of social media by the self-identified, anonymous “Q”.
They alleged that Democrats ran a worldwide child kidnapping and sex trafficking conspiracy, and that the US security establishment “deep state” was conspiring against Trump.
Q moved his / her posts to more prominent sites and found followers, helped by Trump’s repeated statements that there is indeed a plot against him from inside US government.
The movement now seems to have possibly thousands of followers in a loose network, expanding and embellishing numerous baseless conspiracy stories, and talking about a “great awakening” coming with Trump.
They wear shirts and patches with large “Q” symbols, often together with the US flag and their motto “Where We Go One, We Go All,” expressed #WWG1WGA.
They also have a global presence, especially in Europe, in which a French QAnon website has a lot more than 25,000 followers, according to Julien Bellaiche at the Global Network on Extremism and Technology.
The group became a force this season in the protests against confinement and masks through the COVID-19 pandemic, in both United States and Europe.
Some state the virus is a hoax and others that it is China’s contribution to the plot against Trump.
A substantial number of QAnon adepts are joining Trump rallies, and the movements has followers in the military and police aswell.
A Florida SWAT-team member assigned in 2018 to protect Vice President Mike Pence wore a QAnon patch in his chest.
And last week Ed Mullins, the top of a fresh York police union, spoke on Fox news more than video with a good coffee cup carrying a QAnon logo prominent behind him.
Embraced by Republicans
Sometimes tacitly and increasingly openly, Republicans, including Trump and the White House, are actually embracing QAnon and its own bizarre theories within the party’s base.
Media Matters, a watchdog group, said it counted 185 times that Trump amplified the QAnon message in likes and retweets on Twitter, 90 lately.
Trump’s former national security advisor Michael Flynn recently took an “oath” of fealty to QAnon, while seeking donations from its followers to attack his federal court conviction on lying to the FBI about his Russian contacts found in 2016.
Last October Erin Perrine, the director of press communications for Trump’s 2020 reelection marketing campaign, gave an interview to the QAnon Patriots’ Soapbox Network, a dedicated YouTube channel with 79,000 followers.
And on June 20 Eric Trump posted on Facebook a picture of an American flag with a huge “Q” onto it along with #WWG1WGA, and the words “Who’s ready for the Trump Rally tonight?”
He later deleted the post.
QAnon in Congress
QAnon has truly gone more unapologetically mainstream found in the congressional elections coming in November.
Media Matters counted 66 followers, practically all Republican, seeking the party’s nomination this year.
In Oregon, the Republican US Senate candidate, Jo Rae Perkins, has publicly declared she “stand(s) with Q” and recited a “digital soldier” pledge popular with QAnon followers.
Colorado congressional prospect Lauren Boebert, who has also appeared on the Patriots’ Soapbox Network, said in an interview that “Everything that I’ve heard about Q, I hope that this is real, because it only means America gets more robust and better.”
Not banned by Twitter
Twitter’s crackdown angered QAnon followers, many of whom have created accounts on the brand new right-wing oriented platform Parler.
But Twitter didn't ban the group or topic outright. It only turn off accounts that seemed to coordinate in deliberately propelling QAnon theories and personal attacks.
THE BRAND NEW York Times reported that Facebook also plans to place similar controls on QAnon posting.
