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Sunday, October 18, 2020

QAnon: How a fringe internet phenomenon is now mainstream

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Vanshita Banuana
Vanshita Banuana
North America

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Vanshita Banuana

Article Title

QAnon: How a fringe internet phenomenon is now mainstream

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Global Views 360

Publication Date

October 18, 2020

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QAnon supporter in a Trump Rally

QAnon supporter in a Trump Rally | Source: Tony Webster via Wikimedia

In the age of the internet, conspiracy theories come a dime a dozen. They can be shared with an unimaginably huge audience with extreme ease. Most conspiracy theories center around specific large-scale events, but sometimes they do end up centering around a person instead. This has been recently observed in a group of conspiracy theorists called ‘QAnon,’ who are essentially supporters of incumbent U.S President Donald Trump, and believe that he is on a mission to expose a global secret network of high-profile pedophiles (and also cannibals, depending on who you ask).

QAnon followers believe that Democratic party members such as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are a part of this group, along with Hollywood celebrities such as Oprah Winfrey and Ellen DeGeneres. It is even believed that religious leaders like Pope Francis and the Dalai Lama are also in this group.

What is QAnon?

QAnon is an umbrella term for a large set of theories and sub-theories. It is considered a ‘big tent conspiracy theory,’ which means that it is still evolving and adding more claims under its belt. The most pervasive and foundational claim is that of a global cabal of pedophiles, and that Trump’s sole purpose is to unmask them.

It all started in October 2017, an anonymous account calling themself “Q Clearance Patriot” posted the first message associated with QAnon, on a site called 4chan. Q claimed to be a high ranking intelligence officer who knew classified information about Trump’s “war” against the aforementioned global cabal. Q also claimed to predict something called “The Storm,” which refers to the time Trump finally exposes the cabal and brings its members to justice.

The event’s title, “The Storm,” was inspired by a remark made during a photo op around the same time the first post appeared on 4chan. While standing with military generals (who QAnon followers believe recruited Trump to run for President with the aim of destroying the cabal) Trump made a remark about “the calm before the storm.” QAnon followers consider this to be a message for them. There have been many predictions about when this storm will occur, as well as other predictions that later never happened, such as Republicans winning a large number of seats in the 2018 midterm elections. As is common among conspiracy theorists, they twisted the results to continue to fit their beliefs.

The person(s) behind ‘Q,’ as the original poster is known, remains unknown. After first appearing on 4chan Q’s posts bounced around on similar sites. These days the posts— known as “drops”— are posted on a site called 8kun. To date, Q’s posts total to around 5,000, and there are some apparently popular apps that collect all past and present posts in one place. They are usually cryptic and use initials or codes to refer to people, such as HRC for Hillary Rodham Clinton, and POTUS (President of the United States) for Trump. QAnon followers use many common social media platforms like Twitter and Discord to discuss the meaning of the Q Drops.

Other QAnon claims include: Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russia’s collusion with the Trump campaign was actually a cover for investigating Clinton and Obama while Trump only pretended to be involved with Russia in order to force a third-party investigation; the cabal is involved in pedophilia and child murder either because they’re satanists or being blackmailed by the CIA (take your pick)

What was President Trump’s response?

President Trump (L) with Vice President Pence | Source: History in HD via Unsplash

Trump is idolised in QAnon theory, and what he says is monitored as closely as what Q says, and similar to Q’s drops, QAnon followers see messages and codes in things ranging from what number Trump says to what tie he wears, and decode the meaning of these perceived signals.

Anyone who knows anything about Trump knows he is incapable of denouncing anyone who supports him regardless of the absurdity of, or dangers posed by their actions. When asked about QAnon, Trump stated that while he didn’t know much about QAnon, he understood that they “like me very much.” The reporter explained Trump’s role in the conspiracy as a saviour from pedophiles and cannibals, to which Trump replied, “Is that a good thing or a bad thing?” He added that he hadn’t heard about that, but was “willing” to help “save the world from problems” if he can. On top of that, whether he knows or not, he has retweeted content from QAnon supporters multiple times.

Public figures are also revealing themselves to be QAnon followers, such as Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Republican candidate in Georgia who promoted QAnon— and she’s not the only one, joining a small-town mayor who supported QAnon during a radio broadcast. She was backed by Trump, who reportedly called Greene a future star, and called QAnon followers lovers of their country. Greene supposedly has a good chance of being elected to Congress.

Why is this becoming mainstream now?

A QAnon supporting sticker in Brooklyn, United States | Source: Robby Virus via Flickr

The QAnon member base is not a small one by any means. A singular QAnon on one social media platform like Facebook can reportedly have hundreds of thousands of members. It also seems that due to increased Internet usage during pandemic related lockdowns and work-from-home, more and more people are coming to know about QAnon, thereby increasing the number of people who believe and take part in it. There is, apparently, even a recently established church based on QAnon rhetoric that holds sessions via Zoom, and works to indoctrinate people into QAnon through tools such as videos and discussions.

In terms of group dynamics, QAnon has been compared to puzzle games due to the intricacy of the plot it weaves with the help of members’ contributions. Creating a shared reality, a common phenomena among conspiracy theorists, turns a political forum into a social environment, thereby deepening a person’s connection to a conspiracy via that people that they meet in these groups and other social media interactions with QAnon followers.

Perhaps due to the activity of coming together to decode Q’s drops, QAnon followers are intensely involved in the creation of the conspiracy itself, which makes this a unique kind of conspiracy theory, despite many elements of it being those often seen in various older conspiracy theories.

QAnon followers have been making waves offline as well, with a murder and a threat of a murder being attributed to QAnon followers. The FBI considers that QAnon poses a potential threat of domestic terrorism. Photos of Republican rallies in which signs of the letter Q and posters about QAnon are visible are becoming more and more common.

Additionally, QAnon followers seem to be making a joint effort to infiltrate anti-trafficking movements, both online as well as by attending rallies. Many members of QAnon believe that the global cabal is made up of child sex-traffickers or child-eating Satanists, thus making it easy for them to use campaigns such as #SaveTheChildren to lure or recruit people into their ideology. They have also been linked to spreading misinformation about COVID-19 and Black Lives Matter on social media sites such as Twitter and Facebook.

QAnon is a conspiracy theory that combines old and new elements, and which is already causing real harm to people and social causes. What truly makes matters worse, though, is that fact that the person at the center of the QAnon conspiracy, Donald Trump, is just as unlikely to see reason as QAnon followers themselves.

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February 13, 2021 8:54 PM

Black Lives Matter: Looking back at the journey of racial justice movement as a Nobel Peace Prize Nominee

The killing of George Floyd by a police officer in the state of Minnesota, has confronted the people of the United States in particular and the Western World in general about the existence of deep-rooted racism which has remained even after the Civil Rights movement and many decades of progress.

The years of racial discrimination led to the emergence of the Black Lives Matter (often abbreviated as BLM) movement. The BLM movement has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel peace prize as well.

This article explains the BLM movement, it's nomination for the Nobel Peace Prize as well as its symbolics importance in the lives of the black people. In other words, it looks back at the journey of this racial justice movement as a Nobel Peace Prize Nominee.

What is the Black Lives Matter movement?

The BLM movement started in 2013 after George Zimmerman—a white man—shot dead—black teen—Trayvon Martin—to death in 2012. The term “Black Lives Matter” was taken from the tweet of a woman named Alicia Garza, which turned into a trending hashtag and later into the name of the whole movement, co-founded by herself, Patrisse Cullors, and Opal Tometi.

The movement aims at equality and racial justice for Black people and highlights the injustices and oppression against them.

Furthermore, there is also strong resistance from the police and usage of military weapons against the black protestors as compared to the white ones, a kind of systematic racism which was clearly visible during the Storming of the Capitol Hill.

When a black person named George Floyd was killed by a white police officer in Minnesota on 25 May last year, the movement gained momentum and there were solidarity protests not only in America, around the globe—including countries like the UK, France, Australia and Germany. There were even violent protests in some parts of the US, and in some places the right wing groups clashed with these protestors.

The Movement Growing Profusely

A pro-right wing ruling government, where the President himself was criticised for being racist on several occasions and the upcoming elections led to increasing dissent—furthering the growth of the movement. George Floyd became the face of the movement along with many other black people who lost their lives before due to systematic racism—some names in the unfortunately endless list were Breonna Taylor, Ahmaud Arbery, . The movement also started getting the support of Hollywood celebrities, who supported the movement on their social media handles.

Amidst of all this, a similar killing of yet another black person, named Jacob Blake happened, which sparked the protests further.

“The group has called for defunding the police for at least five years”, Black Lives Matter Los Angeles co-founder Melina Abdullah told CNN. Some of the protestors believe that defunding the police could decrease such incidents.

In June, after pressure from BLMLA and massive protests, the Los Angeles City council unanimously approved a measure to develop an unarmed model of crisis response that would replace police officers with community-based responders for nonviolent calls.

Corrine Basabe, a black woman, started the George Floyd Justice Billboard Committee. Because of that, there are also billboards in cities like Los Angeles, New York and Washington DC, which are made for people to see regarding the Black Lives Matter movement and the killing of George Floyd. This way, many people driving through the roads could be reminded of what happened.

Featuring an oil painting by New York City artist Donald Perlis, a white, the billboards also include a quote from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr.: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere." His painting was also displayed in New York’s Times Square.

When asked what she hopes for BLM's future, co-founder Patrisse Cullors said she knows the movement will win. "I know this because our work is full of love, healing and dignity," she said. "And we centre Black people's humanity and life over our death and decimation."

Backlash

The movement faced backlash from various right-wing groups like The American Patriot and Proud Boys. There was a slogan “All Lives Matter” from the Anti-BLM protestors, which minimises the problems faced by the black community in their daily lives. The then President Donald Trump also refused to condemn the right-wing groups and he defended the police instead of supporting the Black people’s cause.

In Arizona, Rep. Walt Blackman, a Black GOP member of the Arizona Legislature labelled BLM as a “terrorist organisation” in an interview with Fox News Radio affiliate KFYI.

There are a lot of post-truth narratives defaming the BLM movement.

Nomination for Nobel Peace Prize

As mentioned earlier, the BLM movement has been nominated for the 2021 Nobel peace prize, for the way they spread and called for a systematic change in the world, through non-violent protests. It has been nominated by a Norwegian MP.

In his nomination papers, the Norwegian MP Petter Eide said the movement had forced countries outside the US to tackle racism within their own societies.

“I find that one of the key challenges we have seen in America, but also in Europe and Asia, is the kind of increasing conflict based on inequality,” Eide said. “Black Lives Matter has become a very important worldwide movement to fight racial injustice. They have had a tremendous achievement in raising global awareness and consciousness about racial injustice.”

He said that one other thing that impressed him about the BLM movement was the way “they have been able to mobilise people from all groups of society, not just African-Americans, not just oppressed people, it has been a broad movement, in a way which has been different from their predecessors.” He has previously nominated human rights activists from Russia and China for the prize.

His written nomination concludes: “Awarding the peace prize to Black Lives Matter, as the strongest global force against racial injustice, will send a powerful message that peace is founded on equality, solidarity and human rights, and that all countries must respect those basic principles.”

Nominations for the Nobel peace prize are accepted from any politician serving at a national level, and they are allowed only 2,000 words to state their reasons. This year’s deadline was February 1, and the committee prepares a shortlist by the end of March. The winner is chosen in October and the award ceremony is scheduled for 10 December. The World Food Programme was the winner last year.

The movement deserves the nomination, and if it is declared the winner of the Nobel Peace Prize, then it’s going to be a huge win for the Black people and will give a push towards an ideal where there will be no racism.

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