The Q appeared in the assault on the Washington DC Capitol on Wednesday afternoon.
Among the crowd that stormed the headquarters of the There were some people in the United States Congress who identified with the QAnon movement, as evidenced by photos and videos.
Several prominent activists from This ideological trend were seen inside the building, while some more carried banners with the Q both inside and outside the compound.
It is a group that considers President Donald Trump as a hero , even though he did not has expressed its support and has only described these activists as “people who love” their country.
How was the chaotic “day of infamy” that the US lived with the violent assault on the Capitol by Trump supporters But what is QAnon and who are her followers?
What is it about? In essence, QAnon is a widely expanded and completely unfounded theory that says that President Trump is waging a secret war against Satan-worshiping pedophiles from the US government, business and media elites.
Several QAnon activists stormed the Capitol in Washington DC. Those who believe in QAnon have speculated that this fight will one day lead to a reckoning in which political figures such as former presidential candidate Hillary Clinton will be arrested and executed.
By What made it so easy for Trump supporters to break into the Washington Capitol? That is the basis of the movement, but There are so many derivations and internal debates that QAnon’s total list of claims is huge and often contradictory.
Adherents to these theories turn to news, historical facts and numerology to develop your own implausible conclusions.
Where did it all begin? In October 2017, a anonymous user posted a series of posts on the 4chan site. He signed them as “Q” and claimed to have a US security clearance level known as “Q clearance” .
“Where one goes, we all go” is one of the slogans associated with QAnon. These messages became known as “ Q drops ”(“ Q drops ”) or also like“ breadcrumbs ”, and were often written in cryptic language peppered with slogans, promises and images of Trump.
Who believes in QAnon? This movement has thousands followers.
They have increased their traffic in social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, Reddit and YouTube, from 2017, and there are indications that the numbers have grown even further during the covid pandemic – 19.
Twitter’s onslaught against the entire content linked to QAnon’s conspiracy theory Given this, the large internet firms tightened their rules on QAnon content and removed hundreds of accounts and videos related to the Q.
Jake Angeli, one of the activist s most notorious in the assault on the Capitol, it is part of QAnon. But on social media and polls it becomes clear that there are hundreds of thousands or even millions of people who believe in some of QAnon’s strange theories.
And their popularity has not been diminished by events that seem to discredit them. For example, the investigation of the special prosecutor Robert Mueller on the possible Russian intervention in the campaign of the presidential elections of 2016 In U.S.A.
The Republican who supports the conspiracy theory QAnon and won a seat in the United States Congress Supporters of QAnon claimed that the Mueller investigation was actually a pretext for a pedophilia investigation . When it concluded without an explosive revelation, the conspiracy theorists’ attention was diverted elsewhere.
What impact has it had? QAnon supporters push hashtags on social networks and coordinate attacks on adversaries: politicians, celebrities and journalists whom they accuse to be covering up pedophiles.
QAnon supporters used to appear at Trump campaign rallies. It’s not just about online messages. Twitter says it took action against QAnon due to potential “offline damage.”
Several QAnon believers have been arrested after making threats or actions in person. In a case of 2018, a heavily armed man, Matthew Wright, blocked a Hoover Dam bridge near Las Vegas. He then pleaded guilty to one count of terrorism.
The false conspiracy theory about a furniture company and child trafficking that went viral A Pew Research Center study from September 2020 found that almost the half of Americans had heard of QAnon , twice as many as six months earlier.
Of those who had heard of this group, one fifth had a positive opinion of the movement. And for many believers, QAnon constitutes President Trump’s base of support.
Knowing it or not, Trump has retweeted messages from QAnon supporters and, before the elections of 2020, his son Eric Trump posted a QAnon meme on Instagram.
QAnon in Latin America QAnon’s theories are unfounded and often contradictory. Even so, they have thousands of followers. Although it is a phenomenon of the United States, QAnon’s ideas have also had an influence in Latin America.
QAnon in Latin America: how and why groups associated with this controversial conspiracy theory have multiplied in the region The Costa Rican newspaper The Nation , for example, published in 2020 a research on the page “QAnon Costa Rica”, created on 28 of June of last year with thousands of followers in the Central American country .
There is also the group “Q Anon in Argentina”, created a couple of weeks after the Costa Rican page, the 14 July 2020, also with several thousand followers.
And a quick search on Facebook also reveals “groups QAnon ”in Colombia, Mexico, Guatemala, Panama, Brazil and Uruguay, where they not only talk about politics, but also about vaccines, climate change and the severity of the coronavirus pandemic.
The motto of Qanon Latin America is “the great awakening. ” Milthon Agüero, a Peruvian member of the group “Qanon Latinoamérica”, said last August that what is shared in these types of groups is not fake news or conspiracy theories, but “alternative information” to that of the “official media”, to which this publicist of 32 years he said not to believe them.
“I practice naturopathic nutrition and natural medicine and for years I have not trusted traditional, pharmacological medicine. So, looking for alternative information, I came across this group at the end of March, beginning of April “, Agüero told BBC Mundo.
But for Ethan Zuckerman, director of the Center for Civic Media at MIT, QAnon is an especially corrosive conspiracy theory because it leads people to assume that almost every authority figure “is part of a secret clique that works against freedom.”
“The corrosion that comes from that is the danger that we don’t trust any institution ,” Zuckerman said in a recent edition of the the BBC The Inquiry dedicated to QAnon.
“And that mistrust, if exploited by an authoritarian leader, is incredibly dangerous,” he concludes.
With the collaboration of Mike Wendling, Jack Goodman and Shayan Sardarizadeh , by BBC Reality Check, and by Arturo Wallace, from BBC News Mundo.
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