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The QAnon Conspiracy Theory Is Insane, And Also Weirdly, Wildly Popular

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | June 11, 2018 |

By Dustin Rowles | Politics | June 11, 2018 |


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I never paid much attention to the tweets of Roseanne Barr until a couple of weeks ago when her tweets got her fired, but for a couple of days I was reading all of them — retweets included — and among those retweets were a number referencing or discussing something called the QAnon Conspiracy.

I had no idea what that was, and could only assume it was racist bullshit, but I never really followed up on it. However, the guys over on the podcast “Reply All” did follow-up in an edition of their phenomenal “Yes, Yes, No” series, and guess what? It is not only racist bullshit, but wild.

It originated where all the most terrible racist, sexist conspiracy theories begin — 4Chan — and it has taken off in the right-wingosphere over the last year, so much so that it’s been mentioned by Sean Hannity and retweeted on numerous occasions by Roseanne Barr and others. It began with an anonymous poster who started posting suspicious questions regarding Hillary Clinton and her alleged connections to Russia, and that anonymous poster was given the nickname Q, referring to very high top secret clearance within the government.

Anyway, this guy started posting a lot onto 4Chan, and 4Chan is gonna 4Chan, so they built an elaborate conspiracy theory around these posts, and the gist of it is this, according to Reply All:

“The Mueller investigation is not investigating Donald Trump. It is working with Donald Trump. It is a great big smokescreen designed to misdirect people from the actual investigation. Trump is a brilliant four-dimensional chess player that is playing the long game pretending to be in love with Putin and Russia, and the whole investigation is actually directed toward the Clintons, the Obamas, Huma Abedin, [John Podesta, John McCain] and essentially what it’s investigating is a continuation of the Pizzagate conspiracy … The Trump Administration is onto these bad guys and is going to prosecute them.”

Huh. Wow. That’s … something.

Anyway, the endgame here is that Trump is going to arrest John Podesta, that there will be riots in the street, the military will have to temporarily take control of the government, and all the bad people (Obamas, Clinton) will be arrested.

And this is so popular online that there is a 30,000 member subreddit; there is an App that was top ten on iTunes that allows people to search for QAnon clues; and there are YouTube videos with hundreds of thousands of views. On top of that, there was an actual March on Washington.

This YouTube video kind of offers a comprehensive overview. It’s been viewed 570,000 times. It digs into the idea that people like John McCain and Hillary Clinton (who have foot braces for injured feet) and people like Huma Abedin and Michelle Obama — who have been seen wearing loose-fitting pants — are all secretly wearing ankle monitors because they’re under house arrest. Also, that Mueller has 10,000 sealed indictments waiting for judgment day.

Source: Reply All